Today, we are going to talk about Hangzhou, especially its food culture. Firstly, let’s introduce Hangzhou basically. Hangzhou is the capital city of Zhejiang province. It is a representative Jiangnan water town, it’s very near to Shanghai. There is a saying: The unique features of a local environment always give special characteristics to its inhabitants. Hangzhou in our eyes like a tender woman, most Hangzhou girls’ temperament will be praised gentle.
Look this scenery. It’s the most famous spot in Hangzhou, the West Lake.
Does it make you feel like the breeze caresses your cheeks like mother’s hands? So warm and so kind.
The best feeling is when you are running around the West lake in the morning, breathing the freshest air, feeling like you are one with the nature. Especially when the breeze blowing, you can see the willow branches swayed gently, all the places green. That’s charm of water town.
Because the west lake is an unavoidable topic when you talk about Hangzhou so I must mention it briefly even today’s important point is not scenery. There are many articles introducing the West lake, if you are interested, just search it.
By the way, if you come to Hangzhou, don’t forget to go to the West lake.
After that. Today, the most important thing is to introduce the food culture of Hangzhou!
Do you know any seasonal foods cannot be miss?
Do you know why some foods can be regard as medicine?
SPECIAL TOPICS WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT TODAY!
Food in Hangzhou related to climate and season; food related to health; representative Hangzhou cuisine you must not miss 😊
As a representative city of Jiangnan water town, good climate and good location makes here grow up various types of plants. Some of them are regard as precious food materials, the gifts of nature.
This is a kind of edible wild herbs looks not so great right?
But this wild herb is be called the taste of spring. As its names, it’s a seasonal cuisine. The cook recipe is very simple, but the most important thing of this cuisine is to keep its original taste of the wild spring so that you can get the taste of nature.
This plant I suppose most people know it. Bamboo.
But do you famailer its look before it grow up.
It’s must be a incredible food material: bamboo shoot.
This cuisine is what we called “ yanduxian”腌笃鲜
Use bamboo shoot with salt meat and mushroom.
The delicate flavors of the bamboo shoot is totally showed in this dish.
But, sadly, it’s also a seasonal cuisine.
So that’s why we said all thses food materials we mentioned before are gifts of nature. All of these gift only growed up in specific regions in specific season without any seeds and they are free to all.
After seasonal cuisine, we are going to talk about medichinal cuisine.
Medichinal cuisine, does it sounds crazy?
Actually, medichinal cuisine is used to decrible the cuisine which intergrates normal food materials and traditional Chineses medicine and it can help people strengthen their bodies .
But medichinal cuisines are not easy cuisines, they need to be cooked under scientific guidness and strict standard.
It sounds amazing, food can be used as a medicine. What’s more, it taste decious, it breaks your traditional image to the Chinese medicine.
Hangzhou is very good place to taste medichinal cuisine because there are many medichine herbs here.
Chinese people always said: shape compensation. 以形补形
That means if you feel some organs are not good, you can eat the same organs from animals for compensation.
It’s good for kidney.
It's good for kidney.
If you cannot accept this cuisine, let’s see another one.
This cuisine used two herbs called yuanhu and yimucao separately. Yuanhu is used for relieve pain, yimucao is used for menstrual extraction. So it’s really useful for woman.
Pear paste sugar is a famous dessert in jiangsu, zhejiang and Shanghai.
The pear paste sugar made by hangzhou people forms its own vein, which is called "hangzhou pie pear paste sugar".
Traditional pear paste sugar is made of pure white granulated sugar (without caramel, essence and pigment) and 14 kinds of domestic good medicinal materials (grinding powder), such as almond, scallop, pinellia ternata and poria cocos.
When you cough, just taste this sugar, it makes your throat better.
Finally, we are going to say some typcal hangzhou food.
Maybe you’ve heared some hangzhou food restaurents in shanghai, and maybe you’ve even been to the Chinese HangZhou Cuisine Musem.
Anyway,
Hangzhou cuisine is an important part of zhejiang food culture.It forms the traditional zhejiang cuisine together with ningbo cuisine and shaoxing cuisine.
The taste of hangzhou cuisine is salty and slightly sweet.
"Light" is a symbolic feature of hangzhou cuisine.
Special dishes include west lake vinegar fish, dongpo pork, longjing shrimp, dried duck with bamboo shoots, babao tofu, etc.
(Supplement: A STORY ABOUT DONGPO PORK)
Dongpo pork, this name is from a very famous poet in the acient age called Dongpo Su.
Dongpo Su was a governor of hangzhou.When he was in charge of Hangzhou. He managed the West lake and did a lot of good things for the people.
The people were very grateful to Dongpo. During the Spring Festival, the people brought wine and pork to Dongpo.Dongpo received a lot of pork, and let people cut the meat into pieces, and then use a variety of spices to burn the meat red, and then shared with people.
Bloger:
Isabella SHEN is a Chinese student study in EMlyon Business School in paris, France. She is the first year student in emlyon and majors in Global BBA.Now she start her summer internship in Mandarin INN.
