In just five months, Semiofest will be coming to Shanghai!
This city is known as one of the biggest cities in China and a global financial center. But do you really know Shanghai? What’s the city’s story besides being another metropolis? In the next few months, we’ll bring you to a virtual culture tour to explore our amazing city – Shanghai.
Last time, we gave a brief introduction of Shanghai’s history and culture background. This time we are going to bring you some delicious taste of Shanghai and introduce you to the Shanghai cuisine.
Shanghai cuisine, sometimes known as Hu cuisine, is a popular style of Chinese food. Shanghai’s cuisine is known in China as Benbang Cuisine and Haipai Cuisine.
- Benbang Cuisine, meaning ‘local cuisine’, is the traditional family style cuisine that appeared in Shanghai over 100 years ago. It always has a great flavor and a bright color derived from the oil and soybean sauce.
- Haipai Cuisine, meaning ‘all-embracing cuisine’, absorbs the advantages of food from other regions of China and even western food, and then adapts them to suit local tastes.
The use of sugar is another uniqueness found in Shanghainese cuisine and, especially when used proportionally with soy sauce, the taste created is not so much sweet but rather savoury. Visitors are often surprised when the “secret ingredient” was revealed by local Shanghainese.
The following dishes are considered traditional dishes to Shanghai:
Here is a fun video about Shanghai delicacy from Air New Zealand.
Please stay tuned for our next post-Shanghai 103: Chinese New Year