中国文化通览 - 图文

Chinese Culinary Arts中国饮食文化

Chinese culinary arts are rather complicated, and in different places, there are different ways for preparing dishes. Many different cuisines unique to certain areas are formed, for instance, Shandong cuisine（菜肴）, Beijng cuisine, Shanghai cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Jiangsu cuisine, Zhejiang cuisine, Anhui cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Hubei cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Shanxi cuisine, Henan cuisine, north-eastern China cuisine, royal style cuisine, Muslim style cuisine and vegetarian cuisine.

Each cuisine has its own specialty.（例子不背） For example, the Fujian cuisine has a dish called “happiness and longevity”. Its preparation is like this: first put some of the most nutritious ingredients (sea cucumber, dried scallop, shark’s fin, ham, tendons of beef, dove’s eggs, chicken, duck, etc) into a jar, then add some bone broth, Shaoxing rice wine and spices, next, cover the mouth of the jar with a lotus leaf, and last, simmer it on the stove. It’s not hard to imagine how delicious and nutritious the dish would be. This dish has another well-known name— “Buddha jumping over the wall”. It may sound strange, but there’s an interesting story behind it. It is said that during the Qing Dynasty, a restaurant in Fuzhou (the capital city of Fujian Province) was very famous for its dishes. One day, the restaurant made the dish “happiness and longevity”, the aroma of the dish was so appetizing and spread so far that a monk in a nearby temple just couldn’t resist the temptation. In the end, he put aside the Buddhist discipline, jumped over the wall into the restaurant, and ate to his heart’s content. What happened to the monk afterwards, we do not know, but the reputation of the dish “Buddha jumping over the wall” spread afar.

Generally speaking, there are three essential factors（要素） by which Chinese cooking is judged, namely: “color, aroma and taste”. “Color” refers to the layout（布局） and design of the dishes. “Aroma” implies not only the smell of the dish, but also the freshness of the materials and the blending of seasonings（作料）. “Taste” involves proper seasoning and fine slicing techniques（切片技术）. These three essential factors are achieved by careful coordination of a series of delicate activities（微妙的活动）: selecting ingredients（材料）, mixing flavors, timing and cooking, adjustment of the heat, and laying out the food on the plate.

What is worth mentioning is that there’s a lot of cultural background knowledge involved in the naming of Chinese dishes. Often, it’s hard, even for the Chinese people themselves, to tell what is actually in a certain dish until it is served on the table. Of course, one can always turn to the waiter or waitress for explanation. In most cases, waiters and waitresses are ready to satisfy one’s curiosity.

Apart from having regard for the above-mentioned three essential factors — “color, aroma and taste”, Chinese cuisine attaches great importance to nutrition. As a matter of fact, Chinese cuisine has long been closely related to traditional Chinese medicine. Ginseng, walnut, Chinese angelica and the fruit of Chinese wolfberry are often used as ingredients in certain Chinese dishes.

中国饮食文化

Chinese culinary arts are rather complicated, and in different places, there are different ways for preparing dishes. Many different cuisines unique to certain areas are formed, for instance, Shandong cuisine（菜肴）, Beijng cuisine, Shanghai cuisine, Sichuan cuisine,

Generally speaking, there are three essential factors（要素） by which Chinese cooking is judged, namely: “color, aroma and taste”.

These three essential factors are achieved by careful coordination of a series of delicate activities（微妙的活动）: selecting ingredients（材料）, mixing flavors, timing and cooking, adjustment of the heat, and

laying out the food on the plate.

What is worth mentioning is that there’s a lot of cultural background knowledge involved in the naming of Chinese dishes.

Apart from having regard for the above-mentioned three essential factors — “color, aroma and taste”, Chinese cuisine attaches great importance to nutrition

Chinese Tea Culture

Chinese people like to drink tea, and often entertain friends and guests with it. They are the first to discover the tea leaf and have been drinking tea in many varieties ever since.

Chinese tea may be classified into four types according to the different methods by which it is processed. Green tea keeps the original color of the tea leaves without fermentation during processing. This category consists mainly of Longjing, Maofeng and Biluochun. Black tea is fermented before baking; it is a later variety developed on the basis of the green tea. Oolong tea represents a variety half way between the green and the black tea, made after partial fermentation. Scented tea is made by mixing fragmented flowers in the tea leaves in the course of processing. The flowers commonly used for this purpose are jasmine tea and magnolia among others. Jasmine tea is a well-known favorite with the northerners of China and with a growing number of foreigners.

