50 Fun Facts About Chinese Food

What is the classic filling of a traditional Cantonese mooncake?

The whole yolk in the centre stands for the full moon that the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates.

When are mooncakes traditionally eaten?

The festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month and is tied to legends of the moon goddess Chang'e.

What are zongzi wrapped in?

The glutinous-rice parcels are eaten at the Dragon Boat Festival, popularly linked to the poet Qu Yuan who drowned himself in 278 BC.

Which poet's death is commemorated with zongzi and dragon boat races?

He died in 278 BC, though the earliest documented link between him and the rice dumplings dates from the 5th century AD.

Jiaozi dumplings are said to bring prosperity because they resemble which object?

Many families eat them at midnight on New Year's Eve, and some hide a clean coin inside one for luck.

Legend credits jiaozi to the physician Zhang Zhongjing as a cure for what?

The dumplings were originally called 'tender ears' and were folded to look like the ears they were meant to heal.

A 1980 People's Daily article named how many great regional cuisines of China?

The 1980 list, from a People's Daily article, names Anhui, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan and Zhejiang.

Which grain-based foods are dietary staples in northern China's dry climate?

The wheat-growing north contrasts with the rice-growing south, a divide that shapes almost every regional menu.

How long are ducks raised before slaughter for authentic Peking duck?

Authentic versions serve mostly the crisp skin, carved by the cook in front of diners and rolled into pancakes with spring onion and sweet bean sauce.

Which Beijing restaurant, founded in 1416, was the first to specialise in Peking duck?

Its rival Quanjude, opened in 1864, popularised the hung-oven method; Bianyifang still uses the older closed oven.

In which country did fortune cookies most likely originate?

A similar cookie was made in Kyoto in the 19th century; Japanese immigrants brought it to California, where Chinese restaurants later adopted it.

Where is Wonton Food, the world's largest fortune cookie maker, headquartered?

It turns out more than 4.5 million cookies a day, out of roughly 3 billion made worldwide each year.

Which San Francisco attraction is credited with first serving fortune cookies in the US?

Makoto Hagiwara served them in the early 1900s, with the cookies baked by a local shop called Benkyodo.

General Tso's chicken is named after a general from which Chinese province?

Zuo Zongtang died in 1885, nearly a century before the sweet, crispy dish was invented in the 1970s.

Where did chef Peng Chang-kuei open the restaurant that popularised General Tso's chicken?

He opened Uncle Peng's Hunan Yuan on East 44th Street around 1973; a rival chef, T. T. Wang, also claimed the dish.

Which Qing statesman's 1896 US visit is one popular myth for the origin of chop suey?

An 1884 Brooklyn newspaper article had already called it 'the national dish of China', so the story is almost certainly false.

Chop suey has been traced to tsap seui, a leftovers dish from which town?

The name means 'miscellaneous leftovers'; Taishan was home to many of the earliest Chinese immigrants to the United States.

Kung Pao chicken is believed to be named after the title of which Qing official?

He was governor of Sichuan; during the Cultural Revolution the imperial-sounding name was dropped and the dish became plain 'spicy chicken'.

What does 'mapo' in mapo tofu literally describe?

The dish is tied to a Chengdu eatery run by a couple named Chen in the 1860s or 1870s; the nickname was Mrs Chen's.

Which city is the birthplace of mapo tofu?

UNESCO named the Sichuan capital a City of Gastronomy in 2011.

What gives Sichuan pepper its tingling, numbing sensation?

Despite the name it is not related to black pepper or chilli; the spice is the dried husk of a Zanthoxylum fruit.

What does the Sichuan flavour term 'mala' mean?

It combines Sichuan pepper's tingle with chilli heat and defines dishes like Chongqing hot pot.

Xiaolongbao soup dumplings are traditionally steamed in what?

The name literally refers to the little steaming basket; the most famous style abroad comes from Nanxiang near Shanghai.

Xiaolongbao originated in which Jiangsu city?

They evolved from the soup-filled dumplings of Kaifeng, the Northern Song capital.

What does 'dandan' in dandan noodles refer to?

Street vendors carried noodles and sauce in baskets slung from either end of the pole over their shoulder.

