by Coe, Andrew
Although the Chinese did have contacts with the outside world before the Han Dynasty, their cooking ingredients and tastes were almost all native-grown. The expansion of the Silk Road and the initiation of trade with the kingdoms of Central Asia, India, and Persia stimulated culinary exchange. The caravans that carried silk and other precious goods west brought back cucumbers, pomegranates, carrots, walnuts, pistachios, coriander, green peas, spinach, and dates. The trade routes across the seas and over the mountains of Sichuan led to the introduction of South Asian spices; most important were black pepper, cardamom, and nutmeg. Portuguese merchants carried new ingredients from the New World to India and Southeast Asia, and these were brought by boat or caravan to China. Maize (corn) and sweet potatoes became known as peasant foods and livestock feed (sweet potatoes are also now a popular street snack); peanuts, tomatoes, and particularly chili peppers gained more widespread acceptance. Today, the regions that lie along the main mountain trade route—Sichuan and Hunan provinces—have the highest chili pepper consumption of China.
In ancient China, the proper preparation of grains, vegetables, meats, and fruits was a topic that concerned emperors and poets as well as cooks. Confucius held very firm ideas about how his meals should be prepared:
His rice is not excessively refined, and his sliced meat is not cut excessively fine. Rice that has become putrid and sour, fish that has spoiled, and meat that has gone bad, he does not eat. Food that is discolored he does not eat, and food with a bad odor he does not eat. Undercooked foods he does not eat, and foods served at improper times he does not eat. Meat that is improperly carved, he does not eat, and if he does not obtain the proper sauce, he will not eat. . . . He never dispenses with ginger when he eats. He does not eat to excess.15
Rice, millet, and other grains were most often cooked by steaming. Archaeologists have found ceramic steamers—three-legged cooking pots into which fit pots with perforations in the bottom—dating back seven thousand years. In the millennia before stoves were invented, the pot’s legs allowed it to be put directly over the open fire. Bamboo steamers, today found in nearly every Chinese kitchen, appeared around the time of the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE). For millennia, Chinese chefs likely used steaming and boiling most commonly as their methods of cooking vegetables.
Many of the important texts of the Zhou and Han dynasties address the proper preparation of meat, poultry, fish, and other seafood. Large animals had to be butchered before they were fit for the stove; this task could be elevated to an art form:
Ting, the butcher of King Hui, was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every tread of his food, every thrust of his knee, every sound of the rending flesh, and every note of the movement of the chopper, were in perfect harmony—rhythmical like the Mulberry Grove dance, harmonious like the chords of the Ching Shou music.16
Next the meat had to be cut, a step so important that food preparation was sometimes called “cutting and cooking.” We can guess that it was already the rule that meats be brought to the table chopped or sliced—the emperor would never have to wield a knife to eat his food. Steaming, boiling, and poaching were used to cook some kinds of animal flesh, particularly young chicken and fish. Chefs used the slow boil, or simmer, to prepare soups and particularly the rich, complex stews that had been favorite dishes since Shang times. Meats also were braised, grilled, or shallow-fried in a pan using a little animal fat. Beef tallow and lard, as well as lamb and dog fat, were all thought to contribute distinctive flavors to a dish. The ancient Chinese did not use deep-frying and stir-frying; there simply wasn’t enough animal fat available to make these possible. The technology of pressing oil from seeds—sesame, hemp, perilla, and others—was developed during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE); by the Song Dynasty, vegetable oil had become one of the necessities of Chinese life. Meat or poultry also could be parched (heat-dried), roasted, broiled, baked in clay, or skewered and cooked over open flames.
