History of Chinese cuisine
The history of Chinese cuisine is marked by both variety and change. The archaeologist and scholar Kwang-chih Chang says "Chinese people are especially preoccupied with food" and "food is at the center of, or at least it accompanies or symbolizes, many social interactions". Over the course of history, he says, "continuity vastly outweighs change." He explains basic organizing principles which go back to earliest times and give a continuity to the food tradition, principally that a normal meal is made up of grains and other starches and vegetable or meat dishes.
A terracotta sculpture of a woman, 7th–8th century; during the Tang era, female hosts prepared feasts, tea parties, and played drinking games with their guests.
A page of Lu Yu's Classic of Tea
Dried jujubes such as these were imported to from South Asia and the Middle East. An official from Canton was invited to the home of an Arab merchant, and described the jujube: "This fruit is the color of sugar, its skin and its pulp are sweet, and it gives the impression, when you eat it, of having first been cooked in the oven and then allowed to dry."
A mural of people preparing drinks of Liao Dynasty.
The Five Grains or Cereals are a grouping of five farmed crops that were all important in ancient China. Sometimes the crops themselves were regarded as sacred; other times, their cultivation was regarded as a sacred boon from a mythological or supernatural source. More generally, wǔgǔ can be employed in Chinese as a synecdoche referring to all grains or staple crops of which the end produce is of a granular nature. The identity of the five grains has varied over time, with different authors identifying different grains or even categories of grains.
Zao Jun the Kitchen God to whom Wǔgǔ offerings are made in some traditions.
Shennong ploughing fields in a mural painting from the Han dynasty.
Yellow Emperor (Huangdi)
Broomcorn millet head
