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It’s commonly known that the Chinese invented chopsticks as a set of instruments to be used when eating but the reason behind that is not commonly known. Actually, the Chinese where taught to use chopsticks long before spoons and forks were invented in Europe (the knife is older, not as an instrument for dining but as weapon). Chopsticks were strongly advocated by the great Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC).
He reasoned that, as a matter of advancement in civilization, instruments used for killing must be banned from the dining table. Therefore, knives cannot be permitted, and that is why Chinese food is always chopped into bite size before it reaches the table. The Thais, originating from a region that is today China, have fully adopted the Chinese philosophy on cutlery (if one wants to extend this term to encompass chopsticks).
Chinese cooking is not complicated in the manner that French cuisine is complicated. Much less depends on temperatures of ingredients and exact timing for frying, baking, or cooking. Most Chinese dishes are just cooked in water or oil. Of course, there are many delicacies but most of them do not require such an elaborate processing in the kitchen as does one of China’s most famous dishes, Peking duck (thin slices of barbecued duck, wrapped in thin pancakes together with onion, radish, etc and eaten with a sweet plum sauce).
But while Chinese cuisine may not beat French cuisine in the degree it is complicated to prepare dishes, Chinese cuisine certainly wins the prize for stranger ingredients.
Now, while the French have their strange and hard to find ingredients like truffles, they cannot come up with an ingredient like the previously mentioned bird’s nests.
The Chinese have a refreshingly unemotional approach to edibles. One may think that as long as eating something doesn’t cause a disease there must be a way it can be prepared deliciously.
Therefore, birds nests are not the only strange food stuff used in Chinese cuisine. Others include turtles, sea weeds, shark fins, etc. There are no forbidden foods like pork in Islamic countries and beef for Hindus. On the contrary, many foods are recommended in the Chinese cuisine for a variety of medical purposes, several of them to restore sexual power.
This goal, for example, allegedly is achieved by consuming Soup No 5 which contains the testicles of various animals and which is served in a number of Chinese restaurants in Bangkok.
Many animals with a phallic look are also supposed to help men’s sexual power, as for example eel and snake. Snake meat is highly valued in Chinese cuisine rather for a number of alleged pharmaceutical effects than the taste (it tastes like chicken). Snake is supposed to be particularly good in winter because it is regarded as heart warming. Eating the snake’s gall bladder is supposed to bring sure relief from rheumatism. A dish named Dragon, Phoenix, Tiger is prepared of snake, chicken and cat and is supposed to be an especially powerful agent to restore youth and vigor.
Of course there is nothing wrong with eating cats, snakes, and bird’s nests; most probably these foods are even nutritious; it’s just the idea of it that cannot convince Westerners to enrich their diet with these delicacies. Especially cats, being considered pets, receive in Western tradition sympathy to a degree that is never afforded less cute animals such as pigs or chickens.
Furthermore, what criteria makes some kinds of animals a clean food and others unacceptable to the Western diner are just perceptions based on ignorance. Shrimp live in mud and preferably near sites where waste is drained into the sea, and those who believe chickens only eat clean food may observe them pecking on dung-hills. Who after these elaborations doubts that the Chinese have a more enlightened approach to food than Westerners, and a much more enlightened approach than Moslems and Hindus.
China is a vast country and it is therefore no surprise that there are many regional variations in Chinese cuisine. In general one can say that the Southern Chinese, Cantonese, cuisine puts more emphasis on fish and seafood and the Northern Chinese, Peking, cuisine includes more meat. Of all meats pork is most common in all Chinese cuisines. Actually the pig is so respected by the Chinese that the Chinese character for "home" is a combination of the characters for "roof" and "pig".
The central Chinese regions of Sichuan and Hunan have the spiciest food in all of China. Garlic as well as chili are extensively used. Helmsman Mao Zedong who was Hunanese once claimed that the more chilies one eats the more revolutionary one becomes. It was meant as a joke (most probably) but the statement is in accordance to the Chinese belief that diet makes a great difference in the well-being of a person. Anyhow, Mao Zedong’s theory fails to explain why Thais who certainly eat loads of chili are in general rather conservative than revolutionary.
In the case of exclusive dining, Chinese have a different orientation than Westerners. First, the ambience of a restaurant is much less important; even first-class Chinese restaurants tend to be simply and inexpensively furnished. Second, unlike European custom a dish doesn’t become much more expensive when prepared by a much better cook.
In Europe a certain meal (for example baked duck) can cost many times as much in an exclusive restaurant than it does in an ordinary restaurant; in the case of Chinese restaurants it’s less the particular preparations that make a restaurant first-class but more the use of fancy and more expensive foods.
An exclusive Chinese restaurant for example will serve foods like turtle (though wildlife conservation concerns have led to the disappearance of turtle dishes from the menus of all but a very few Chinese restaurants who still offer them rather secretly) and abalone (a large marine snail; only the foot, about fist size, is served) which cost many hundreds of Baht per dish.
But it’s not the preparation that makes these foods so expensive, it’s just the price of the raw material. Many more ordinary Chinese dishes do not cost much more in first-class Chinese restaurants than they do in plainer kinds.
Tea is preferred by the Chinese as a drink during all meals less for it’s own taste but to clear the palate of a former dish before proceeding to the next. And as proclaimed by the Hong Kong Tourist Association in their official guide, "the Chinese don’t ruin the tea with such alien substances as milk, sugar or lemon."
A typical addition to the names of Chinese restaurants is Garden. Usually, Chinese restaurants designating themselves as Gardens are better class.
