Canola oil is high in beneficial monounsaturated fatty acids, and with its light taste and high smoke point, it is ideal for stir-frying in a healthy way.

Soy sauce has been used for over 2000 years in Chinese cooking. Dark soy sauces are usually thicker and employ a single fermentation process, aging over a longer period than the lighter varieties. The flavor will come through, however, with any reduced-sodium soy sauce.

Also central to this Asian classic are the snow peas. They provide a fresh, crunchy consistency, along with vitamins A and C, iron and potassium. At their prime eating stage these flat thin pods should have a barely visible bulge that reveals the tiny seeds they contain. When buying them look for crisp pods with a vibrant green color.

Other thinly sliced vegetables like red bell peppers or zucchini may be added or substituted for the carrots. No matter what you decide, this tasty and nourishing dish is easy to prepare and can brighten any day.

Read more about this article and get the recipe.

The three were detained in northwestern Shaanxi province on Dec. 2, before tainted goods reached stores, the official Xinhua news agency said.
It named the three as Liu Ping, general manager of Shaanxi Jinqiao Diary Company, and two of the firm’s employees and said they were detained for “the suspected crime of producing and selling toxic food.”

The report, citing police, said they sold 5.25 tonnes of melamine-laced milk powder to Nanning Yueqian Food Additive Company, based in the southern region of Guangxi.

The powder was seized on Nov. 18, so did not make its way into the market, Xinhua added.

By Shane Dingman. Read the full article.

We’ve had industrial revolutions in the west and more recently in China and South Asia; budding revolutions in “superjumbo” aircraft and plug-in electric cars; and Seinfeld episodes that can be downloaded onto cellphones worldwide.

Yet we remain trapped in some previous century in that most basic of necessities; keeping the world population fed. Remarkably, the facts today point to yet another global food shortage just a few years after the food crisis of 2007-08, which ended only when the Great Recession curbed a debilitating upward spiral in prices of basic staples like rice, corn and wheat worldwide. As the world economy recovers, the prospect of another global food crisis looms large.

The determining factors in famine are mostly man-made. They include civil war and political instability in many, if not most undernourished regions. Protectionism in affluent nations that removes the incentive for developing-world farmers to enhance crop yields in the hope of earning export revenue. A sharp decline in affluent-world donations of agricultural assistance to underfed countries. A growing scourge of crop failure related to global warming. And a ferocious debate between advocates of natural farming methods and those arguing for a new agricultural revolution based on genetically modified (GM) crops.

By David Olive. Read more about this story.

Mr Obama landed in Shanghai yesterday to start his four-day visit during which he will try to balance his efforts to underline strong Sino-US ties with the need to emphasise Washington’s global role in the face of growing Chinese economic muscle.

International efforts to fight climate change, the need to co-ordinate action on global trouble spots such as North Korea and Iran, and concern over the value of the Chinese currency will all feature on the agenda.

The Nobel Peace laureate will also address human rights issues such as freedom of worship, although the American leader will avoid confrontation in the lead-in to his China visit, probably the most strategically important stopping point on his nine-day Asian jaunt. Saving face is important here.

On issues such as Tibet, he will have to deal with an at-times unsophisticated approach. A government spokesman said Mr Obama should be especially sympathetic to China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence, because he is a black president who lauded Abraham Lincoln for helping abolish slavery.

“He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln’s major significance for that movement,” said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

“Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States,” he said.

Tibet is sure to be a knotty issue over the talks. Beijing calls the Dalai Lama a dangerous “splittist”, encouraging Tibetan independence, a charge he denies, saying he merely wants more autonomy for the region.

by The Irish Times. Read more on this story.

He is one of hundreds of young entrepreneurs seeking overnight fortunes in Shenzhen Inc. — the Wild West of the mobile-phone industry. Phones made and designed by these Chinese vendors will account for about a third of the 1.1 billion cell phones that will be sold around the world this year.

