Maybe I'll disappoint you, but in China you have to try very hard to find a catering establishment where snakes, lizards, rats, crocodile meat, monkey brains or silkworm larvae are served. It will be very difficult for a typical tourist to visit such a restaurant, someone from the local should specially take you there, and then he will do it only to surprise the foreigner and to marvel himself, as modern Chinese do not consume such food, as well as we we do not eat bear or venison every day.

The maximum that you can stumble upon as a tourist trip to China is chicken eggs cooked in tea-cheddar, which look disgusting, in a Chinese corner on the buffet line at breakfast in your hotel, silt and turtle soup in one of the tourist restaurants. So do not think about anything like this, but enjoy truly unique flavors of traditional Chinese cuisine. In China, there are eight main regional cuisines:

Cuisine Lu

Distributed in Shandong Province in the east of China. The basis of this cuisine is seafood, and it differs from all other cuisines variety of different soups. Specialty dishes that are worth trying - exquisite and expensive dishes from swallows' nests, which were served only to the imperial table. Sea trepang with celery and shrimp is a dish that not everyone can afford.

Cuisine Zhuan

Distributed in Sichuan province in southwest China. The peculiarity of the cuisine is the severity of the dishes. The famous hot-pot (hot samovar) is from here. A specialty is considered to be a mafo tofu

Cuisine Yue

Distributed in Guangdong province in the south of China. A cuisine famous far beyond China, in fact, thanks to the numerous people from Canton who opened Chinese restaurants in different parts of the world.

For foreigners it is Cantonese cuisine that embodies the Chinese cuisine as a whole. The cuisine of Yue is distinguished by a variety of sauces, almost all of which have a sweetish taste, the most famous - of course, sweet and sour sauce, and that here in the literal sense of eating everything that moves. Specialty dish - pork in sweet and sour sauce.

Kitchen Su

Distributed in Jiangsu Province in the east of China. The province of Jiangsu is located on the coast of the Yellow Sea, here the great Yangtze River flows, which is why the basis of this cuisine is seafood and river fish, it features a variety of soups. It is worth noting that the kitchen Su - one of the oldest cuisines in China with a thousand-year history. The specialty is carp with red orange sauce. This dish has a sweet and sour taste so popular with both Chinese and foreign people

Cuisine Ming

Distributed in Fujian province in the south of China . The kitchen uses a lot of different delicacies, very often wine is added to the dishes . Specialty dish - fotyaotsyan - Buddha flying over the wall .The composition of dishes includes the following products: shark fin, shark's mouth, the fish swim bladder, abalone, squid, marine sea cucumber, chicken breast, slices of duck meat, pork tripe, pork shank, ground ham, leg of lamb, dried scallop, winter bamboo shoots, Chinese mushrooms (Syangu) . Their seasoned and cook for a couple alone, and then placed in a ceramic jug with a narrow neck, add the wine and a dozen boiled eggs pigeon . pitcher closed and put on high heat, then cook for a while slowly m fire without boiling added 100 -150 . c . local liquor and then left another 5 minutes . After this meal to be served .

Kitchen Jae extended in Zhejiang Province in the east of China. The basis of the cuisine consists of dishes from poultry and sea and river fish, almost all dishes of this cuisine are added the roots of bamboo. Signature dish - chicken ( "chicken-rogue", Mandarin - "tszyaohua chi"), a dish wrapped in lotus leaves and coated alumina

Cuisine Xiang Distributed in Hunan Province in southern China.. It is considered to be the most economical cuisine in China, as here a lot of vegetables are used, which are deliberately left half-baked in cooking, and often compared to Indian food by the variety of seasonings added. The specialty is the head of a fish with pepper (a very spicy dish, however it is very popular)

Cuisine Hui

Distributed in Anhui province in the north of China. A special feature of the kitchen is the use of natural products and medicinal herbs in cooking. Signature dish - cooked civet (a rare genus of mammals)

If we talk about the popular side dishes in China - in the south of the country is mainly rice, and in the north - noodles and flour products. From desserts, try apples, bananas or pumpkin baked in caramel