Connect me to: Fujian: The Province and Its Foods Chinese Food
in China, Hong Kong, and/or Taiwan Summer Volume: 1999 Issue:
6(2) page(s): 13, 20, 22, and 28 Facing Taiwan sits the Fujian
Province (previously spelled Fukien) of China. It has lots of
coastline on the eastern side and many interior mountains that
reach the sea. More than twenty-eight million people inhabit the
forty-eight thousand square miles of this province and they
speak more than a hundred dialects, many Min and Wu languages.
Fuzhou (once written Foochow) is its capital city. With access
to salt water and large rivers such as the Min, there is a
plethora of foods available from both sweet and salt waters,
foods grown on the mountain slopes, and on other available land.
Ten percent of the land is arable and the province produces lots
of sugar, rice, wheat, sweet potatoes, and tea. In addition,
they grow many oil seeds such as peanut, soy and rape. The
latter, as an oil, is called 'canola' in most western countries.
Fujian has many fruit tre