Dining
Chinese cuisine is renowned all over the world for its appearance, aroma, and flavour. Its unique style of preparation, cooking and presentation can be traced to the beginnings of Chinese historymore than 5,000 years ago. As the capital of China for Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1115-1911), Beijing developed its own unique cuisine incorporating the best features of different regional styles. Beijing cuisine reached its present form in the imperial kitchens of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Among the most famous dishes or styles which found their way from the imperial court to public restaurants are Court Cuisine, Beijing Roast Duck, Tan Cuisine, Mongolian Hot Pot, and Barbecued Meat.
Court Cuisine
Court Cuisine, as the name suggests, consists of dishes once prepared exclusively for the imperial family. Every Dynasty in Chinese history had an “imperial kitchen” to prepare meals for the emperor and his consorts. The dishes were not only meticulously prepared, but also included rare and expensive foodstuffs, such as bear’s paws, birds’ nests, sharksfins, venison, sea cucumbers, duck webs and other delicacies of land and sea. The Court Cuisine of today is based on the dishes prepared by the Qing imperial kitchens but further developed ever since.
There are several restaurants in Beijing where it is available:The“Imitation Imperial” Restaurant in BeihaiPark, and the Pavilion for Listening to Orioles Restaurant in the SummerPalace and some other restaurants featuring the court cuisine.
Fangshan (Imitation Imperial) Restaurant is located in Qionghua Islet with a hill behind and a lake in front. You enter BeihaiPark by the east gate, cross a bridge, turn right and walk along the lakeside for 5 minutes, you will get to the restaurant. The restaurant offers a picturesque view.There are 11 halls, large and small, which can accommodate atotal of 250 people. All the dishes and desserts are imitations of imperial cuisine. Its dishes are carefully prepared and beautifully served. The taste is subtle and clear. The textures are crisp and tender. The restaurant is also famous for its delicate pastries, including pea flour cakes, kidney bean flour rolls,miniature corn cakes and sesame seed buns with minced meat filling. These pastries originated among the ordinary people of Beijing and there are interesting stories about how they were introduced to the Qing court. For instance, the corn cakes found their way into the court in 1900 when the Alliced Forced of Eight Imperialist Powers occupied Beijing. On her fight to Xi’an, 1,200 kilometres by railway, Empress Dowager Cixi was turn to Beijing she ordered the imperial kitchen to make corn cakes for her. But the chefs, afraid that ordinary cakes might be too rough for Cixi to eat, made miniature cakes with finely-ground corn flour and white sugar instead.
The Pavilion for Listening to Orioles Restaurant used to be a theatre in the SummerPalace where the Empress Dowager used to enjoy opera and music. The name implies that the imperial music was as beautiful as the singing of orioles. After 1949, it was changed to a restaurant. It is divided into eight dining rooms of various sizes in two courtyards and can seat up to 500 customers at one time. During busy season, there are three sittings for lunch in the restaurant: 11:30 am; 12:40 pm; 13:30 pm.
The menu is based on the Imperial Cuisine, and the experienced chefs can prepare more than 300 dishes and pastries from the Ming and Qing imperial recipes.
Beijing Roast Duck
Beijing Roast Duck is prepared from specially-bred Beijing crammed duck with a unique roasting process which gives it a perfect combination of colour, aroma and taste, a crisp thin skin, and a mouth melting, and delicious flavour.
Beijing Roast Duck dates back 300 years, and originated in the imperial kitchens of Jingling (today’s Nanjing).
Beijing’s first restaurant which served roast duck was started by Yang Quanren, who arrived in Beijing from nearby Ji County, Hebei Province, to establish a business in 1835. Yang opened a stall to sell roast chickens and ducks on Beijing’s Qianmen (Front Gate) Street during the mid-19thcentury. On July 18, 1864, he had saved enough money to buy a grocery at Number 24 Roushi (Meat Market) Street- today, the busy avenues that stretches south from Qianmen. Calling his shop Quanjude (Repository of All Virtues), Yang began to sell ducks he roasted in a special hanging oven that had formerly been used in the palace kitchen to cook whole piglets. His process involved filling the dressed ducks with boiling water, tying them tightly with sorghum fibres, and then hanging them to roast. During the cooking, they were constantly roasted, resulting in a dish with crisp skin, tender and delicious meat.
Tan Cuisine
Tan Cuisine originated in the household of Tan Zongjun, a bureaucrat of the late Qing Dynasty. Very particular about their food and drink, Tan Zongjun and his son Tan Zhuangqing would pay high fees to hire skilled chefs to cook at their home. In this way the Tan family created a cuisine based on Guangdong cuisine, one that incorporates the best elements of many other regional styles. The private dinner parties given at the Tan house gradually made their cuisine famous. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the then Impoverished Tan opened a small restaurant, and thus Tan dishes found their way into society and became a Beijing specialty and an element of home-style cooking in Beijing households.
Mutton Hot Pot
Hundreds of years ago , the Mongolian horse men were fighting around north China in the exemely cold winter time.When they stopped to cook their meal during the day,it happened that the mutton they brought along become so frozen and was impressible to be cooked in a limited time. A clever soldier tried to cut the meat carefully into very thin pieces by his sword, and then boiled a helmet of water and cooked those lamb pieces in seconda all followed his example to cook their meal quickly while marching. Later, a kind of charcoal-heated boiling pot had been invented to serve this special Mongolian food, and it became very popular soon in Beijing city. Now it is considered as an ideal party meal for family or friends' gothering to warm up in chilly winter time .Mongolian hot pot is regarded as one of the three Beijing delicacies, as famous as Peking duck.
