Episode 1 Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure

KEN HOM: China - home to one in five of the planet's population -

the superpower the world fears, but few really know.

-CHING-HE HUANG:

-Ken Hom is the godfather of Chinese food.

Heaven on earth!

He introduced the wok to the West more than 30 years ago.

This is the way you should be cooking it.

Ching-He Huang is leading the next generation of Chinese cooks...

I'm just going to chop off the head.

..with a modern, inventive approach to the cuisine.

-That's like ducks playing in springtime.

-Lovely!

'We're taking a once in a lifetime adventure

'across China through food...'

-Rabbit head!

-Shall we try one?

-No!

'..to delve into its heart and soul.'

Bang it, pull it.

Food is the best way to explore Chinese culture

because we really live to eat.

It's an epic trip -

3,000 miles, from the mega cities of the east,

to the forgotten villages of the wild west.

It's like we've been back to the time of Genghis Khan!

-CHING SCREAMS

-She's just decapitated it!

'We'll uncover the familiar, the secret, and the surprising...'

Wow, I've never seen that done before!

'..cook simple and delicious dishes...'

That is my Sichuan sausage.

And reveal the secrets of China, old and new.

It's like a journey that I've always dreamt about,

but in a China I've dreamt about.

We're spending the first week of our month-long trip

in the capital, Beijing.

I was raised in Chicago,

and when I first came here in the 1980s,

it was just beginning to open up to the West

after the dark years of the Cultural Revolution.

Unrecognisable. It's like the new frontier.

'Now everywhere you look,

'new China smashes up against the old.'

The question for both of us,

on this voyage of discovery,

is to see if all this incredible pace of changes,

is that going to affect food?

-Yeah.

-Good and bad.

And I'd love to experience modern Chinese cookery here

and whether some of the traditions have been eroded.

It's a brew that will be quite interesting to see.

China is a country of contradictions.

Tradition and innovation sit side by side.

And it's most evident here in Beijing.

In the northeast corner of the country,

it has been the imperial capital for 800 years.

It remains deeply proud of its traditional culture and cuisine.

As it opens up to the world,

it's revealing those secrets with a new culinary confidence.

We're beginning with the quintessential Chinese food -

noodles.

They're a humble everyday dish, eaten in all regions.

But they have a 4,000-year-old history and today in Beijing,

this ancient craft is being celebrated centre stage.

It's just incredible.

I think they got this concept from the West, the open kitchen.

-Yes!

-And it's pretty spectacular.

It is. Watching them work, it is like an orchestra.

Like the guy with the big block that's just shaving noodles,

he looks like he's playing the violin.

KEN LAUGHS Yes!

'The capital is pulling in the country's best cooking talents.

'These noodle masters are from Shanxi Province, West of Beijing,

'where the art of noodle making

'has been passed down through the generations.

'They are most famous for their hand-pulled noodles, La Mian.

'Made from just wheat flour and water,

'the skill is in manipulating the dough.'

You double it up and double again.

Yeah. It's folding, folding on itself.

-It could be a mess.

-It's about balancing the elasticity

before he can actually pull the noodles.

-So he's stretching that.

-Now stretching.

OK, what he's doing, he's pulling and folding it,

a little bit like how children used to play Cat's Cradle.

-Cat's Cradle is a lot easier!

-Yeah!

Wow, that's beautiful! That's what we call tung chow mein.

Yes! CHING APPLAUDS

'They serve 20 different types of noodles here,

'and these guys are masters of them all.'

To perfect the technique, every year

he would do this for at least two hours a day,

for a year and a half.

Oh, my God! HE LAUGHS

This is good! That's good!

-CHING LAUGHS

-That's amazing!

-It's like...noodle bullets!

-Yeah!

Oh, OK. So it's kind of like... Get in there!

'I was taught to cook at home by my mother growing up in England.

'As we as we travel across China,

'I'm looking forward to the challenge of cooking in its fiery, professional kitchens,

'where it's rare to find any women.'

I love it! The drama, the commotion, you know?

Also the excitement, as you approach a wok like this,

because you never know what's going to happen.

This is a very intensive heat source here.

It heats up the wok to over 350 degrees.

It's very powerful. It really keeps you on your toes

cos one second off, you could burn and destroy the whole dish.

'Throughout our trip, we'll be cooking dishes

'simple enough to do at home.

'First is my take on a classic northern noodle recipe,

'Zha Jiang Mien.

'It the Chinese version of spaghetti Bolognese.'

