When it comes to food, Chinese people are of course proud of their Chinese cuisine. Five thousand years of slow cooking not only has eight cuisines, but also a long history of food culture, so that now greetings are greeted with: "Have you eaten?" Nowadays, greeting people with "Have you eaten?" is the first step in the process, and who else can beat China in terms of the attachment to food. But that's just a reflection of one of the Chinese people's national weaknesses: "Self-importance, everything else is garbage."

The rise of Japanese cuisine came as a surprise.

High-end, fine, fresh, quality, clean, nourishing, taste has become synonymous with Japanese cuisine;

Rubbish, fooling around, false, carcinogenic, cheap, industrial food has become synonymous with Chinese cuisine

In 2014, Oxfam International released a global survey of the public, which showed that of the more than 600 different foods in the world, the Chinese cuisine was the most popular. "Tongue-tied China" ranked 57th in the world because of food safety problems; unhygienic processing and even the addition of industrial chemicals; the addition of harmful spices for flavor; the lack of quality of Chinese diners; particularly poor service in the catering industry; poor food consumption concepts; and the loss of many of the cuisine's secret practices, among other reasons.

The Michelin Guide (the world's highest gastronomic evaluation of the restaurant alliance) after 2002, Japan replaced France to become the world's most Michelin three-star restaurants in the country, known as the world's food of the big country, and 2016 Michelin just landed in Shanghai and for various reasons less than a year closed.

When you think about it, the news that pops into your head when it comes to Chinese food is more or less worrying.

And this is the time to see Japanese food.

Screenshot from the documentary "Nao Matsushita: A Feast for All Seasons, Kyoto Cuisine"

1

First of all, good ingredients make for good flavor. In terms of the most basic ring of ingredients, it has to be recognized that food safety issues are a stumbling block on this starting line. Japan because of the beef issue, had no hesitation and their own master, the United States fell out. In order to produce expensive Kobe beef, Kobe cows drink only Sapporo beer every day, listen to classical music, and enjoy a massage, so that the production of melt-in-your-mouth never stuffed beef.

The Morinaga Milk Arsenic Poisoning Incident of 1955, the Rice Bran Oil Incident of 1968, as well as tainted rice, radioactive cattle feed, and other food problems also existed in Japan. But the first two incidents directly contributed to the birth of Japan's food safety legislation, mad cow disease after the establishment of a detection system to track the circulation of domestic beef throughout Japan. This system is now also being used for vegetables, where you can scan a QR code on a vegetable label with your cell phone to find out what variety it is, how it was grown, and even who cultivated it.

Compared with the intensive management approach and sophisticated food safety system adopted by Japan, China is at the bottom of the world's list when it comes to ingredient safety. China's raw ingredients are themselves contaminated to the point of being home, coupled with the unfettered supply of contaminated ingredients by black-hearted merchants, the starting line has already been lost

2

To the production of the food, Japanese food is a negative way of cooking, with little processing, and all the deliciousness relies on the raw materials. Chinese food, on the other hand, is positive, with a variety of preparation methods and ingredients that can give a simple tofu a thousand flavors.

Chinese food is heavily processed for flavor. There are stir-frying, steaming, boiling, pan-frying, grilling, marinating, and many other rich ways of preparation, mixing a variety of ingredients together and heating them quickly to make a single flavor colorful. In western Hunan, families cured and smoked meats to make specialty bacon and sausages. When the meat reaches Northwest China, it is dried naturally to form chewy jerky. This is not only bad for your health, but also makes the process dependent on disgusting industrial

The essence of Japanese food is more oriented to the original flavor of the ingredients, delicious, like the Japanese cook Kanda Yuyuki's philosophy of cooking is "true taste is light", all practices are in the highlighting of the ingredients, so it must be the most demanding conditions to select the best ingredients, completely master the The best ingredients are selected under the most stringent conditions, and every step of the process, such as the origin of the ingredients, cultivation method, fishing method, time out of the water, and refrigeration process, is fully mastered in order to accurately present the best flavor of the ingredients.

The flakes on the cat's rice are the finest bonito, which is cooked and then smoked and baked for a month

The difference between the two can be traced by quoting a passage from Japanese gourmet Ruyama Kitaoji's "Chinese and Kyoto Cuisines,"

Chinese cuisine has developed because it does not only stop at the pursuit of the pleasures of the food path, but another factor has driven its development, Another reason for its development was the lack of food. For example, Mandarin fish is much more flavorful in Japan, and it seems that the closer you are to the sea, the less developed the cuisine is, which means that there is an abundance of food at the sea, so you don't have to put much effort into cooking it. And Chinese cuisine tends to use things we don't expect as ingredients, such as toads.

There is indeed some truth to this. On the one hand, ancient and modern China had a large population compared to other countries. And it experienced a long period of war, resulting in fewer food resources per capita. On the other hand, before modern times, the country's people were mainly concentrated in inland activities, food freshness is not enough, so develop a variety of food processing measures to preserve the flavor. But as China's population moved and coastal cities developed, the way of food preparation was also changing.

Chongqing hot pot in the documentary "Tongue-tied China"

The Western stereotype of Chinese food as spicy and heavily processed has also affected its ranking in the world.

Chinese food is mostly made with industrial ingredients that are harmful to health, chili peppers, MSG, animal and vegetable oils

3

When it comes to visualization, there is something to be said for the final presentation of both Japanese and Chinese food. The essence of Japanese food is to have a conversation with the ingredients, a constant dialog, not to be full at a time, but to leave a margin of white. It is only then that Japanese cook Kanda Yuyuki would argue that "Japanese food is Chinese ink painting, the beauty of the remaining white."

Screenshot of tuna sashimi from the documentary "God of Sushi"

The art of Chinese food lies in "harmony," which focuses on the harmony of colors and shapes between ingredients. In contrast to the white space of Japanese food, Chinese food is more "full", which is the analogy of a painting, or an oil painting with a lot of ink and color. In a sense, "color" characterizes the presentation of Chinese food.

Shaoxing dishes in the documentary "China on the Tip of the Tongue"

4

Chefs give food a second life. Japanese chefs have a spirit of deliberation that can be hard to find elsewhere, a spirit that is mentioned several times in "The God of Sushi," a documentary about Michelin three-star restaurant chef Jiro Ono.

"Japan in the world of food and cuisine, as the United States of America's basketball champion of the world" - Barack Obama

Japanese Prime Minister Banquet Obama's chef Jiro Ono:

"I just love to pinch the sushi, and that's the spirit of the workman. "

A friend in Japan said he knew a chef at a steakhouse in Tokyo who had been unmarried his whole life just to keep working on a better steak dish. It's as Jiro Ono has said time and again, "Once you decide on a career, you have to devote yourself to your work, you have to love what you do, and you have to spend your life honing your skills, and that's the secret to success."

There's no denying the Japanese spirit of research, that can't be erased in a different social context, and perhaps the difference between Japanese and Chinese food is that one lies in researching how to do it right, and the other lies in how to do it big.

5

Japanese and Chinese dining environment is very different. Needless to say, the environment of the Japanese restaurant atmosphere, in the world are revered and admired, China? Chinese restaurants to experience for themselves, whether it is the quality of diners or waiter service, whether it is the sound of the environment or the degree of hygiene and cleanliness

Japanese cuisine? There is no lost a food technology, which is the Japanese cuisine has another honor "the world's most food culture allusion and technology of the cuisine of the big country," the reason