China has a large number of Chinese dishes, a wide range of flavors, and complex cooking methods, which are     1     (two) to none in the world. For a long time, due to the influence of the local environment, customs and dietary habits, dishes from all over China     2     (form) various genres with local flavor characteristics.    3     is known to all is the “eight major cuisines” in China, with the four major cuisines of Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Sichuan forming     4    (early), and later the other four.

Sichuan cuisine has a variety of flavors,     5    (include) spicy, sour, tingling, fishy, and strange. Sichuan cuisine is also the largest folk cuisine. Among the top 20 dishes, Sichuan cuisine occupies half of the seats, and “Sichuan Hot Pot” ranks first among    6    thousands of dishes selected by the Data Journalism Lab.

The second and third place are dominated by two traditional Hangzhou dishes,    7    (name) Dongpo Meat and West Lake Vinegar Fish. Are the 3 hottest dishes in each of the “Big Eight Cuisine” dishes the same     8    the results in your mind?

The “eight major cuisines” have their own systems, which represent different customs and cultural characteristics of different places, but in the final analysis    9    (be) Chinese people’s attention and love for “eating”. Diet has become a way of life and a fashion that promotes     10    (consume) and drives the development of the country’s catering industry.

The tea    1    has delighted and fascinated the world for millennia has finally received top-level    2     (globe) recognition as a shared cultural treasure of mankind.

Traditional tea processing techniques and their associated social practices in China    3    (be) added to UNESC’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on Tuesday, Nov. 29th.

The status was conferred by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, hosted in Rabat, Morocco. It consists    4    knowledge, skills and practices concerning management of tea plantations, picking of tea leaves, and the processing, drinking and sharing of tea.

According to UNESCO, in China traditional tea processing techniques are    5    (close) associated with geographical location and natural environment. The techniques are mainly found in the provinces and autonomous regions,    6    (include) Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui, Hubei, Henan, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. Associated social practices, however, are spread throughout the country and    7    (share) by multiple ethnic groups.

Over 2,000 tea    8    (variety), mainly in six categories-green, black, yellow, oolong, white and dark, are grown in China.

Tea-related customs are not only found across the country,    9    influenced the rest of the world through the ancient Silk Road and trade routes.

As a document from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to UNESCO explained, tea is ubiquitous in Chinese people’s daily life. Steeped or boiled tea is served in homes, workplaces, tea houses, restaurants, temples and used as     10    important medium for communication in socializing and ceremonies.

4 . Advice for Cooking on a Tight Schedule

From my experience, there are three main reasons why people don’t cook more often: ability, money, and time.

    1    Money is a topic that I’ll talk about another day. So today I want to give you some advice about how to make the most of the time in the kitchen. Here are three tips for great cooking on a tight schedule:

Think ahead. I usually think cooking is a pain when I’m already hungry and there is nothing ready to eat. So think ahead of the coming week. When will you have time to cook? Do you have the right materials already?    2    

Make your time worth it. When you do find time to cook a meal, make the most of it and save yourself time later on. Are you making one loaf of bread?    3    It takes around the same amount of time to make more of something. So save yourself the effort for a future meal.

    4    This may surprise you, but one of the best ways to make cooking worth your time is experimentation. It gives you the chance to hit upon new ideas and recipes that can work well. The more you learn and the more you try, the more ability you have to take control of your food and your schedule.

Hopefully that gives you a good start.    5    And don’t let a busy schedule disappoint you and stop you from making some great changes in your life!

Dumplings are one of the Chinese people’s favorite traditional    1    (dish). According to    2    ancient Chinese legend, dumplings were first made by the medical saint-Zhang Zhongjing. There are three steps    3    (involve) in making dumplings: first, make dumpling wrappers(饺皮)out of dumpling flour; second, prepare the dumpling stuffing(馅); finally, make dumplings and boil    4     (they). With thin and elastic dough skin, fresh and tender stuffing, delicious taste, and unique shapes, dumplings    5     (be) worth eating hundreds of times. There’s an old    6    (say)that claims, “Nothing could be more delicious     7    dumplings”. During the Spring Festival and other holidays, or when treating relatives and friends, Chinese people prefer    8    (follow) the custom of eating dumplings. To Chinese    9     (people) who show high reverence(尊敬)for family love, having dumplings at the moment when the old year is replaced by the new is a    10    (meaning) part of bidding farewell to the old and greeting the new year.

10 . When you think of Chinese food in the US, fried rice, or General Tso’s chicken may first come to mind. But a new museum exhibition in New York City is trying to expand visitors’ palates (味蕾). It features stories of famous cooks like Martin Yan and home cooks whose food represents 18 different regional cooking styles of China.

“I think it’s unfair to just classify Chinese cooking as one,” says Kian Lam Kho, an organizer of “Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy: Stories of Chinese Food and Identity in America” at the Museum of Chinese in America. “Even with the same dish or same cuisine, every family has a different variation.” That’s why the organizers say if you want to taste the full range of Chinese cuisine in the US, you’ll need to go beyond restaurants and into home kitchens, which can play a central role in many immigrants’ lives.

“The kitchen itself is kind of a comfort when you come to a new country. That’s the one place where you set up as your home base, and you cook things that you remember from your past,” explains Audra Ang, another organizer.

One of the home cooks showcased in the exhibition is Ni Biying, 80, of Manhattan. She worked as a live-in babysitter for years before she could finally afford to rent a home with her own kitchen. These days, you can usually find her moving around her one-bedroom apartment as a sweet smell of vinegar and rice wine floats from her stove. For Ni, a small dinner for friends and family means preparing almost a dozen different dishes. She learned some of her techniques from her father, who made most of her family’s meals when she was a child. “I still miss the beef with stir-fried celery my father used to cook,” she says. And it’s the kind of comfort food that defines Chinese food for Ni.