Food from the rest of China

Did you know that 100 million people in China are minorities? There are 55 tribal groups in the country who are not ethnic Chinese. That means there are 100 million in China who probably don’t eat all that much Chinese food. NPR’s Kitchen Window has an interesting feature about these ethnic groups and their foods, based on the book Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Deep-fried cheese, crepes and carrot salad don’t sound like Chinese food. But they are.

Fried cheese momos are a standard snack in Tibet, two-layer crepes are eaten by the Hui people in Qinghai province, and dai carrot salad is from the southern Yunnan city of Jinghong.

These are some of the foods of the 55 tribal groups called “minority peoples” by the Beijing government. These tribes make up 8 percent of China’s population, which amounts to more than 100 million people.

Although these communities are not ethnically Chinese, they have lived on land that is now part of China for centuries. This includes Inner Mongolia, the western Silk Road region of Xinjiang and other lands outside central China’s westernized cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

The story includes recipes for dai carrot salad and cheese momos.

Related posts:

1. Romancing the food in Southeast Asia ...
2. The internet and culture in China ...
3. Appalachian comfort food ...