Cuisine

Chinese

Chinese food is a family of regional cuisines that share techniques and disagree about heat, fat and what belongs in a banquet. Soy, ginger, garlic and spring onion recur; the next step does not. Dan dan mian is Sichuan: noodles in a chilli-and-pork sauce. Char siu is Cantonese roast pork. Chicken congee is rice cooked into a savoury porridge. Tomato egg stir-fry is home cooking, barely a restaurant dish. Egg fried rice is leftover rice in a hot wok with egg. Smashed cucumber salad is a cold, garlicky reset. Hot and sour soup and chilli crisp noodles are the pantry-heat end of the weeknight table.

Imperial banquet language and peasant wok cooking both exist; they are not the same cuisine. Wheat in the north, rice in the south, chilli in Sichuan and Hunan, wok hei in Guangdong, vinegar in Shanxi — the map is the story. Overseas 'Chinese' menus often collapsed that map into sweet-and-sour and a generic brown sauce. Sichuan noodles sit beside Cantonese roast meat and a northern-ish tomato egg scramble. Naming Sichuan or Cantonese is more accurate than stopping at the national adjective.

Wok heat, steaming, braising and a seasoned oil are shared tools. Doubanjiang and Sichuan pepper mark Sichuan; light soy and roast glaze mark Cantonese. Tomato egg should be soft and barely set, not a scramble drowned in ketchup. Fried rice wants cold leftover grains. Chilli crisp is a condiment and, on noodles, almost a sauce. Keep regional names attached so mapo-adjacent heat is not asked to explain a steamed fish.