A new documentary series on Chinese cuisine airing on CCTV has set food lovers abuzz over the nation's rich culinary history, while inadvertently raising a new level of disgust over the seemingly endless food safety scandals.
The seven-episode series, A Bite of China, has eclipsed almost all other TV shows in popularity in the past two weeks, garnering praise for its focus on forgotten dishes and religious-like searches for the right ingredients and time-honoured cooking methods that go into making them.
Shot in high-definition video, the series took a CCTV crew to more than 60 locations across the nation beginning in March last year in search of authentic dishes, their painstaking preparation and the personal stories associated with them.
CCTV said the series was not just a simple gourmet show, but an illustration of how people lived, how they cared about their families and related to others in their communities, all based on the belief that 'You are what you eat'. The series also fit well with the mission of CCTV's Documentary Channel of 'opening a window on China'.
Wu Heng, a graduate student in Shanghai, said he became hooked on the show when he watched the first episode in mid-May, which included a segment on the role of lotus root in his native Hubei cuisine. 'I wanted to enjoy the series as much as other food lovers,' Wu said. 'But I just couldn't help being distracted by how much the real China differs from what we see on TV,' he said.
Wu is a part-time webmaster behind the website 'Throw it out the window', where he has documented food scares on the mainland since 2004 in a bid to raise public awareness.
He said there was an 'ideal' China portrayed on TV, one with a rich culture and great diversity of food, and the other China, where people must deal with risky and unsafe food daily.
