How do you remember the Eight Great Cuisines? Chef Fu says it’s easy if you follow two lines, the coast and the Yangtze River. Go down the coast from north to south and you get Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Cantonese cuisine. That’s five along the coast.
Proximity to the river or the sea means a plentiful supply of fish and other aquatic foods, enough to put together a different banquet menu for each of the four seasons. Far from either, you have fewer aquatic foods and less variety in your ingredients. To people in the culinary world, it’s simple. A cuisine is a way of preparing ingredients, and those methods depend on what’s available. Without enough variety, you can’t put together banquets with that range, and your cooking tradition can’t grow into a major cuisine.
Via Dedao, Luo Zhenyu’s Inspiration Club, Episode 2