It's basically a meat topping,

a delicious savoury meat topping,

on top of delicious noodles,

and sometimes you have some fresh crunchy cucumbers.

'Every region has its own variation of the sauce,

'but the essentials are minced pork and bean paste.'

This is belly pork. The Chinese call it "hua rou" -

"five layers of heaven". You've got skin, you've got fat,

you've got meat, you've got fat again.

That's what gives it flavour.

And this bit is quite fatty, so I'm not going to use that.

-Ooh! That's the best bit!

-It's really oily, Ken!

-Ohhh.

-I don't know, you think so? Maybe a little bit.

Just for you!

My uncle used to tell me, "No fat, no flavour!"

My dish is a classic stir-fry

of aubergines with mild green chillies.

I've been chefing now for 52 years.

I started in my uncle's restaurant when I was 11.

My mother sent me there to keep me out of trouble.

My first lesson was in mastering the essential tool of a Chinese chef.

In my uncle's restaurant, there was no such thing as a vegetable peeler.

All they had was cleavers.

So you either had to learn how to use it,

or you would never get your work done.

'Unlike the range of knives we have in the West,

'the cleaver blade does it all -

'from chopping and shredding to slicing and dicing.'

Usually what people do with aubergine is they fry it,

which I don't really like. So what I do...

Braising it is very nice. It doesn't get it to be very oily.

And I know, Ching, you don't like it greasy and oily either.

'I've got my wok smoking hot, ready to stir-fry my ingredients.'

I'm putting in some ginger and garlic.

Lots of garlic, because I love garlic.

Mild chilli peppers.

Aubergine.

Stock, just to braise it.

Little bit of soy sauce.

'The key to wok cooking is controlling the heat.

'It's a delicate dance between the flame and the wok

'to control the temperature of the oil.

'This skill is called wok hei, meaning "breath of the wok".

'Next, in go the blanched, knife-cut noodles.'

Some spring onions. Yes, that's it.

And a little drizzle of their fragrant chilli oil.

'It cooks for another minute, and it's ready to serve.'

That looks bloody good!

I love the look of your dish.

You know, it's rich, it's smoky.

You can tell it has wok hei, the breath of the wok, all over it.

Yes! KEN LAUGHS

'Now it's my turn at the wok,

'making my Zha Jiang Mein Sauce.'

In with the garlic, ginger, leeks,

Sichuan pepper in the hot oil,

together with the belly pork.

And then in with little bit of wine.

Little bit of this tian mian jiang, sweet bean paste.

'Tian Mian Jiang is a key ingredient in Beijing cooking.

'It's a wheat-flour fermented soybean paste,

'with sugar and spices.'

And a little bit of good stock. Good quality pork and chicken stock.

'Keep stirring the ingredients so they don't burn.

'The sugars in the sauces will caramelize,

'giving the pork a sweet, crispy edge.

'This wok burner is so intense,

'it only takes a couple of minutes to crisp up the pork.

'Usually, it would need about four.

'I'm serving it with hand-pulled noodles.'

-Wow!

-Oh, beautiful!

Noodles, once they're cooked,

you need to loosen them up a little bit,

so I'm going to toss them in this sesame oil and chilli oil.

This is not traditional zha jiang mein style,

but this is my twist on it.

Just on the top, I'm putting cucumber, radish.

And then with that delicious meat sauce on top,

which has got a lot of flavour.

And then some of this sort of savoury oil on top.

And then just some flowers, for beauty.

Oh, raw vegetables. It gives a nice contrast

to the richness of the sauce and the noodles.

Bloody good! THEY LAUGH

Mmm, the aubergine is delicious!

-It's got that kind of barbecue-y flavour.

-Barbecue grill flavour.

It's been tossed well.

Oh!

It's not just the classics of Chinese cuisine, like noodles,

that are being showcased.

Street food is also getting a shiny, modern makeover.

THEY LAUGH

Wanfujang Night Market is bang in the city centre.

Traditional food stalls sit alongside

luxury hotels and shopping malls.

Banana!

-No, thank you!

-I love it!

-They used to never speak English!

-I know!

Xaiochi, or "small eats", were very much part of the Beijing life for centuries,

with vendors on every corner.

But as part of the major clean-up for the 2008 Olympics,

they were moved off the streets,

and now operate in regulated and uniformed places like this.

-Now, this is zhen jin bao. Zhen jin bao.

-Oh!

When I think about Beijing, this is exactly what I think about.