The Shang Dynasty chef Yi Yin, in addition to discussing raw ingredients and cooking methods, describes the third component of the best cooking as the focus on the relationship between flavors and textures. In a properly prepared dish, all five of the basic flavors—bitter, sour, sweet, pungent, and salty—should be present, to greater or lesser degrees, often depending on the season, but always in harmony with each other. According to Yi Yin, the bitter flavor comes from various herbs, the sour from fruit or vinegar, the sweet from malt sugar and honey, and the salty from salt. The pungent was, and is, a little more complex: it refers to the group of flavors that is sharp, stinging, or biting to the tongue and olfactory receptors. Chili peppers were unknown in ancient China; the prime sources of pungency were leeks, scallions, shallots, ginger, garlic, Chinese cinnamon (cassia), and dried Sichuan pepper (also called fagara in the West)—not actually a pepper but a tiny citrus fruit that produces a pleasant (and addictive) spicy yet numbing sensation in the mouth. Yi Yin also recognizes that fat adds both a taste and a texture to a dish that must be balanced. If a stew contains too much grease, it won’t feel right in the mouth. Today, Chinese cuisine is one of the few that recognize the importance of texture at the table. Besides an array of ingredients and flavorings, the dishes must contain a variety of textures, from slippery to crunchy to gummy.
Although the ancient Chinese limited their flavor pantheon to five, they clearly recognized the importance of a sixth taste, savoriness, also known by the Japanese term umami. This flavor comes from naturally occurring glutamates and other compounds found in meats, mushrooms, aged cheese, and some fermented products. From the Shang Dynasty on, Chinese chefs added to their dishes a wide variety of preserved condiments, including pickles, marinades, and sauces, to heighten their savory qualities. These concoctions were essential components of meals from the imperial level on down. Simple pickles, made from vegetables, salt, and water, were probably the earliest of these preserves, but these only added saltiness. By the time of the Zhou Dynasty, the Chinese had become masters at fermenting foods, a process which not only preserves the foods but intensifies their savory qualities. The active agent of this fermentation was a moldy grain that was added to jars of cooked meat, fish, vegetables, and various kind of seafood and sometimes mixed with wine; the whole was aged until it became a savory compound that could range in texture from chunks in sauce to a thin liquid. Clear evidence for the production of soy sauce, or jiang you, doesn’t appear until at least the late Song Dynasty a millennium later, but jars of fermented beans and bean paste discovered in Han Dynasty tombs point to earlier tastes for fermented soybeans. By the eighteenth century, fermented meats and vegetables (though not pickles) had largely disappeared from Chinese tables and were replaced by fermented soybeans, soy paste, and soy sauce, now the ubiquitous seasoning of Chinese cuisine. Nonetheless, the descendants of the ancient fermented compounds live on in the many kinds of fermented fish sauce found across Southeast Asia.
The kitchens where the ancient art of Chinese cuisine was practiced could range from the vast culinary complex that served the emperor to the corner of the peasant’s hut. By the time of the Han Dynasty, the zao (cooking stove) had replaced the open fireplace. A large rectangular box usually made from various types of brick, the zao is about three feet high and four feet wide, with a chimney rising from the back. In the top are two large holes into which fit the large, round-bottomed pottery (and later iron) cooking pots, today called guo (Mandarin) or wok (Cantonese). The rounded base of the wok allows cooks to use the absolute minimum of precious oil and firewood for stir-frying—an important feature for the Chinese peasant—but these pots can also be used for frying, boiling, steaming, cooking rice, and preparing soup. The pots’ bottoms are suspended over an open, wood-burning fire that is contained inside the stove and is regulated by a hole in front. Efficient and perfectly suited to the high heat needed for Chinese cooking (particularly stir-frying), the zao is still used across China. You may see updated, gas-fired versions of it, with holes for the
woks replacing the familiar burners, in many Chinese restaurants in the United States.
By the end of the Han Dynasty, many of the fundamental tenets of Chinese cuisine had been established; but it is important to remember that none of this was set in stone. The story of Chinese food, like any great cuisine, has always been one of constant change and evolution—with an occasional revolution. One revolution occurred during the Han period, when rotary mills for grinding grain became widespread in the North. For millennia, the Chinese had milled their grains using saddle querns, slightly convex stones on which grain is crushed by hand with a cylindrical stone. A quern was probably used to prepare the millet flour that was used to make the four-thousand-year-old noodles, the world’s oldest, recently discovered in a pot at the Lajia site on the Huanghe River in northwestern China. Millstones were unknown across southern and central China, because rice is soft enough not to need grinding; it is merely husked and then steamed or boiled.
