China covers a large territory and has many nationalities, hence a variety of Chinese food with different but fantastic and mouthwatering flavor. Since China's local dishes have their own typical characteristics, generally, Chinese food can be roughly divided into eight regional cuisines, which has been widely accepted around. Certainly, there are many other local cuisines, which are famous, such as Beijing Cuisine and Shanghai Cuisine.
Shandong Cuisine
Consisting of Jinan cuisine and Jiaodong cuisine, Shandong cuisine, clear, pure and not greasy, is characterized by its emphasis on aroma, freshness, crispness and tenderness. Shallot and garlic are usually used as seasonings so Shangdong dishes tastes pungent usually. Soups are given much emphasis in Shangdong dishes. Thin soup features clear and fresh while creamy soup looks thick and tastes strong. Jinan cuisine is adept at deep-frying, grilling, frying and stir-frying while Jiaodong division is famous for cooking seafood with fresh and light taste.
Typical Courses: Bird's Nest Soup; the Yellow River Carp in Sweet and Sour sauce
Sichuan Cuisine
Sichuan cuisine is world-famous and forms a class of its own. The Chinese claim that it comprises more than 4000 dishes, of which over 300 are said to be famous. It's easily China's hottest and spiciest cuisine, often using huajiao, literally 'flower pepper', a crunchy little item that leaves a numbing and strangely unfamiliar aftertaste-some compare it to spicy detergent.
Sichuan chefs have a catch-cry that draws attention to the diversity of Sichuanese cooking styles: 'baicai, baiwei,' literally 'a hundred dishes, a hundred flavors. ' Whether 'a hundred flavours' is a characteristic Chinese exaggeration or not is difficult to say. There is, nevertheless, a bewildering cornucopia of Sichuanese sauces and culinary-preparation techniques.
Some of the more famous varieties are yuxiang wei, a really tasty fish-flavored sauce that draws heavily on vinegar, soy sauce and mashed garlic and ginger; mala wei, a numbingly spicy sauce that is often prepared with bean curd; yanxun wei, a 'smoked flavor' sauce, of which the most justifiably famous is that used with smoked duck; and, perhaps most famous of all, the hot and sour sauce (suanla ivei). The hot and sour soup, suanla tang, is eaten throughout China and is great on a cold day.
A famous dish is spicy chicken fried with peanuts (gongbao jiding). Equally well known is mapo doufu, which is beancurd, pork and chopped spring onions in a chilly sauce. A favorite with travelers and worth trying simply for the novelty value is guoba roupian. Guoba refers to the crispy bits of rice, uncannily similar to Rice Crisps, that stick to the bottom of the rice pot - they are put on a plate, and pork and gravy added in front of the dinner.
Chinese cooking is justifiably famous, a fine art perfected through the centuries. Quality, availability of ingredients and cooking styles vary by region, but you'll almost always find something to suit your tastes.
While the Chinese make outstanding lunches, dinners and snacks, many foreigners are disappointed with breakfast. The Chinese do not seem to understand the western notion of eating lightly in the morning - a typical breakfast could include fried peanuts, pickled vegetables, pork with hot sauce, fried bread-sticks (youtiao) , and rice porridge. Outside of hotel restaurants, prices are generally low.
The other catch is that when Chinese dine out they spend big, and foreigners are expected to do likewise.
It cannot be said that one who does not experience Sichuan food ever reaches China.
Typical Courses: Hot Pot; Smoked Duck; Kung Pao Chicken; Twice Cooked Pork; Mapo Dofu
Guangdong Cuisine (Cantonese Cuisine)
Tasting clear, light, crisp and fresh, Guangdong cuisine, familiar to Westerners, usually chooses raptors and beasts to produce originative dishes. Its basic cooking techniques include roasting, stir-frying, sauteing, deep-frying, braising, stewing and steaming. Among them Steaming and stir-frying are more commonly applied to preserve the natural flavor. Guangdong chefs also pay much attention to the artistic presentation of dishes.
