Chinese Cultural Diversity

• Most popular Chinese food in the U.S. is loaded with salt and sugar, so it tastes sweeter, saltier, and can often greasier than authentic chinese food.
• Besides salt and sugar, there are many other common spices in China, including dried chili, wild pepper, star anise, Chinese cinnamon, soybean source, water chestnut powder, etc. MSG is also widely used in China, you can find it in almost every dish.
• It’s impossible to generalize the taste of authentic Chinese food because people’s tastes in different regions can vary tremendously in China.

-Ex. many provinces in south China, such as Szechuan, Yunnan, and Hunan, are famous for their spicy foods, but their spicy spices are different from each other. People in northeast China are more likely to add a soybean source when cooking, so their food is relatively saltier and darker in color. Shanghai people are well known for having a ‘sweet tooth’.

• Most people believe that all Chinese people are alike
• Some may think that all Chinese people have the unique ability to fight
• China has the largest population of any nation in the world. Chinese people are often stereotyped as being of a single ethnicity, when in fact the population of China is made up of many ethnic groups.
• A lot of people also believe that the only thing Chinese people will eat is rice.

The largest festival in China is the Spring Festival that marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year. It falls between mid-January and mid-February as time to honor our ancestors. They have performing arts such as Kung Fu, Chinese Folk Dance, Chinese Traditional Music, Chinese Acrobats, and many more.

Chinese Cultural Diversity

Chinese food

Dining Experience

General

• The experience of dining in China is far different than eating at restaurants in America. Manners and menus are almost entirely opposite.
• Menus in China are usually illustrated hardback books, in which almost every single dish has a picture.
• There is no tipping in China, every person is your table’s waiter, and it’s appropriate to stop anyone in the restaurant and ask them for something. This is not rude, it is expected.

• Americans love to eat Chinese food, whether in a fancy Chinese restaurant with extravagant décor or at those often crowded, noisy little local spots. That being said Chinese food found in the U.S. is very different from the authentic cuisine consumed daily by people in China.

Cooking Method

• Americanized Chinese cuisine simplifies cooking steps. In fact, it usually takes quite a long time for Chinese people to prepare and cook a traditional Chinese dish because they emphasize the harmony of three features, “color,” ”aroma,” and ”taste.” Chinese chefs also pay much attention to how they cut their ingredients.

Ex. Tofu Noodle Potage, a Chinese vegetarian soup. To prepare this dish, a Chinese chef will skillfully slice a fist-sized piece of tofu into hundreds of hair-thin shreds so that it can contribute a silky texture to the soup.

• Methods such as stewing, braising, baking, steaming, boiling, and even fermenting are commonly used in authentic Chinese cuisine, either cold dish or hot dish.
• Chinese people believe that fried food is very unhealthy, and may increase the risk of cancer. Instead, they spend much time boiling nutrient soup and porridge to balance the body’s Yin and Yang. So, popular Chinese dishes in the U.S., such as Sweet ‘n’ Sour Chicken and Crab Wontons, are actually rarely seen in China.

Taste

Ingredients

• Authentic Chinese food puts more attention on vegetables, bean products, and cooked wheaten food.
• Most Chinese dishes in the U.S. focus on a kind of meat, beef, pork or chicken (turkey is not used), with vegetables just as sides or fillers. In China, however, vegetables and bean products (like Tofu and soybean) are as important as, or even more important than, meat for a dish.
• Sometimes, meat is just one of the ten or more different ingredients used in a dish. Many authentic Chinese dishes contain several ingredients, which often take a long time to prepare before cooking.

Stereotypes of Chinese people

Chinese Families

• Chinese family has a hierarchical order with the man as the head of the family tagged with the responsibility for earning the bread of his family
• The man of the house also has the privilege to have the final say in the affairs of the family and complete authority
• As time passed the father of the house remained head of the house but he no longer has the full say over his children such as choosing a career for them.
• Even though the children are allowed to choose their own career are still required to consult their elders for advice.

Clothing style

Lower Class

Ancient Chinese dress

• In the earliest years of China, poorer people had to use hemp to make their clothing.
• Hemp was a fiber made from a tall Asian herb that’s similar to linen.
• At the beginning of the Song dynasty(960-1279 c.e), cotton had replaced hemp, and become the primary material used for garments of the common people.
• During this time Wool was considered a “barbarian” fabric and used only by non-Chinese.
• Strict rules insured that clothing showed clear distinctions between the different ranks of society, and it was considered a serious offense for poor people to wear decorative or showy clothing.

Language & Religion

• Beginning with the earliest Xia dynasty(1875-1550 b.c.e), the majority of the people wore simple outfits that consisted of a tunic or jacket called a san and a pair of loose trousers called a ku.
• Depending on the time of the year, the tunic could be short, ending at the waist, or longer ending at the ankle.
• These outfits also were known for having a Chinese collar, known as the mandarin collar, which stood up from a round neck opening with a small gap in the front.

Chinese Characters

• Official Language: Mandarin
• Other Languages: Wu, Huanese, Jiangxinese, Hakka, Yue, Cantonese, Ping, Shaojiang, and Min
• Tonal systems are used to differentiate between the languages
• Mandarin has 4 tones

• Early forms were pictographs
• Each character represents a syllable of the spoken language
• In the 1950s, the Chinese government began to simplify the characters as an effort to improve literacy

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Modern Day dress

• Chinese maintained its traditional practices in clothing for an unusually long time, right up to the twentieth century.
• In 1911 clothing styles changed dramatically.
• Western dress was finally allowed to enter China(in the past Western dress had been forbidden and frowned upon)
• The qipao dress for women had become very popular.
• By 1949, a violent civil war brought upon a Communist government to China and Western dress was once again shunned upon.
• The new government favored a new basic garment called Mao suits, with plain trousers and a tunic with a mandarin collar and two pockets on the chest.
• As China modernized in the last twenty years, Western dress began to appear but for many the Mao suit still remains as the common garment for daily wear.

Upper Class

Religion

• The customary garments for upper classes, such as the emperor and his family, a court of nobles, and a wide range of officials wore robes. A long-sleeved, loose-fitting garment that fastened in the front.
• The cut and style changed over the course of the years. At times the sleeves were narrow; at other times quite loose and billowing.
• The robes were sometimes belted, while other times they hung loose at the waist. They were either fastened down the middle or across the right side of the chest, but never across the left.
• These robes were most often made of silk, but some emperors would have robes of a different material to make a political statement.
• By the time of the Qing dynasty, the dragon robe had become the signature garment of the ruling class.

• Many Chinese Americans identify themselves as unaffiliated with a religious group
• About 1/5 of the population consider themselves to be Protestant
• About 1/6 of the population considers themselves to be Buddhist.

Traditions and celebrations