Three decades ago, Shenzhen was China’s first city to experience market-oriented economic reform, unleashing anything-goes capitalism that has spread throughout the nominally capitalist country. And while China’s mobile-phone industry has spread beyond Shenzhen, the southern region remains a center of the mobile-phone ecosystem that inspires dreams of instant success.

“It is China’s version of the Gold Rush,” said Shanghai-based Ken Qing Wang, general manager of the China operations of Silicon Valley-based Telegent Systems, which supplies analog TV chips to the mobile-phone industry. “A lot of wealth has been generated.”

Tsoi, who at 33 is already wealthy and founder of Chinaking International Development, has his eyes set on even loftier heights. “There are lots of billionaires in their twenties here,” he said. Waving a pink cell phone, Tsoi proclaimed he intends to join the billionaires club after a successful initial public offering “in a couple of months.”

Such gunslinger hubris is what goes for street talk in Shenzhen, which supplies cell phones primarily for the developing world but also covets the developed world. Whether mobile-phone makers like Tsoi can ever compete with such innovative thoroughbreds as Apple and Research In Motion is questionable. But companies like Chinaking have shown they can make money in developing nations. For now, they are happy to focus on the next billion mobile phone consumers — the world’s urban poor and rural residents who often are out of the reach of giant international brands. Those lowly markets, though, are expected to represent 60 percent of global mobile-phone sales by 2013, according to researcher Informa Telecoms & Media.

By John Boudreau. Read the entire article.

Answer: First, we need to understand the differences between sauces, seasoning, and marinades. It would take time to explain the differences between them, and this cannot be answered in one short paragraph. We interpreted your question as the following, “Can we place all of our seasoning such as salt, sugar, hoisin sauce, soy sauce all together to make one big sauce, and then use that sauce for cooking”. If you want to make on sauce for a dish, then it is ok for your purpose, but the food would taste much better if you place the spices and seasonings as specific times during the cooking process; this would allow the food to absorb the into the food. If you look at our example recipes, it tells you to put the food and seasoning at specific time and / or stages of the cooking process.

2. We would like to use commercial deep fryer for deep frying. Is it common in professional cooking, or better it is to deep-fry in wok?

Answer: Yes, you may use a commercial fryer for deep frying. The concern of using a professional fryer is that it is easy to overcook the products since there is too much oil in the fryer, and this fryer will over consume the food product. You will need to learn how to control the use and manage the amount of frying being done. It can be managed if you use it properly. There are many sizes of commercial fryers and we have worked with fryers from 2 gallons to 5 gallon sizes.

3. What is the best way to make crispy cover for meat and to escape sticking the pieces to each other while deep frying?

Answer: Take the pieces of meat and light coat or dust them with a little corn starch just before deep frying. You must be carefully in not over cooking the meat pieces using a deep fryer.

4. When I stir fry they stick to the wok every time. Is there any secret when stir frying noodles?
Answer: First prepare the noodles. Soak the noodles in water in depending on the noodle type, and blanch the noodles in boiling water depend on the dish. Use a little more cooking oil in the edge (not center) of the wok when stir-frying in medium heat setting instead of a hot heat.

5. Which is the best type of wok to use? We are think about 15” carbon steel wok for our small restaurant.

Answer: You are purpose of a very small outdoor or street restaurant a 14” carbon steel wok is the common or general size for a wok, and 15” carbon steel is fine to use as well. For other restaurants that are larger, we would suggest a larger wok size. Make sure your read our information or see our video on treating or seasoning a wok.

6. We would like to deep-fry all types of meat? We intend to use only topsides or quality part of pork, beef, and chicken breasts. And is it ok, to use only deep-fried meat in all our dishes?

Answer: Yes, it is great to use topside or quality meat, but we must focus on the cooking process. If you cut the meat into strip form be carefully on how long you deep fry the meat since it will make the meat hard as a mat. You will need to practice on how to deep-fry, and cut the meat into the right thicknesses in strip form to get the right meat texture. You need to perform par-cooking on the meat near the end of the final cooking process. You need to prepare and cut all of your vegetables first and cook them, and then prepare the meat at the end of your cooking. If you cook the meat first, and let it sit on the counter top, then the meat will turn hard or stiff which will not be pleasant to eat.

