People take food
as the first important thing. Among the four factors--dressing,
eating, housing and going, eating occupies the first place.
When the Chinese people meet each other and send their best
regards, it's not "how do you do", "good morning".
but "have you taken the meal?" Though it doesn't
mean to invite somebody having a meal, but one can see how
important the eating is. When the Chinese people offer a sacrifice
to Heaven and ancestor, asking the God and paying tribute
to the Buddha, they all prepare three kinds of animals to
pay their respectfulness, so one can see the most important
respect is also eating. Once the Catholics take up the rice
bowl, they must first mark with crosses and murmur Amen to
thank the God, but they have no such expression when they
put on the dress.
In the epoch and district of backward economic life, most
people eat only for appeasing their hungers and dress only
for sheltering their bodies, it's not a kind of enjoyment.
But following the development of the society, the other cultures
develop, the Chinese eating has been abundant and developed,
and gradually formed eight food series -- Sichuan, Guangdong,
Shandong, Hunan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Fujian. Shanghai
food couldn't take a place in the past history. But since
nearly 100 years, the economic development of Shanghai has
walked ahead in China, also it's half of the Chinese culture,
so following this point, the eating culture of Shanghai has
also developed, and become the delicious food center of China.
The eight food series of China have many traditional famous
dishes. In contemporary Shanghai, owing to the concentration
of industrial, commercial and culture personages added with
interior and exterior interflow and widespread adoption, just
like the economy of Shanghai, the eating culture of Shanghai
becomes the hub of domestic and foreign delicious food culture,
various cliques and schools all set up many food shops in
Shanghai. If one wants to eat the nationwide famous dishes,
you don't have to travel through various provinces, only need
to go to Shanghai. Shanghai people have the nicest gourmet's
luck. Not only in the restaurants and family dining tables
absorb and converge the elite of delicious food culture of
various places, but also can taste the famous dishes of various
places in China from many special restaurants, such as Sichuan
Restaurant's "hot taste rice crust", Laobanzhai's
"Yangzhou lion head shaped meat ball", Zhiweiguan's
"West Lake fish with vinegar", Yueyanglou's "Hunan
three cups chicken", Minjiang Restaurant's "Fujian
Buddha jumping the wall", Xincheng Restaurant's "Sichuan
three in one mashed dish", Yangzhou Restaurant's "Zhenjiang
Yao Meat(cold meat cube)", and also Xinya's Cantonese
dishes, Yanyunlou's Beijing dishes, Zhuangyuanlou's Ningbo
dishes, etc. In the recent years, there are a great quantity
of Cantonese restaurants and Sichuan restaurants opened all
over the whole city. Speaking from the single item, each clique
has its own delicious dishes, and there are variety of species
for each dish series, but different provinces only take their
own dishes as the main dishes, only Shanghai concentrates
all the dish series of the whole country. Hence if we take
the total group marks, the taste of Shanghai dishes is the
best, the species of Shanghai dishes is the most, and the
gourmet's luck of Shanghai people is also the best.
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