Favorite Asian Culture?

[Ed Anger]

And....*takes a drink*

[Valmy]

China was quite a diverse place before Mao.   

So you used the present tense to refer to a state of affairs 70 years in the past?

[CountDeMoney]

China was quite a diverse place before Mao.   

You mean it was a diverse place prior to the Pleistocene Age.  Numbnuts.

[HVC]

China was quite a diverse place before Mao.   

So you used the present tense to refer to a state of affairs 70 years in the past?

he's using the Dorsey method to age the diversity

[Queequeg]

If we are talking linguistics, then there's the obvious divide between the many mutually unintelligible dialects of China, in addition to Turkish, Mongol, Manchu, Tibetan, and the various other languages of the SW. 

If we are talking geography, you have everything from the Gobi to the jungles of Yunnan.

If we are talking in terms of physical anthropology (unlikely) there is a pretty wide diversity, from North Chinese to South Chinese to Tibetan to half-Caucasian Uighurs. 

If we are talking religiously, there is Islam, the extremely diverse variation of Chinese religion, Buddhism, the Kaifeng Jews, local Christians. 

If we are talking cuisine, similarly there is a lot of diversity.

I think it is a pretty diverse place by just about any metric.  People with Western European backgrounds are just more likely to either be ignorant of the nation, or else believe that because the majority of Chinese have long identified as "Han" that there isn't a huge amount of diversity within that group. 

[Queequeg]

China was quite a diverse place before Mao.   

So you used the present tense to refer to a state of affairs 70 years in the past?

It was one of the most traumatic events in 20th Century history.  Between that, the Japanese and industrialization it's a wonder there is as much as there is. 

Besides, this happens everywhere.  If you were to go to 17th Century France there'd be far more local diversity then than there is today. 

[Neil]

Wait, is diversity a good thing?  Our ancestors just spent the last thousand or so years trying to stamp it out.

[Jacob]

You mean it was a diverse place prior to the Pleistocene Age.  Numbnuts.

What do you know about Chinese diversity?

[Valmy]

Uighurs4eva!

[Sheilbh]

Uighurs4eva!

I live near an unbelievably good Uighur restaurant

[Queequeg]

What's Uighur food like?

[Sheilbh]

Chinese food but with lots spices and some techniques from Central Asia/Middle East.

So for example do a lamb shish which is tiny bits of lamb, alternating with melting lamb fat spiced heavily with cumin and lightly with chilli. There's also a lamb shish noodle which is a different sort of shish, again it's heavy on the cumin but there's this slow burning intense heat to the chilli on the dry shish which you stir through the hand-pulled noodles so they aren't glooping in sauce but lightly coated in the meaty spiced coating of the lamb. I'm always a bit dubious about cumin because I think it can easily destroy other flavours and not add enough on its own, but it's incredible here.

There's also the wonderfully titled 'big plate chicken' (or if there's fewer than four of you 'medium plate chicken'). Which is a huge stew pot of light but warming chilli broth and some veg, potatoes (in a stew! in a Chinese restaurant!) and chicken on the bone. You pick those bits out with your chopsticks and then they bring a big bowl of hand-pulled noodles and pour it into the broth for you to dish up.

And some beautiful veg side dishes: cold smacked cucumber with chilli and garlic, and an intensely spicy chilli cabbage dish. Wonderfully they're also on the liberal end of the Muslim spectrum because they do (wonderful) home-made pork and chive dumplings every day (£3.50 for 10) and a twice cooked pork which seems Sichaun-y in flavour to me.

It's one of my favourite restaurants and has never cost more than £15 for food.

More generally a big trend in London over the last five-ten years has been a regionalisation of Chinese and Indian restaurants. We're starting to realise that talking about either of those types of food is like talking about 'European' food. I've read that the large increase in Mainland Chinese students and immigrants also means there's been a shift from Cantonese food which is what Chinese always used to mean in England. For a casual eater like me it's amazing though

[Queequeg]

That sounds completely, totally amazing.  And yeah, the same thing is happening in New York and to a lesser extent Chicago. 

[Queequeg]

I'm actually very surprised by how Chinese and un-Central Asian that sounds. 

[Norgy]

Can anyone help me with the name of the clay pot often used to cook Chinese dishes in the oven?