Diet is an important foundation of human activities, which is based on people's most basic and life-sustaining physiological needs, and food culture is more based on people's family and human society's dietary practices, as well as people's specific production and living conditions, to meet some of people's spiritual needs. Therefore, food culture is an indispensable and important part of people's daily life, and often becomes a typical representative, intuitive symbol and identity symbol of national culture and regional culture.
▲On October 13, 2023, the 24th China Food Festival was held in Qingdao. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Ziheng
The world-renowned Chinese food culture is an important part of Chinese culture, which has been passed down from generation to generation, with a rich historical heritage and rich humanistic connotation, and is an important embodiment of the soft power of Chinese culture.
Food culture is rich in philosophy
Food culture covers every day of people's daily life and profoundly affects all important nodes of life, such as weddings and funerals, imports, festivals, interpersonal interactions, etc. From the state banquet of foreign affairs activities to the family banquet of the people of all ethnic groups, there is a corresponding food culture.
Chinese food culture is closely related to people's livelihood. The Book of Songs contains: "The quality of the people, daily food"; Han Feizi emphasized that people take the stomach as the foundation, and if they don't eat, they can't live, so the ancients said that "the people take food as the sky" and "at the beginning of the husband's ceremony, the beginning of the diet". People often say that the seven things that open the door, "firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea", are food culture.
Chinese food culture is inextricably linked to the idea of governing the country. "Food" is listed as the first government in the "Eight Policies" of the most important "Eight Policies" governing the country in "Shangshu Hongfan", that is, "one food". Lao Tzu clearly pointed out in the "Tao Te Ching": "To govern a big country, if you cook a small fresh", its essence is that whether it is cooking delicacies or governing the country, we must pay attention to the word "meticulous". Ban Gu emphasized in the "Hanshu Food and Goods Journal" that "food and goods are sufficient, and then the country and the people are rich, and education becomes", which further illustrates the profound truth.
Chinese food culture is not only about the needs of the stomach, but also contains the philosophy of knowing and understanding things. "The Analects of the Township Party" proposes that "you don't get tired of eating, and you don't get tired of being fine", which means that the way of eating also reflects a person's taste and way of treating others. Because of this, Chinese food culture has the characteristics of "diverse flavors, different seasons, paying attention to beauty, paying attention to taste, and combining medicine and food", including refinement, beauty, affection, etiquette and other characteristics, on the basis of integrating five grains in the blending of five flavors, the taste of the five dishes in the middle and the middle, the inclusion of five animals in the subtlety of the song, the absorption of five fruits in cooking and maturation, and the innovation of the five signs in the combination of meat and vegetables, on the basis of making full use of cooking skills such as removing the fishy fat, increasing the freshness, controlling the heat, and adjusting the taste, and strive to improve and optimize the color, aroma, and taste of the dishes, so as to achieve the fragrance, taste, beauty, and text, courtesy.
The food cultures of various ethnic groups are blended with each other
The inheritance process of Chinese food culture is also a process of mutual absorption and integration of food culture elements of various ethnic groups. In the long-term historical development process, the Chinese ethnic groups are interdependent, interactive, coexisting and co-prosperous, and the food culture of each ethnic group with its own characteristics constitutes an organic whole of the Chinese food culture, forming the dual characteristics of national food culture and regional food culture.
For example, milk tea, a model of combining elements of nomadic culture and agricultural culture, is deeply loved by Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu, Uygur, Kazakh and other ethnic groups, and can be described as "a meal for more than a thousand years". This is achieved through the "tea and horse market" and other channels, and is the result of exchanges and blending between ethnic groups. Today, milk tea has become a widely shared drink for members of many ethnic groups, and its scale extends far beyond the scope of nomadic peoples.
After long-term development, Chinese food culture has formed eight well-known cuisines, including Shandong cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Hui cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Suzhou cuisine, and Zhejiang cuisine. The Manchu and Han Banquets, known as the "Chinese Banquet Champion", are outstanding representatives of Chinese food culture.
The Manchu and Han Dynasty banquets and the Qing imperial diet are both different and related. This phenomenon of sublimation of food culture was formed in the context of the continuous consolidation of China's unified multi-ethnic state in the Qing Dynasty, and after experiencing the stage of Manchu and Han separate seats, the stage of Manchu-Han cuisine, and the stage of Manchu-Han full seats. It continues to gather the essence of multi-ethnic food culture, becoming the pinnacle of the development history of Chinese food culture, and also reflecting the continuous context of the formation and development of Chinese culture from the level of food culture.
Contemporary cuisine is constantly blending and innovating
The Chinese food culture has the right way to cook, there is a recipe for cooking, there is a good taste, there is a good type of view, and there is a miraculous effect on food, which has reached the realm of "silk and jade lotus, pearl japonica koi, nostalgia, and years". Nowadays, the process of blending Chinese food culture continues to expand.
For example, Shaqima, a typical traditional food of the Manchu people, is widely loved, and the people of various ethnic groups have carried out integrated optimization and innovation in its production concept, materials and processing technology. Some of the ingredients of Shaqima use tartary buckwheat flour or tartary buckwheat sprouts, which are abundant in the Liangshan region of Sichuan, and the taste of sakima is softer, sweet but not greasy, crispy and soft and glutinous. Under the guidance of modern health care concepts, some manufacturers have developed xylitol, tartary buckwheat yam, pueraria, poria cocos, and shaqima, so that diabetic patients can also eat it with peace of mind; The people of the Bai nationality in Dali, Yunnan Province also introduced the local specialty food milk fan into the production process of Shaqima, and developed the milk fan Shaqima, which further enriched the taste of Shaqima. Various localities have also innovated the production of different types of flavors such as milk caps, fruits, vegetables, oats, nuts, etc., making the ecological business of Shaqima look new.
Under the premise of respecting each other's eating habits, different ethnic groups can improve their taste and perfect their diet through mutual learning and integration of cooking techniques and dishes. For example, cold noodles, a typical representative of Korean special diet, take the pot-wrapped pork that is loved by people of all ethnic groups in Northeast China as one of the fixed pairings of cold noodles, which significantly improves the appearance and taste of traditional cold noodles and realizes the innovation of traditional food. This is a reflection of the progress of the times, which fully illustrates that Chinese food culture has both national and contemporary characteristics.
The thriving and spectacular Chinese food culture has also promoted the activity of related academic research, and formed a "knowledge-intensive discipline" compatible with food production, cookware and tableware production, cooking and food manufacturing skills, and the number of academic papers and related academic monographs on the topic of Chinese food culture has been rising. We eagerly await more masterpieces on Chinese food culture.
(The author is a distinguished expert of the Beijing Research Center for the Consciousness of the Community of the Chinese Nation and a professor at the School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China)