7. We are not going to use very big flame on gas range. We will not have specialized wok ranges with large burners, but regular gas ranges.

Answer: You may to this. But, you must cook the food in small amounts such as one to two orders at a time. If you have too small food product in a small wok, the food will become watery or soup based since it will be too much liquid accumulate in the wok. If you have a large wok with a higher flame, you can accommodate more food.

8. At this point I will tell you the method of one recipe that I am creating, and can you could tell me if I am on doing this right. Here is the recipe:

Crispy chicken in sweet and sour sauce
Cutting chicken breasts in small cubes,
Marinating in soy sauce, rice vinegar, rice wine, five spice powder, ginger powder, sesame oil, cornstarch, egg and MSG for 5 hours.
Then, draining it and deep-fry it.
Then, taking out and put in the refrigerator.
Make the stir fry dish. First put in wok ginger and garlic, then adding vegetables (red pepper, onion) and mushrooms, then adding cold deep-fried meat. Then, add sweet and sour sauce.

Answer: Do not over deep frying the chicken cubes because it is small and hard to manage. You can marinate the dish in a shorter time to 30 minutes. You do need not refrigerate, and you must try to cook the meat into the final cooking process when making the dish. There is no need to use the soy sauce since it will darken the dish and add unnecessary more salt into the dish.

The Marketing officer will also tackle how to stay healthy and still enjoy Chinese food by planning ahead, choosing wisely and watching how much you eat. Choosing traditional food dishes that are high in fiber, vitamins and minerals, and low in fat. Choosing beans, peas, tofu, bean sprouts and dark green vegetables such as Chinese broccoli, choy sum, watercress, Chinese chives, Chinese yard-long beans and amaranth also known as Chinese spinach.

Also pointed out other Chinese vegetables that are rich in iron like Chinese mushroom, seaweed and black fungus. Go for the mung beans (green gram beans), yellow bean and black bean dishes for soup or desserts with artificial sweetener. Sweet potatoes are also high in fiber and very nutritious . Whole wheat and rye bread and cornbread are good sources of fiber and are good for everyone.

As the sponsor, Choy Sum will support Carter Sinclair Org’s mission to prevent the onset of diabetes within La Quinta community and help those who are already living with the disease. Support will emphasize importance
of diabetes information from the CarterSinclair Org, including information about making better food choices.

“Food plays an important role in the prevention and management of diabetes,” said Mary Scott, MS, RD, a certified diabetes educator and nutritionist at La Quinta “Many of the behaviors needed to prevent type 2 diabetes and diabetes-related complications – behaviors such as meal planning
and physical activity – are shaped by an individual’s culture and values.

Most people over the age of 20 have diabetes and are at raised risk for severe complications such as heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, and amputations. Cartersinclair Org wishes people to know that it is possible to enjoy Chinese food that is both delicious and good for everybody by making simple changes to ingredients and cooking
methods.

By Carter Sinclair Org. Read more.

2. Supplement a healthy diet with Emergen-C. This is easy to use and available at grocery stories everywhere. It comes in a variety of flavor packets and has good absorbable vitamins C and B, as well as zinc, all of which help boost the immune system during stressful times. Both children and adults can use this product. Of course, supplements work best when you’re getting proper nutrition in your diet, so remember to eat plenty of green, leafy vegetables and whole grains, and limit your sugar intake because bacteria loves sugar in the human body. Bacteria thrive on glucose.

3. Use astragalus. Among Asian herbal medicines, astragalus is known as Huang (yellow) Qi (energy). Yellow is associated with earth energy. Astragalus, an inedible root, is know to increase the white blood cell count. Soak it in water before cooking and then use the water to cook your rice or soup, or put it in a filtered bag in soup while cooking. You can also buy it in tincture form, but using it in your cooking in the winter time is a convenient way to boost your immune system. It’s best to get high-quality astragalus. It should be yellow, fresh and pliable, not dark, stiff and old. If it looks like dark wood, it’s been on the shelf for years, and it won’t be effective. Herbs have to be fresh, just like your spice.

