Food feuds rife as regional tastes clash
Print Edition
China is a country renowned for its culinary diversity. From north to south, from east to west, each region prides itself on local dining traditions.
Regional palates can be quite set in their ways. In 2011, a debate flared between northern and southern China over whether bean curd jelly should be sweet or salty. In 2013, a similar north-south squabble erupted, this time over whether zongzi, the rice dumplings that traditionally accompany the Dragon Boat Festival, should be sweet or salty. The war of words elicited more than 150,000 posts on Weibo.
Each to his own taste. Chacun a son gout, as the French famously say. But in China, tastes can vary greatly and traditions die hard. Here is a sampling of food feuds that have gone viral in the Chinese online community.
Most culinary controversies center on the issue of salty versus sweet dishes.
Bean curd jelly is a popular breakfast dish enjoyed across China. In the north, a bowl of hot bean curd jelly is usually topped with the likes of gravy, chilies, cilantro or crunchy peanuts. But in the south, this dish is more like a dessert, served with brown sugar syrup.
When Weibo user Qiaodongli from Guangdong Province posted that he cannot abide salty bean curd jelly, it was reposted more than 33,000 times. The squabble even went abroad as some netizens in China posted a rather silly petition on the White House website asking the US to standardize bean curd jelly as salty.
Bean curd jelly is not the only fuse. Not long after the jelly business faded in controversy, soymilk moved center stage.
This time, geographic positions were reversed. People in the north drink soymilk plain or sweetened, while in the south, people add soy sauce, dried shrimp and pieces of fried bread sticks.
A Weibo user going by the online name Tommy from Guangdong Province wrote that he loathes sweet soymilk.
Zongzi is eaten every year to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. In the north, the filling is usually something sweet, like red bean paste, candied Chinese dates and chestnuts.
Plain zongzi made with glutinous rice only are often dipped in sugar. In the northwestern province of Shaanxi, locals eat chilled plain zongzi with a honey dressing.
But the southern Chinese are used to eating zongzi with marinated meat and salted egg yolks.
Rice dumplings are a must during the annual Lantern Festival. When the food feud turned to these dumplings, many northern netizens were surprised to learn that the dumplings were made with meat filling.
In the North, the dumplings come with sweet fillings of red bean paste, black sesame and even chocolate. In Shanghai, by contrast, most rice dumplings are filled with meat.
Weibo user Pudaosuoyoumiao wrote that she tried rice dumplings with a meat and vegetable filling many years ago in Suzhou and was surprised to find them salty.
“Although it was quite good, I still find salty rice dumplings kind of weird,” she wrote. “I still prefer them sweet.”
Scrambled egg with tomato is a common stir-fry dish that Chinese grow up eating. It’s simple to make, but suddenly a discussion on whether sugar should be added to the dish went viral.
Netizens from across China lined up behind pro and con arguments.
In the south, it is indeed a common practice to add sugar to the dish. That is hard for northerners to comprehend, much less stomach.
Mooncakes are the hallmark of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls this year on September 27. In southern provinces, the mooncakes often have meat fillings, while in the north, sweet fillings prevail. The social media debate was less strident on this point than for other foods. Everyone seems more willing to accept both versions as delicious.
Hotpot is a beloved culinary creation in China, but even here taste differences emerged. This time the issue wasn’t sugar versus salt. The choice of dipping sauce was the point of contention.
In the southwestern province of Sichuan and adjacent city of Chongqing, the birthplace of spicy hotpot, people commonly have two plates of sauce and spice as condiments: dried chilli pepper flakes and sesame oil. The additional pepper adds zest to the ingredients in the hotpot, while the sesame oil eases the spiciness and also has a special aroma.
But netizens in other regions of China turned up their noses at the idea of chillies and sesame oil. The popular condiment sauce they said they prefer contains sesame paste or peanut butter, along with a dozen other sauces and spices. In Beijing, for example, a lamb hotpot must be served with sesame paste.
In southern provinces, condiments like shacha sauce are popular. Shacha is made from soybean oil, garlic, shallots, chillies, fish, and dried shrimp. It has a savory and slightly spicy taste
Traditional dumplings provoke two camps of thought. Should they be eaten in a soup or without soup? In provinces like Henan, traditional dumplings are boiled and drained, then served with a spicy and sour dipping sauce. The water used to boil the dumplings is eaten separately.
But in Shaanxi, Jiangxi and some other provinces, dumplings are served in a soup bowl. Shaanxi’s famous sour soup dumpling lies in a mixture of vinegar, soy sauce, cilantro, dried shrimp, nori and sesame oil.
It’s not only old, traditional dishes that come in for taste scrutiny. Many newer foods are also stirring online discussions. For example, netizens were talking this year about the latest trend in Fujian Province — pairing fresh mango and lychees with soy sauce.
Stubborn palates will always be hard to convince that trying something new can be exciting. But those who are willing to set aside prejudices may find a whole new world of taste that may someday even replace old favorites. If nothing else, the continuing debates about food show that China is still a country where eating is a treasured practice.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
