Beijing cuisines offer a taste of China.

You may ask why? Well Beijing cuisine offers almost a taste of signature dishes everywhere in China.

This includes the famous Sichuan-Style Chili-Spiked crayfish and flaky flatbreads or even the Mongolian lamb and the dumplings.

Others have also stated that Beijing's Cuisine is known for its stubbornness like the residents who don't shy away from their favorite dishes.

I have been here for almost five months and was able to have tasted different cuisines some in Beijing while some in other provinces

22 years ago if you ask me, how does a Chinese dumpling taste I would laugh my head out because I have no idea what kind of food is that.

I was born and raised in my island home, Papua New Guinea, a country that lies north of Australia in the Pacific Ocean.

Since I was from a tropical country, we loved our traditional dishes such as creamed banana or taro with fish, or sweet potato and pork being roasted together from hot stones using an earth oven and the list goes on.

We were not exposed to eating Asian food because we were told it’s unhealthy and for Western food it was too expensive for an average family to even afford.

But you can say your own food taste better and I will not argue with that, yes nothing beats hometown delicacies.

I was told to try Beijing Cuisine before leaving home and I said I will not, one I don't know the name of the dish and two I don't know how to use chopsticks.

After arriving here I overcame by biggest fear of eating Chinese food and I started off with Beijing Kaoya (roast duck) I loved it.

The Chicken dumplings were somewhat delicious.

But as time moved along I came to realize that Beijing's cuisine or culinary traditions has been influenced with time.

This means that the style of cooking may have been brought in from other provinces to cook at the Imperial palace for the emperors and their families and officials.

Cooking and serving is just one part of the food culture in China.

When I first walked into one of the restaurants in Beijing back in March, I was surprised to see that there were no serving utensils found on the table where my friends and I were asked to seat.

The table was prepared with only napkins and chopsticks, in my head, how am I supposed to eat food with chopsticks.

But have come to realize that Chinese people encourage guests to eat using chopsticks in order to experience the Chinese food culture.

Chopsticks isn't the only thing I had problem with, they even brought us bowls to eat with, as for me bowls are meant to keep food for serving not eating.

You will also realise that it is not rude to sit in a Chinese restaurant and drink soup from the bowl or even lift the bowl to your mouth unlike some countries in the West and some parts of Asia.

Melisha Yafoi contributes to the article. The ideas expressed are the author's alone, and do not represent the position of our website.