4. Try acupuncture, which helps the body get out of stress and strengthen organ systems. If you’re in a state of stress or sympathetic overload, your body has difficulty fighting infection. It’s the state your body is in when running from danger (a bear in the woods, perhaps), but in modern society, we are so overstimulated, many of us are chronically in sympathetic overload. To heal, the body must be in parasympathetic mode, which is out of stress and in balance, so you can sleep well, digest your food properly and fight infection.

5. Gargle with salt water. This good old grandmother’s recommendation works because salt repels bacteria. Salt is a natural dehydrator used in food dehydration. A sore throat is usually inflamed due to bacteria and other germs wreaking havoc on your soft tissues. The inflammations are typically filled with water, and the salt draws out the edema fluid and kills the bacteria, which requires a warm, wet environment. Salt doesn’t act as a cure, and too much salt can harm the mucosa, so gargle in moderation. And remember to get lots of rest and keep drinking plenty of fluid.

By Laura McHale Holland. Read entire article.

The challenge will last a year and a day, from September 1, 2009-September 1, 2010.

Audio books are fine, as are books for all age levels. If you want ideas of things to read, just click on the “China” tag at the end of this post to see a bunch of my previous reviews of all sorts of books about China.

There are several levels to choose from:

Armchair Traveler:

Read 1 book about China. I’m defining this pretty loosely, but the majority of the action should take place in China. For the sake of ease, places such as Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, and Taiwan count.

Fast Train to Shanghai:

Read 5 books about China

1 should be a translated work of fiction by a Chinese author (or not translated if you have the language skills.) I will make exceptions for Chinese authors that also write in English– their English works are fine.

1 should be nonfiction

Hiking the Great Wall:

Read 10 books about China

1 should be a work of translated fiction

1 should be nonfiction.

Here you can read 1 book (but only 1) about Chinese immigration. So, stories of Chinese people abroad, or nonfiction about overseas Chinese communities.

Silk Road Trek:

Same as “Hiking the Great Wall,” but you also have to do (and blog about!) at least 3 of these other China-Related activities:

By Jennie. Read the entire article.

Panda Express promises “all-white meat chicken, fresh red bell peppers, diced onions and juicy pineapples, wok-tossed to perfection in our zesty sweet chili sauce,” but abstains from advising that it is not part of their new “WOK SMART” dish, and rightly so, as indulging in Panda Express SweetFire Chicken Breast might not be such a good idea.

Panda Express clearly states that the SweetFire Chicken Breast is 440 calories and is based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. Panda Express “WOK SMART” dishes all claim to be less than 250 calories per serving.

However, the serving size is 5.8oz and 5.8oz of Panda Express SweetFire Chicken Breast is a smidgen over one cup. I don’t know about you, but I eat way more than one cup of food, and if you’re hitting a buffet, more than likely, you’re going to get a plateful of extras, to not only fill the plate, but to get your money’s worth.

Panda Express Sweet Fire Chicken Breast Nutritional Facts. Assuming you get two serving spoons of Panda Express SweetFire Chicken– and by two serving spoons, you should be aware that Panda Express serving spoons are not spoonfuls, but are, in fact, large spoons, the likes of which is used to serve heaping portions of food — quickly — and this amounts to well over 880 calories, which is over 320 fat calories (it takes 10 minutes, running at a speed of at least 5 mph on a treadmill to burn off just 100 calories — just calories).

Now, Panda Express is a buffet. There’s a queue, you wait behind people and grow increasingly more hungry — and impatient — with each whiff of that pungent, Chinese food. You take a tray and wait to choose your food. Someone else serves you and now here is what happens: Panda Express SweetFire Chicken: two servings (880 calories); steamed rice: one serving (420 calories); mixed veggies: one serving (190 calories). Damage: 1,490 calories.

