Excerpts from Chinese Gastronomy

I was so excited when I read the first pages of Hsiang Ju Lin and Tsuifeng Lin's 1969 book Chinese Gastronomy that I literally could not sleep that night.

All of these things I've sensed eating my way around Hong Kong, and which were hinted at in books like Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, were laid out so plainly and concisely in the first pages of the Lin's book.

After seeing the same arguments play out again and again on the China & Southeast Asia Chowhound board in which a Chinese-speaker says something like...

"[we] try hard to unblock your bias so that you can learn to appreciate Cantonese cuisine like the locals do, and I know you do try hard, you go for street food that most gwailo don't do....but you still have this western mentality that is blocking you."

To which a non-Chinese speaker eventually replies,

"Who is to say that one persons bad isnt another persons great? What makes a great meal, that you like it or that the majority likes it? To me, it is about me liking what I eat. I.e., I really hate eggplant, so any dish with eggplant inside is bad for me. But for someone else, it will be great."

(For the entire thread, read here.)

This makes me want to pull my hair out!

No, we non-Chinese speakers are not genetically inferior lower life forms who are unable to appreciate Chinese cuisines (and yes, I know that there are five or more regional cuisines, not just one). And also NO, the difference between good and bad Chinese food is not entirely subjective. There is a real philosophical or conceptual foundation to Chinese gastronomy that makes some things simply right or wrong in a technical sense. I think that "Westerners" need to learn it and Chinese speakers need to teach it explicitly. I mean come right out and tell non-Chinese speakers this stuff instead of pretending like it's some magical thing that we are incapable of understanding because of our "Western bias." The truth is, Chinese cuisine is not about naturalness. If you didn't learn these principles from family and friends throughout your life, you're probably not going to figure them out any time soon with just your tongue and your teeth.

In service, I hope, to the community of folks who care about Chinese cuisine, I have transcribed what I think are essential passages from the first pages of Chinese Gastronomy and hope that it will elevate the discussion somewhere somehow.

Without further ado...

"if there is anything [the Chinese] are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food." (Forward by Lin Yutang, p. 7)

"Recipes can be followed, but the whys and wherefores are not gone into, tactile and gustatory sensations can be experienced directly but the raison d'etre and the critical standards are unknown."
(p. 7)

"'If something is not right, this is due to carelessness, and it is the cook's fault. If something is good, say why, and when it is bad, pick out its faults. If one does not keep the cook in line, he becomes insolent. Before the food comes, send word down that the food tomorrow must be better.' -- Yuan Mei"
(p. 11)

"the cuisine did not come into its own until the critics became articulate. They found fault with the food. They developed ideas and harassed their cooks. The gastronomes contributed their sense of form to the cuisine. Their prompting made the cooks masters of flavour and texture."
(p. 11)

"We had to learn how to eat before we could learn how to cook."
(p. 11)

"[Chinese cuisine's] peculiar character comes from the realization that cooking is a form of artifice. This attitude accounts for its triumphs, its faults and its sophistications. Because of the trickery involved, the psychology of eating is different."
(p. 12)

"Cooking is a form of artifice, because the taste of food is both good and bad. Good taste cannot be achieved unless one knows precisely what is bad about each ingredient, and proceeds to correct it. The curious, omnivorous cook knows that the taste of raw fruit is quite delicious and cannot be improved upon. Raw fish is insipid, raw chicken metallic, raw beef is palatable but for the rank flavour of blood. It is pointless to talk about the natural taste of these things, as many people like to do. We take it to mean the characteristic flavour of each thing, which is mainly in the fat and in the juices. This is brought out by artifice and appreciated as the hsien and hsiang, the flavour and aroma. Here is the pivotal point where Chinese cuisine swings away from the others and takes off on its own. Note that Western pastry-making is a departure from the natural form and perhaps the 'natural taste' of food. The patissier works only with butter, eggs, flour and sugar. But because he does not feel compelled to preserve the natural form, and present the flavour of each ingredient individually, he is often able to evolve something better. The palate can then perceive the taste of the ingredients interlocked in his inventions. The Chinese cook has done the same for food in general."
(p. 12-13)

