At Home with Chinese Cuisine (2 page)

Introduction

From the Qin Dynasty in the third century BC to the end of the Qing Dynasty in the early twentieth century, China was ruled by centralised, autocratic imperial regimes. A class system formed under such a political structure. This class system was divided into five social groups: the imperial households at the very top of the hierarchy; the aristocrats and mandarins; men of letters and hermits; merchants, traders, and city dwellers; and last the peasants.

The peasant population who lived on the land was the very foundation of the hierarchy. In a predominately agricultural society, as China had been up to the twentieth century, peasants were the producers of foodstuffs for the whole population. To most of them, food was for subsistence and survival from famine, poverty, and man-made disasters such as tyranny and war. Their predominately vegetable-based diet was not always by choice but mostly due to economy.
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Necessary trial and error in the hunt for food resulted in acquired knowledge and experience of living with the land and nature. Peasants took advantage of and appreciated the natural endowments,
including all those that fly in the sky and move on land. The instinct as well as the curiosity to identify objects that could end up on the dining table must therefore have a biological imprint on the Chinese as a result, and it has a profound influence on Chinese attitudes towards all aspects of food.

Peasant food had always been a source of inspiration for city traders such as those who made a living from the catering trade. It is through the catering trade that peasants’ dishes could become known. Chefs adapted and refined dishes they found interesting, adding them to their collection; Beggar’s Chicken (Chicken Baked in Crust) is often quoted as an example. The more dramatic route to fame was for a peasant’s dish to have royal patronage. There are stories of emperors who fell in love with the flavour of a particular dish during their travels in plain clothes outside the palace. The instant success of the dish would ensure continuous refinement and a position in the culinary history with a story to tell. Song Sau’s Fish Geng is an example in point.

The culinary contribution of the merchants and traders came to prominence with the construction of the Grand Canal about 2,500 years ago. Its continuous expansion in the centuries that followed spurred the development of commerce between the north and the south. The canal was initially designed for the northward transportation of commodities such as grain and salt, but its most long-lasting contribution was to facilitate the movement and development of people, commercial activities, cultural exchanges, and social and political integration among regions along the waterways. Merchants and traders were among the beneficiaries of the mobility. The enterprising chefs spotted the opportunities to serve travellers who craved the familiar flavours of their hometowns. They travelled with their customers to major towns and cities and unwittingly assumed the role of culinary and cultural ambassadors of the areas from which they came. Competition no doubt led them to identify the unique selling point of their business, which was to sell food with characteristics associated with where they originated from.

By the fourteenth century in the Ming Dynasty, the catering industry was well established and prosperous, especially around the old and new capital cities of HangZhou 
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and NanJing 
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in the south. Emperor HongWu (ZuYuanJiang), the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, continued the practice of the earlier dynasty to encourage the development of the catering industry. From time to time, the imperial household and the aristocrat and mandarin class either had take-away from or held banquets in up-market restaurants in the capital city. Dining out became an open and acceptable social activity for the first time in Chinese history for all walks of life. It was from this period onwards that an elite group of men of letters and hermits led the way to write and openly discuss gastronomy and the pleasure of dining. The old traditional stigma that cultured gentlemen should stay away from all matters related to kitchen was no more.

Men of letters and hermits belonged to a unique grouping of their own. They were well respected for their scholarly background and literary accomplishment. Many of them had been civil servants with scholarly backgrounds who came into prominence through the system of imperial examination, which promoted talents on the basis of meritocracy.
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Since the seventh century, people from different backgrounds were given opportunities to pursue a political career and to seek advancement in life through the system. Studying was seen as the only route to fortune and fame. For these educated elites, gastronomy or fine dining was not something they were preoccupied with, and they certainly hadn’t been writing or talking about it.

But by the Song and the Ming Dynasties, the preceding period of political upheavals and the uncertainty derived from the change of allegiance brought much soul searching among these educated elites. Some of them chose to retire from their official posts, and those who did not share the political ideology of the establishment opted for the life of political exile or hermits. Many of them had a good living and were inspired to the search of their inner beings and pleasure in life. They had the literary skills to write about what they had tasted on their culinary journey, and they had time, the sensitivity, and the enthusiasm to reflect and consolidate the gastronomical experience in writing. Their long-lasting legacy was to put down in writing the collective dietary habits and recipes of common people around them.

The saying that you need to be able to cook to fully appreciate good food held true for some of the men of letters and hermits who were great cooks in their own right. There are well-known dishes that bore their names and remain popular today. SuDongPo is a household name when it comes to pork dishes. Dong Po Pork is his best-known dish. He was a civil servant and man of letters from the eleventh century. His poems provide us a glimpse of his daily life at ease among commoners, and he demonstrated that a sumptuous dish could be prepared using easily available and inexpensive ingredients.

