China has a vast territory. Different natural conditions, people's living habits and economic and cultural development have formed different local flavors in food cooking and dishes. The two major flavors of North and South began to appear in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and were fully formed in the Tang and Song Dynasties. At the beginning of Qing Dynasty, Shandong cuisine (including Beijing, Tianjin and other northern regions), Jiangsu cuisine (including Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui cuisines), Guangdong cuisine (including Fujian, Taiwan, Chaozhou and Qionglai cuisines) and Sichuan cuisine (including Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou and Yunnan cuisines) became the most influential local cuisines in China, and were later called "four major cuisines".
"Qing Qian Chao" describes the food situation in the late Qing Dynasty, saying: "The differences in eating habits in different places are caused by convention. Then northerners like onions and garlic, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan and Sichuan like spicy food, Cantonese like light food, and Sioux people like sugar. " The characteristics of local cuisines are also analyzed in detail: "Suzhou people's diet, especially fat meat, is mixed in cooking methods, but there are more sugar and five spices." "The diet of Fujian and Guangdong people-the food is mainly seafood, and the rice must be accompanied by soup, while the Cantonese people like to make trouble and are not enterprising." "Hunan and Hubei love people's diet-they like to eat spicy food. Although they eat it before the abbot, before the fault is full, there are no peppers and mustard, and there are many soups." "Northerners eat scallions and garlic, and they are also produced in the north to win ..." And so on. Although the quotation is not enough to explain the whole picture of the cuisine, we can see the characteristics of the four major cuisines in China.
With the further development of catering industry, some local cuisines have become more and more unique and formed their own factions. In this way, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, the local cuisines in Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan and Huizhou had become the "eight major cuisines", and together with Beijing and Shanghai, they were called the "ten major cuisines". Although cuisines continue to multiply and develop, people are still used to using "four major cuisines" and "eight major cuisines" to represent tens of thousands of local flavor dishes in China. There are thousands of famous local dishes with exquisite materials, fine production, diverse varieties and different flavors, and they pay attention to the coordination and unity of color, fragrance, taste, shape and utensils, and enjoy a high reputation in the world. Most of these famous dishes have their own development history, which not only embodies exquisite traditional skills, but also has various beautiful legends or allusions, and has become an important part of China's food culture.