A perfect Chinese meal must have the balance famous Four Natures and Five Tastes. Four natures refer to the hot, the warm, the cool, and the cold while Five tastes refer to pungent, sweet, bitter, sour, and salty.
People in China eat more noodles and dumplings because China is better suited to growing wheat and other grains besides rice. While they may have eaten relatively little rice in the past, it is quite common now that China has a developed infrastructure system and it's easy to ship commodities throughout the country.
The Chinese have been wielding chopsticks since at least 1200 B.C., and by A.D. 500 the slender batons had swept the Asian continent from Vietnam to Japan. From their humble beginnings as cooking utensils to paper-wrapped bamboo sets at the sushi counter, there’s more to chopsticks than meets the eye. Throughout history, chopsticks have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with another staple of Asian cuisine: rice. Naturally, eating with chopsticks lends itself to some types of food more than others. At first glance, you’d think that rice wouldn’t make the cut, but in Asia most rice is of the short- or medium-grain variety. The starches in these rices create a cooked product that is gummy and clumpy, unlike the fluffy and distinct grains of Western long-grain rice. As chopsticks come together to lift steaming bundles of sticky rice, it’s a match made in heaven.
The seating at a Chinese dinner table will look like the image above. At a Chinese dinner table there will be the same gender every second seat. (Explain)
Famous food in China:
Sweet and sour pork
Gong bao chicken
Ma po tofu
Wontons
Dumplings
Chow Mein
Peking roasted duck
Spring rolls
Noodles
