The 63 Cuisines of China Explained in 40 Minutes: A Complete Primer

Wher­ev­er in the world you grew up, you prob­a­bly grew up with an inac­cu­rate idea of Chi­nese food. For Amer­i­cans, it can come as a shock to hear that such famil­iar dish­es as chop suey and Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en are unknown in Chi­na itself. By the same token, almost every coun­try in the world has devel­oped its own con­cept of “Chi­nese food” geared, some­times out­landish­ly, to local tastes. But it could be said that the aver­age Chi­nese per­son in Chi­na also has a skewed idea of their nation­al cui­sine, because they see it through the lens of their own region­al cui­sine — of which, accord­ing to the Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied video above, there are at least 63.

In just 40 min­utes, the chan­nel’s co-host Chris Thomas broad­ly explains all of those cuisines, from the six eat­en in Guang­dong alone to the var­i­ous fusions avail­able in the vast-unto-itself region of Inner Mon­go­lia.

Along the way, he high­lights such rep­re­sen­ta­tive dish­es as beer fish, blood duck, “steamed dou­ble stinky,” lion’s head meat­ball, braised don­key sand­wich, “ol’ bud­dy noo­dles,” lamp-shaped rice cake, hairy tofu, and “every­body’s favorite, penis fish.” Of course, quite a few of the items in between will seem more famil­iar to view­ers who’ve nev­er delib­er­ate­ly sought out “authen­tic” Chi­nese food: even Peking duck, it turns out, belongs in that cat­e­go­ry.

Still, the fla­vors of the Peking duck you can get in Bei­jing sure­ly beat out those of the ver­sions avail­able in, say, Den­ver.  If you want to taste them, as Thomas explains at the video’s end, “you should trav­el to main­land Chi­na. Is it the eas­i­est place in the world to trav­el to? No. If you don’t know Chi­nese, the lan­guage bar­ri­er can get intense” (though you might con­sid­er start­ing to learn it with the resources we’ve round­ed up here on Open Cul­ture). But “if you want easy, go to Dis­ney­land”; if you want to expe­ri­ence “mind-numb­ing culi­nary diver­si­ty,” it’s time to start plan­ning your eat­ing jour­ney through the Mid­dle King­dom — and there are hun­dreds more Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied videos avail­able to make you hun­gry.

Note: Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied has a relat­ed post on their Sub­stack. Titled “63 Chi­nese Cuisines: the Com­plete Guide,” the post fea­tures help­ful maps and com­men­tary. It’s worth check­ing out.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

The First Amer­i­can Cook­book: Sam­ple Recipes from Amer­i­can Cook­ery (1796)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.