Life of Guangzhou - Chaozhou Cuisine Applies for Intangible Cultural Heritage Listing

Chaozhou cuisine, one of the major culinary schools from the Guangdong province in South China, will apply for listing as intangible national cultural heritage, according to the Guangdong Food Profession Union.

Guangzhou Daily reports the move is designed to promote Chaozhou cuisine to the rest of China and the world by making it a more fashionable dining choice.

Chaozhou Cuisine is famous for its snacks like Chaozhou Handmade Beef Ball.

Union Chairman Zhang Junxiu says Chaozhou cuisine is one of China's eight major schools of cooking, with a history that dates back one thousand years. The restaurant industry in the Guangdong province generated 160 billion yuan, or 20.7 billion U.S. dollars, last year. That's equal to one seventh of the revenue the restaurant industry generated across the whole of China.

Zhang Junxiu also says around 10 million Chinese people from the Guangdong province now live overseas. He believes they can also help to boost the international profile of the cuisine from their region.

Chaozhou is the name of a coastal region near the Shantou district of Guangdong. The cuisine from this area stresses the use of unique combinations of soy sauces and flavorings to produce salty, sweet, sour, spicy and astringent. Fish sauce and oyster sauce are used a lot.