This week on Sinica: On my final two days in Shaxi in Yunnan, Chris Thomas and Stephanie Li, the hosts of the marvelous YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified, joined me for some cooking and lots of chatting about food! We recorded this show together and focus our conversation on their heroic attempt at a taxonomy of different Chinese cuisines. We don't talk about all 63 that they identify, but we do get into their
04:31 - Flavors of Yunnan
08:44 - On balancing between the “exotic” and “normal” China
11:53 - The origin story behind “Chinese Cooking Demystified”
14:56 - The Breath of the Wok (Wok Hei, 鑊氣 / huo6 hei3)
21:05 - A Comprehensive Taxonomy on Chinese Cuisine
32:25 - Correlations between dialects and cuisine
37:15 - Efforts behind the work
39:09 - Promoting local specialties
44:23 - Chinese identity and food trends
52:30 - "Minority" cuisine in Yunnan
01:00:52 - Yunnan cuisine and the Chinese hipster generation
01:05:52 - Dali dish recommendations
Recommendations:
Chris & Steph: Shunde Lao Baby, Pin Nuo, Lao Dongbei
Kaiser: Taking time off to do something you love!
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