This week on Sinica: On my final two days in Shaxi in Yunnan, Chris Thomas and Stephanie Li, the hosts of the marvelous YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified, joined me for some cooking and lots of chatting about food! We recorded this show together and focus our conversation on their heroic attempt at a taxonomy of different Chinese cuisines. We don't talk about all 63 that they identify, but we do get into their

04:31 - Flavors of Yunnan 

08:44 - On balancing between the “exotic” and “normal” China 

11:53 - The origin story behind “Chinese Cooking Demystified”

14:56 - The Breath of the Wok (Wok Hei, 鑊氣 / huo6 hei3)

21:05 - A Comprehensive Taxonomy on Chinese Cuisine 

32:25 - Correlations between dialects and cuisine 

37:15 - Efforts behind the work

39:09 - Promoting local specialties

44:23 - Chinese identity and food trends

52:30 - "Minority" cuisine in Yunnan

01:00:52 - Yunnan cuisine and the Chinese hipster generation

01:05:52 - Dali dish recommendations

Recommendations: 

Chris & Steph: Shunde Lao Baby, Pin Nuo, Lao Dongbei

Kaiser: Taking time off to do something you love!

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