ABSTRACT
Han Yii, quoted above, was an eighth century statesman, philosopher, and poet who was banished to what today is Kwangtung. His attitude was one of willingness to try southern cooking, to experience its different tastes. In their hearth in North China, the ancient Chinese seem to have used a quite limited range of spices and flavorings, their diet less interesting than later, when southern contributions were greater. Judging from textual evidence, the most important spices and flavorings of the Chou Period were sour plums and salt, vinegar of some sort, meat sauce, fagara (Zanthoxylum spp.), cinnamon, and, near the end of the period, probably soy sauce as well (K. C. Chang, 1977b: 30-31). Starting in Ch’in and Han times,
conquest of the south and expansion of trade contacts with Southeast Asia and India brought a much greater range of spices and flavorings into use. For T’ang China, one reads (Schafer, 1967: 193-98; 1977: 91-92, 109-13) of an impressive assemblage of spices and flavorings, among them fagara, evodia (Evodia officinalis), Chinese or herbaceous cardamom (Amomum globosum), black or bitter cardamom (Amomum amarum), true cardamom (Elettaria car damom), lesser galangal (Alpinia officinarum), Mioga ginger (Zingiber mioga), nutmeg, cassia or Chinese cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia), coriander, cloves, sweet basil, mustard seed, licorice,1 spring onion, dill, turmeric (Curcuma longa) or zedoary (Curcuma zedoaria), and
2 3ginseng (Panax ginseng). * To fully appreciate that variety, one must note that South China, along with Malaysia and
India, is one of the three great centers of spice plant domestication in eastern and southern Asia. Among the plants credited to South China by most botanists are cassia and certain types of fagara. Some botanists also suggest an origin or possible origin there of ginger (Zingiber officinale), star anise (Illicium verum), turmeric, zedoary, false cardamom (Amomum xanthoides), or lesser galangal (Newcomb, 1963; I. H. Burkill, 1966; Mathon, 1981; Zeven and de Wet, 1982). Certainty about origins is hindered not only by a paucity of historical records, but by the fact that some of the above spice plants occur wild in more than one center. Some may have been domesticated in a single center, others in more that one. There has, moreover, been trade by sea and land among the three centers since antiquity, and an exchange not just of spices but of spice plants as well. Monosodium glutamate, that tasteless flavor-enhancer, is ubiquitous today in Chinese cuisine at home and abroad, but it first came into large-scale production in Japan early in this century; thus in most of Chinese history, the quality of a dish could not be disguised by liberal additions of MSG, but relied on the nature and quality of its ingredients, including spices and flavorings, and the cook’s skill and methods of preparation.4