Different tea-drinking customs in various parts of China make up the rich Chinese tea culture. Among the customs, a host will only fill a teacup to seven-tenths of its capacity. It is said that the other three-tenths will be filled with friendship and affection. Moreover, the teacup should be emptied in three gulps.

Tea plays an important role in Chinese social life. Tea is always offered to a guest immediately upon entering a Chinese home. Serving a cup of tea is more than a matter of mere politeness. It is a symbol of togetherness, a sharing of something enjoyable, and a way of showing respect to visitors. In some areas of China, it might be considered rude not to take at least a sip.

Although there has been an increasing amount of literature about tea in recent years, such literature is certainly not new. During the Song dynasty, Lu Yu, who is known as the “Tea Sage”, wrote the Tea Scripture. This scripture describes in detail the processes of planting tea bushes, picking tea leaves and preparing leaves for brewing. Famous poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Bai Juyi created large numbers of poems about tea. Famous painters Tang Bohu and Wen Zhengming even drew many pictures about tea.

The Chinese pay great attention to their tea and the way they drink it. People have high requirements for the quality of the prepared tea leaf, the water they use to brew tea and the wares they use to prepare and serve tea. Normally, the finest tea is grown at altitudes of 3,000 to 7,000 feet (900 to 2,100 meters). People select their water carefully. The Chinese emphasize water quality and water taste. Fine water must be pure, sweet, cool, clean, and flowing.

Chinese prefer pottery wares to wares made of metal or other materials. The best choice is the purple clay wares in Yixing and Jingdezhen. The purple clay gives the ware their internationally-known purple color.

中国茶文化

Drinking tea can quench one’s thirst, dispel fatigue, help digestion and prevent some diseases.

The constant drinking of tea is quite beneficial to people’s health.

Chinese tea may be classified into four types according to the different methods by which it is processed. Green tea Black tea Oolong tea Scented tea.

Different tea-drinking customs in various parts of China make up the rich Chinese tea culture. Tea plays an important role in Chinese social life.

Drinking tea can quench one’s thirst, dispel fatigue, help digestion and prevent some diseases. The constant drinking of tea is quite beneficial to people’s health.

The Wine Culture酒文化

Wine culture is an important part of the Chinese food and drink culture. According to The Book of Rites, the water ancient Chinese offered to god was called xuanjiu or mingshui by later generations. As to the inventor of wine, there are several versions, but the most popular one is that a person called Du Kang made it. Du kang or Shao Kang was regarded as the inventor of wine.

Drinking Etiquette酒令

The drinkers’ wager game not only brought fun to the drinkers at the banquet, but also promoted the popularization of Chinese wine culture. Nowadays wine culture is still an important part of Chinese people’s daily life.

酒令作为酒宴中的一种游戏，不仅增加了人们饮酒时的情趣，而且也进一步促进了中国酒文化的兴盛。时至今日，酒文化仍然是人们日常生活当中的一个重要内容。

Traditional Festivals

Every nation in the world has its own traditional festivals, so does China. China is a multiethnic country with many festivals shared by all ethnicities. And most of the traditional festivals are related to historical development, religious practice and moral principles of the Chinese culture. Of those festivals, some are kept to commemorate certain historical events so as to inspire the people to succeed and carry out some lofty spirit or fine traditions; others to sing the praise fro the outstanding persons and express people’s grief for them and cherish their memory. Traditional festivals are created by the people themselves, radiating with their wisdom and ideals.

China’s major traditional festivals include the Spring Festival, the Lantern Festival, the Qingming Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Double Ninth Festival. Ethnic groups have also retained their own traditional festivals including the Water Sprinkling Festival of the Dai people, the Nadam Fair of the Mongolian people, and the Torch Festival of the Yi people, etc.

Chinese traditions and festivals are closely related to complex, mystical concepts of time, similar to those found in Western astrology. The traditional lunar calendar is

the same calendar as used in Western countries. This is the official calendar and all holidays and festivals that began in modern times are celebrated on days of this (Gregorian) calendar. The lunar calendar is the one that the Chinese have used throughout most of their history. It is also known as the Farmer’s Calendar.

Months in the traditional Chinese year are known as moons and they have either 29 or 30 days. The calendar is arranged so that the first day of each month coincides with a new moon and the 15th day corresponds to a full moon. However, the 12 lunar months do not equate to a real (solar) year, so and extra, intercalary month is added every third year. This 13th month is inserted anywhere between the 2nd and 11th month.

