Food Writing
The season for Chinese Toon (or Xiangchun as it’s known in China) is short. The first shoots arrive in early April, and by May, they’re too big and no longer tender. Xiangchun is the only tree in Northern Asian with edible leaves, and thus, the arrival of the shoots in Beijing is one to be celebrated, marking the end of cold weather, as the city bursts into life.
More often than not we tend to discuss ‘Chinese food’ as one cuisine. But with a country the size of Europe, it seems obvious that Chinese food is varied and diverse. Indeed, depending on who you ask, there are three, five, seven or eight cuisines of China (and many more if you ask me).
Why does China use chopsticks and other utensils completely different from the West? It all comes down to fire. Fire is fundamental to cooking, but creating that fire was not always as easy for China as it was for other countries.