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China has diverse natural
conditions across its land.
As a result, Chinese people living in different areas
enjoy absolutely different but rich staple food.
From the south to the north,
the diverse staple foods
provide energy for human bodies.
Moreover, they influence people's feelings
towards the change of four seasons
and enrich
the lives of the Chinese.
The Story of Staple Food
Xiangfen County, Shanxi
The Ding Village in Shanxi
is the most ancient village in the Central Plains.
Housewives here are best at making food out of flour.
Local people call the powdered cereals
as flour.
Cereal processing has a history of over 1 0,000 years.
The most ancient millstone
was unearthed just nearby.
Today,
millstones of the same shape are still being used.
Millstones grind up cereals into powders.
Sieve out the coarse grains
Then the real flour food appears.
Rich in mountains while lacking rivers,
Shanxi is scarce in its vegetable varieties.
Housewives cannot do much
to enrich the non-staple food.
So they figure out different ways
of making flour food
to increase the family's appetite.
Flour is processed
into various delicacies on the table.
These diverse and delicate foods remind people
of the women's nimble fingers
and rich imagination.
When the women in the Ding Village
are busy preparing
a birthday feast,
a fragrance of flour floats out
from a cave house on the loess plateau.
Huang Guosheng, a Suide native,
just got a tray of yellow buns steamed.
Processed by Huang, the glutinous millet
becomes sweet and tasty.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve
Huang Guosheng
From the lunar November on,
he would ride 1.5 hours to the county town
every three days
to sell the buns.
I'm 58.
I need to work hard.
Hello. I'm at Dengjialou.
Suide County, Shaanxi
Suide County sits in the hilly-gully areas in Northern Shaanxi.
Today, minor cereals and wheat
are the main ingredients on the table.
Local people make them into diverse dishes.
Yellow steamed bun
Yellow steamed bun
Yellow steamed bun of Northern Shaanxi
Yellow steamed bun
I'm from Kangjiagou.
No.1 in Suide
My yellowed steamed buns are the best.
Yellow steamed bun
One yuan
No problem!
(Huang Guosheng)
I've been selling yellow steamed buns for more than 7 years.
At first, my customers can get one free if they buy 1 0 buns.
I could earn 0.5 yuan then.
The buns taste good.
I sold them out very quickly.
My customers all spoke highly of my buns.
Suide is rich in the glutinous millet resources.
The yellow steamed buns are made with this main ingredient.
Due to its drought-enduring nature,
glutinous millet became the most important crop on the loess plateau.
It was planted along the Yellow River regions
more than 8,000 years ago.
If the glutinous millet is directly steamed, it doesn't taste good enough.
But it used to be the most popular staple food
for people in Northern Shaanxi.
There are two types of glutinous millets, the hard and the soft.
Huang Guosheng mingles the two based on this proportion:
70% hard glutinous millets and 30% the soft kind,
dip them in water over a night and then grind them up on a millstone.
Then he would use a sieve to get rid of the rough grains.
Huang firmly believes that
the glutinous millet powdered by a machine lags
far behind those ground up
on his millstone.
Fried glutinous millet
produces natural fragrance.
That's a recipe
that Huang feels most proud of.
After kneading the glutinous millet flour,
Huang would put it in a big jar for fermentation for a night.
Experience taught Huang
to wrap up the jars with quilts to make the buns tastier.
Huang's home, a cave house,
is the most traditional dwelling format
on the loess plateau in China.
It has a history of over 4,000 years.
For the hardworking farmers here,
their basic wish is
to renovate a cave into a home
and marry a wife.
That's how a life gets complete.
Huang and his wife
can make 700 buns every time.
Grinding up, kneading and fermentation,
the whole process takes 3 days.
The couple works from 3 am
through 9 pm.
By working hard, we earn money.
Lazy people can never make money.
Nine, ten, eleven
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
Huang's buns are good-tasting.
And Huang is an honest businessman.
One yuan for each bun, no bargain!
120 yuan
It's difficult to make them.
I'm making hard money here.
Yellow steamed bun
Yellow steamed bun
In the coldest two months of a year,
Huang can sell 1 5,000 buns.
Taking into account the cost,
he can earn 8,000 yuan
in a winter.
Huang has a son and a daughter.
Both have settled down in the city.