The bao type of bun.

Ooh, that's spicy!

How much do I owe you? CHING SPEAKS IN MANDARIN

-VENDOR SPEAKS IN MANDARIN

-Wow! Prices have gone up.

-Wow, they used to be very cheap here.

-10 Yuan - that's £1 - for this!

-You're joking! You're joking!

-No, it's expensive.

Wow. It's highway robbery.

'Despite the prices, this is a great place

'to get a bite-sized taste of China, with foods from every region.

'The Chinese are known for eating EVERYTHING,

'especially Cantonese Chinese like me.'

-Oh, now... Now we're talking!

-Oh, no!

No, no, no, no, no!

I'd like a small scorpion.

Let's have a cricket. Yes!

A cricket?!

Eurgh!

Mmm!

CHING LAUGHS

-Is it meaty right in the middle?

-It's not meaty.

-Like, when you get to the guts?

It's like eating a fried piece of crisp.

I do love offal, and I do love things like chicken's feet...

-I love that.

-..and all these traditional... You know, duck's tongue.

But I can't be really Chinese, because I don't eat everything!

-My stomach dictates who I really am.

-Yeah.

Beneath the modern face of the capital,

there are small pockets of the city,

where it seems little has changed for centuries

and there is still a strong sense of tradition.

Jingshan Park is in the shadow of the Forbidden City,

the Imperial Palace that was home to China's emperors

for 500 years.

SHE SINGS IN MANDARIN

Every morning before breakfast,

people meet for their daily routines.

I took classes for a while. I thought I was too young for it!

HE LAUGHS

Maybe I'll get back into it now.

For both Ching and I, this trip is deeply personal.

We want to understand more about our relationship with our homeland.

Even though I was raised in America, I've been connected to China

through food from a very early age.

My father passed away when I was eight months old

and my mother brought me up in Chicago's Chinatown.

I grew up in a Chinese bubble cos I didn't see any other people

except Chinese people.

We only ate Chinese food, we went to see Chinese movies

and we only spoke Chinese.

Cantonese, that is.

The era I grew up in,

it was very difficult to be a minority in America.

You were either made fun of or you didn't exist

and China was like a dream.

Like a fantasy.

That was the life raft I clung to, to be proud of my identity.

When I finally made it to the homeland in 1983,

it was not the China I imagined.

It was still emerging from the trauma of the Cultural Revolution

of the 1960s and '70s.

I was pretty appalled.

It was as if China was almost 50 years behind.

I just couldn't believe it.

In Beijing, traditional food culture was nearly wiped out

as a result of Chairman Mao's communist ideals

to rid the country of bourgeois influence.

Red Guards shut down restaurants and burnt recipe books.

A lot of chefs left China, or else they kept their art secret.

In other words, they didn't practise it any more in public.

But, you know, once you cook, you can never forget how to cook.

And when the reforms came,

all these people came out of their kitchens and started cooking again.

To see how traditional cooking is being kept alive,

Ching and I are headed to a backstreet restaurant

in one of the hutong districts, old neighbourhoods

that have survived the city's often brutal modernisation.

This looks...quite dodgy. Are you sure it's here?

We're meeting a chef who returned to the capital after the reforms.

He's been responsible for preserving what, I think,

is Beijing's greatest culinary tradition, Peking duck.

Ching, I think in my lifetime I've cooked, perhaps, 10,000 ducks.

-10,000!

-Yes. I'd like to see how they make them, traditionally.

-In here?

-Yes.

-Ni hao.

-Ni hao.

-Ni hao.

'Chef Li Chin has turned his family home of 50 years

'into this restaurant, which he runs with his daughter.

'Peking duck is to the Chinese what champagne is to France,

'and Beijing is its birthplace.

'It dates back to the Yuan Dynasty of the 13th century

'when it was reserved exclusively for the Emperor's table.'

Well, the secret of Peking duck is it has to be crispy skin,

no fat and moist meat.

And if you don't have that, it's not Peking duck.

Chef Li Chin has studied the 700-year-old techniques

of the Imperial Court kitchens.

SHE SPEAKS IN CHINESE

THEY LAUGH

The first step is most important - to separate the skin from the fat.

It can inflate, so that when it roasts,

the skin can roast separately in this layer of air while the fat melts.

-And renders.

-And renders and keeps the meat moist.

-Hm.

That's the secret of Peking duck.

-And how I do it is use a bicycle pump.

-Hm. I've always...