By Stefan Pinto. Read the article details.

It is too bad, since one wonders what a teenager would make of the characters’ hijinks and romps. The grandmother —- who does not appear to ever leave home without her cleaver —- visits the San Francisco mayor’s new water garden and kills the carp gifted by the Emperor Hirohito of Japan, because “Hirohito was a mass murderer and rapist and this pond was built with Chinese blood.” Moonie does Gung-fu (kung-fu) on unsuspecting boys. Mei Ling, the sexpot of the two, constantly throws herself at men, testing her powers and satisfying a desire that no respectable Chinese girl should dare admit. All the while, there is a huge dance around prepping, cooking, serving and delivering food to customers of Double Happiness, the restaurant owned by the grandmother. Throughout the novel, Moonie and Mei Long move inexorably toward fulfilling their Chinese immigrant destiny: both go to Ivy League colleges and become successful.

But there is a fundamental strain of sadness that courses through the book. The girls are basically abandoned by their parents at an early age —- the overworked and unappreciated father dies early and suddenly, and the mother never finds her element in America and eventually moves back to Hong Kong, leaving the girls to the grandmother’s care.

All unhappy aspects of the immigrant story are presented: the long hours, the sacrifices made in the struggle to make good, the battle between one’s culture and values and the culture and values of the new land, being the lower-class citizen in the new country, the unhappy past that was left behind but whose ghosts or scars still follow everyone around.

By Jacqueline Zhang Kim. Read entire article.

I have to admit soy-based products have not always been among my favorite snacks. I do notice more soy products available today then in prior years. Stores carry everything from soy milk and soy-based drinks to even snacks made from soy. Soy really isn’t the next new craze. Reports state that use of soy milk was recorded on stone slabs as early as A.D. 25-220 in China. Now that is some really good record keeping.

Soy milk is produced by soaking dry soy beans in water and grinding them to get the milk consistency. I guess it is very easy to make at home if you have the proper equipment. Like anything else, if you can get it at the store, why not get it there? I wouldn’t buy a cow so I could get fresh milk. I do want to say that having a cow is not a bad thing. I just don’t have a place to keep a cow, and I could only imagine what it would cost me to buy cute clothes for it to wear.

As I mentioned earlier, there are many other soy products and one of the most famous is tofu.

Tofu is made from the coagulation of soy protein and is drained and packed to form a cheese-like substance. Tofu is used in many applications but found its popularity in Chinese cuisine and vegetarian cooking. The texture of it lends itself to being used in place of meat.

By Tim Carrigan. Get more article information.

Su and a group of friends pooled their money to print the hymnal, which will be distributed to house churches in China. The one she holds in her hand was one of the first off the press.

“We have not had a hymnal,” she says smiling. “All of the songs are written by Chinese. It’s very exciting to have our own praise songs.”

Like so many others, Su came to the city from a rural family of nine children to build a better life. Families are larger in rural areas since minority families often can legally have more than one child.

“I have six older siblings and two younger ones,” Su says. “We knew we needed to move to the city if we were going to succeed.”

Su’s interests lie in cooking. Since she was young, she has been in the kitchen learning to prepare new dishes.

“At first, my mother and my aunts let me cook only the greens,” she says. “I learned more as I got older.”

One of her older sisters moved to the provincial capital and became a believer. She began sharing her faith with Su, especially after she also had moved to the city.

“I didn’t like this Jesus,” Su recounts. “I told my sister her beliefs were not Chinese, that this religion was foreign and not good for us.”

She did notice, though, that her sister seemed much happier, and her personality was different — so much so that Su began to listen.

“After some time, I wasn’t against believing,” she says. “I liked to gamble, though, and I didn’t want to give it up. So I didn’t believe just yet.”

Eventually, Su did pray for salvation. She gave up gambling and made a commitment to spread the Gospel among her countrymen.

By Katie Chute. Read more of this story.

