Chinese cuisine comprises cuisines originating from China, as well as from Chinese people from other parts of the world. Because of the Chinese diaspora and the historical power of the country, Chinese cuisine has profoundly influenced many other cuisines in Asia and beyond, with modifications made to cater to local palates. Chinese food staples such as rice, soy sauce, noodles, tea, chili oil, and tofu, and utensils such as chopsticks and the wok, can now be found worldwide.
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern Myanmar. Tea is also made, but rarely, from the leaves of Camellia taliensis. After plain water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. There are many different types of tea; some have a cooling, slightly bitter, and astringent flavour, while others have profiles that include sweet, nutty, floral, or grassy notes. Tea has a stimulating effect in humans, primarily due to its caffeine content.
Herbal teas, technically known as herbal infusions, and less commonly called tisanes, are beverages made from the infusion or decoction of herbs, spices, or other plant material in hot water. Often herb tea, or the plain term tea, is used as a reference to all sorts of herbal teas. Many herbs used in teas/tisanes are also used in herbal medicine and in folk medicine.
Tapioca is a starch extracted from the tubers of the cassava plant, a species native to the North and Northeast regions of Brazil, but whose use is now spread throughout South America. It is a perennial shrub adapted to the hot conditions of tropical lowlands. Cassava copes better with poor soils than many other food plants.
Chrysanthemums, sometimes called mums or chrysanths, are flowering plants of the genus Chrysanthemum in the family Asteraceae. They are native to East Asia and northeastern Europe. Most species originate from East Asia, and the center of diversity is in China. Countless horticultural varieties and cultivars exist.
Chinese teas can be classified into six distinctive categories: white, green, yellow, oolong, black and post-fermented. Others add categories for scented and compressed teas. All of these come from varieties of the Camellia sinensis plant. Most Chinese teas are cultivated and consumed in China. It is commonly available in Chinese restaurants and grocery shops worldwide. Green tea is the most common type of tea consumed in China.
Gunpowder tea is a form of tea in which each leaf has been individually rolled into a small pellet. Its English name comes either from some resemblance of the pellets to gunpowder, or from a phrase in Chinese that phonetically resembles the word "gunpowder". This rolling method of shaping tea is most often applied either to green tea or to oolong tea.
Tea culture is how tea is made and consumed, how people interact with tea, and the aesthetics surrounding tea drinking.
Tea blending is the act of blending different teas to produce a final product that differs in flavor from the original tea used. This occurs chiefly with black tea, which is blended to make most tea bags, but it can also occur with such teas as Pu-erh, where leaves are blended from different regions before being compressed. The most prominent type of tea blending is commercial tea blending, which is used to ensure consistency of a batch on a mass scale so that any variations between different batches and seasons of tea production do not affect the final product. Commercially, it is considered important that any batch of a particular blend must taste the same as the previous batch, so a consumer will not be able to detect a difference in flavor from one purchase to the next.
Chinese patent medicine are herbal medicines in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), modernized into a ready-to-use form such as tablets, oral solutions or dry suspensions, as opposed to herbs that require cooking.
Pseudostellaria heterophylla, known commonly as hai er shen, tai zi shen, and false starwort, is an adaptogen in the family Caryophyllaceae that is used in Chinese medicine and herbalism to tonify the qi and generate yin fluids. It is known as the "ginseng of the lungs". The plant is a low growing plant of the pink family that is grown in Southern China in the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Shanxi.
Scaphium affine is a tree species in the family Malvaceae, subfamily Sterculioideae .The species is endemic to mainland Southeast Asia, and no subspecies are recognized in the Catalogue of Life.
Clitoria ternatea, commonly known as Asian pigeonwings, bluebellvine, blue pea, butterfly pea, cordofan pea or Darwin pea, is a plant species belonging to the family Fabaceae, endemic and native to the Indonesian island of Ternate. In Indian ayurveda it is commonly known by the name Aparajita. It is also sometimes confused in India with Convolvulus prostratus(Convolvulus pluricaulis).
Aiyu jelly, known in Amoy Hokkien as ogio, and as ice jelly in Singapore, is a jelly made from the gel from the seeds of the awkeotsang creeping fig found in Taiwan and East Asian countries of the same climates and latitudes. The jelly is not commonly made or found outside of Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore, though it can be bought fresh in specialty stores in Japan and canned in Chinatowns. It is also used in Taiwanese cuisine.
Arrowroot tea, also called kudzu tea, is a traditional East Asian tea made from East Asian arrowroot, a type of kudzu.
Xia Sang Ju, also spelled xiasangju, is a kind of Chinese herbal drink made by soups cooked from dried leaves of Heal-all and White mulberry, as well as a kind of dried yellow sweet chrysanthemum. Such a drink originated from a famous herbal-drink formula in Qing dynasty called Sang Ju drink (桑菊飲) for expelling an epidemic spread in East China in 1814. It is easily available in East Asia or Asian groceries as a box of ready-to-drink small packets.
Ginger tea is a herbal beverage that is made from ginger root. It has a long history as a traditional herbal medicine in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and West Asia.
Butterfly pea flower tea, commonly known as blue tea, is a caffeine-free herbal tea, or tisane, beverage made from a decoction or infusion of the flower petals or whole flower of the Clitoria ternatea plant. Clitoria ternatea is also known as butterfly pea, blue pea, Aprajita, Cordofan pea, Blue Tea Flowers or Asian pigeonwings.
Maehwa-cha or plum blossom tea is a traditional Korean tea made by infusing dried flowers of Korean plum in hot water. During the early spring, half-open buds of plum blossoms are picked, dried, and preserved in honey. It is served, with ten flowers in a teapot and by pouring 50 millilitres of hot water. The tea can be enjoyed after one to two minutes of steeping.
The Iroquois use a wide variety of medicinal plants, including quinine, chamomile, ipecac, and a form of penicillin.
