Local Delicacies

Xiamen local delicacies have a quite long history. According to Egret River Records, in the Song Dynasty people used the five cereals which were teeming in the island to make numerous delicacies, such as "Grain harvest Chicken", "Lotus Leaves Food with 'eight treasures'", "Jiahe crispy chicken" and so on. In the Qing dynasty, people used Guofish, Jiali fish, yellow flower fish and squid which abounded in Xiamen to make delicacies.

Xiamen Food

Fujian food is one the Eight Foods in China, and Fuzhou and Xiamen food are the representatives of it. Xiamen food is characterized by the Southern Fujian area. The cooking characteristics are: Soup must be clear, taste must be light and fried food must be crisp. Xiamen food is also famous for seafood, which always uses many cooking techniques including steaming, frying, braising, grilling and stewing. The special taste is fresh, light, appetizing, mash and a little sour, sweet and hot.

Xiamen Vegetable Dish

Vegetable dishes are the food of Buddhists, which is proved to be helpful to people's health. Therefore, it has become more and more popular among people. Vegetable dishes in South Putuo Temple are named by color, main ingredient and shape. The cold dish is called "colorful flowers welcome guests", because this dish has red, yellow, green, and other colors which make a colorful design. Another dish named "double mushrooms contend in beauty" is made of straw mushroom and mushroo and water chestnut as well. The dish "white wall and green clouds" is made of Fa vegetable (also called green cloud) and tofu (bean curd.). In 1962, the famous writer Guo Moruo traveled to South Putuo Temple. When he tasted the vegetable fish "Chinese angelica and gluten soup", seeing half mushroom and half gluten, tasting like chicken soup when adding Chinese angelica, he could not help writing a poem "Traveling South Putuo Temple". One sentence of the poem reads "half moon sinks in the river and thousands of mountains enter into eyesight". After that, this dish was renamed to "half moon sinks in the river".