It's really easy to do and it does it instantly.

It's quite a cool thing.

'But Chef Li Chin is a firm believer that the old ways are best.'

-Oh, he does it by...

-Yeah, blowing into it.

-..blowing into it.

-Wow.

Wow, I've never seen that done before,

by a mouth.

The Peking duck, it's a type of Mallard duck with white feathers.

The species is important because of the skin.

This is why the skin is very important.

You can't use any type of duck,

it has to be this type of duck that works.

It can inflate better and it's the amount of fat that it has in it.

But in a new health-conscious China,

there's a growing demand for a less fatty bird.

Now over half of the ducks consumed are reared from a super lean breed

of Peking chick imported from England.

With the entrails removed, boiling water

and sugar syrup are poured over the duck to tighten the skin.

It's hung up to dry for four hours and then it's ready to roast.

It feels like parchment paper. It's essential that it's that dry.

-One hour.

-One hour!

-Hour.

Duck over the flame.

-And...ooh!

-THEY LAUGH

-That is beautiful.

-Beautiful, isn't it?

-Oh, it is so beautiful.

I suppose it gives it, like, a... It's got a lovely fruit flavour.

When I came to Beijing in the '80s, I had Peking duck.

I was very disappointed. And I went into the kitchen,

and there were a lot of young chefs who did not have his expertise and knowledge.

-This man is passionate.

-Thank you.

-THEY LAUGH

Thank you.

Chef Li Chin's passion has survived not only the Cultural Revolution -

he battled to save his restaurant when the 400-year-old neighbourhood

was threatened with demolition to make way for new apartment living.

Only a third of Beijing's hutongs still exist,

and the living conditions here can be pretty primitive.

-How was your loo experience?

-It's communal.

God, there was no privacy.

-Really?

-No. No segregation.

-Oh, my God!

-At all.

-Everyone's equal here.

-Right! THEY LAUGH

After an hour of roasting, our duck is ready to eat.

-Wow! I can smell... It smells lovely and smoky.

-Can you see all the steam coming out?

-Slice it the middle.

-Look at that skin!

Oh. My mouth is watering like crazy.

'The ritual is familiar to people all over the world.

'A dab of sweet bean sauce, a couple of slices of duck,

'spring onion and cucumber,

'all wrapped in a wafer-thin pancake.'

Mmm!

That is delicious.

It's aromatic,

it's juicy, the skin is crispy.

I've eaten so many Peking ducks all over the world,

but this is the mothership.

-HE SPEAKS IN CHINESE

-Thank you.

-It's like a human epic...

-It is.

..that he's gone through all this hardship to arrive here.

And this is our story.

And I think he embodies very much what China is about.

-It's not about complaining.

-No.

-It's about looking forward.

-Yeah.

-Don't look back.

-Yeah, yeah.

We've been in the capital for a couple of days,

and we're starting to appreciate the spirit of the Beijingers.

Being in the north of the country, Beijing is exposed to some harsh, cold winters.

-Are you warm with a hat on, Ken?

-Yeah, I'm very warm with the hat on.

-I wish I got one as well!

-Really? Oh, you have hair! I don't.

The locals survive it on a diet of hearty comfort food.

And we're joining them for a traditional breakfast.

Smells really good. Aw, this is the kind of food I love!

-Oh, fantastic!

-I feel like we're at a school cafeteria.

-Wow!

You can't come to Beijing without eating a baozi.

-This is the pork and leek one.

-Yes.

-Mm-mmm!

-This is heaven on Earth.

-HE LAUGHS

-It's so juicy inside.

-Mmm!

-And the bread is slightly sweet.

And the dough has to have that pillowy texture about it.

It's steamed, just like fluffy clouds.

-It's delicious.

-It's actually like eating almost sweet nothingness. Mmm!

-Mmm!

Baozi have savoury or sweet fillings,

and are found across the country as street snacks.

In Beijing, there's a unique way of eating them.

-They serve the baozi with this, like, an intestine...

-Soup.

-..soup.

Like a garlicky soup, quite starchy.

And inside there's intestine. Yeah.

The locals can't seem to get enough of it, so why not?

Mmm.

I've never had baozis with, like, a rich soup like that before.

-Very Beijing-y.

-Mm.

Baozi are part of the extensive dumpling family,

pleated parcels of deliciousness

that have been at the heart of Chinese cuisine for 600 years.

In the capital's high-end restaurants,

culinary pride has been taken to levels of fanatical obsession.

