Ding Jiemin, a senior official of Huai'an City in east China's Jiangsu province, addresses the opening of a high-level forum on "Canal Culture and Huaiyang Cuisine", held at the Beijing Hotel on Saturday, September 8. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com]

How do you like Huaiyang (Huai'an-Yangzhou) cuisine, which is extremely popular in the lower reach of the Yangtze River? Did you ever want to step into a restaurant that serves Huaiyang dishes but worried that the cost of this former state banquet fare might be too much?

Huaiyang cuisine, popular throughout history as one of the four traditional Chinese cuisines, together with Lu (Shandong), Yue (Guangdong) and Chuan (Sichuan) cuisine, seems to have been overshadowed as time went by. However, a significant high-level forum on "canal culture" and Huaiyang cuisine on Saturday gathered together renowned experts from various fields to forcibly drive away the shadow hanging over Huaiyang cuisine, once again unveiling it as a shining pearl to the masses.

This high-level forum was jointly hosted by Huai'an government, the Directing Group of Local Chinese Records and the China Cuisine Association (CCA), with the support of Committee of Cultural and Historical Data under Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The Great Canal Went Hand in Hand with the Rise of Huaiyang Cuisine:

The forum highlighted the importance of the ancient Great Canal that was built in the Sui Dynasty. It stretched from Beijing to Hangzhou and ran through Huai'an, a northern city with over 2,000 years of history, in eastern China's Jiangsu province. Water transport developed rapidly along with the construction of the Great Canal, which, in return, caused a boom in the salt transportation business.

"The extravagant lifestyle of rich salt merchants greatly stimulated the development of Huaiyang cuisine," said Wang Xi, an expert in cuisine history, with the Directing Group of Local Chinese Records.

He further explains, "The local cuisine was enriched as salt merchants took to show off their private dishes to each other, they also took their domestic cooks along with them to their hometown, and selling points in both the south and north. This constant absorption of local dishes in places where the salt merchants traveled also contributed a lot to the maturity of Huaiyang cuisine."

As learned from the expert Zhang Yingpin, Huaiyang cuisine reached its peak in the Qing Dynasty when the Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong stayed in Huai'an and Yangzhou during their visits to southern China. It is said that local officials in charge of water transport used to prepare complex mutton and eel dishes to please the emperors, greatly boosting the development of the local cuisine.

Huaiyang Cuisine -- Nice, Mild and Fresh:

Huaiyang cuisine was the selected cuisine for the first state banquet in 1949, and it also made an appearance on the menu of a state banquet in 1999. In 2002, Huaiyang cuisine was once again given center stage when former President Jiang Zemin hosted a dinner for visiting US President, George W. Bush.

Huaiyang cuisine was once regarded as a noble cuisine, and it's true that it does feature a diversified use of aquatic food, because of its geographic location that promises abundant water resources. However, besides those comparatively costly high-protein ingredients, a large number of the famous dishes just rely on ordinary things.

"Huaiyang dishes actually cater a lot to the needs of ordinary people, despite their reputation for being noble." Researcher Cheng Zhongyuan expressed this notion during the forum, relying on his 25 years of experience of eating the dishes. He stressed the use of locally grown raw materials from cattail to common beancurd.

Huaiyang dishes are famous for its delicate cooking methods. The cooking techniques consist of stewing, braising, roasting and simmering. Stewing and steaming are most popularly applied. The flavor of these dishes is light, fresh and less salty, thus they enjoy widespread popularity across the country.

Main Huaiyang dishes like stir-fried eel, fried cattails with dried shelled shrimp, Pingqiao beancurd, crispy young pigeon, as well as snacks with a special flavor like crabmeat buns, Hongze Lake fried dumplings with fish sauce and Xuyi crawfishes all enjoy high reputations.

How to Enhance the Image of Huaiyang Cuisine:

As how to secure a stable market place for Huaiyang cuisine amid the fierce competition of cuisines form different places, experts propose that the city must stick to its profound cultural heritage and raise up its national taste supremacy. Moreover, they stressed that innovation should be based around retaining original flavors. To better carry on the preservation of this culinary legacy, the training of a next generation of cooks is also being emphasized.

"In my opinion, we should first keep the original flavour of Huaiyang cuisine at the core, and never go astray from it. At the same time, we should also keep learning from the excellent cooking methods of other cuisines, so as to ensure that Huaiyang cuisine maintains its vitality and stands out with its charms among others," said Professor Mao Peiqi, a renowned scholar of history at Renmin University, also a famous speaker on the popular CCTV 10 program "Lecture Room".

Zheng He, an entrepreneur who runs Huaiyangcun, or Huaiyang Village Restaurant, a chain store selling Huaiyang cuisine across Beijing expressed his full confidence in the future of Huaiyang cuisine.

"Is there a market for Huaiyang cuisine? There is no doubt that the market not only exists, but also has big potential." Zheng further added, "It is the inherent nature of Huaiyang cuisine that fills the need in the consumer market. Customers have gradually learnt that we not only have delicious seafood, but also provide other exquisite and yummy dishes that come from simple, ordinary ingredients."

Zheng labelled Huaiyang cuisine as a literati food, one which stresses exquisiteness and delicacy. He put forward the concept of "dish taste"---that should be closely related to the profound cultural background of the cuisine, without emphasising this, it is impossible to build up a sound brand.

"A good chef cooks nice food. This lies at the core of the survival and development of the catering industry. It's essential to train, manage and improve the culinary skill and aesthetic sense of cooks." Zheng attached great importance to food quality and said he was currently setting up a northern training base so as to nurture more talented chef who can create real Huaiyang dishes.

By Tian Tian