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Chinese Food 中国饮食
Chinese cuisine is widely seen as representing one of the richest and most diverse culinary cuisines and heritages in the world. It originated from different regions of China and has become widespread in many other parts of the world — from East Asia to North America, Australasia and Western Europe.
A meal in Chinese culture is typically seen as consisting of two or more general components: (1) a carbohydrate source or starch, known as "main food" — typically rice, noodles, or mantou (steamed buns), and (2) accompanying dishes of vegetables, meat, fish, or other items. This cultural conceptualization is in some ways in contrast to cuisines of Northern Europe and the USA, where meat or animal protein is often considered the main dish, and analogous to the one of most Mediterranean cuisines, based typically on wheat-derived components like pasta or cous cous.
There are mainly eight categories of dishes in China and they are Anhui (徽), Cantonese (粤), Fujian (闽), Hunan (湘), Jiangsu (苏), Shandong (鲁), Szechuan (川), and Zhejiang (浙). Usually the dishes from Xiang and Chuan are spicy and hot, and the dishes from Yang and Zhe are sweet and sour.