Barbecued Meat
Barbecued Meat is a Manchu dish which has now become a Beijing specialty. More than 300 years ago it was the custom for Qing officials in Beijing to go on picnics in the hills around the capital on the Double Ninth Festival (the ninth day ofthe ninth month of the lunar calendar). They would bring with them boiled beef or mutton, various seasonings and garnishes, and an iron pan for re-cocking the meat. In some attractive spot they would build a fire, heat the pan over it and sear the cild boiled meat in the pan. The seared meat was then dipped into soy sauce and mashed garlic before being eaten. This dish was gradually introduced into restaurants. About eight years ago, the recipe was changed to make the meat more palatable:raw beef or mutton was cut into thin slices and marinated before searing. This kind of barbecued meat then became very popular.
Red Mansions Banquet
Generally speaking, in famous literary works, none excels the classic novel ADream of Red Mansions written by Cao Xueqin (?-1763) in the description of gourmet or table delicaces. With regard to the more than 400 characters of the NingMansion and the RongMansion, the book gives spectacular details of banquets, big or small, seasonal delicacies, tonic of four seasons, fine pastries, gruel, soups, noodles and top quality wines as well. The description of these delicacies is not only closely linked with the characterization and plot of the monumental works, but also gives a complete account of the colours, smells and tastes of the delicacies, making countless devoted readers of the book in the past and at the present regret being unable to savour in person the delicious food described by Cao Xueqin.
Today, this dream has come true. The chefs of Yangzhou Xiyuan Hotel, Yangzhou Guesthouse and the Cooking Department of the Commercial Training School of Jiangsu Province have prepared and served a large “Red Mansions Banquet” which has been highly praised by scholars researching into the work ofADream of Red Mansions and Chinese and foreign customers for the colour, smell, taste, pattern, and utensils of the dishes.
The Legend of Smelly Bean Curd
A young man from AnhuiProvince named Wang Zhile came to Beijing nearly 300 years ago to take the imperial examination. But he failed the exams the first time. Determined to take them again, Wang set up a small tofu mill to finance his continued stay in Beijing, but his business did not go very well. Then, one hot day in summer, Wang Zhihe cut his surplus fresh tofu into small pieces and dried it to eat the next day. He put some salt and Chinese prickly ash onto the tofu to preserve it , and put it into a jar. However, he forgot all about his jar of tofu until several months later. When he opened it a strong smell came out. The snow- white tofu had turned dark green. Not wanting to throw it away, Wang plucked up courage and tasted a little. And to his surprise, the smelly tofu tasted great. Following closely on his experience, he asked some neighbors to try it. They love it and asked Wang to make more.
Wang Zhile never did pass the examinations. But he made loads of money selling tofu and eventually set up a smelly tofu shop. In the late Qing Dynasty when Empress Dowager Cixi came to power , its reputation soared. The down-to-earth dish finally started to appear in recipe books and it was put on the imperial menu. The new food caught on and across the country smelly tofu producers mushroomed.
Tianfuhao Braised Pork Leg
With a history of nearly 300 years, the Tianfuhao Braised Pork Leg is famous cooking meat in Beijing. The upper part of the pig’s leg is used. The leg is first cooked for an hour in boiling water with salt, ginger, and cooking wine. Then it is taken out, washed in cold water, and put into stock from which the fat has been skimmed off, and braised until it is well done.
In 1738 a man named Liu Deshan opened a cooked meat shop with his son, and named the store Tianfuhao. They had to take turns to cook during the night. One night, when his son was on duty, he was very exhausted and fell into sleep. When he woke up, he found that the pork was over-done and the stock had become thick sauce. He managed to remove the meat, sold it when it got cold. An officer happened to buy the pork and found it very delicious. The following day he came back again for more such pork. Finally, the father and the son changed their way of cooking and specialized in this kind of pork,and their business became flourishing.
McDonald’s
Located on the corner of Wangfujing Street ,the busiest shopping street, McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in May, 1992 inBeijing. It is a joint venture between McDonald’s Corporation and the General Corporation of Beijing Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. The restaurant has a seating capacity of 700 people and employs a local staff of nearly 1,000. About 95 percent of its food and packaging is supplied in China, including beef, chicken, fish, potatoes, lettuce, and various beverages. McDonald’s Opened its first China outlet in 1990 in the southern city of Shenzhen near Hong Kong.
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Located at Qianmen (Front Gate), the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Restaurant with a seating capacity of 505, was the first of its kind, opened in China by the Beijing Kentucky Company, a joint venture between China and the US Kentucky International Corporation. It was opened on November 12, 1987. At the very beginning, some people doubted whether it was successful or not. A year later at the end of 1988, turnover and profits were surprisingly double the planned figures and more. Ever since the KFC restaurants in China have been snowballing bigger and bigger. By the end of 2001, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has increased its outlets in 121 cities in China to 475 since its first restaurant opened in Beijing in 1987. It plans to open another 120 new outlets in 2002. And McDonald’s boasts 377 outlets in 67 cities in China. |
