China's long history, vast territory and extensive contact with other nations and cultures have given birth to the distinctive Chinese culinary art. With several thousand years of creative and accumulative efforts, the Chinese cuisine has become increasingly popular among more and more overseas gourmets, virtually functioning as an envoy of friendship inChina's cultural exchanges with foreign countries.

Modern Chinese enjoys a worldwide reputation as theKingdomofCuisine. The exquisite Chinese culinary art, regarded indisputably as one of the world's finest culinary traditions, has prevailed all over the world. The nearly endless variety of natural ingredients and methods of preparation employed in Chinese cuisine stand out unequaled in the world, which may very well account for the universal popularity of Chinese restaurants and Chinese cooking overseas.

The three essential factors, or key elements, by which Chinese cooking is judged, are known as color, aroma and taste. The color of Chinese food, the first of these elements which is so evident at Chinese banquets, includes the layout and design of dishes, best exemplified in particular by the large elaborately prepared cold dish served at the beginning of the dinner. Aroma implies more than what one's nose can detect directly; it also includes the freshness of the raw materials used and the mixture of seasonings. Taste is the art of proper seasoning, though it also involves the texture of food and the fine slicing techniques. These three essential elements--color, aroma and taste--are achieved by the careful coordination of a series of delicate activities: selecting ingredients, mixing flavors, timing the cooking, controlling the heat and finally, laying out the food on the plate before reaching the table.

China covers a vast territory and has many ethnic groups, hence a variety of Chinese food with different but fantastic and mouthwatering flavor. Since China's local dishes have their own typical features, generally, Chinese food can be roughly divided into eight regional cuisines, namely, Sichuan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong (Cantonese), Jiangsu, Anhui and Hunan, which has been widely accepted around. Certainly, there are many other local famous cuisines, such as Beijing cuisine and Shanghai cuisine.