How long is the history of cooking in China?

With the complete birth of China's unification, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty had the most complete diet management system in China at that time. Among the officials in charge of the daily affairs of the emperor, there are taiguan, tangguan and daoguan related to food activities. They are "main diet", "main cake bait" and "main rice selection" This is a huge bureaucratic system. The food expenses of the emperor and the harem are equivalent to the property of 20 thousand middle-class people in the Han Dynasty.

During this period, the spread of food culture in China intensified. Zhang Qian and others not only introduced products such as gourd, walnut, coriander, flax, carrot and pomegranate from the Western Regions, but also introduced products such as peaches, plums, apricots, pears, ginger, tea and food culture from the Central Plains to the Western Regions. Today, among the cultural relics unearthed from the Han tombs in the former Western Regions are wooden chopsticks from the Central Plains. One of China's traditional barbecue techniques, iron plate barbecue, also spread to Central Asia and West Asia through the Silk Road very early, and finally formed kebabs that local people like to eat.

Chang 'an in the Tang Dynasty was the center of world culture at that time, which provided convenience for the exchange and integration of various ethnic food cultures. Great changes have taken place in the traditional diet structure of the Hu Hanmin ethnic group. During the Han and Tang Dynasties, "eating meat and drinking cheese" began to become a common dietary feature of the Hu Hanmin ethnic group in the whole northern and northwestern regions.

We eat about 160 kinds of vegetables every day today. However, about half of the common vegetables in 100 are native to China and about half are imported from abroad. During the Han and Tang Dynasties, the Central Plains introduced many kinds of vegetables and fruits, such as alfalfa, spinach, Brassica, gourd, beans, garlic and coriander, grapes, almonds, watermelons and pomegranates, as well as spices such as pepper and sugar, through exchanges with ethnic minorities in the northwest. At the same time, the cooking methods of the western regions were also introduced to the Central Plains.