This is southern Chinese cooking-lots of steaming, boiling and stir-frying. It's the best of the bunch if you're worried about cholesterol, as it uses the least amount of oil. It's lightly cooked and not as highly spiced as the other three, with lots of seafood, vegetables, roast pork, chicken, steamed fish and fried rice.
Dim sum is a snack-like variation, served for breakfast and lunch (but never dinner) and consisting of all sorts of little delicacies served from pushcarts wheeled around the restaurant floor. It's justifiably famous and something you should experience at least once, but like many visitors you'll probably get addicted.
The Cantonese are famous for making just about anything palatable: specialties are abalone, dried squid, 1000-year eggs, shark's fin soup, snake soup and dog stew.
Typical Courses: Shark's Fin Soup; Steamed Sea Bass; Roasted Piglet
Fujian Cuisine
Consisting of Fuzhou Cuisine, Quanzhou Cuisine and Xiamen Cuisine, Fujian Cuisine is distinguished for its choice seafood, beautiful color and magic taste of sweet, sour, salty and savory. The most distinct features are their "pickled taste".
Typical Courses: Buddha Jumping Over the Wall; Snow Chicken; Prawn with Dragon's Body and Phoenix's tail
Jiangsu Cuisine
Jiangsu Cuisine, also called Huaiyang Cuisine, is popular in the lower reach of the Yangtze River. Aquatics as the main ingredients, it stresses the freshness of materials. Its carving techniques are delicate, of which the melon carving technique is especially well known. Cooking techniques consist of stewing, braising, roasting, simmering, etc. The flavor of Huaiyang Cuisine is light, fresh and sweet and with delicate elegance.
Typical Courses: Stewed Crab with Clear Soup, Long-boiled and Dry-shredded Meat, Duck Triplet, Crystal Meat, Squirrel with Mandarin Fish, and Liangxi Crisp Eel
Zhejiang Cuisine
Comprising local cuisines of Hanzhou, Ningbo and Shaoxing, Zhejiang Cuisine, not greasy, wins its reputation for freshness, tenderness, softness, smoothness of its dishes with mellow fragrance. Hangzhou Cuisine is the most famous one among the three.
Typical Courses: Sour West Lake Fish, Longjing Shelled Shrimp, Beggar's Chicken
Hunan Cuisine
Hunan cuisine consists of local Cuisines of Xiangjiang Region, Dongting Lake and Xiangxi coteau. It characterizes itself by thick and pungent flavor. Chili, pepper and shallot are usually necessaries in this division.
Typical Courses: Dongan Chick; Peppery and Hot Chick
Anhui Cuisine
Anhui Cuisine chefs focus much more attention on the temperature in cooking and are good at braising and stewing. Often hams will be added to improve taste and sugar candy added to gain freshness.
Typical Courses: Stewed Snapper; Huangshan Braised Pigeon
Read More...
Guangzhou metro line 5 opening this month
Read More...
From as early as the school was established in China, teachers dominated the entire classroom, students just have to receive and imbibe what teachers taught in class and any kind of challenge or doubt was discouraged and dampened. The results were independent thinking has been hampered; the spirit to doubt and argue has been impeded. In such atmosphere, no dare to challenge the authority. Pundit or expert means standard. In a circumstance like this, if we want to better our education and to install a productive atmosphere in classroom, we must oppose this teacher-centered lecture format and build up a student-centered one.
Why, you may wonder, should students center the classroom? Firstly, knowledge counts only when the receiver thoroughly absorbed it and the teacher-centered lecture format definitely hindered the procedure. In teacher-centered lecture format, teachers may offer some formula and solutions for mathematic problem or some facts and events in history, but that only means the students truly understand the knowledge the received. When they encounter a new problem or phenomenon, they have no idea to solve it or explain the cause and effect of it.
In student-centered lecture format, teachers only have to offer some cases and guidance lead to solution, the students, on the other hand, under the guiding from teacher, equipped by what they have learned, find out definite solution themselves and truly acquired what teachers want them to know in the process.
