Differences in food culture between the United Kingdom and China .
Traditional Chinese custom is to plant food diet. Staple foods are grains, complementary foods were vegetables, plus a small amount of meat. Main reasons for the formation of this practice is to agricultural production as a major economic mode of production in China. Dominated by hot foods, cooked food, is also characteristic of Chinese eating customs. Westerners culture of adhering to the nomadic, seafaring nation ancestry, mainly for fishing and hunting, breeding, collection, planted to supplement, more fresh veg, eat, wear, are taken from the animals. Chinese eating customs of another major feature is the use of chopsticks. But people of the United Kingdom make a carving knife, fork and the West as the main eating utensils, left hand holding the fork and knife in your right hand, will cut food down, you can use the fork into the mouth.
China is a beauty-diet concept. Chinese cuisine has its own unique charm , its taste is the key. And delicious produce, is to reconcile, to make the food taste, cooked after heating, combined with ingredients and excipients and harmonic taste of spices, interwoven integration coordination together, making them complement each other, mutual penetration, perfect harmony, you have me, I have in you. Pay attention to the harmonic beauty of Chinese cooking, where is the art of Chinese cooking essentials. Shape and color of the dish is something external, but taste is something intrinsic, inherent and not deliberately modified appearance, flavor of the dish without excessive display shape and color of the dish, this is the most important manifestation of China's view of beauty-diet. Compared with Chinese food, The United Kingdom diet is a rational diet concept. The United Kingdom culinary emphasis on nutrition at the expense of flavor in comparison, the Chinese food tends to art, color, smell and taste dishes of external-oriented performance; The United Kingdom diet not as deep as Chinese cultural tradition, and therefore will not focus on the art, and more from the nutritional point of view to consider the structure of food and food ingredients.
In China, any dinners, whatever the purpose, there was only one form is the common masses of sat around, sharing one seat. Banquet round table, which formally created an atmosphere of solidarity, courtesy, and common interest. Delicacies in the center of a table, it is a table of the objects of human appreciation and tasting, and a table of emotional communication medium. Mutual toast, vegetables, and advised people food, in front of beautiful things, embodies mutual respect between people, courtesy of virtue. Although from a health point of view, this kind of diet with notable deficiencies, but it is in our national "happy reunion" General mindset. The United Kingdom on Wed, despite the food and wine is very important, but in fact it was as a foil. Banquet: key social, with the neighbor conversation between guests, achieve the purpose of companionship. If the friendship between the party and dance analogy, so it can be said that Chinese-style feast like line dance and The United Kingdom banquet like ballroom dancing for men and women.
It is believed that there are some reasons for the differences in food culture between China and the United Kingdom. First, what cultural variants affect diet differences . Second,traditional culture in social development, differences in thinking, customs and other aspects of life, creating a differences in Chinese and Western food culture. Third, Differences in food Culture between China and the United Kingdom were influenced by their lifestyle and their rhythms of life. In the West, the fast pace of life and stress, life of machinery led to a diet of single sex, people pay attention to the shortcut way to eat, don't focus on food, tasty or not, KFC and McDonald's is undoubtedly the most representative Western-style fast food. In contrast, people of the country's pace of life is not quickly, most people like to sit with family and friends together to taste the pleasures of eating slowly. In a word , Through the analysis of differences in diet study, we can effectively avoid arising from communication due to cultural differences between the two sides did not understand, or misunderstood.