"Criteria of Excellence

The unique qualities of the cuisine are contained in some almost untranslatable words. The words hsien, hsiang, nung, and yu-er-pu-ni are the criteria of excellence in flavour. 'Flavours must be rich and robust, never oily, or they must be delicate and fresh without being too thin. A flavour which is nung means that the essences are concentrated and the scum has been removed. Those who like greasy food might just as well dine on lard. When some dish is hsien, its true flavour is present. Not the least particle of error can be tolerated or you will have missed the mark.' (Yuan Mei)

Hsien Sweet natural flavour. Usage: to describe the delicate taste of fat pork, or the taste of butter; the taste of fresh fish, bamboo and prawns (shrimps). It may be simulated by a combination of seasonings, principally sugar. In an exceptional case, the hsien of fish is simulated by a mixture of seasonings and pork (Mock Fish, 66).

Hsiang Characteristic fragrance; aroma. Usage: applied to those dishes which can give pleasure by their smell as well as their taste; characteristic fragrance of chicken fat, of roasted meats, of mushrooms, of sauteed onions, etc. Hsiang is almost impossible to duplicate by artifice, for it depends mainly on the oils present in each ingredient.

Nung Rich, heady, concentrated. Usage: in contrast to hsien, which must always appear natural and effortless, dishes which are nung are strongly flavoured with meat essences or spices. Applied to richly aromatic food (Glazed Duck, 121); to Cream Stock (16), composed of three kinds of meat. Nung is not always used in a complimentary sense: it may mean too rich, like overripe cheese.

Yu-er-pu-ni To taste of fat without being oily. Usage: applicable to the yolks of preserved eggs, to roe, to properly cooked belly pork. Compare the taste of these: caviar, cold fresh unsalted (sweet) butter or avocado. This phrase occurs frequently because of the importance of solid fat in the cuisine. Always used as a compliment.

The two following words describe texture. They are interesting because cooks try to achieve tsuei and nun textures with foods that do not naturally have them.

Tsuei Crisp, crunchy. A texture often brought out or concocted. Usage: applicable to dipped and sauteed snails, tripe, squid, Dipped Snails (93), Blanched Kidneys (124), prawns (Rule for Prawns, 25) and Fish Balls (31); pork crackling, roasted skin of fowl (Peking Duck, 57).

Nun Soft and tender; non-fibrous. A somewhat resilient texture brought out by skillful cooking, to be distinguished from another word ruan meaning soft and loose-textured. Usage: applied to texture of perfect soft-boiled egg, Velvet Chicken I (29), texture of quenelles de brochet.

These words are by no means sufficient to describe the range of flavours and textures, but they are most important and interesting worlds which have provoked a lot of thought. They embody qualities aimed at in cooking. The most famous dishes of Chinese cuisine combine several of these qualities. The skin of Peking duck is fragrant, crisp and rich without being oily (hsiang, tsuei, yu-er-pu-ni). Fish balls are at once fresh, crisp and tender (hsien, tsuei, and nun). The combination of these qualities in a single dish suggests the complexity of classic Chinese cuisine. Note how no one quality contradicts any other.

Blending of Flavours

Plain flavours. The plain flavour appears simple because all the seasonings blended into it are undetectable. Cooks are satisfied when people appreciate the 'natural' fragrance and taste of the food, unaware of the seasoning that has gone into it. They keep perfectly quiet about the amount of art that went into bringing out the 'natural' taste. The fragrance and taste (hsiang, hsien) of many foods are brought out by the use of supporting ingredients which should merge intoa single flavour. It was once suggested that bamboo be sauteed with marbled pork to extract its hsien juices, and then the pork be discarded before serving (Li Liweng). This is an extreme case to illustrate the importance of undetected seasoning.

Once supporting ingredients have done their job, they should be removed from view. If wine or vinegar is added, it can be evaporated away. If ginger and spring onions (scallions) are included, it is better to remove them before serving the dish. Light soy sauce should be used when seasoning prawns (shrimps) or vegetables. Sugar must not be detected in grains, nor should salt, unless it is served in a separate dish. Things are either served with or without sauce. Make it very obvious which you are doing.

