Never ask “why” unless you’re sure of “if”.
As someone who has grown up eating “high-end” Chinese dishes, I found this question puzzling. Then I realized that what North Americans think of as “Chinese food” and what I as a person of Chinese descent think of as “Chinese food” are VERY different.
From what I’ve eaten at family banquets growing up, you’d probably recognize a small handful of dishes, but most would probably be compeletely new to you.
This is what a few dishes from a proper Chinese banquet look like:
Clockwise from the top we have Chinese Roast Pig (燒豬), Chinese Steamed Fish (中式蒸鱼) (usually pickerel in my family), Chinese Roast Duck (烤鴨), and Sauteed Lobster with Ginger and Scallion (蔥薑龍蝦).
The lobster, duck (sometimes we’d have roasted chicken instead), and fish were mainstays at our big family dinners.
To my memory we only had a whole roasted pig once, at my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. This dish is a BIG DEAL.
How about some appetizers:
Clockwise from the top: soy beef, bean curd, pork slices, seaweed, and jellyfish (in the centre).
We didn’t normally have appetizers at our dinners, we weren’t that formal. Other than my grandmother, we’re descended from pesants (our prosperity has only really come in the last 50 or so years), so our dinners were fairly informal by Chinese standards. Again, we had them at my grandparents 50th, when much of my grandmother’s surviving aristocratic family flew in from Taiwan.
Probably the best known “high-end” Chinese dish here in North America is Peking Duck. Traditionally it took a full three days to prepare, and while modern versions can be done in a fraction of the time, it’s still not simple to prepare if you want to really get it right.
So yes: there ARE high-end Chinese dishes, you probably don’t know most of them.
Picture Source multiple websites
Thanks for Reading
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