There is no such thing as "Chinese food." There are at least eight officially recognised regional cuisines (the "Eight Great Cuisines" — Shandong, Sichuan, Cantonese, Fujian, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, Anhui), plus dozens of sub-regional and ethnic-minority traditions. A Cantonese chef and a Sichuan chef share a written language but almost nothing else in the kitchen — their ingredients, techniques, flavour principles, and culinary philosophies are as different as French and Thai. The Provenance database must reflect this: entries tagged "Chinese" without a regional specification are meaningless.
- **Sichuan = chilli-and-Sichuan-pepper heat.** Mala (numbing-hot). Doubanjiang (fermented chilli-bean paste). The wok and the cleaver. - **Cantonese = seafood, dim sum, and the pursuit of "wok hei."** The lightest, most ingredient-focused of the eight. Steamed fish with ginger and scallion is the Cantonese exam. - **Shandong = the root of northern Chinese cooking.** Wheat-based (noodles, dumplings, mantou), onion-garlic-ginger aromatics, braising and deep-frying. - **Hunan = the fieriest.** Hotter than Sichuan (which uses numbing pepper alongside chilli), Hunan uses chilli alone for a direct, frontal heat. Chairman Mao's favourite cuisine. - **Jiangsu/Zhejiang = the sugar-vinegar sweet-savoury traditions.** Shanghai cuisine falls here. Hongshao (red-braising in soy, sugar, and Shaoxing wine) is the mother technique. - **Yunnan, Xinjiang, Hakka, Dongbei** — already documented in this extraction — fall outside the Eight Great but are equally important.
REGIONAL CHINESE BEYOND SICHUAN + AFRICAN CONTINENT DEEP