Artwork by well known artists Haiyan, Chen Weiming, Tom Block, Yan Yukun, Bob Hieronimus, and Daxiong told the story of the CCP, as well as serving as an inspiration to all of us.

Wei Jingsheng, 59, is much more at home with words than with art. As one of China’s most renowned dissidents, Wei was incarcerated by the Chinese regime for nearly 18 years for advocating democracy, before he was finally released and exiled to the U.S. in 1997. His 1978 essay “The Fifth Modernization—Democracy” challenged the Communist Party’s new leadership’s stance that progress could be made without democracy.

Organized by the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and open on October 1 and 2, this art exhibit in the nation’s capital is a way for the proponents of human rights and democracy to observe the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China by condemning the crimes perpetrated by the CCP over the past 60 years. The major co-sponsors of the exhibit are the “Tear Down This Wall” Foundation, the Human Rights Painting Project of Amnesty International, and the Asia Democracy Alliance. Several other groups, including The Epoch Times, also supported the exhibit.

The concept behind the art exhibit and news conference, which were followed by a seminar the next day, was to include not only the Han Chinese ,who have suffered under 60 years of tyranny, but the minority groups who have also been victimized by the CCP since it took power by force in 1949. The Tibetans, Uyghurs, Inner Mongolians, Burmese, and Vietnamese were represented at the news conference and by the art depicted. (Dr. Quan Nguyen, representing Vietnam, was invited but was ill and could not attend.)

The largest piece in the exhibit was a sculpture of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989 by Chen Weiming. It is 28 feet long. The description says, “…The army opened fire on the protesters and killed thousands of innocent people. Chang An Road, the widest road in the world, was covered with lifeless bodies of these youthful lives.”

By Gary Feuerberg. Read the entire story.

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates just warned China’s growing military power “threatens our freedom of movement and narrows our strategic options.”

Translation: the U.S. Seventh Fleet can no longer operate with impunity off China’s coast. True enough. China is reasserting its historic sovereignty and will push U.S. power back into the Pacific.

I first went to China in 1975 during the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Over the ensuing three decades, I saw China transformed from a giant, dimly-lit prison camp into today’s booming nation, which just surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy.

This is the most remarkable event I have seen in my life.

Much of the credit goes to China’s late leader, Deng Xiaoping, one of the 20th century’s greatest men.

He ended Marxist dogma, releasing the energy of his long-suffering people whose nation had been raped by western imperialism, then ravaged by brutal civil wars. Until 1800, China was a leading world power.

But a ghost will haunt this celebration: the Great Helmsman, Mao Zedong. What to make of him?

I have long struggled to understand Mao and felt conflicting emotions. Was he modern history’s greatest revolutionary and earth-shaker, or a demented mass murderer who nearly destroyed China?

Chaos

Great times produce great men. Mao rose from the chaos of 1920s China to lead the new-found Communist Party. He fought Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, an assortment of powerful regional warlords, and, later, the Japanese invaders.

China suffered some 15-20 million dead from 1928-1949.

Mao was an accomplished poet, writer and historian, a profound thinker, and a superb military strategist. His works on guerrilla war are on my desk. Mao crushed the U.S.-backed Nationalist’s 4.3-million strong armies in numerous titanic battles.

Mao gave the Communists political and strategic direction. Below him were a group of outstanding generals — the “Ten Marshals” — among them Zhu De, Lin Piao, Peng Dehui, Chen Yi and Nie Rongzhen — who crushed Chiang Kai-shek’s armies.

The Great Helmsman united fractured, war-torn China for the first time in centuries, restoring its pride and self-confidence after a century of humiliation. Mao thwarted Soviets and U.S. efforts to turn China into a client state, and built up China’s military power.

But Mao’s crackpot economic notions, notably the infamous 1958 Great Leap Forward, created famines that killed 20-36 million Chinese peasants. “Red Emperor” Mao was prodigal with his people’s lives, cared little for them, and was indifferent to their suffering.

Mao horrified even brutal Soviet leaders by saying he was prepared to lose half his people in a nuclear war.