Combing the two calendars presents a few problems, so the Chinese use almanacs to determine the Gregorian dates of lucky or unlucky days. Chinese people like to refer to such almanacs when setting dates for marriages, opening businesses or having children. Traditionally, the calendar was critical to the timing of events, both on a personal and social level. All the great Chinese festivals occur at special times in the traditional calendar.

The Spring Festival(春节)

This is the Chinese equivalent of Christmas and New Year rolled into one. It celebrates the beginning of the New Year according to the lunar calendar阴历. To avoid confusion with the January 1st New Year, it is called the Spring Festival. It falls between January 21st and February 20th and provides the biggest celebration of the Chinese year. It is a time when families get together and people often travel great distances to do so.

The last days of the old year are spent cleaning the house thoroughly and preparing the lunar New Year feast. Chinese people like to eat fish at this time because the word for fish is pronounced the same way as the word for abundance, so a request for fish invokes a plentiful new year. Sticky cakes are eaten, too.

People give offerings of food to their ancestors or local gods within their own homes. Families like to hang lunar New Year pictures in the homes. These might feature fish, harvests or children, all healthy and plentiful. Red is synonymous with wealth, so parents give lucky money to their children in little red envelopes and spring couplets bearing auspicious messages are hung on either side of the entrance to the house to bring good fortune into the home.

There are many public celebrations, too. Lion Dances are performed. These involve many people carrying a costume animal through the streets, the main troupe member at the head. Traditionally members of rival kung fu schools competed with each other to display their group’s prestige and physical skills, but nowadays people participate to the sound of pounding drums and deafening firecrackers to scare away evil spirits.

The Lantern Festival元宵节

The Lantern Festival is held on the first full moon of the year, 15 days into the first month. During the festival, lanterns of many shapes and colours, made from silk or paper, are hung outside the homes. This festival is associated with glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with various sweet fillings. These are known to Beijingers as yuanxiao, which is another name for the festival.

The Qingming Festival 清明节

Tomb Sweeping Day and the Clear Bright Festival are other common English translations of the Qingming Festival. Qingming has a tradition stretching back more than 2,500 years. Its origin is credited to the Tang Emperor Xuanzong, in 732. Wealthy citizens in China were reportedly holding too many extravagant and ostentatiously expensive ceremonies in honor of their ancestors. Emperor Xuanzong, seeking to curb this practice, declared that respects could be formally paid at ancestors’ graves only on Qingming. The observance of Qingming food found a firm place in Chinese culture and continued uninterruptedly for over two millennia.

The Qingming Festival is an opportunity for celebrants to remember and honor their ancestors at grave sites. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks, (joss) paper accessories, and/or libation to the ancestors. The rites have a long tradition in Asia, especially among farmers. Some people carry willow branches with them on Qingming, or put willow branches help ward off the evil spirit that wanders on Qingming. Also on Qingming people go on family outings, start the spring plowing, sing, dance, and Qingming is a time when young people start courting. Another popular thing to do is flying kites (in shapes of animals or characters from Chinese opera). Others carry flowers instead of burning paper, incense or firecrackers as is common.

Nowadays, grave cleaning is rarely performed by urban Chinese since cremation is the law and common practice. However, most modern Chinese honor their dead on this day through some form of commemoration. Unusually, this festival is set by the solar calendar and it falls in early April.

The Dragon Boat Festival端午节龙舟节

This is probably the most energetic Chinese festival. It takes place on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month and involves frantic boat races up and down rivers in rural China. The boats are dressed up as dragons and raced, the purpose being to tame the dragons believed to be alive in the rivers and responsible for causing floods. The date commemorates the suicide of Minister Qu Yuan who, after being expelled by the king, drowned himself. Fishermen raced to save him but failed. To protect his soul, they beat drums and slapped the water with their oars. The food of this festival is zongzi, pyramid-shaped dumpling with glutinous rice.

这可能是最精力充沛的中国节日。它发生在每年农历5月5日,是疯狂的上下船比赛在中国农村河流。船是装扮成龙

日期纪念部长屈原的自杀,后被国王驱逐,淹死自己。渔民跑去救他,但失败了。保护他的灵魂,他们击败了鼓和桨扇了水。这个节日的食物是粽子,糯米金字塔形状的饺子。

The Mid-Autumn Festival中秋节

This festival coincides with the autumn equinox, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest on the 15th of the 8th month. It is associated with the legend of Chang’e and her rabbit living on the moon. Traditionally, it was common for people to meet and philosophize while gazing at the night sky. The food of this festival is the delicious moon cake.

这个节日恰逢秋分,当月亮是最大的和最聪明的在8月15日。它是与嫦娥的

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