48 Fun Facts About Chinese Food

What is the classic filling of a traditional Cantonese mooncake?

Lotus seed paste and salted yolk: the whole duck-egg yolk stands for the full moon, and the cake is so rich that it is cut into thin wedges and shared over tea.

When are mooncakes traditionally eaten?

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls at the full moon of the 8th lunar month; a folk tale says rebels once hid messages in the gift cakes to plot the overthrow of China's Mongol rulers.

What are zongzi traditionally wrapped in?

Bamboo leaves scent the sticky rice as it boils; in one telling, the first parcels were thrown into a river so the fish would leave a drowned poet's body alone.

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

Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Miluo River in 278 BC; legend says villagers raced out in their boats to save him, which is how the festival's boat races are said to have begun.

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

Gold and silver ingots: sycee like these were money in imperial China, so households wrap the dumplings on New Year's Eve and eat them as midnight strikes to invite wealth.

Legend says the physician Zhang Zhongjing invented jiaozi one bitter winter as a cure for what?

Frostbitten ears: in the tale he wrapped mutton and warming herbs in dough folded to look like ears, boiled them and handed them out to villagers suffering in the cold.

Which newspaper published the article credited with establishing China's 'Eight Great Cuisines' in the 1980s?

People's Daily: journalist Wang Shaoquan's article added four newer regional schools to the four older great traditions, and his list of eight became the standard way to divide Chinese cooking.

Which foods are the dietary staples of northern China's dry, temperate climate?

Noodles, porridge and bread: paddy rice needs the wetter south, so the north built its cooking on hardier dry-land grains, a split that shapes almost every regional menu.

Which part of a Peking duck is prized above all and traditionally served first, with sugar for dipping?

The crisp skin: cooks pump air between skin and flesh and paint the bird with syrup before it goes in the oven, so the fat renders away and the skin turns thin and brittle.

Which US statesman was served a Peking duck lunch by Zhou Enlai during a secret 1971 trip to Beijing?

Henry Kissinger: the lunch came in the middle of the secret talks, which ended with an agreed statement announcing that President Nixon would visit China.

Fortune cookies are not Chinese: they most likely descend from a cracker made in which country?

Japan: a similar folded cracker was being made in Kyoto in the 1800s, immigrants carried it to California, and Chinese restaurants there later made it their own.

In 2005, lucky numbers from fortune cookies made 110 players second-prize winners in which US lottery?

Powerball: lottery officials suspected fraud until they traced the numbers to paper slips from one cookie maker, which had printed five of the six winning numbers.

Orange chicken is credited to Andy Kao, who created it in 1987 as executive chef of which restaurant chain?

Panda Express: Kao reworked a bone-in chicken dish at one of the chain's Hawaii restaurants, frying boneless pieces and tossing them in a sweet orange-peel sauce.

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

Hunan: Zuo Zongtang died in 1885 without ever tasting it; chef Peng Chang-kuei, who made the dish famous, came from the same province and named it after its war hero.

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

New York City: Peng opened on East 44th Street in 1973, United Nations officials became regulars, and the dish he had first cooked in Taiwan in the 1950s became a takeaway staple across the US.

Chillies, the signature of Sichuan cooking, are native to which part of the world, reaching China only in the 1500s?

The Americas: Columbus carried chillies back to Spain and Portuguese traders spread them along their Asian routes, so the fire in Sichuan food is only a few centuries old.

Chop suey's Cantonese name, tsap seui, roughly translates as what?

Odds and ends: the dish likely began as a way to use up scraps of meat and vegetables, much like minestrone, and its name was already appearing in US newspapers by 1884.

Where does the 'Kung Pao' in Kung Pao chicken come from?

An official's court title: Ding Baozhen, a Qing governor of Sichuan, was styled Gongbao, 'palace guardian', a name judged so imperial that Cultural Revolution menus called the dish plain spicy chicken.

What does 'mapo' in mapo tofu literally describe?

A pockmarked old woman: 'ma' means pockmarked and 'po' an old woman, the nickname of the cook, Mrs Chen, so the dish that made her famous is named for her scars rather than her skill.

Which city is the birthplace of mapo tofu?

Chengdu: the dish began at a cook-shop feeding traders and peddlers passing through the city, which in 2010 became the first in Asia to be named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy.

What gives Sichuan pepper its tingling sensation on the tongue?

Hydroxy-alpha sanshool acts on the nerves that sense touch and vibration, so the lips buzz as if vibrating at about 50 hertz, the frequency of mains electricity in much of the world.

What does the Sichuan flavour term 'mala' mean?

Numb-spiciness: 'ma' is the tingle of Sichuan pepper and 'la' the burn of chilli, and the numbing half came first: chillies joined the region's traditional pepper only a few centuries ago.

Xiaolongbao soup dumplings are traditionally steamed in what?

A small bamboo basket: 'xiaolong' means little basket, and diners lift each dumpling onto a spoon and nibble a hole to sip the scalding soup before eating the rest.

How does the hot soup get inside a xiaolongbao dumpling?

Jellied stock melts in the steamer: cooks simmer pork skin and bones into a stock that sets when chilled, fold cubes of it into the filling, and the heat turns them back into soup.

