"Satisfying your taste buds in China"

By Huma Sheikh
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/14/content_11183997.htm
BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhuanet) -- When thinking of some fine dining experience, China comes to mind! The country offers great cuisines of the world cooked in myriad ways. You can find world's best platter on table in China and dine on foods you have ever eaten anywhere. China's unique variety of cuisines represents different customs and style based on different parts of China. For example, each province in China has different kinds of cooking style and specialties. Some of the best-known Chinese cuisines today are Cantonese, Shanghai, Mongolian-Shandong, Sichuan-Hunan and Beijing. The Beijing (Peking) duck is one of the national foods of China. The roast duck is the famous attraction of the visitors from across the world, which is served thin and crispy in a duck-shaped platter and sliced before diners by the cook.
While Northern food is a little spicy, Sichuan cuisine is highly spicy with peanuts as its special ingredient for most of the dishes. Hunan cuisine is also hot but with moderate use of chili pepper.
Mongolian food is served in large meat chunks to be eaten with Mongolian-style knife or else barbequed or roasted. Cantonese food is defined by its variety, the freshness of its ingredients and its delicate sauces and seasoning. Fruit, vegetables, and seafood, such as crabs, prawns, abalone, and squid, are its popular cooking ingredients.
Shanghai cuisines, on the other hand, are delicately seasoned. The special feature of Shanghai food is sugar -- more sugar is used in its dishes than in any other part of China.
Hot pot, a bubbling broth container simmering in the middle of the dining table, is a popular dish in almost every part of China. The meat is cooked in the hot water along with vegetables. Both together are then dipped in spicy sauces and condiments and eaten with round sesame buns.
Then there is another uniqueness found in Chinese cuisine.
A simple dish of spinach and eggs cooked in various styles tastes so different that you won't feel you just had eaten the same dish an hour ago in another restaurant. The knack of Chinese chefs for cooking wide range of specialties in different styles is amazing.
But it was different on this day!
Had it not for Mr Zhang, an overseas Chinese, who called the Aquatic Wildlife Protection Center (Guangzhou), the nurse shark would have found its place on the luxurious food menu of the China restaurants.
A Guangzhou restaurant had invited more than 70 clients to dine on a nurse shark on March 18. As the stage was set for the grand banquet, Mr Zhang informed the protection center and was even ready himself to donate ten thousand yuan to save the animal. The environmentalists intervened and recovered the nurse shark after shelling out 130 thousand yuan. The shark was kept for ornamental use for some time.
But due to the deteriorating health of the shark because of lack of quality water and food, it was not immediately released in the ocean. Guangzhou Ocean World provided the animal free medical service and kept the shark in a little pool during the observation. The shark was released a few days ago in the seawaters.
China has so much to serve to satisfy food cravings of people from across the world and the shark incident cannot cause much of the exuberance about the Chinese delicacies to evaporate. As the saying goes, "there are two great cuisines in the world -- the Chinese and the French. And the Chinese cuisine is traditionally much older than the French".