Complementary flavours. Chinese cooking has been called 'the marriage of flavours'. This is very apt, for the individual ingredients should preserve their identity while complementing each other. This principle is discussed at length in Chapter 2. Unlike the subtle alterations of flavour discussed above, the second type of blending depends on showing up the flavours of individual ingredients by contrasting them with similar or totally different ingredients. The delicate taste of bird's nest is matched with very finely chopped winter melon (blending of similar flavours) or with minced ham (matching of contrasting flavours). This is comparable to matching several shades of white to each other, or contrasting black with white. The combination of cheese with other ingredients in French cooking comes closest to this idea of mutual support.

Variation of Texture

The refinement of the cuisine is most obvious in its control of texture. Classic cuisine stresses the creation of crisp or tender textures, demanding of the cook a certain virtuosity. Fundamentally, textural variation is an effort to improve upon nature. For example, every piece of meat is encased in invisible membranes, with sinewy connections and silky ligaments. Even after all these substances have been cleared away, the texture of meat remains a problem. The beginner knows well that it is difficult to keep meat tender while cooking it. Any error will make the meat fibrous and dry and all the tricks used in cooking it have the common aim of keeping it tender.

Variation of texture runs like a minor theme throughout the whole of Chinese gastronomy. At the most sophisticated tables it became an end in itself. It led to the search for texture-foods, things that have interesting textures but no taste. Today, there is no banquet without bird's nest or shark's fins, both texture-foods. These ingredients brought on yet another development in the cuisine. The cook was confronted with the problem of creating flavours for things which had no flavour in themselves. In Chinese cooking at its most sophisticated, substances with texture but no flavour were wedded to stocks of great flavour but no substance.

Use of Parts

The search for new flavours and textures led naturally to the use of parts. This was carried to an extreme. People distinguished between the cheeks of the fish, its soft under-belly, the jelly-like tissue at the base of the dorsal fins. Country-style cooking was by necessity a cooking of parts, quite aside from the art of eating. The inherent textural variation of innards is interesting to gourmets. Chinese tongues and teeth are perhaps unusual. Many people can split a watermelon seed, extract the meat and carry on a rapid conversation at the same time, pausing only to expel the shell. Others, with a little practice, are able to tie one or two knots ina cherry stem with tongue and teeth. The Chinese tongue is a sensitive thing. So the grainy quality of liver, the unctuous intestine, the figrous gizzard, the spongy maw and crunchy tripe all stand apart from each other, to be appreciated as delicacies, each with its unique texture.

The use of parts is also favoured by the cook, who knows that the white meat of chicken is done earlier than the dark, and that the wings must be stewed, the legs fried, the skin roasted or fried, the breast meat sauteed or minced. Each part must be cooked differently to bring out the best, and by separating the parts one can bring out the best in each.

Use of Fat

Fat is a delicacy. Despite the term yu-er-pu-ni (to taste of fat without being oily), which belongs more to gastronomy than to common taste, all oil is considered good. Pork fat can be made to soak up juices, chicken and duck fat to flavour vegetables. Sesame oil is used to suppress the fishy taste of seafood, to fry sweets and to flavour food. Sesame, peanut and vegetable oils are used in vegetarian cooking. The flavour of meat and fish is in the fat. Hence the cooking of fat as such has developed in step with the techniques for cooking meat. The use of fat is particularly appreciated with the main substance is rice or wheat. The lean food of peasants was enriched by fat. 'The fat in meat, fish, ducks and chicken must be kept in the meat and not allowed to run out, else the flavour is all in the juices' (Yuan Mei)"

(p. 12-16)

Dead or alive

E has been requesting shrimp for months. Not two or three months. More like ten to twelve. But I, a nearly 5'10"-tall human being, have been afraid of 3"-tall crustaceans...



My problem is that seafood in Hong Kong is very fresh. If you walk through the wet markets, fish fling themselves out of fish mongers' buckets onto the pavement. And in front of every decent seafood restaurant there is a large tank filled with garoupas, sullen lobsters, and shrimp with frantic little legs.

Living in a city like this, I would feel embarrassed -- or even negligent -- buying dead shrimp for my sweetheart. But the thought of personally ending the lives of 20 or more little beings was very daunting. Finally, finally, finally, I plucked up the courage. Actually, first I skulked around the supermarket for a while trying to think of anything we might possibly need that I could buy first. But finally I made my way up to the seafood counter and gave a death sentence to a catty (1.4 lbs) of white-legged Chinese shrimp.

