The Lost Art of Cooking in China

Recipe-book culture in the UK is an obsession. There’s a book for every cuisine, for every method, for every occasion. I have hundreds of cookery books in the UK, some bought, foolishly, for their beautiful design or binding.

But the same culture does not exist in China. The first few times I stepped into a Chinese kitchen, the ayi (the ‘auntie’) sprinkled, pinched and scattered spices and oils into the wok. I asked ‘how much’ and get vague answers like ‘a bit’, ‘some’, ‘just try it and see’. When I asked which recipe they were following, it was if they didn’t understand the question. Recipe? There are no recipes. Everything is done by instinct, by habit, by look and taste.

In the home kitchen, cooking was passed down from mother to daughter either explicitly or through osmosis. It’s a romantic view of a cuisine, except, China is running into a problem: the younger generation of women didn’t learn how to cook from their mothers. They were busy breaking the traditions - studying hard, going to university overseas, getting careers, with aspirations of shopping at Louis Vuitton and Hermes, not stuck in an oil-soaked kitchen. Cooking became seen as an act for the poor. The middle-class eat out, or have in-house cooks.

When I first moved to China I spent every meal eating out or ordering delivery. The food was cheap, quick and great. I loved cooking, but my apartment kitchen had a work surface the size of an A4 paper sheet with a temperamental one-hop induction stove. It was stressful to cook even the simplest thing, so I didn’t bother. Many apartments in first-tier cities are small with kitchens the size of a shower cubicle. So there’s another cohort of Chinese not cooking.

But we need recipes for the home. If the younger generations are not acquiring the knowledge, then writers need to preserve it. Thankfully, the tides are changing. Although chefs are still not respected in China, the young middle-class are claiming home-cooking as a hobby. Baking is the ultimate lifestyle statement - posting pictures of their leisurely Monday afternoon session in big Western-style kitchens.

Cooking is, although not quite as trendy, coming back too. But how are this generation learning? Social media. The young characters on-screen are far more engaging than our own mothers. The recipes are turned into simple, easy-to-follow videos for the youth of China. They are certainly doing a great service to China, although for me, I can’t break my recipe-book obsession. I tried following a shen jian bao recipe on xiao hong shu recently, and the amount of times I have to keep pausing, rewinding, losing my place, unlocking my phone all whilst making a sticky dough was infuriating. It’s simply not as practical. Give me a recipe book with my own scrawled notes in the margins any day.

I’ll stick to my books, they can stick to their videos, as long as we’re all learning the dishes of China.