Shaanxi cuisine

Shaanxi cuisine (simplified Chinese: 陕西菜; traditional Chinese: 陝西菜; pinyin: Shǎnxī cài), or Qin cuisine (Chinese: 秦菜; pinyin: Qín cài), is derived from the native cooking styles of Shaanxi province and parts of northwestern China. Shaanxi cuisine makes elaborate use of ordinary materials, and is best known for its pork and lamb / mutton dishes. The flavour is strong and the taste is heavy. There is an emphasis on savoury flavours such as salt, garlic, onion, and vinegar; sugar is seldom used. Cooking methods are mainly steaming, frying, and stir-frying. Due to its geographical location between the provinces of Shanxi and Sichuan, the taste of Shaanxi cuisine resulted in both sour and spicy, in addition to the salty taste. In comparison to other Chinese cuisines, noodles consisted of greater portion than rice, but in contrast to noodles of Beijing cuisine, and to a certain degree, Shanxi cuisine, the noodles of Shaanxi cuisine is nearly always wider, thicker, and longer.

Shaanxi

Shaanxi (Chinese: 陕西; pinyin:  Shǎnxī; postal: Shensi) is a province of the People's Republic of China, officially part of the Northwest China region. It includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qin Mountains (Qinling) across the southern part of this province.

Name

The name Shaanxi means "Land west of Shan". Shǎn was the ancient name for the narrow mountain pass where the Yellow River flows from the Loess Plateau down to the North China Plain. It is now the Shanzhou District of Sanmenxia city in Henan Province.

The Chinese pronunciation of 陕西 (Shǎnxī) and its eastern neighbor 山西 (Shānxī) differ only in tone. As tone marks are often omitted, this would leave the two provinces indistinguishable and, to prevent this ambiguity, the Chinese government adopted the special spelling Shaanxi as an official romanization. The first syllable is derived from the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system of romanization, whereby tone is reflected by change in spelling. The second syllable, 西, would be rendered "shi" in Gwoyeu Romatzyh, but the Chinese government opts to transcribe it as the pinyin-derived "xi," meaning that the official spelling reflects the application of two separate romanization systems. When tone marks are noted, however, it is always rendered as the simple Shǎnxī and not Shǎanxī or Shaǎnxī.