Another revolution happened as the Han era concluded. In the North, farmers had long grown small amounts of wheat and ground it into flour to extract its nutrients. The revolution began with the kneading of wheat flour with water and encompassed a world of new dishes made from this preparation, known as bing: steamed breads, grilled flatbreads, noodles, and probably some kinds of dumpling. These dishes were so delectable that they inspired Shu Xi (c. 264–304 CE), a court poet, to compose his famous “Ode to Bing,” including these lines:
Flour sifted twice,
Flying snow of white powder,
In a stretchy, sticky dough
Kneaded with water or broth, it becomes shiny.
For the stuffing, pork ribs or shoulder of mutton,
Fat and meat in proper proportion,
Cut into small bits,
Like gravel or the pearls of a necklace.
Ginger roots and onion bulb
Are cut into a fine julienne,
Sprinkled with wild ginger and cinnamon ground fine,
Boneset and Szechuan pepper,
All mixed with salt and seasonings,
Blended into a single ball. . . .
To dip them into a black sauce,
We grip them with ivory chopsticks;
Back stretched tight like a tiger waiting in ambush,
We sit close, knee against knee, flank against flank.17
From rural villagers to emperors, the taste for bing was apparently universal in early medieval China. Bing makers sold their products from boats, and vendors hawked steamed breads and noodle soups on the streets. Among the offerings were mantou—now, simple steamed breads; then, stuffed with chopped, seasoned meat. According to legend, they were invented by a general who had been told that in order to assure victory he must offer the head of a sacrificial victim to the gods. He fooled them by concocting a head-shaped loaf of steamed bread stuffed with meat and painted with a human face. Today, similar meat-stuffed dumplings are found from Turkey (manti) to Korea (mandoo). In China, large steamed stuffed breads are now known as baozi. Another popular bing was wonton, a meat or vegetable dumpling enclosed in a thin wrapping. In Cantonese, the word wantan is written as “cloud-swallowing,” while the Mandarin term huntun means “chaos,” referring to the primordial state before the separation of Heaven and Earth. Both terms aptly invoke the sight of airy, white dumpling wrappings billowing in a bowl of soup. In 1959, archaeologists unearthed dehydrated wontons from a Tang Dynasty tomb in the Sinkiang desert; they also found ancient versions of jiaozi, dumplings with slightly thicker wrappings that are still a favorite snack across northern China. As the Chinese became more adept at working with wheat flour, they discovered that they could separate its starch from its gluten by washing. Tender, white, and flavorful, cooked gluten became a favorite delicacy with many culinary uses. Buddhists mixed gluten with mashed roots and flavorings to give it a texture remarkably like meat; wheat gluten “beef,” “duck,” “chicken,” and “fish” became mainstays of Buddhist vegetarian meals.
During the Tang Dynasty, the world of bing underwent a lexicological division. Fried, baked, or steamed breads and boiled dumplings remained bing, but noodles became mian. Lacking the hard durum wheat of western Asia, the Chinese concentrated on making fresh noodles for eating immediately rather than dried noodles for storage. These included mian made from rolling dough into ropes, cutting sheets of it into strips, or pushing very soft dough through the holes of a sieve into boiling water. Over the century or two that followed, mian grew in importance from a beloved snack into the full-fledged basis of northern Chinese meals. Bowls of noodles, either dry or in broth, were topped with all kinds of meat, seafood, and vegetables and slurped down with chopsticks. When invaders from the north and west overran northern China, beginning in the twelfth century, noodle-making technology was carried down to the Yangzi basin and then all across the South. (Marco Polo did not carry this knowledge back to Italy, where they had already been making fine noodles and lasagna for centuries.) Unfortunately, wheat didn’t flourish in the warm, moist South, so the region’s mian makers experimented with making noodles from rice and various kinds of roots and legumes, most notably mung beans, the basis of fen si, or cellophane noodles. To improve the flavor, eggs were added to wheat noodle dough around 1500 CE—perhaps the last great innovation in Chinese dough cookery before a Taiwanese businessman in Japan invented instant noodles in 1958.
Figure 3.2. Two kinds of steamed dumplings, with either meat or vegetable fillings. Dumplings have been part of the Chinese menu for well over a millennium.