Kitchens are like factory production lines,

producing thousands of dumplings a day to rulebook standards.

For me, this is never going to compete with the simple pleasure of a home-cooked dumpling.

To perfect our techniques, we're going back to dumpling school.

THEY CONVERSE IN CHINESE

It is in Nanluoguxiang, one of the hutong areas

that instead of being bulldozed are now being protected and regenerated

as the government begins to recognise both their cultural and commercial value.

Look through there. Look through there, that's the old-style hutong home.

'The old courtyard houses are being turned into boutique shops

'and cafe bars, which is showing a sense of community that was central

'to hutong life for centuries.'

-Actually, normally, I'm quite good at directions, that's a dead end.

-Yes.

-Shall we just knock on every door?

-No, I don't think so.

'The school teaches traditional home-style cooking to the growing number of Westerners

'and overseas Chinese moving to China.

'It's run by Chinese American food writer Jen Lin-Lui...'

ALL: Hi.

'..who came here to reconnect with her roots 12 years ago.

'The school's dumpling master is a native Beijinger,

'with the intriguing name Chairman Wang.'

Hello. This is Chairman Wang.

I learned how to cook from Chairman Wang.

She was my cooking teacher when I went to a local cooking school.

We made dumplings a lot. That's how we became friends.

'We're making the classic Beijing dumpling, Jiaozi.

'Traditionally, families make them together for the Chinese New Year.

'We start with a dough for the dumpling skins.'

Two-parts flour and one part cold water.

'You can skip this part and buy ready-made wrappers

'but it's great to make your own, and in Chairman Wang's kitchen,

'there aren't any shortcuts.'

SHE SPEAKS IN CHINESE

Compared to hers, this is not hard enough, actually.

-You basically just want to add more flour in there.

-More flour.

-I'm too afraid to ask how old she is.

-No, no, you never do that.

You can ask her.

THEY SPEAK IN CHINESE

She said, "How old do you think I am?"

THEY LAUGH

'The dough rests for 20 minutes, and we start on the filling -

'smoked tofu and shiitake mushrooms, finely diced.

'We're also adding rice noodles, chopped carrot and coriander.'

SHE SPEAKS IN CHINESE

She's got here a mixture of yellow bean paste

and also tian mian jiang,

which is that wheat flour paste, to bind it together.

'Tian mian jiang is the sauce used in Peking duck pancakes

'and is similar to hoisin sauce.'

We're adding a little dark soy sauce. The light soy sauce is saltier,

the dark soy sauce adds a bit more texture and colour.

I remember us cooking with my grandmother, making dumplings.

It's such a social occasion, actually,

but I was too small to really learn at such a young age

but I could hear the sound of this chopping

and then her and my great-aunt sitting round,

they used to gossip and talk about the neighbour next door.

It's wonderful.

With all this modernisation going on, especially here in Beijing,

to what extent is this still being done in homes?

It is being done in homes still but less and less, I'd say.

It's time-consuming, especially if you want to do them right.

You make everything from scratch.

Now it's onto the dumpling skins.

The hollowed bit in your palm at the centre makes that mound, that shape.

It's kind of fat in the middle and sloping on the side.

The rolling pin never leaves the board.

You're just doing this repetitive motion with this hand

and turning with the other hand.

To judge whether you've made a really good dumpling skin,

you know in the Imperial Courts, if you made the skin really thin

that you could still read a newspaper behind it,

you knew you had the perfect thinness of skin.

Next we fill and seal the dumplings.

At Chinese New Year, it's the tradition to hide coins inside

and the one who finds them is blessed with good fortune.

This is the easy way. You just press and seal it.

You want a smooth circle on one side and the pleats on the other side

and a good dumpling is one that sits down and doesn't tip over.

We're cooking the dumplings two ways,

the first is simply boiling for 15 minutes.

The second is pan seared, my favourite.

This is great because this creates steam

and because of the steam, it's crispy on the bottom.

And it cooks with the steam.

So you want to fill the water

about two-thirds the way to the dumpling top.

To get a delicious crispy bottom on your dumpling, add a ladle of oil.

With ginger and Sichuan pepper.

-Fragrant oil.

-Fragrant oil.

-Wow!

-Beautiful.

That looks so good.

You don't understand what that means to me right there, looking at it.

-It's like home.

-It's like home.

If the dumpling skin is too thick, it's too chewy.

If it's too thin, the dumpling will break.

-These look spot on.

-Oh...

