1# Chinese regional cooking — orientation
 2
 3"Chinese food" is not one cuisine. This file orients across several major regional traditions; Sichuan has its own folder (`../sichuan/overview.md`) because its logic is so distinct. The single most important thing here is to _resist flattening_: be specific about which region, community, or diaspora tradition you're drawing from.
 4
 5## The major regions, in brief
 6
 7Classical shorthand often names the Eight Great Cuisines: Shandong, Sichuan, Cantonese/Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, and Anhui. That list still misses plenty: Beijing, Shanghai/Jiangnan, Teochew, Hakka, Yunnan, Guizhou, Shaanxi/Xi'an, Uyghur/Xinjiang, and diaspora cuisines all matter. Use the named tradition, not a generic "Chinese" label, when the distinction affects flavor or technique.
 8
 9**Cantonese (Guangdong).** Freshness and subtlety; the cooking aims to express the ingredient's natural flavor rather than overwhelm it. Light hand with seasoning, mastery of steaming and quick stir-frying, restrained use of soy and sugar, and a reverence for texture (the snap of a properly cooked vegetable, the silkiness of velveted meat, the restaurant wok hei sear when called for). Seafood-forward. Many Western diners have met some Cantonese-derived food, but the real thing is cleaner and more precise than the takeout version.
10
11**Sichuan.** Bold, layered heat and the numbing tingle of _má là_, but also many non-spicy or gently balanced flavor profiles. See `../sichuan/overview.md`.
12
13**Hunan.** Often perceived as hotter and more direct than Sichuan: fresh and pickled chiles, pronounced sourness, smoking and curing, and less reliance on numbing peppercorn. Not simply "Sichuan without peppercorn"; it has its own sour, smoky, chile-forward logic.
14
15**Shanghainese / Jiangnan (lower Yangtze).** Richer, sweeter, oilier. Famous for "red cooking" (_hongshao_) -- soy, sugar, and wine braises that turn glossy and deep mahogany -- and for delicate things like soup dumplings. Sweetness is used more openly here than in many other regions. Jiangnan is broader than Shanghai, so don't collapse the whole lower-Yangtze world into one city.
16
17**Xinjiang / Uyghur and other northwest halal traditions.** Central-Asian-influenced: lamb and cumin rather than pork, hand-pulled and hand-cut noodles, flatbreads, grilled skewers, and warm spice. Xinjiang itself is ethnically diverse; when you mean Uyghur food, say Uyghur.
18
19**Northern (Beijing/Shandong and beyond).** Wheat country -- noodles, dumplings, and breads more than rice; heartier; braises; and the precise, savory, technique-driven Shandong tradition that influenced imperial cooking. Beijing also carries court, Mongolian, Muslim, and street-food threads.
20
21## Flavor logic (cutting across)
22
23Where many Han Chinese traditions converge: respect for texture; balance within a dish; a savory backbone that may include soy, fermented bean pastes, Shaoxing wine, stock, or vinegar; aromatics of ginger, garlic, scallion, and regionally chile; and the importance of the order in which things hit the wok. Where they diverge: heat (Sichuan/Hunan hot, Cantonese mild), staple grain (rice south, wheat north), fat and sweetness (rich/sweet in Shanghai, cleaner in Canton), protein (pork common in many regions, lamb in Uyghur/Xinjiang cooking), and table structure.
24
25## Core techniques
26
27The wok stir-fry done right: high heat, ingredients added in sequence so each is cooked correctly, aromatics bloomed in the oil, and brief smoky char when _wok hei_ is actually part of the dish. _Velveting_ (a cornstarch-and-egg-white or baking-soda treatment) keeps meat tender and silky through fast, hot cooking. Steaming for purity (fish, dumplings, custards). Red-cooking and other soy-sugar-wine braises for depth. Balancing a sauce of soy, wine, vinegar, sugar, and stock to the dish at hand.
28
29## Pantry backbone
30
31Light and dark soy (dark for color and a touch of sweetness, light for salt), Shaoxing wine, rice vinegar (and black Chinkiang vinegar), toasted sesame oil, cornstarch, ginger, garlic, scallion, white pepper, fermented bean pastes (doubanjiang for Sichuan, others regionally), oyster sauce for some Cantonese cooking, Sichuan peppercorn and dried chiles for Sichuan, fresh and pickled chiles for Hunan, cumin for Uyghur/Xinjiang dishes. Don't quietly assume the regional pantry is there: Shaoxing wine, dark soy, Chinkiang vinegar, oyster sauce, doubanjiang, and Sichuan peppercorn are common missing pieces.
32
33## Common outsider mistakes
34
35The big failure is flattening: "Chinese" becomes takeout brown sauce, or Sichuan heat gets pasted onto a Cantonese dish that should be clean and precise. Stir-fries need real heat and space; a cool, crowded pan gives you steam, not wok hei. Light soy and dark soy do different jobs. Shaoxing wine and a little dark soy can move a home stir-fry from thin to deep, but only where that flavor logic belongs. Restaurant, banquet, home, street, regional, and diaspora foodways are different contexts; don't mix them up by accident.