Sichuan Cuisine

 Sichuan Cuisine is one of the Chinese four major cuisines and Chengdu dishes are its core and soul. Many Chinese historic men such as Zhugeliang in the Three Kingdoms Period, Zuo Si in the Western Jin Dynasty. Du fu in the Song Dynasty, Lu You in the Song Dynasty and Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty, were full of praise to Sichuan cuisine and some ancient poets from Sichuan, such as Chang Qu, Libai, Sushi and Li Diaoyuan, wrote many poems to sing high praise of their hometown food. A lot of ancient books such as Lus Spring and Autumn Annals recorded the developing course of Sichuan cuisine. During the Southern Song and Northern Song Dynasty, Sichuan cuisine went beyond Sichuan and was popular all over the country. Today, Sichuan cuisine even crosses vast oceans and is abroad.
    Sichuan dishes are based on rich products of Sichuan. Wide-ranging resources of raw materials from river to mountain and rich condiments are two important characteristics. For example, Sichuan chefs can cook edible wild herbs into delicacies with rich Sichuan condiments
    Outstanding characteristics of Sichuan dishes lie in their color, smell, taste and shape, especially taste. Only in flavor, there are home taste, fish taste, litchi taste, salty&fresh taste, sweet& sour taste, ginger taste, piquant taste, onion-oil taste and mashed garlic taste. Moreover, peppery taste could be divided into such kinds as prickly&peppery, salty&peppery and slight peppery. Cooking methods have developed into roasting, stewing, frying etc. Sichuan dishes are cooked "done" but not tough, tender but not raw, strong taste but not greasy, weak in taste but not tasteless. So, people praise Sichuan cuisine as " one dish, one taste, hundred dishes, hundred tastes".