Secondly, teaching is learning. This means teachers have to update knowledge themselves in order to offer fresh nutrition for the younger mind. Being challenged and argued is the best way to spark new idea and thinking. To keep knowledge fresh is to keep it alive. Furthermore, in teacher-centered lecture format, students feel bored and passive; while in student-centered lecture format, boredom and passiveness are gone, students act actively and concentratedly because they have to join the discussion or to answer question raised by teachers or their peers. Thus, the classroom atmosphere improves.
Overall, the teacher-centered lecture format is outdated, for it discourages independent thinking and doubt; the student-centered lecture format is productive and agreeable, for it welcomes challenge and opens the door for true knowledge.
Read More...
I just can't understand this, May 10, Google.cn put a festival logo on the homepage. Needless to say, to honor all the mothers throughout the world is something agreeable. However, two days later, while all the websites throughout China are making a fuss to commemorate the devastating earthquake of Wenchuan, Sichuan 365 days before and to offer condolence to the victems,
Read More...
Wherever you got chance to come to China, you have to visit Guangzhou, the most vibrant and energetic city in this country.However, Guangzhou is big city, if you don't want to miss anything exciting, read carefully.
Read More...
In google.cn, there are 59,000,000 hits when search with the key words "Hero Review"."Read on the Wiki".
Here are some parts of the critiques from the web, I didn't edit.
Hero is the masterpiece. It employs unparalleled visual splendor to show why men must make war to secure the peace and how warriors may find their true destiny as lovers. Time
Swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling, Zhang Yimou's Hero is an action movie for the ages. Chicago Tribune
Led by director Zhang Yimou and dazzling cinematographer Christopher Doyle, the unseen Hero production team has made what just might be the most artistically sophisticated, most formally beautiful martial arts film the genre has seen. Los Angeles Times
Hero is an epic, evocative of another epoch and of landscapes beyond time. It's overwhelming. And yet I miss the animating anger of Zhang's early masterworks, in which penniless young lovers were oppressed by impotent old men.L A Weekly
In the end, the spectacular martial-arts epic seems to signify nothing much more than its own beauty, as brilliant and ephemeral as a fireworks display.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Generally, west critics are focused on the visual effect created by colors, costumes and cinematagraphy. But I goes more to this one.
Much of your ability to appreciate the finer points of Zhang Yimou's “Hero” depends on your knowledge of Chinese culture and history. This doesn't mean those of us completely unaware of the country's monumental struggle to unite itself under one kingdom, or the zenish notion of swordsmanship as an art form rather than a martial prowess, can't also appreciate the film. There's plenty to like about “Hero”, but unfortunately for anyone who has seen any number of Hong Kong swordplay film (or even Ang Lee's “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), there's nothing new here.
I have to say that the success of this blockbuster is much more depended on its pilot and characters portrayed in it rather than the picturresqueness. It shown care to the world we're living, on which war goes on endless; one part or another of the world seems have to fight for some reason unknown.
Note:In the movie, Qin Shi Huang (Emperor Qin), got the meaning of culture things. He said:" it is troblesome that nineteen different sayings just for one word-sword-and couldn't understood by each other," and want to unified them all. This is where I want to draw my idea from. The world now is just global village, and none of us want to bring about war. Understanding about each other is more essential than that of any other kinds of exchange. To do this, we should begin with the culture.
See difination of Hero on wikipedia.org or the Chinese version of it on baike.baidu.com
Read More...
Today I try to translate a poem written by Qu Dajun, a poet born in Guangdong province,Qing dynasty. He is a famous poet in the southern China. He and another two native poet was entitled: the three poem master of Lingnan.
Visiting the Green Bull Terrace on the Pengjin Mountain
By Qu Dajun
By who the verdure of the lotus is carved,
On this peak stands a tower that is about to soar.
Mountains encaged the resting wild geese,
and the winding ranges took the shape of a gray dragon.
