Introduction

Over the centuries, having been alternately buffeted by famine or warfare and blessed with the splendors of a great civilization at peace, the Chinese have had both the dire need to experiment on all things edible for sheer survival and the leisure of prosperity to perfect their cooking techniques for sensual enjoyment. They eat boiled bark, weeds, and roots when there is nothing else; they eat shallow-fried transparent prawns from preference, jasmine blossoms out of poetic sentiment, and wine-braised camel’s hump from blatant extravagance. If there is anything the Chinese are perpetually serious about it is food. As the great sage Kwan Tze said in 700 B.C.: “To the ruler the people are Heaven; to the people food is Heaven.”