They no longer work on the farmland.
But Huang doesn't want to leave.
Living in his cave house
and eating the food he plants,
Huang feels satisfied with his life.
For thousands of years,
Chinese people gain food and clothing from the five cereals.
The feel of satisfaction
brought by these carbohydrates
is just provided by millions
of hardworking farmers
Iike Huang.
In autumn,
the ripe wheat decides the basic color
of the land in North China.
Heilongjiang
Wheat was introduced into the Central Plains
through the Hosi Corridor.
As it contains rich nutrition,
it has been the most vastly planted crop in North China
after a localization process
of over 4,000 years.
This species originated from West Asia
and has become the most important staple food for the Chinese.
After the wheat flour ferments,
people bake them in a specially-designed fire pit.
This type of round pancake
contains little water and can be preserved for a long time.
They're the indispensable staple food
for Uyghur families in all seasons.
In Kuqa, Xinjiang,
people celebrate the Corban Festival
with delicacies.
Naan is the most favorite staple food for Uyghur people.
The name originated from ancient Persian
and has a history of over 2,000 years.
When they first emerged,
steamed buns were called Chui cakes and steamed cakes.
They are the most popular staple food in the Central Plains.
Ancient Chinese people were inspired
by the water boiling food theory.
They made China the earliest country
to cook with steam.
Five cereals in China
have always been a changing concept.
Around 2,000 years ago,
the five cereals were namely rice,
broomcorn millet, millet, wheat, and beans.
But today,
the three grains that rank top in terms of their production volumes
are rice, wheat and corn.
No matter how things have changed,
the leading status of rice
remains unchanged.
In the *** language,
Dimen means the origin of spring.
Liping County, Guizhou
Dimen Village sits at the origin of Qingshui River.
It mostly rains throughout a year.
Wu Shunyu is fetching rice
from their own barn.
Barn plays
a vital role
in the storage of rice.
The barn of tile and wood structure
was built above the waters
to prevent fire, mice and insects.
The most ancient barn here
has a history of 300 years.
The rice Wu Shunyu has fetched
is with shells.
The fresh taste of rice
can be preserved with the shells.
The rice Wu fetched today
would be presented as a gift
to a family in their village.
In Dimen,
after a woman gives birth
and her baby reaches the age of one month,
her parents-in-law
would send her the betrothal gifts.
That marks the official formation
of a new family.
Other women in the village
would also send baskets with new rice and eggs.
That represents the most sincere blesses
for the newly-born.
Rice noodles are the most important
rice product in Liping, Guizhou.
They can be seen everywhere on the local markets.
People here love the noodles in soup the most.
Refined rice noodles
in the spicy broth
can be served for any of the three meals daily.
Grind the dipped fresh rice into rice milk,
that's the first step for Yang Xiuxia to make rice noodles.
Scoop out the milk,
steam it
The rice milk is steamed on the boiling water,
air dry it
and store it.
This is a typical rice noodle workshop in South China.
As white as jade,
the rice noodles preserve some warmth
and produce the unique
fragrance of rice.
Yang Xiuxia and her husband cooperate naturally.
For every movement,
they've repeated for hundreds of times.
Plowing a field in spring, hoeing and weeding in summer,
harvesting in autumn and storing up in winter
Today,
more than 65% of the Chinese eat rice.
China is the earliest country
to plant rice paddy.
Some 7,000 years ago,
rice paddy was grown in the Yangtze River areas.
From the green rice shoots
to the golden paddy,
rice has been made into different foods
based on people's diverse
eating habits.
Guangzhou natives also love rice noodles,
which are cooked similarly
to Liping rice noodles.
Around 1 50 years ago,
rice noodles first appeared in Guangzhou.
The rice noodles here are thinner and more transparent
and they taste more tender and smooth.
The most popular rice noodle product
among the Cantonese
can be this stir-fried rice noodles with beef.
This dish is a test of a Cantonese chef's
basic skills.
To make this dish perfect,
chefs have to fry the noodles on vigorous fire.
While frying the noodles evenly,
chefs also have to guarantee the intactness of the noodles.
People in North China like eating flour products.
The noodles in the south are made of rice.
More than 1,000 years ago,
China was divided by the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River
in terms of the rural pattern: rice in the south and wheat in the north.
