It doesn't matter if your favorite dish is lo mein or chicken feet, or a bit of both with a side of gai lan and xiao long bao. Anyone with a tongue and a modicum of chopstick dexterity knows that Chinese food dominates the global food landscape, and for good reason.That's because Chinese food is damn good, in all of its many-splendored iterations.From the regional cooking of the mainland and its surrounds to how it's been interpreted (and bastardized, as some might argue) in the West, there are millions of dishes to eat and enjoy—and probably just as many opinions about the right way to make each one. To that end, we've planned a week of stories on Chinese food: It's not exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, but we've tried to encompass everything we love, and everything we want our readers to love, about the wide world of Chinese food.Over the course of the week, we'll be spotlighting stories that take a few different tacks: there'll be a few deep dives into regional Chinese cooking (like an in-depth look at the beloved spicy rabbit heads of Chengdu and China's obsession with greens); interviews with the people, like Cecilia Chiang and Ken Hom, who helped to put Chinese food on the map in the West; interviews and personal essays from chefs and writers (like Brandon Jew, Clarissa Wei, and Nick Chen-Yin) on authenticity, appropriation, and their own personal journeys; and a wealth of recipes from our favorite Chinese chefs from around the world to recreate dim sum feasts, wedding banquets, and noodles all day long.We really want the stories and the voices behind them to speak for themselves, so we won't say much more. Pull up a seat at the banquet table. We're glad you're here.
Photo by Liz Barclay.