China has a culture that goes back thousands of years. Through the centuries, Chinese people have continuously worked to enrich the cooking arts. In the primitive society, when human being first learned how to cook, the methods were very simple. They simply put food on the fire to bake on hot stones. A variety of cooking utensils were then invented including the ding, and the zeng. The ding was a bronze cooking vessel with two loop handles and three legs; the zeng was an earthenware utensil for steaming rice. In the Zhou Dynasty, kings ate lamb and piglet meat cooked in butter in the spring, dried chicken and fish cooked in dog fat in the summer, veal and fawn cooked in lard in the autumn and frost fish and wild geese cooked in sheep fat. Ritual of Zhou mention eight precious food prepared for kings. The preparation involved roasting, frying and stewing. Ingredients included rice flour, thick soybean paste, vinegar and spices. During the Warring States Period, Qu Yuang, the great poet of the Chu State, composed an essay entitled Sunmmoning the Soul. This essay contained a long menu, including such dishes as Beef, Roast Soft-shelled Turtle, Roast Lamb, Fish Soup, Pork Meatballs and Quail Soup. Flavoring included soy sauce, vinegar, salt, plum and homey to make the dishes taste salty, pungent or sweet. During the Han Dynasty, Zhang qian brought back alfalfa, grapes and other new foods from his travels to the West. Walnuts, broad hens, carrots, onions, pepper and cucumbers were also introduced to China, while bean curd and various bean products were invented in China.

This article by Yang Tianqing and Daniel Kister.