What does 'dandan' in dandan noodles refer to?

A carrying pole: street vendors walked the lanes with noodles in one basket and sauce in the other, slung from the ends of a pole across the shoulder, selling bowls to passers-by.

What does the Cantonese word 'hoisin' literally mean?

Seafood: yet the dark, sweet sauce contains none at all, being built on soybeans, garlic, chilli and sugar.

What does 'char siu' literally mean in Cantonese?

Fork roasted: 'char' is a fork and 'siu' to roast; the pork is steeped in soy sauce, sugar and rice wine, then roasted under a glaze of honey or maltose.

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

Wheat flour: the Cantonese name means 'oil-fried devil', from a folk tale that the paired strips stand for a hated Song minister and his wife, fried for plotting the death of the hero Yue Fei.

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

The English custard tart: Guangzhou's Western-style department stores were competing fiercely for customers, so their pastry chefs adapted it; Macau's egg tart instead follows the Portuguese pastel de nata.

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

Su Dongpo, as the poet Su Shi styled himself, gives his name to pork belly braised for hours in rice wine; legend says he worked out the slow method while exiled and short of money.

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

Dark greenish-grey: the alkaline coating slowly raises the egg's pH, turning the yolk creamy and pungent with sulphur and ammonia while the white sets into a dark, translucent jelly.

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

Chinese hawthorn: the haws are sour, so a hard shell of set syrup makes each bite sweet and sharp at once; the name means 'sugar gourd', and the same coat has since spread to strawberries and pineapple.

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

Zhuge Liang replacing human heads: told that a river would let his army cross only if men's heads were thrown in, the strategist is said to have offered head-shaped buns of dough instead.

Soy sauce is fermented with Aspergillus oryzae, commonly called which kind of mould?

Koji mould: its enzymes break down the starch in grain, and the same culture is used to brew sake and to ferment soybeans into miso.

The earliest known chopsticks, bronze pairs from Shang dynasty tombs, are thought to have been used for what?

Stirring cooking pots: the long bronze sticks could reach deep into pots of hot oil or water, and only many centuries later, as food came to be cut into small pieces, did they move to the table.

The wok's deep bowl shape is said to have been developed in China to make the most of which scarce resource?

Fuel: the curved base gathers the fire's heat into one small, fierce spot, so thinly cut food sears in moments, a real saving when wood and charcoal were growing dear.

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

The California Gold Rush drew thousands of men from southern China after 1848, and many of them turned from mining to running laundries and restaurants.

With which meal is dim sum traditionally eaten in restaurants?

Brunch: the meal grew out of teahouses where travellers took small bites with their tea, which is why Cantonese speakers call going for dim sum yum cha, 'drink tea'.

At a Cantonese tea table, what does tapping your fingers beside your cup traditionally signal?

Thanks for pouring the tea: legend says servants of a Qing emperor travelling in disguise could not kneel when he filled their cups, so they knocked bent fingers on the table as a tiny bow.

Which Chinese tea, whose name means 'black dragon', is partly oxidised, between green and black tea?

Oolong: the leaves are withered in strong sun and left to oxidise only partway before being fired, which is why the tea drinks darker than a green but lighter than a black.

In the best-known legend, Shen Nong discovered tea in 2737 BC when what happened?

Leaves blew into his boiling water: the emperor, a renowned herbalist in the story, tasted the accidental brew and liked it; another telling has tea curing him after he sampled poisonous herbs.

Which chain, China's first Western fast-food arrival, added congee and fried dough sticks to its menu?

KFC: a menu rebuilt around local tastes helped it pull far ahead of its nearest rival, and by 2013 its owner had more than twice as many outlets in China as McDonald's.

Lanzhou-style hand-pulled lamian, sold in halal noodle shops across China, is tied to the cooking of which ethnic group?

Hui: these Mandarin-speaking Muslims of the north-west run many of the small noodle shops, which serve beef rather than pork and have spread from Lanzhou to cities across China.

Which style of hot pot is known for a fiery red broth of chillies, Sichuan pepper and beef fat?

Chongqing hot pot: diners cook tripe, duck blood and sliced beef in the bubbling broth themselves, then dip each scalding bite in sesame oil before eating it.

In the best-known tale of Yunnan's crossing-the-bridge noodles, why did a scholar's wife top his broth with fat?

To keep the soup hot: he was studying on an island and lunch went cold on her walk across the bridge, so she sealed the broth under fat and added the noodles on arrival.

Tangyuan, the sweet rice balls of the Lantern Festival, are round to symbolise what?

Family togetherness: the name tangyuan sounds like tuanyuan, 'reunion', so relatives share a bowl on the first full moon of the lunar year.

China's four great culinary traditions each stand for a compass point: which one does Sichuan's Chuan cuisine represent?

The west: Chuan stands beside Lu for the north, Yue for the south and Huaiyang for the east, a four-way scheme that was later widened into the eight great cuisines.

Which taboo applies when cooking Chinese 'longevity noodles' for a birthday?

Cutting the strands: an unbroken noodle stands for an unbroken life, so slicing one is said to shorten the eater's years, and each strand should be eaten whole.