Another great revolution began with the invention of the first fermented drinks. Although Confucius extolled the virtues of water, it’s clear that the favorite beverage of the ancient Chinese was wine fermented from grains. They mastered the fermentation of sauces and pickles early on; likewise the complicated art of brewing this wine. Mixing boiled millet, rice, or wheat with sprouted grain (to add sugar from the malt), water, and a special “ferment” made from moldy grain that added the necessary yeast to turn the sugar into alcohol. They aged and filtered the resulting liquid to produce a fairly strong, flat drink—more like wine than beer—that was usually drunk warm in small cups. It was by no means the only beverage—people drank parched grain tea (like barley tea), fruit drinks, water in which grain had been boiled, a kind of sour milk, and perhaps even distilled liquors—but wine was certainly the most celebrated. Today, the Chinese still enjoy their rice wine, particularly at banquets, but the primary mealtime drink is now quite different.
During the Han Dynasty, a new thirst-quencher appeared, originating in the Sichuan basin: tea or cha, brewed by boiling in water the fresh leaves of the tropical and subtropical bush Camellia sinensis. Tea’s flavor was first appreciated along the Yangzi basin and south of it; in the North, Buddhist monks, who noticed that drinking tea helped keep them awake during long periods of meditation, spread its use. The virtues and rituals of tea drinking were promoted by Lu Yu’s eighth-century work The Classic of Tea, which gave the elite precise instructions on how to enjoy the brew (an art that lives on in the Japanese tea ceremony). By the time of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368 CE), tea drinking had spread to the lower classes, becoming one of the “seven necessities” of everyday Chinese life. (The others were fuel, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar.) This is not the place to enumerate the many varieties of tea or the new means for processing the leaf that were developed from the Yuan Dynasty on. Suffice it to say that by the seventeenth century, when tea first appeared in western Europe, tea had become the universal drink of China and one of the defining characteristics of its civilization. Tea was also one of China’s most important exports, as the taste for it brought first the Dutch, then the English, and finally the Americans to trade at Canton.
The chief arena for the display of all the main building blocks of Chinese cuisine, from foodstuffs to theories of health, was the banquet table. Indeed, from the Zhou Dynasty on, the feast was seen as a kind of stage where the participants reaffirmed the correctness
and value of Chinese civilization, from the structure of its political and religious life to family relations. In the palace kitchens, chefs followed an encyclopedic rulebook that determined not only the appropriate type of banquet for each occasion but precisely how much food and wine guests of different rank were to be served, the table settings, even the musical entertainment. The Qing emperors preferred Manchu food (boiled pork, wild game, sweet breads, milk products) for their court banquets, offering the top three grades to the gods and deified ancestors as sacrifices. Fourth-grade banquets were served to the imperial family, while envoys from tributary states like Korea were given the honor of fifth- and sixth-grade banquets. Women never mingled with men at these functions; cloistered by traditional Chinese morality, they ate in separate rooms, hidden from anyone who wasn’t family. Outside the palace walls, government officials and scholars who passed their examinations could enjoy six grades of more familiar Han Chinese banquets. The food served marked each diner’s place in the elaborate hierarchy of Chinese life (a system that was disrupted by the arrival of the tall, pale-skinned foreigners who disdained, among other things, Chinese food).
Private banquets also reflected and enhanced social status, but the rules were far looser. Pleasure, in fact, was often the guiding principle—in one’s choice of food, grain wine, drinking games, and guests. Menus could include as few as eight or well over one hundred dishes in multiple courses. At lesser events, a group of Chinese merchants staying in nineteenth-century Nagasaki, for example, would order eight-course banquets, for second-class occasions ten courses, and for really important events sixteen courses, featuring fish belly, dried mussels, crab sauce, steamed fish, goose, duck, two kinds of chicken, pigs’ feet, fried lamb, sea cucumbers, birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, deer’s tails, and bears’ paws.18 Although Yuan Mei scorned them, these rare delicacies were included to display the host’s wealth and sophistication. After all, the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius had said: “I love fish, so do I bear’s paw; but if I cannot get both, I give up fish and take bear’s paw.”19 Birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, and sea cucumbers commonly came from Southeast Asia and in fact comprised the bulk of Chinese trade with that region. All three are notable more for their texture than their flavor (as well as for how much they add to the banquet’s cost).