When the party resisted Mao, he tried to destroy it by unleashing the Great Cultural Revolution that plunged China into chaos and civil war. China’s brilliant, much under-rated premier, Zhou Enlai, curbed some of Mao’s worst excess and rescued China by engineering Deng Xiaoping into power.

Gang of Four

Deng crushed far-left Maoists known as the Gang of Four, and restored order. His sweeping economic reforms revitalized China, unleashing its latent economic power. But Deng’s great achievements — and this week’s huge birthday party in Beijing — would not have been possible without Mao’s unification of China and imposition of an all-powerful one-party state.

So, as with many Chinese, I’m uncertain how to qualify Mao. Like Stalin — once called “half man, half beast” — Mao appealed as much as he repelled.

Most Chinese now regard Mao as their nation’s beloved, respected father — but who went dangerously senile before his death in 1976. Old men’s egos can be very dangerous.

I suspect as time goes by, Mao’s misdeeds will fade away and the glowing image of the Great Helmsman will continue to hang over the gate of the Beijing’s Forbidden City.

By Eric MargolisA

The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio.

BBC World Service correspondent Mukul Devichand traveled to Shanghai to explore the profound impact of new European foods to Chinese society, and found that the culinary market there is already crowded:

At a Chinese radio station, on-air personalities tout the virtues of pairing the proper wines with the proper cheese, eating pasta and enjoying a good cigar.

British, French and Portuguese foodies are pushing gastronomy and fine dining to a remarkable new class of Chinese citizens.

The problem is, parmesan, cheddar and brie are pretty alien to the Chinese palate. Despite over 3000 years of Chinese fine dining, it’s only from the 20th century that dairy products were really consumed in China — many there remain lactose intolerant.

The solution for European marketers is to educate Chinese consumers.

At a wine seminar, a young French woman explained what drew her to China, “Even though we are in the middle of an economic crisis, we see an increase every single week, of Europeans landing here with their suitcases and a dream, and they want to make it. Of course the hope of making money is also part of it, but I would say that creating jobs in my own country, in my own region and creating jobs for my family’s neighbors is a big part of it.”

By BBC World Service. Hear the radio clip on the Cheese for Chinese.

Same story with the next most popular regional style, Shanghainese food. Shanghai is only one city on the East coast. Its cookings style, while bearing unique flourishes of its own, is a subset of Huaiyang cuisine, which developed in the area between the Huai and Yangtze rivers on the Eastern seaboard.
What it Should be

Chinese food is both highly scientific and pragmatic—food is food, so it should be judged on nutritional content and taste. The standard measure for a good dish is color, aroma, taste, and cut.

The five major regional styles of Chinese food are Sichuan cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Dongbei (Northeastern) cuisine, and Shandong cuisine. All styles adhere to the principles of yin-yang theory in their ingredient selection and preparation methods. In traditional Chinese medicinal manuals, the five colors and five aromas in food correspond to the health of five major bodily organs. Therefore eating certain foods aided the treatment of specific health problems.
Presentation is Secondary

The Chinese know how to cook and certainly know how to eat, so why is Chinese cuisine so lacking in critical acclaim?
Of Zagat Guide 2009’s top ten restaurants in New York City, six are French, three are contemporary American, and one is Japanese.

“There’s absolutely no Chinese [on the list],” said Lei Xi, producer of the upcoming 2009 New Tang Dynasty Television’s International Chinese Culinary Competition in New York. “Why is Japanese food regarded so highly? It’s because it is somehow matched with Westerners’ understanding of presentation. It’s got small portions, it’s delicate. That style of presentation matches the French high cuisine concept.”

In Chinese food, “presentation” and the cooking process is intimately linked. Take for example stir fries. “After stir fry, how the chef lands the food on the plate is an art in and of itself,” said Xi. “Sometimes they literally throw it. Once it lands on the plate, you can’t touch it. You can’t do what a French chef would do—tweak it or top it with a mint leaf. It has to be eaten right then and there.”

By Christine Lin. Read more on this article.