And then...I had a bag of living things. It's weird to carry a grocery basket that has things moving in it. They were kicking intermittently, with some feistiness.

Then I paid for my living creatures and hoping to give them the opportunity to die on their own, I waited for the 56 bus and rode home with them on my lap. Ugh.

By the time they were spilled out on my kitchen counter, there were just flickers of motion. I needed to stir-fry them and I didn't know how to get from a living creature to the raw ingredient for my recipe. "How do I kill them?" I asked the young man at the seafood counter. Apparently you can stick them in the freezer for a while -- not enough to freeze the meat, but enough to effectively put them to sleep.

After 20 minutes in the freezer they weren't moving anymore, but they sure looked vibrant, vital, something. You know when you just have a feeling that something's alive but you can't say why? Ugh.

Anyway, what was I going to do? I didn't want to freeze the shrimp entirely, otherwise what was the point of buying fresh? So...I began to decapitate them. Whack -- off with the head. Whack -- the tail. Then I ran a knife over the little feet, separating them from the body so I could get a grip on the edge of the shell and pull it off. Over and over.

Finally I found myself with a tiny pile of beautiful shrimp meat and an enormous pile of gray shrimp parts. It was an interesting moment. I had gone from living creatures with beady eyes and speedy legs to...well, to food. And the meat had a certain quality, an almost silkiness or slinkiness to the way it moved. If you touched it, it would sort of shimmy back into place.

A while back there was a trend among young hipster foodies in the States to face the bloody reality of eating meat. Maybe this has something to do with Buddhism. I don't know. At my friend K--'s wedding in Oregon, for example, they served a pig roasted on a spit and carved on site, a gory carcass with its side missing displayed for all to witness.


(Don't have a picture of that pig, but this photo captures that witness-the-gruesomeness-of-meat spirit.)

I assure you that this is *not* my motivation for telling you the shrimp story.

The point of my shrimp story was that I witnessed first-hand the connection between life and freshness.

Since coming to HK I've asked a number of people to describe Cantonese cuisine. Invariably, they all talk about freshness. Cantonese like their food very fresh. This was surprising to me because, being a Californian, I always thought that we liked our food very fresh. And yet, Cantonese food and "California cuisine" are very different. 

To me, the freshness in California cuisine often refers to rawness, and specifically to raw vegetables. When I think of California cuisine, I think of an elegant salad of peppery greens I once had at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, that came from their own organic garden.


Cantonese food does not have raw vegetables. What is prized is a quality of freshness in cooked food.

Before coming to HK, I probably thought (unconsciously) about freshness as a spectrum starting from when the vegetable is freshest, still hanging on the vine; becoming less fresh after it's been picked and transported; less fresh still when it's handled and prepared for cooking; and finally becoming pretty dead when you cook it.

Now, I think differently.

After being in HK about six months, I went home to SF and ate at all good restaurants...but my impression was, Jeez, these people can't cook ;-( The food seemed dull and lifeless.

At any decent restaurant in HK, the food comes to the table piping hot, just out of the wok or the steamer. And really, you can forget about any sequencing of dishes. As soon as a dish is ready, they bring it to you. Incidentally, this was a gigantic source of frustration to E, who is very attached to the idea of a meal as a specific sequence of events (appetizer--soup--main--dessert). If a dish came in the wrong order, he would let it sit on the table and get cold until the correct dish in the sequence arrived. A misapplication of engineering instincts, if you ask me!

But if you eat the food as soon as it arrives, it's amazing. It's as if all the ingredients have simultaneously woken up and are opening to you like a rose blooming and releasing a fragrance. And if everything has been cooked perfectly and is in balance, it's like hearing a chord or a harmony in music. It's really lovely.

I don't think that most "Westerners" (or maybe just most Americans) even know to look for this quality of freshness in their cooked food. The Chinese, of course, (or maybe just the Cantonese) not only know to look for this freshness, they actually have a phrase to describe it: wok hay.

To quote Grace Young from The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen:

"Wok hay is not simply hot food; it's that elusive seared taste that only lasts for a minute or two."

