Chinese Cuisine and Alchemy

When I read a book, I almost always have a notebook handy to write down unknown words to be looked up in a dictionary (I love vocabulary), compelling quotes, interesting topics to explore, and ideas inspired by the work. This is just a sampling of the type of topics that were inspired by The Years of Rice and Salt an alternate history book by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Chinese Cuisine Digested on Answers.com

The combined cuisines of China have often been compared to French cuisine as having made the greatest contribution to the world of food. Chinese cooking styles have been divided into five main regions: Southeastern (Canton), East Coast (Fukien), Northeastern (Peking-Shantung), Central (Honan) and Western (Szechuan-Hunan). Cantonese cuisine is famous for its meat roasting and grilling, fried rice, and bird's nest and shark's fin soup. The province of Fukien is noted for its multitudinous selection of soups and for its seafood dishes. The light, elegant Peking-Shantung style originated the famous peking duck, and is highly acclaimed for its subtle and artful use of seasonings. China's Honan province is the home of sweet-and-sour cooking, and the Szechuan-Hunan school is known for its hot, spicy dishes. Mandarin cooking and Shanghai cooking are not regional designations, but terms used to describe cooking styles. The word mandarin means "Chinese official," and mandarin cooking suggests an aristocratic cuisine that gleans the very finest elements from all the regions. Shanghai cooking refers to a cosmopolitan combination of many Chinese cooking styles.

---

Alchemy Demystified on Wikipedia

In the history of science, alchemy (Arabic: الكيمياء, al-kimia) refers to both an early form of the investigation of nature and an early philosophical and spiritual discipline, both combining elements of chemistry, metallurgy, physics, medicine, astrology, semiotics, mysticism, spiritualism, and art all as parts of one greater force. Alchemy has been practiced in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Persia, India, and China, in Classical Greece and Rome, in Muslim civilization, and then in Europe up to the 19th century—in a complex network of schools and philosophical systems spanning at least 2500 years.