The four major cuisines are Szechuan, Lu, Guangdong, and Huaiyang cuisines;
The eight major cuisines are based on the four major ones plus Hunan, Hui, Zhejiang, and Fujian cuisines;
The ten major cuisines are based on the eight major ones plus Beijing and Shanghai cuisines;
The twelve major cuisines are based on the ten major ones plus Henan and Shaanxi cuisines;
Expanded Information:
China is a big country of catering culture, for a long time in a certain area due to the geographic environment, climate and products, cultural traditions and national customs and other factors, the formation of a certain degree of kinship inheritance relationship, dishes with similar flavors, high visibility, and for some of the masses of people love the local flavor of the famous genre known as the cuisine.
As early as the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, China's traditional food culture in the north and south of the flavor of the dishes showed differences. By the time of the Tang and Song dynasties, the southern and northern cuisines had formed their own systems. In the early Qing Dynasty, Lu Cuisine, Su Cuisine, Cantonese Cuisine, and Sichuan Cuisine became the most influential local cuisines at that time, and were called the "four major cuisines".
Toward the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zhejiang cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Anhui cuisine, the four new local cuisines were differentiated to form, **** with the traditional Chinese food culture of the "eight cuisines".