China's long history, vast territory and extensive contact with other nations and cultures have given birth to the distinctive Chinese culinary art. With several thousand years of creative and accumulative efforts, the Chinese cuisines have become increasingly popular among more and more overseas gourmets, virtually functioning as an envoy of friendship in China's cultural exchanges with foreign countries.

Modern China enjoys a world wide reputations as the ‘kingdom of cuisine'. The exquisite Chinese culinary art, regarded indisputably as one if the world's finest culinary traditions, has prevailed all over the world. The nearly endless variety of natural ingredients and cooking methods employed in Chinese cuisine stand out unequaled in the world, which may very well account for the universal popularity of Chinese restaurants and Chinese cuisine overseas.

The three essential factors, by which Chinese cooking is judged, are known as color, aroma and taste. The color of Chinese food, the first of these factors which is so evident in a Chinese banquet, includes the layout and design of the dishes, best exemplified in particular by the large elaborately-prepared cold dishes served at the beginning of the dinner. Aroma implies more than what's one nose can detect directly, it also includes the freshness of the raw materials used and the blending of seasoning. Taste is the art of proper seasoning, though it also involves the texture of the food and fine slicing skills. These three factors are achieved by the careful coordination of a series of delicate activities, including selecting ingredients, cutting, mixing flavours, timing the cooking, controlling the heat and finally, laying out the food on the plate for the table.

If you hear someone say that I love Chinese food, he or she is taking too much for granted. In fact, there is no such simple thing as the so-called ‘Chinese food'. A more accurate statement in this instance should be such that expresses one's preference for a particular Chinese cuisine or a particular regional way of cooking. With a territory as large and a history as long and complex as China's, it is inevitable that distinct regional differences in cuisine have involved over the course of centuries. Numerous factors are involved in this diction, geography, climate, transportation, migration, and influence from overseas cultures, etc.

Although there is no agreement on the precise number of Chinese regional cuisines, those concerned with such matters agree that the four principal culinary regions are Shandong, Sichuan, Canton, and Yangzhou. It should be pointed out that these designations are not hard and fast geographical boundaries. Beijing food, for example, falls within the realm of Shandong cooking, but includes some Sichuan dishes and Mongolian-influenced specialties, while the cuisine of the entire densely populated Yangtze River Delta area, including Wuxi, Suzhou, Shanghai, and Hangzhou dishes, falls under the category of Yangzhou cuisine. All over China, local delicacies and foods unique to various ethnic groups are numerous. According to some others, the characteristic flavours of China's eight cuisines can be summed up as the light southern cuisines, and the salty northern cuisines, the sweet easterns, and the spicy westerns.

Apart from the Han, China also has 55 minority ethnic groups whose living habits vary greatly. Living on the grassland and engaging in herding and hunting, the Mongolians are call the ‘ethnic group on the horseback'. Their typical food, like Roast Whole Lamb, Roast Lamb Leg, Mutton Eaten with Fingers and Milky Tea, is well known both inside and outside China . The Tibetan dwells on the roof of the world. Due to high altitude, water's boiling point is too low to cook highland barley. So they bake the barley and grind it into flour to make a special staple named Zanba. The minorities living in muggy zones in southwest China flavor sour, bitter and spicy food, such as Roast fish Wrapped in Lemongrass created by the Dai people in Yunnan Province . Apart from adding ingredients like ginger and pepper, they wrap the fish with lemongrass and then grill it on a fire.