II. The Origins of Diet Culture in China and Great Britain

2.1 The Origins of Diet Culture in China    

   The development of the Chinese diet has a history of four or five thousand years. It consists of ancient palace cuisine and local cuisine, and its office food mainly is local dishes. Chinese diet has experienced two periods of raw food and cooked food with fire. The discovery and use of fire play a pivotal role in the development of Chinese diet. It made the Chinese society at that time shift from barbarism to civilization. It is also the beginning of the history of the human diet. Chinese people’s physical and mental quality also improved a lot. It laid a material basis for the first great leap of the history of human diet. Chinese food culture emerged from the following conditions: (a) The food source is relatively stable. The Neolithic age has grown grain and raised livestock; (b) The production and use of pottery. The emergence of pottery was companied by food utensils and cooking utensils.

   Diet culture in Xia and Shang Dynasties: during Xia and Shang dynasties in order to consolidate and strengthen the ruling, rulers attach great importance to agricultural production. The prosperity of agriculture and animal husbandry provides people with a lot of food materials. During Xia and Shang Dynasties, the processing of grain was primitive and simple, and cooking methods were very few. Whereas, the cooking methods became various due to the rapid development of productivity, such as boiling, steaming, grilling, frying, and so on. Steaming and frying were cooking methods which occurred in the heyday of the bronze culture of Zhou Dynasty.

   Diet culture in the Spring and Autumn period, the Warring States period and the Qin Dynasties: “during the Spring and Autumn period, with the decline of the Zhou Dynasty, it has been the history of the annexation of small powers for hundreds of years.” (Zhao 55) All the princes of the annexation of each other and mutual integration of all ethnic groups formed the north and south two flavor in the diet culture. Diet culture in the North had a long history, and its cooking techniques was more advanced. Thus it formed the earliest local flavor dishes in our country: the prototype of Shandong dishes.