"I always imagined wok hay as a special life force that, when consumed, provided us with extra energy, hay. Some readers may be familiar with the Mandarin word for hay, which is qi, as in qigong. Qi (pronounced "chee) is the Chinese concept of vital energy that flows through the body."

"As a child I clearly understood that when dinner was announced there was no excuse for tardiness. It was totally unacceptable to explain that you wanted to see the last five minutes of a television show, finish a phone conversation, or even do a few more minutes of homework. Hot food was serious business, and the idea of missing the wok hay was unthinkable."
(quotes from p. 20-21 of Young's book)

I usually cook dinner four or five nights a week, and most of those meals I cook in my wok. I've been doing this just over a year. And after regularly following recipes that go something like -- put the garlic in and let it sizzle about 15 seconds; add ingredient X and stir fry 30 seconds; add two tablespoons water and cover for 10 seconds, etc. -- I've gotten an intuitive sense of the delicacy and elusiveness of the hay.

Which is why it would drive me absolutely bonkers when -- after I had carefully shredded ingredients into delicate slivers for two hours and then brought the attention of a fighter pilot to hitting them with the perfect amount of heat for just the right amount of time in my wok and then rushed the steaming plate to the table -- E would finish his email, stand up, stretch, go to the bathroom, get a glass of wine, and finally sit down to the beautiful dish of food that had just lost its hay. Argh.

So finally, I did an experiment...

I prepped two identical sets of ingredients for Willow Chicken with Black Bean Sauce from Yan-kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook.


Then I cooked one set and we had dinner (yum!), but I kept a bit of the dish aside. After we ate, I cooked the other set of ingredients and placed the fresh, hot version on the counter next to the leftover version from 30 minutes ago. Then I asked E to come running and taste the two.

Ha! He didn't even want to touch the cool dish he was so transfixed by the fresh one. So, as he stood there eating the hot food, I took a bite of one, and then a bite of the other. And then I tasted the individual elements of one and those of the other. Here is what I found...


Color -- the difference in color was very apparent. Not only was the green of the peppers, chilis, and spring onions brighter in the freshly-cooked dish, but the chicken itself was brighter or lighter and also a bit pinker or yellower. So the dish actually looked more lit up. And it's really interesting...if you think about the way that broccoli or green pepper becomes brighter green when you cook it...it's almost as if it becomes more alive when you cook it. It's like the heat from the wok wakes it up, prompts it to open itself and display its most lovely qualities. A very different idea from thinking of cooking as making food another step more dead. Do you see what I mean?

Warmth and aroma -- when you took a bite of the fresh dish, the steam coming off the fresh food actually brought some warmth up to my face before taking a bite. Then, because the aroma of the different ingredients mingled in the steam, before I even tasted it I had the sense of the dish as a single, integrated experience. Tasting the cool food, there was almost no aroma. And the smell that was there was somehow sharper and oilier, with the garlic and spring onion being more prominent.

Flavors -- it's interesting. Both dishes tasted good. But they tasted different. In the cooler dish the seasoning was more apparent: the spring onion, garlic, and salt were more prominent -- as with the aroma. When I compared the individual ingredients, I was most struck by the difference in the flavor of the pepper. The warm pepper had more of a green or cucumbery flavor to it while the cool pepper tasted distinctively bitter.

Textures -- woha, big time difference in textures. Of course the pepper went from slightly crisp to limp. And the spring onions in the warm dish still had a kind of bounciness to them, like they would rebound to their original form after each bite (like the coils of a mattress rebounding up after you push down on it). The cool spring onions were flacid. When you bit them, they just lay there. But the chicken was the biggest surprise to me. I expected there to be a difference in the elasticity, but that's not actually what I noticed. Actually, the warm chicken was much softer. The cool chicken had a hardness or rigidity to it. Similar to the difference between raw pie dough and cooked pie dough. That difference in texture.

Overall, there was a way in which the warm dish had more of a softness and openness and receptiveness to it, while the cool dish had a kind of harshness and reticence to it.

But I am thrilled, because my experiment was a success. E has tasted wok hay and cannot deny that it exists. I mean it was so apparent that there was life in the one dish and not in the other, that there was absolutely no argument. So if he chooses to finish his soup while a beautiful plate of lamb with scallions loses its wok hay next to him, that's his choice. But now, at least he knows what he is missing!