The classic way to eat dumplings in the north,

is dipped in wheat flour vinegar and chilli oil.

And actually Beijingers also like raw pieces of garlic.

They munch on those.

-Do you guys want some of that?

-I don't plan to kiss anyone tonight.

I might as well.

Wow!

I can taste the sweetness of the carrot

and the texture of that smoked tofu.

It's so delicate and moist.

Sensational!

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

This is masterful.

Hands down, she's dumpling master of Beijing.

Cooking with Chairman Wang's brought back memories

of being in the kitchen of my grandmother's farm in Taiwan,

where I spent my early childhood.

She passed on three years ago

and I've come to a Buddhist temple to pay my respects to her.

My grandparents looked after me from a very young age, from about two.

Both my parents were really busy working, trying to,

er, make a living.

My memories of food actually all come from

those very early years of living on that farm.

We didn't have very much but every day was so much fun.

The island of Taiwan is off the south coast of China

and is disputed territory.

My parents left for work when I was five and we travelled first

to South Africa and then England where we settled when I was 11.

When I was growing up I didn't want to be Chinese,

I wanted to be English. I wanted to be everything that was not Chinese.

My father forced me to go to Chinese school every Sunday

and I had to cook Chinese food for my dad.

I resented that and I hated cooking.

Erm, but only as the years have gone by

that, actually, that's the only Chinese part of me

that remained, was the cooking bit and the food.

Through it, I now appreciate Chinese culture

and I'm finding myself, through food,

and beginning to understand more of where I'm from and who I am.

This journey is so important because it gives me

a chance to really delve deeper into Chinese cooking, just to learn more.

Being as Western as I am Chinese, it's pretty challenging

cooking authentic food for people in their homes, especially

in some of the most traditional places outside of the cities.

I want to see what people are eating, what are they farming?

Just see what ordinary life is, if there's such a thing

as ordinary life in China any more because it's so developed.

In the last 20 years, over 100 million people

have left their villages to find work in the mega-cities springing up all over China.

It is strange, isn't it, because you've got deserted towns dotted around?

There's no life.

Like a ghost town.

I'm travelling two hours out of Beijing.

90 kilometres to the west is Chuandixia.

Chuandixia is a 400-year-old village.

It used to be a thriving farming community.

Now, only 100 villagers remain.

GREETINGS IN CHINESE

I'm staying with Mr and Mrs Han, whose family have lived here for generations.

I thought it was just three generations,

but he says 13 generations.

The Hans run a homestay.

These are like B&Bs that offer a taste of rural peasant life

that's fast disappearing.

They're popular with the new, urban middle classes

who want to escape the city and experience a China of the past.

So this is it.

It's a courtyard home and it all belongs to his family.

This is wonderful. I feel like I really have stepped back in time.

Central to the home-stay experience is the home-cooked meal

with home-grown vegetables.

I'm hoping to learn some traditional country recipes from Mrs Han.

She's going to teach me how to make cornmeal pancakes.

Cornmeal pancakes are the equivalent of their daily bread.

When I don't understand something,

because my Chinese isn't great, she tends to raise her voice.

She's a real character.

I'm actually quite scared to cook in her kitchen.

Let me just finish explaining this. This is corn...

She said, "Don't open it."

She said, "Don't be in such a hurry."

Mrs Han seems a little nervous of strangers in her kitchen

but I persuade her to let me share the woking, under strict supervision.

This is slices of pork.

We're making a stir-fry of pork and wild mushrooms.

You've got vegetable oil, Sichuan flour pepper,

you've got some ginger and you explode it in the wok.

We call it Bal Shang, explode fragrance.

She's added slices of pork.

In the summer, they pick mushrooms from the mountains

and freeze them for winter months when fresh food is scarce.

She said don't worry about the look of it, it's really good.

Stir-fry that together.

A good substitute would be oyster or chestnut mushrooms.

Then she's added a little bit of dark soy sauce for colour,

to colour the meat.

She's also put in a little bit of garlic,

and a bit more spring onion at the end.

Just OK.

It looks mean and moody.

A bit like the chef!

Mrs Han's an expert in making a little go a long way.

She's using the leaves of a pepper plant to make a kind of tempura.

Oh, this is Sichuan pepper leaves.

She's put it in egg and wheat flour and she's deep frying it.

This would work equally well with spinach or kale.

Wonderful, isn't it?

Before we eat, Mr Han prepares my sleeping accommodation for the night.

