China National Evening

China is a country famous for charming culture and delicious food. As the only scholar from China this year, I feel obligated to demonstrate our culture and more important, “to feed my dear followers with delicious Chinese cuisine”.

The super star of the dinner is definitely “General Tso chicken” which is a sweet-and-spicy, deep-fried chicken dish that is popularly served in North American Chinese restaurants. The dish is named after General Tso Tsung-tang, or Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty general and statesman, although this connection is tenuous. He is said to have enjoyed it, and perhaps helped create a dish, but there are no recorded recipes. The real roots of the dish lie in the post 1949 exodus of chefs to the United States. The dish is reported to have been introduced to New York City in the early 1970s as an example of Hunan cooking, though it is not typical of Hunanese cuisine, which is traditionally very spicy and rarely sweet.

Dumpling, whose mandarin name is Jiaozi, is indispensible for a traditional Chinese cuisine.

Common Chinese dumpling generally consists of minced meat and finely chopped vegetables wrapped into a thin and elastic piece of dough skin. Popular meat fillings include ground pork, ground beef, ground chicken, shrimp, and even fish. Popular mixtures include pork with Chinese cabbage, pork with garlic chives, pork and shrimp with vegetables, pork with spring onion, garlic chives with scrambled eggs. Filling mixtures vary depending on personal tastes and region. Given the various religious backgrounds of Sauvé Scholars, I choose to serve dumpiness with a mixture a ground beef and onion.

Besides the real delicious food, the presentation about Chinese culture is also a “visual delicious dish”. By playing two interesting short films about China, I seek to provide a relatively whole picture about China in controversy to my fellow scholars, hoping to further their knowledge about China.

It was a night with great fun and I am sure the coming national evenings will bring Sauvé community more fun.