As the saying goes, people take food as their heaven. When something can’t be solved, just treat yourself with one meal, or two if that’s not enough. China has a long-standing and well-established food culture; even international friends know how delicious Chinese foods are! Different regions have cultivated different types of cuisines, Bashu's spicy, Huaiyang’s original flavor, Kantonese’s wide range of materials and ingredients... With a close look, you’ll see the great appearance of food, from afar, you’ll find the cultural origin behind the cuisine. What remains unchanged is the Chinese taste.

A Bite of China

A Bite of China is a food documentary directed by Chen Xiaoqing and produced by CCTV. It revolves around the Chinese people’s pursuit of better cuisine and life, and connects with specific character stories to tell the food ecology of China. There are currently three seasons.

Season 1: In the previous video materials, Chinese cuisine is more of a “cooking master” or “gourmet celebrity”, demonstrating its “superb cooking skills” and “complex cooking process”, and TV programs on Chinese cuisine mostly appear in the form of “competition”. In this season, Chinese cuisine presents the Chinese daily diet to the audience, especially those overseas, with its easy and quick narrative rhythm and delicate and ingenious pictures. The rich experience accumulated by the Chinese in their diet, different eating habits and unique taste aesthetics, and the values of oriental life that have risen to the level of survival wisdom, are all presented in this season.

Season 2: As a food documentary explores the relationship between the Chinese people and their food, when food is used as a pathway to understand China, people can taste this ancient oriental country with great savor. “A place nurtures its people”, this document depicts and perceives Chinese people’s cultural traditions, concepts about family, life attitudes and home-bound emotions by showing the multiple aspects of people’s daily life related to food. People harvest, preserve, cook and produce food, and retain and inherit the taste memory, dietary customs, cultural styles and homely emotions carried by food in this process. There are 8 episodes in this season, telling the story of Chinese food from seven angles: “Seasons”, “Footsteps”, “Heart’s Message”, “Realm of Secrets”, “Daily Life”, “Encounters”, and “Three Meals”. Episode 8 is a shooting feature.

Season 3: Taking a closer look at the beauty of food, and looking at the cultural roots of Chinese cuisine from afar, this season uses the diet to thoroughly explore some more valuable and charming Chinese stories. Exploring the migration and integration of Chinese cuisine in historical evolution, and discussing the relationship between Chinese and food in-depth, the program crew has travelled in more than 20 provinces, cities and autonomous regions across China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan. There are as many as 115 filming locations, more than 300 people being interviewed, and more than 400 foods have been shot. The program tries to provide a great feast both visually and spiritually for its audiences.

A Bite of Guangdong

A Bite of Guangdong is a large-scale food documentary produced by Guangdong TV, which talks about Cantonese cuisine in the memory of old Cantonese people. While exploring the roots of Cantonese cuisine from a unique perspective and digging the secrets of Guangdong’s representative cuisine, it also tells the cultural story behind Guangdong’s diet, records the relationship between people and ingredients, and the unique local farming and breeding methods and production techniques. With beautiful panoramic picture, it demonstrates the unique geographical environment and historical conditions of Guangdong, and uses unique documentary audiovisual language to show Lingnan’s agricultural and marine culture.

World inside a Pot

From the exotic bacteria in Yunnan to the spicy pleasures of the Bashu ordinary people, from the extreme knife technique in the desert of north China to the delicate ingredients in the east of Lingnan, hot pots are everywhere. On the streets of Chongqing, for every five stores, there is a restaurant for hot pot! Hot pot has long been China’s most popular cuisine. It gives people a reason to gather together. In the night of a reunion, whether at home or in the restaurant, just a pot, a set of fire, a group of friends and families, in the steaming heat and boiling soup, thousands of words are all in the pot. When countless flavors made up such a big world, what about diners sitting beside the hot pot?

Barbecue in China

Barbecue in China is different from the mainstream food documentaries which focus on the production mode of the food itself. Instead, it contains a little more sense of the mortal world and continues to search for things deeper inside the food. It has chosen a more specific, but more attractive entry point which provides a special perspective to achieve a breakthrough in the food documentary, that is, “midnight barbecue”. In the early stage of the shooting, the main production team and the main film crew traveled through north and south China, focusing on the microscopic scene of China’s current barbecue night market with a real and delicate perspective. Ordinary city, trivial life, behind the food is the unforgettable warmth from human.

Taste of City

The 7-episode documentary Taste of City was produced by the documentary channel CCTV-9. Seven Chinese cities were carefully selected as the shooting locations, and the documentary includes the special cuisine and regional culture all over China. Taking the “changing city, unchanged taste” as the soul, it conveys the Chinese culture that “the unique features of a local environment always give special characteristics to its inhabitants”. The city’s beauty and charm is expressed with its delicious food.

Each episode depicts one city. It takes the perspective of a professional chef, searching deep into the city, in small shops alone the street, in ordinary families and in restaurants, to find folk cuisines that best represent the characteristics of the city. Taking food as the main clue, it connects in-depth elements such as city history, culture and environment. With the taste of food, it attempts to analyze the urban taste and urban temperament.

A Bite of Shunde

Shunde is a place where ancient and modern blend in a fantastic way. Thousand years of reclamation gave birth to the fertile mulberry fish pond, and the prosperity of the silk reeling industry a century ago promised its richness. Today, home appliances produced here have changed the lives of billions of people around the world. However, this land is always famous for its food. Shunde people have the ability to create hundreds of ways to eat fish, but may spend half a year on just one single dish. They tirelessly pursue the ultimate taste, and expand their intentions for food into life and various fields, generating a kind of survival wisdom. A Bite of Shunde tells stories about the past and present of delicious food, and records the people who create them.

Taste Yunnan

Taste Yunnan is a 10-episode documentary introducing Yunnan cuisine. Opening with “Spring in Family Gathering”, “Human Rejoicing” to the nostalgic “Missing the Years Gone by” and “Homesick in a Foreign Country”, the episodes seem unconnected, but share one core inside. Unlike traditional food programs, Taste Yunnan was shot in places far from each other, and does not classify food by region and or their classification. Instead, each episode has its own protagonist: Brother Zheng Hongwei of Jianshui picking grass shoots; Yang Jimei’s family who worked with Chinese toon at the foot of Mount. Jizu in Binchuan, Dali; and Wang Jinghua, a young man of Nu nationality who still knows the traditional hand-made method of making Nujiang “Oily Boiled Chicken”...

The documentary’s simple and delicate description of food and the subtle understanding of the relationship between people and ingredients also make it more than a gourmet documentary. In the past, people share the misunderstanding that there is no cultural content in Yunnan cuisine. This documentary, however, has changed this belief, proving that the spirit of Yunnan cuisine is modest and simple. It just lies in the pieces of Dali Heqing’s heirloom liver, and in the jar of Weishan Yinji’s pickles.

Chinese restaurant

Voiced by star narrator Wu Gang, Chinese restaurant is a humanities and food documentary focusing on overseas Chinese restaurants. With 10 Chinese restaurants located around the world being filmed, this documentary focuses on the diet and life of overseas Chinese, telling the food stories of restaurant owners, chefs and diners. Every restaurant has witnessed the maintain and change of delicious cuisine, the ups and downs in life, which reflects the conflict and integration of cultures, and China’s steps towards the outside world. Searching for the taste of China all over the world, and experiencing the tastes of life when all the world’s your family. Where there are Chinese, there are Chinese restaurants.