Hangzhou Cuisine
China impresses most of foreigners with its cuisine and cooking. Hangzhou as one traveling center of China also owns its unique style of cooking differentiating from other regions in China.
As one part of Chinese culture, a visitor who is high on Chinese tradition and culture should learn some of it. The below is the rough introduction on it: Hangzhou has been reputed as the city of gourmet food with a long history of cuisine culture. Hangzhou cuisine emphasizes the freshness of materials, elaboration of processing and naturalness of flavor and attends at the color, smell, taste and shape and Chinese cuisine was always accompanied with Chinese traditional stories and legendary which are reputable at home and abroad. There are over 9700 restaurants in Hangzhou, among them; the most reputable were Louwailou, Zhiweiguan and Tianxianglou etc. As for the exact dishes and refreshments, Hangzhou enjoys a variety of local-flavor dishes, of which 26 are renowned local dishes such as Dongpo Pork, West Lake Carp in Sweet and Sour Sauce, Shelled Shrimps with Dragon Well Green Tea, Beggar's Chicken, Jingle Bell, Honey Ham, All Birds Paying Homage to Phoenix and Quick-Fried Prawns. Later, some new-style Hangzhou dish has been appeared. They are distinguished for new tastes, new raw materials and new cooking methods. They not only draw upon the traditional Hangzhou dishes but also take the strongpoint of eight styles of cuisine in China. The typical cuisine includes Stewed Duck with Dried Bamboo Shoots. Hangzhou has a diversity of time-honored special snacks, which are fine and unusual. Lots of snacks own interesting stories. The famous snacks are Zhiwei Small Dumplings, Noodles with Quick Fired Eels and Shelled Shrimps, Hangzhou Noodles with Pork and Bamboo Shoot, Car's Ear, Southern Big Bun, Wushan Crisp Cakes and Flour Cake Rolled with Shallot and Sauce and so on. They also prefer the traditional cuisine to the popularity of western-style cooking represented by McDonald's and KFC. They keep the centuries-old customs.
Hangzhou's distinctions from other cities are also expressed in the architecture styles. If you are very prudent and cautious, you will find the buildings in Hangzhou are totally independent or separately from others and the styles are, to some extent, roughly westernized, but if you watch them more carefully, you will find the local characters or traditional styles are also thoroughly released in some inconspicuous corners where maybe was the purposely selected by the late people. The preference of local people is shown by this selection, but the reasons are complicated, in general superficially they are influenced by westernization and many parts of their lives have been shifted from the traditional ways, actually their soul also exists in the way of Chinese traditional thinking that is expression of powerfulness, richness of family, happiness of lives and eminence of status. They are apt to Taiji, Chinese medicine, Chinese philosophy, and Chinese traditional arts and leisure.