It's basically a wood fire under your bed

and the heat from that will just warm the bed.

It works like an electric blanket but old school style.

Mmm.

Mrs Han made with that delicious mushroom.

Pork and mushroom. Mmm.

Whilst the homestay gives the Hans a small income of around £4,000 a year,

above all they seem proud to share their traditional way of life with their guests.

She's a tough lady.

Like many villages across the country,

Chuandixia has seen most of the younger generation up sticks.

30 years ago, just one in five people lived in urban areas.

Now, half of the country's population are city dwellers.

It's been the biggest migration in history.

Beijing is now home to 20 million.

It sprawls for over ten times the size of London

with densely packed suburbs.

I'm meeting up with my friend, and food writer, Hong Ying,

a country girl who now lives in the chic district of Chaoyang Park.

This is her local market, where we're shopping for dinner.

The variety, I find astonishing.

This is from America?

It's an interesting mix of Western imports.

Look what they have here, Brussels sprouts.

And Chinese favourites - eels, pig trotters and cows' hooves.

What's that?

Oh, it's called cucumber flower, I've never even seen it.

I'm thinking about these chicken wings.

Hong Ying's life has changed dramatically

since her childhood during the Cultural Revolution.

In the countryside, there were severe food shortages

and families were rationed.

When you were growing up, it was very hard to get meat.

How old were you before you tasted your first chicken?

-12, wow!

-Yeah.

The great famine in the late '50s and early '60s took the lives of an estimated 30 million

when Chairman Mao's agricultural reforms failed.

In Sichuan, where Hong Ying lived, one in seven died.

When China opened up, Hong Ying moved abroad

and became a successful food and fiction writer.

She returned to Beijing ten years ago.

For dinner, we're cooking two dishes, starting with the chicken wings.

Now, what I'm making here is just your sea salt and five spice powder.

I think five spice is a great seasoning.

Just put it over the chicken wing.

It comes ready mixed and is a blend of cinnamon, cloves,

star anise, fennel and Sichuan peppercorns.

Then throw it in the oven, that's how simple it is.

The chicken needs to bake for 30 minutes.

To go with it and making a side dish from the staple

of Beijing cooking, cabbage, which saw people through the hard times.

They think cabbage is a homage to Beijing.

I'm going to stir fry it with this lovely dried shrimp.

-I could smell it when I took it out.

-Yeah.

-How good this was.

Into the wok go some garlic, then the shrimp and the cabbage.

It's the smell of real Chinese cooking.

Now I usually add rice wine, but none at hand, I'm winging it.

Can I add a little bit of the gin?

HE LAUGHS

Don't put too much!

Yes, it's too much.

That smells good.

I'm blanching the cucumber flowers we bought in the market

for a couple of minutes.

Just like beans.

Then I give them a minute in the wok.

They're good.

I've never used that before.

Hong Ying started cooking at 11 in the village commune kitchen.

Each family was rationed just two kilos of rice a month.

She learned to make the most out of very little.

Hong Ying, how did you turn what happened to you into a love of food?

Very philosophical.

THEY LAUGH

After half an hour in the oven,

the chicken wings are golden brown and crispy.

I'm finishing them off in the wok with garlic and spring onions.

When you cook it like more than once,

you have different layers of flavour.

Remember Chinese cooking is about layers,

it's not just one-dimensional.

Mmm.

These are really delicious.

You must try the cabbage.

I learned something from you today.

Gin. Golden gin.

I was impressed. THEY LAUGH

COCK CROWS

In Chuandixia village, I'm up early to join my homestay host,

Mrs Han, making our country breakfast.

It's Tong Dan Bing, spring onion flatbread.

My mother taught me how to make them

but I'm pretty sure Mrs Han has her own particular way of doing it.

The way I was taught is you put a layer of spring onion, oil,

then you fold it like a pastry almost like a pastry.

Oh, wow, she's making it...

(WHISPERS) She's making it a different way!

She cuts it like a cake and then she folds it back on itself

in like a clockwise direction and then she kneads it again.

Quite a good technique, actually.

It means it has these stretchy kind of layers.

She has to cook it until the dough is cooked through.

Normally...

we have a thin layer of, um...egg,

beaten egg, like a crepe that we put on top and we roll it.

That's how I'm used to eating it

but she's going to be serving it with boiled eggs.

I haven't tried it with boiled eggs before.

I'm going to risk rocking the boat here and make my crepe version too.

It's really simple. Just eggs, salt and spring onion.