The detention of the employee from the Shanghai Shen-Mei Beverage and Food Company, a bottling plant partly owned by Coca-Cola, was reported over the weekend by China’s state-run news media, which said the employee took about $1.5 million in bribes.

A spokesman for Coca-Cola, Kenth Kaerhoeg, confirmed on Sunday that a female middle manager at the plant was detained by Shanghai police this year and then dismissed by the bottling company.

Mr. Kaerhoeg declined to give further details about the case, but he said Coca-Cola was cooperating with the investigation.

Calls to Shen-Mei, in which Coca-Cola has a minority stake, went unanswered on Sunday and Shanghai police officials could not be reached for comment.

The detention is the second prominent bribery case this year involving a global company operating in China.

In July, four Shanghai-based employees of the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, including an Australian citizen, were detained and later formally charged with corruption and bribery.

That case emerged after tense iron ore negotiations between Rio Tinto and Chinese steel makers and after Rio Tinto scrapped a deal with a big Chinese company, leading some analysts to speculate that it was partly politically motivated.

Rio Tinto has strongly denied its Shanghai employees were involved in bribery or corruption. Chinese officials have insisted the case is not politically motivated.

By David Barboza. Read more about the details.

Thousands of business delegations enter China every year. Most of these delegations comprise Overseas Chinese who live in other parts of Asia, and the West, who now sees an opportunity for trade and business in Mainland China.

Although they may not know the language and business culture there, the Overseas Chinese are somehow drawn to the familiar, or what they perceive to be familiar. In all likelihood, much of their aspiration may be due to a pining for their roots.

Be it a search for one’s history or clan, the authors of New Asian Emperors delve into the subjects of roots, shoots and harvests that may arise as a result of the differing business strategies of the Overseas Chinese.

George T. Haley, professor of marketing at University of New Haven, wrote this book together with his wife Usha and Tan Chin Tiong, deputy president of Singapore Management University, through interviews with major Overseas Chinese business executives. Usha is an Asia Programs Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. They reside in the United States while Tan is in Singapore.

They got to know each other when the Haleys were working at the National University of Singapore from 1994-96.

By Thean Lee Cheng. Read entire article.

Not surprisingly, whites worked better than the reds. The sweet German riesling that I pulled from my cellar easily handled the hot and sour, its sweetness acting as the ideal foil to the heat of the chilies. It received a thumbs-up from everyone, including our German guest May’Britt, who confided in me earlier that she hates German wine. Hah! Another convert.

But the real surprise was that the wine that worked best with all three soups was a Californian chardonnay: high alcohol, loads of oak and so buttery that we nicknamed it “the fatty.” A wine that I figured would be a write-off wins round one.

Dumplings with peanut butter sauce and spring rolls: rich whites, fresh and fruity reds

Whether the richness came from the peanut-butter sauce served with the dumplings or the oil that cooked the spring rolls, the best wines were the same. Again, the German riesling, with its sweetness and acidity proved to match the richness while providing enough acidity to refresh. Our gewurztraminer wasn’t totally out of place, though it was a touch too aromatic. “Fatty,” again, was surprisingly good.

And for the reds, our Beaujolais, a Moulin à Vent, was exceptional with the dumplings, and good with the spring rolls. Delicate flavours, not too rich and a great acidity seemed to contrast nicely, without overpowering the plates. All the other reds proved too powerful.

Those little spare ribs: dry and spicy whites, fresh and fruity reds

Just mention Chinese food to me, and these little meat candies come to mind. Glazed with honey, the sweetness dominates the palate. All the wines that had any sweetness, including my beloved German riesling and the New World reds, were simply gross.

What we began to notice was that when a wine didn’t work, it really didn’t work. I asked Lesley to send me her impressions of the evening afterward, and she hit the nail on the head when she wrote, “It’s interesting how a wine that is ill-suited to a French dish can still be enjoyed, whereas a poorly chosen wine with Chinese food clashes terribly.”

By Bill Zachariw. Read the entire food article.