What does the Cantonese word 'hoisin' literally mean?

The dark, sweet sauce contains no seafood at all; its key ingredient is fermented soybean paste.

What does 'char siu' literally mean in Cantonese?

The pork shoulder is marinated in hoisin, soy, rose wine and five-spice, then roasted on long forks.

What kind of dough is used for the fried Chinese breakfast stick youtiao?

It is usually dunked in congee or soy milk, or wrapped in a rice noodle roll to make zhaliang.

Guangzhou's dan tat pastry of the 1920s was modelled on which foreign dessert?

It appeared in early 20th-century Guangzhou department stores; the Macau version instead follows the Portuguese pastel de nata.

Which Song dynasty poet gave his name to a red-braised pork belly dish from Hangzhou?

He wrote an 'Ode to Pork' while in exile, praising the cheap meat slow-cooked with wine, sugar and soy.

What colour does the yolk of a century egg turn during preservation?

The eggs are cured in clay, ash, salt, quicklime and rice hulls; ones with pine-branch patterns in the white are prized as songhua eggs.

Which fruit is traditionally skewered and sugar-coated to make tanghulu?

The northern snack dates from the Song dynasty; today strawberries and grapes often stand in for the tart red berries.

Which legend explains the invention of steamed mantou buns as a substitute in a sacrifice?

The story was first recorded in the Song dynasty, when 'baozi' emerged as an alternative word for filled buns.

Chinese legend credits tofu's invention to which Han dynasty prince?

He lived from 179 to 122 BC in Anhui, though tofu only became widespread food in the Song dynasty a millennium later.

Soy sauce is traditionally fermented using which type of mould?

Historically the sauce was a way to stretch salt, an expensive commodity in ancient China.

Where were the earliest known chopsticks, six bronze pieces from about 1200 BC, excavated?

They came from the Ruins of Yin, the Shang dynasty capital in Henan, and were probably used for cooking rather than eating.

Which material are most woks made from?

It is light, cheap and heats fast; Chinese cast-iron woks are also very thin, unlike the heavy Western versions.

Which historical event brought the first wave of Cantonese cooks to the United States?

Some 20,000 to 30,000 immigrants from Guangdong arrived between 1848 and 1855, opening restaurants when barred from owning land.

With which meal is dim sum traditionally eaten in restaurants?

Some Cantonese restaurants start serving as early as five in the morning; the ritual of tea with dim sum is called yum cha.

Which province alone is said to have produced over a thousand dim sum dishes?

Only about forty to fifty types are commonly sold outside China, out of an estimated two thousand nationwide.

Chinese teas are usually classified into how many main categories?

White, green, yellow, oolong, black and post-fermented all come from the same plant, Camellia sinensis.

Which legendary emperor is said to have discovered tea in 2737 BC?

The story says a leaf blew into water he was boiling, and he was won over by the aroma.

The English word 'congee' comes from which language?

The Portuguese borrowed the Tamil kanji as canje in the 1500s and English took it from them; in China the rice porridge is zhou or juk.

Which fast-food chain first tested century-egg congee on its Shanghai menu in 2002?

The Cantonese breakfast dish went nationwide and became a hit across mainland China and Taiwan.

Most lamian hand-pulled noodle shops in China are run by families of which ethnic group?

They serve only halal food, so no pork, and are the commonest halal restaurants in eastern China.

Which style of hot pot is famous for its mala chilli-and-Sichuan-pepper broth?

Its numbing, fiery broth is served with dozens of meats and sauces; Zhou dynasty bronze tripods may be the earliest ancestor of the dish.

Chow mein reached the US with gold-rush immigrants from which province?

The English spelling reflects the Taishanese pronunciation and first appeared in print in 1890.

Nguri, a traditional cheese of southern China, is made from which animal's milk?

It is served in small amounts on congee in Fujian, Guangdong and around Shanghai.

Which four traditions were the most praised cuisines of the Qing dynasty?

They represented west, north, south and east China respectively — Sichuan, Shandong, Guangdong and the Yangtze delta.

Where did oyster sauce production begin no later than the 1870s?

Oysters were boiled in iron basins and the water reduced to a blackish sauce; today most versions are thickened with corn starch.