China is a big country of catering culture. For a long time, due to the influence of geographical environment, climatic properties, cultural traditions and ethnic customs in a certain area, a certain degree of genetic inheritance, similar dishes and flavors, high reputation, and popular among some people have been formed in a certain area. The famous genre of local flavors is called cuisine. Among them, Shandong cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Jiangsu cuisine, Zhejiang cuisine, Hunan cuisine, and Anhui cuisine are known as the “eight major cuisines.”
Cuisine is a self-contained system in terms of materials selection, cutting and matching, and cooking. It has a distinctive local flavor and is recognized by the society as a genre of Chinese cuisine.
As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Chinese traditional food culture showed differences in the flavors of North and South dishes. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, the southern food and the northern food formed their own systems. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Shandong cuisine, Su cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, and Sichuan cuisine became the most influential local cuisines at that time, and they were called the “four major cuisines.” By the end of the Qing Dynasty, four new local cuisines, Zhejiang cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Hunan cuisine, and Anhui cuisine, were formed, and together they constituted the “eight major cuisines” in the traditional Chinese food culture.