Sun shining on the sonw enmantled yellow river,
and bells ringing from the heaven palace.
Princes and lords forget to go home totally,
Green pines grows here eternally.
The original Chinese poem is here!
Read More...
I have cellected some online resource for you to learn Chinese. Make use of them and give your Chinese a chance to grow!
1.Public Chinese
http://www.publicchinese.com/
On this site they offer:
Online Course
Where students can enjoy free learning style without the restriction of time and location. In this section, students are able to take placement tests, set up a study plan, choose a different course level, evaluate the learning process and interactively communicate with tutors online.
Pod
A form of online radio broadcasting, with which students can listen to the radio programs to meet their own expectation. The program mainly contains Chinese music and other entertaining elements for Mandarin learning, showing to students in Audio (MP3), Video (WMV) and Flash formats. Among the services, ’Talk Show Chinese’ and ‘Music Enjoy’ are the most popular ones.
Language Buddy
‘Buddy’ provides students with a large platform for making friends. Here, they can find the ideal friends, and even learn the specific languages that intrigues them most.
Books
Tailored course books: Basic Chinese, Business Chinese and Traveling Chinese, are excellent Chinese Training materials, and ideal self-teaching tools for online students.Both wholesale and retail are available.
2. Hanyu (Chinese)
http://www.hanyu.com.cn/
where offers webcast, online cuorse , WebRadio ,textbook and downlaodings.
3.GChines.com
http://www.gchinese.com/
A English language forum for the foreigners who wanna learn or are learning Chinese.
4.Zhongwen.com
http://www.zhongwen.com/
A online Chinese-English Dictionary.
Read More...
The western customs are so different with that of our Chinese! In this article, I will try to talk about the commons as well as differences of how the two people celebrate their most important festival.
When that day is coming, the people from both side of the world are about to go home to be with their family members. A family reunion or get-together is so indispensable, especially in China, for the people who were apart from the family a whole year or many years because of working afar. They both treat that day most important day in a year that meant to be a day for entertaining themselves, presents are bought for families, friends and relatives, a big even a sumptuous meal is served for it. Neither the Chinese people nor the westerners have to work that day, for that is a day of holiday.
There also some difference between the way how Chinese celebrate the Spring Festival and the westerners do with the Christmas. In China, the adults often give the children a Hong Bao (red pack) with “lucky money” inside during Spring Festival, which promised luck for the coming year. We post a couplet and Men Shen (portraits of Guarding God) on the door to omen a good future and protect ourselves from evil, visit friends and relatives to have a homely talk and share our happiness and stories with each other. In west, a postcard often is sent to friends, a gift instead of lucky money is given to children. They have turkey and roast while we have Jiaozi.
From what I mentioned above, there are many common as well as difference about the way people celebrating the holiday.
Give me some advices to perfect this post, will you? All you have to do is to leave a message below!
Read More...
When people are about to get themselves a job, two main factors are most considered. Go after money or just because love doing it. One chooses a job for a handsome paycheck whilst someone else enjoys doing what he/she loves.
When it comes to me, I’ll make the salary my priority and I’ll also show my reasons so as to make me less seemed like a greedy money-chaser or material-seeker.
First, freedom, which is the most important, significant and magnificent thing we all chased and will chase in the future, only comes when you are financially free. I can’t bear the days in which I have to live up to someone else’s will because of not having enough money to free myself from the post or boss bored with some day. With money, we can choose the day and moment to leave any company without get one of my family members worrying about the living.
Second, we all got or will get a family to support, and as men, we should think the responsibilities before ourselves’ so-called interest even our felling. To be a responsible husband and a qualified father is more meaningful than to be a happy artist or singer or anything else.
Third, one can really enjoy what he or she like only when he or she got the money to free him /her from the bread issue. We can even say that the interest is for the privileged people.
In a word, I will give the money my priority because I don’t want to be cynical by claiming I don’t want that money to live a happy life while making my family worry about the bread things. Is my reasoning reasonable?
Read More...