YuanMei’s
The
Cookery
of
SuiYuan
(SuiYuanShiDan), written in the eighteenth century, is another good illustration of the legacy left behind by men of letters. Mr
. Yuan was a poet and gourmand who was known for sending his cook around different households to learn the dishes Mr. Yuan had tasted and liked. With the inclusion of more than three hundred recipes that he had collected from the families of civil servants and government officials, his book combined theories and practices on the activities of cooking, dining, and entertaining. His thought process in food preparation was rigorous: careful choice of ingredients, emphasis of knife work and heat control, the attention paid to all the elements of flavour, and dining etiquette all typify the culinary practices of the educated elite. The documentation of the thought process and the recipes he left behind remain a source of inspiration for today’s food writers and chefs alike. Prefect Wang’s Bean Curd with Eight Treasures is an example of the recipes in his collection that remain popular today. Bean Curd with Eight Treasures Geng in this book is an updated version of that recipe.

Throughout Chinese history, the aristocrats and mandarins were always in an economically and politically privileged position to lead the way in the development of gastronomy. The pursuit of novelty and the wow factor was part and parcel of their lifestyle, and banqueting as public relation exercises further necessitated their culinary quest for creativity and finesse. Their collections of family recipes were customarily treated as family secrets. By the Ming Dynasty, which was well served by the prosperous catering industry, inviting guests to a banquet in well-established restaurants became in vogue. In order to differentiate and impress, hosts would sometimes pass on their family recipes to the restaurant chefs to prepare for the occasion. This unusual form of assimilation of culinary information has an important contribution to the shared heritage of the collection of fine dishes we have today.

For the privileged families, the position of the family head chef could be hereditary, passing down from father to son. The vast amount of culinary information therefore stayed behind the closed mansion doors. They created, refined, adapted, and evolved at their own accord, sparing no effort to maintain their unique culinary style. Unfortunately, some of these families came and went, and they took with them a wealth of culinary treasure that was lost forever. Those who survived the political turmoil of the twentieth century made a name for themselves in the fine dining restaurant trade. Today, diners marvel at the extravagant ingredients used and the fine flavour attained from meticulous attention paid to the food preparation process. They probably cannot help but wonder how it was like when a treat today used to be taken for granted in the past.

The imperial rulers of the Chinese dynasties were referred to as TianZi, the Son of Heaven; they claimed the mandate of heaven to give them the legitimacy to rule. People addressed them as WanSuiYe, literally meaning the Lord of Ten Thousand Years. Inevitably, longevity was one of their constant preoccupations. To this end, there were designated court officials, including imperial physicians and chefs, as well as separate administration responsible for the dietary planning and preparation of the royal households.

The
Principles
of
Proper
Diet
(YinShanZhengYao) was written at the beginning of the fourteenth century by the imperial physician of the Yuan Dynasty, HuXiHue. It contains a rich collection of court cuisine and discussions on seasonal dietary practices and the nourishing quality of food. The book describes how the imperial court had been pursuing the nourishment in life through dietary practices. The book was published during the reign of the Ming Dynasty Emperor JingTai in the fifteenth century and was made available to court officials and the general public. By putting theories and practice together,
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the book played a part in educating people about how to look after their health through diet.

For the emperor who claimed sovereignty over the land and subjects, food was not just for health and longevity; it was also for giving pleasure in equal measure. Imperial dining was an opulent ceremony that followed tradition and rituals. The Qing Dynasty saw the epitome of court cuisine at its most glamorous. The rich repertoire of the Qing court cuisines amalgamated Shandong,
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ZheJiang, and Jiangsu cuisines,
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with a northeastern Manchu characteristic.
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The imperial kitchen was highly regimented and had a sophisticated management structure with strict adherence to tradition. Rigorous rules applied to how each dish should be prepared and served. The imperial chefs had to be skilful, but the room for creativity was limited.
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Following the demise of the Qing Dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century, the imperial chefs became unemployed and had to make a living among commoners. Many of them went into the catering trade, and the successful ones saw their descendants or disciples become well-known chefs, food writers, or TV celebrities, telling the stories of the palace kitchens and the secret imperial recipes that had been passed down by their forebears. It is quite easy to find restaurants known for their court cuisine menu in Beijing today; adhering to the imperial tradition is their unique selling point.
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The continuous and rapid growth of the economy in twenty-first-century China has brought about affluence and ostentatious consumption. Dining out as a lifestyle is in vogue with diners seeking choice and novelty. The catering industry has never had such a good time in recent history
.
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Because of the comparatively low entry barriers, the competition is severe. Professional chefs are shouldered with two expectations. They are the drivers for innovation and creativity in order to stay ahead of the competition under the watchful eyes of cost-effectiveness. They are also the torchbearers to promote, adapt, and pass on the culinary standards set by their forebears to the next generation. It is sometimes a challenge to strike a balance between the two expectations, because they are not always reconcilable.