Therefore, people in the south love eating rice
and those in the north cannot live without wheaten food.
Thousands of miles away in Xi'an,
this restaurant in the old city town
is always filled with people waiting.
What can keep the local people
wait so patiently can only be
the marinated meat in baked bun.
In Xi'an,
this type of baked bun is the most widely accepted staple food.
The marinated meat in baked bun
is the most classic way to enjoy the buns.
Marinated meat and baked bun
are the perfect combination.
The buns Xi'an people eat
are baked on fire.
The meat is made with 30-plus seasonings
and is stewed with gentle heat.
So it tastes soft and glutinous.
The plain buns can better highlight the mellow meat.
Xi'an native Cao ***
founded a band with a few friends.
They sing in Xi'an dialects.
Cao is a college teacher
and also the lyric writer for the band.
In this song,
he lists dozens of local delicacies
in ordinary people's lives
in Shaanxi.
Spinach noodles are rich in nutrition.
Belt noodles are thick and challenge your throat.
Remember to wipe your mouth after having Jiangshui noodles.
Qishan noodles have a long history.
Garlic noodles are a bit spicy.
Noodles with soybean paste are in good measure.
At last, have a bowl of noodle soup.
Xi'an was once the most
prosperous city in the world.
Thirteen dynasties set up their capitals here.
People from around the world gathered here,
bringing the place diverse delicacies.
Today, Xi'an remains a heaven
of staple foods for the Chinese.
Paomo, another staple food in Xi'an,
originated from the baked buns.
Based on their own preference,
people can tear a bun into different sizes.
As for Xi'an natives,
this process
is what they enjoy very much.
In Northwest China,
chopped-up baked buns in lamb or beef broth
is a perfect combination of staple food and soup.
Another example can be the Lanzhou beef noodles.
Lanzhou, Gansu
Lanzhou natives start their days
with a bowl of beef noodles.
With the Yellow River crossing the city,
Lanzhou is home to over 1,000 Muslim noodle shops.
Every day,
more than 1 million bowls of beef noodles are consumed.
People have lavished praise
on the tender and hot Lanzhou noodles.
One hundred years ago,
a Hui ethnic person Ma Baozi poured the water,
in which the beef and lamb livers were just boiled, into a pot.
Noodles made in that pot won popularity immediately.
The clarity of the beef broth is the way to check
if the beef noodles are authentic.
The best beef noodles
should acquire the following five features:
clear soup,
clean white turnips,
brilliant red chili oil,
green parsley
and yellow noodles.
When kneading the flour, Ma Baozi creatively
added some special water, whose main component is potassium carbonate.
That made the flour more elastic.
All the procedures are manual.
Ma Wenbin is the fourth-generation successor
of Lanzhou beef noodles.
He's been working in a noodle shop for 40 years.
(Ma Wenbin)
To pull the dough into noodles
of different thickness,
a chef needs to have extraordinary strong arms
and also exquisite skills in controlling his strength.
The same wheat
and the same flour,
but different noodles
and different wonders are produced.
Guangzhou, Guangdong
For the mouthfeel of noodles,
people from the north and south
have absolutely different requirements.
The Cantonese like this type of slim noodles,
which are completely different from Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles.
These noodles taste crispy,
elastic and chewy.
Rice paddy gets ripe in Guangdong
for up to three seasons out of a year.
But that doesn't prevent the Cantonese from loving the noodles.
Authentic
Very authentic
Duck eggs are applied in dough making.
A bamboo is used
to press against the dough.
A person jumps
while sitting at the other end of the bamboo.
Thus, the dough can receive strength evenly.
The thin flour can be made
into noodles
or wanton skin
that have special elasticity.
Stewing pig bones,
ground fish and shrimp eggs for 3 hours,
and the soup for the tasty
wonton noodles is made.
Cantonese call noodles made with this traditional method
bamboo noodles.
This ancient method of dough pressing
has been passed on for generations.
When making noodles,
the Cantonese use bamboo
while those in the Central Plains apply a rolling pole.
Making dough
is a skill that girls in the Central Plains
must master.
Noodles for breakfast and a banquet in the noon
is the custom in Ding Village when people hold a birthday feast.
To celebrate her husband's 70th birthday,
Madame Wei got up early
to prepare the flour food.
(Wei Jinyu)
The noodles are called longevity noodles.
Why Chinese people eat noodles on their birthdays?
How did noodles become
the symbol of longevity?
It is said that the shape of noodle
is both long and slim.
In Putonghua, long (chang) and slim (shou) is similar to the pronunciation of longevity (changshou).
Noodles are the most
popular staple food
on birthdays for the Chinese.
At the birthday banquet in Ding Village,
a ritual requiring the participation
of all people is ongoing.
Before eating the noodles,
all the people pick out the longest noodle in their bowl
and put it into the bowl of the one who celebrates the birthday.
When he eats the bowl with all the long noodles
carrying the villagers' best wishes,
a birthday banquet can be regarded as complete.
Qishan County, Shaanxi
People in Qishan, Shaanxi also eat noodles when celebrating birthdays.
When an old person celebrates a birthday,
Qishan people would gather together
and invite a Qin Melody troupe to perform.
At this time,
a bowl of hot,
sour and spicy Qishan saozi noodles
is indispensable.
From early in the morning,
a feast serving guests with noodles starts.
As soon as the guests come,
they'll get a bowl of noodles.
Local chronicles say that Qishan saozi noodles originated 3,000 years ago.
According to the local custom,
people only eat the noodles but don't drink the soup.
The methods to make the ingredients for the Qishan saozi noodles
are very particular.
Meat is chopped into
thin and even dices
and dry-fried until they turn transparent.
Add vinegar and chili
and fry the meat on slow fire.
The good-quality ingredients for Qishan saozi noodles
are red in color,
sour and spicy in the taste.
The bright color and spicy taste
are the essence
of Qishan saozi noodles.
The trimmings for the noodles have five colors.
Fungus and tofu mean black and white.
Eggs represent wealth.
Red carrot symbolizes a prosperous life.
Garlic sprouts mean vitality.
The five colors, red, yellow, green, white and black
represent Qishan people's
best wishes for life.
For thousands of years,
saozi soup has been boiling
in every corner in Qishan Village.
Qishan saozi noodles
have become a wonderful art piece.
Qishan saozi noodles function as both the rice and the dishes.
Such a combination of rice and dishes
can also be found elsewhere in China.
Jiaxing natives start their day
with a hot meat zongzi, a traditional Chinese food,
made of glutinous rice with different stuffing.
(Jiaxing, Zhejiang)
Jiaxing in the Taihu Lake area
has always been known as a world barn.
Today,
the fast-pace production and lifestyle
is turning this
once seasonal food
into a daily staple food.
Every year in early lunar May,
people memorize the poet Qu Yuan
on the Dragon Boat Festival.
Families in South China
dip glutinous rice, wash bamboo leaves and make zongzi.
Liu Guangrong,
a Sichuan native works in Jiaxing.
Here in a zongzi factory,
he wraps 3,000 zongzi every day.
On average, he wraps 7 zongzi every minute.
Each costs him
Iess than 1 0 seconds.
In this standardized workshop,
a zongzi needs to go through
36 procedures before it's finished.
Every working day,
more than 1 million zongzi are produced.
This ancient staple food
is showcasing a new look in this era.
The charisma of hand-made zongzi
remains.
These young workers are using
the temperature of their hands
to protect the life of traditional food.
From agricultural civilization to industrial civilization,
the progress of technologies
has made zongzi no longer confined
to areas or time.
But for Chinese people,
making proper food
for a particular season
means the continuation
of a traditional lifestyle.
When late rice is ripe,
it's time for Ningbo people to make rice cakes.
For 5-year-old Ningning,
the fun game is
to follow her great grandma making rice cakes.
Ningning
How beautiful!
It's beautiful, right?
Jingtou Village faces the sea in three directions.
Gu is the biggest family name in the village.
Ningbo, Zhejiang
With his forefathers living here for generations,
Gu Shengzai is already 78 years old.
(Gu Shengzai)
Madame Gu married to this place
more than half a century ago.
She has four children
and many grandchildren
(Ou Qiuxia)
She is now taking care
of her great grandchildren.
Rice cake is a traditional food that Ningbo people make
to celebrate the Spring Festival.
Ningbo rice cake is made
with the fresh late rice.
Dipping,
grinding,
steaming
and pounding,
the molecules of rice get restructured
and the taste gets improved.
After pounding the rice flour dough,
people need to knead it.
A most ordinary strip rice cake
is made.
In the past, families in Ningbo
make nearly 50 kilograms of rice cakes before the Spring Festival.
They'll preserve them properly
and eat them throughout a whole year.
When going to work in the field,
Ningbo people eat rice cakes as their staple food.
It saves them time.
Rice cakes with vegetables
can fill one's stomach
and also be a tasty dish.
Portunid crabs
give the bland rice cakes
a unique flavor.
The kitchen of the Gu family is filled with steam.
The fragrance of food floats.
The Spring Festival is around the corner.
The young people made their appointment
to return to the village from the city.
The children have formed
their own families.
Four generations of the
family gather together.
Such occasions only happen two or three times a year.
The senior couple is very happy.
Among the diverse dishes on the table,
there must be rice cakes,
their favorite food.
Their children have grown up.
The senior couple seldom makes rice cakes now.
They still adopt
the traditional method.
Here,
making rice cakes is a ceremonious event.
Neighbors would come
to help on these occasions.
Local people also call rice cakes "tuanzi",
meaning reunion.
The grandma mingles the wormwood, which she stored up in spring,
into the steamed rice flour dough.
Green rice cakes
are made after pounding.
The just-made rice cakes
are soft and tender.
Spread the golden pollen pini upon them
That adds a light but long-lasting fragrance of grass,
One can never resist against the delicacy.
When Ningning grows up,
she might not be able to remember how rice cakes are made.
But the tender but elastic mouthfeel,
and the taste of the family,
would always stay in her memory.
After a short family gathering,
the young people return to their homes in the city,
bringing the rice cakes
the senior couple of Gu made.
Beijing
For Chinese people,
the Spring Festival is an occasion of family gathering.
Bai Bo spent the Spring Festival of 2012
with his family in Beijing.
Bai Bo
Bai Bo grew up in Shanxi.
He stayed in Beijing after college graduation.
He invited his parents and his parents-in-law to Beijing
to spend the Spring Festival together.
This is the first time
in the past decade.
If you always eat something in your childhood,
the taste of it would stay with you.
You'll never easily forget it.
The best food my mother makes
is braised noodles.
I can't elaborate on how tasty the noodles are.
In fact, it's easy to make them.
But as long as it's made by my mother,
I feel it tastes so delicious.
Bai Bo has twin daughters who are 5 years old.
Their nicknames are Jixiang and Ruyi.
As a professional cameraman,
Bai works with different crews everywhere.
His two daughters live with the grandparents.
It's only
during the Spring Festival
that the daughters can reunite
with their father.
What's your favorite food?
Jiaozi
Why jiaozi?
Vegetable stuffing
I can have eight.
Eight? What about you?
You can also have eight.
Then why you're fat but you're slim?
Place stuffing into a ready flour skin
and wrap it into the shape of a crescent,
a simple but special jiaozi
is made.
Jiaozi means the end and beginning of time.
No matter how the past year is like,
eating jiaozi is a must
at the year-end Spring Festival.
Dainties of any kind cannot replace jiaozi.
I received traditional family education
during my childhood.
When I was small,
I remember my grandma
making jiaozi
with diverse stuffing.
When I saw jiaozi
being boiled in the pot,
I found it a busy and joyful scene.
It symbolizes family reunion.
When a lot of food have been put
onto the production lines for manufacturing,
the Chinese people,
who treasure the concept of family the most
in the world,
repeat the same things
every year
at their homes.
When you grow up,
will you make jiaozi for grandparents?
You two make jiaozi for us, ok?
In the traditional family concept,
the Chinese pass on things from generation to generation.
When I inherited from my parents,
I would pass on them to my kids.
These jiaozi
would be like a seed
planted in their souls.
No matter where they go,
how far they go,
they can always remember
the delicacies their parents
have made for them.
It's a memory of food
that generations of Chinese
have passed on.
For Baibo and his family,
this is the happiest moment
in a year.
In fact, on this night,
it doesn't matter what they eat.
In the mind of the Chinese,
nothing is more important
than being together with their family.
This is all their hope.
This is how the Chinese people are like.
This is the tradition of the Chinese.
This is the story about staple food for the Chinese. �