With the wok on a medium heat, add the beaten egg mixture,

swirl it around so it coats the wok and creates a thin egg crepe.

Once it's cooked on one side, flip it over and cook the other side.

This is how we have it normally in Taiwan.

Like that.

Tong Dan Bing, with an egg, like that.

This is how we would serve it in Taiwan.

She says it's very good.

Phew! Finally!

Now we can eat.

To accompany our two different versions of the flatbreads,

Mrs Han has also made corn porridge.

Because we're in the north of China, they don't really grow rice here,

so instead they have sweet corn porridge.

You know, it's got a wonderful, smoky flavour to this.

It's really delicious.

Mmm.

Thank God!

She said everyone has their own way of cooking and their own style.

It's our final night in Beijing.

We're back in the heart of the modern city

and its most exclusive street where the new rich come to shop and eat.

We're cooking with a chef who is leading the capital's food revolution.

Chef Da Dong brings tradition

and innovation together in culinary theatre

and his specialty is, of course, the nation's favourite - duck!

This proud Beijinger became a chef on his father's advice

that he would never go hungry.

He's dedicating himself to reviving the reputation of Chinese cuisine

after it was blighted by years of oppression and poverty.

This is the big difference.

Chefs before in China only knew about their region.

Actually, they never had the opportunity, or the time or the money, to travel anywhere else.

This is one of his signature dishes,

sweet and sour duck balls in a crispy yam basket.

This is not like sweet and sour you've ever seen anywhere.

It's like the duck has given birth to the duck balls and that's the duck eggs.

It's all very poetic.

Inspired by this beautiful creation, we're now cooking for him,

making our Da Dong style dishes, using his delicious Peking duck.

We will show them.

A Cantonese and a Taiwanese can take on a Beijinger.

I'm doing a twice cooked crispy duck and apple salad.

I'm inspired by the flavour of the fruitwood,

you know, they use the apple trees, the pear trees.

This is like the way that they slice and carve their ducks

so I thought maybe we'll do some apples in little pieces.

Oh, beautiful.

This is kind of like carving a duck.

Now for the duck.

The leg meat is more juicier, more succulent

and because I'm going to fry it again,

I need that juicy, meaty part

and then I'm just going to chop it into bite-size pieces.

Rough is OK, even with the skin.

I'm just going to put a little bit of five spice,

just a little bit. It really does help to bring out the flavour of the meat.

And then, corn starch and we're ready to deep fry.

The duck only needs a minute in the wok.

As it's already cooked, I'm just sealing in the flavour.

While it's hot, the outer edges where the cornflour, like this...

lovely golden and crisp.

We'll just drain the excess fat.

Next is the salad dressing.

I'm using XO sauce, a spicy seafood sauce made from dried shrimp,

dried scallop and chillies.

Then I'm going to use some of this Tian ming jiang.

The sort of sweet bean paste.

A little bit of sugar,

a little bit of black rice vinegar.

-It's going to be sweet and sour.

-Right.

-How's the sauce?

-It's OK. It's a little bit too vinegary.

I think I need more of the sweet bean paste and a little bit more sugar.

If it's too vinegary, you just add a little bit more sugar.

So, a little spicy, sweet...

Lovely.

That's like ducks playing in spring time.

My dish is minced up with lettuce cups.

I'm going to stir fry the Peking duck with radish and cucumber,

along with some fresh water chestnuts.

I want to get those really, really hot.

OK, some ginger, garlic,

spring onion...

I'm ready to wok and roll here.

-Smells good, Ken.

-Yeah.

I'm going to add my duck.

All these condiments he uses for his Peking duck,

so this is a bit of a homage to him, as well.

That looks good, I love the colours, the pink and green.

A little bit of rice wine.

Water chestnuts, and what I like is a little bit of peanuts for crunch.

I'm also using the sweet bean sauce

and adding a touch of my favourite, oyster sauce.

That'll be ready.

Lovely.

I love watching Ken with the wok, the way he works it with the flame,

he's infusing the ingredients with a deep, smoky flavour.

Oh, good work, Ken.

I'll finish it off.

It'll have a bit of crunchiness.

There's a lot of flavour, you only need a little bit.

Finally, I'm using the fattest part of the duck,

the skin, to add extra crouton, light crunch to my dish.

-Like the crackling.

-The crackling of a duck.

That's going to add that crunch.

And I couldn't resist stealing a bit of his edible flowers.

Beautiful!

Do think we're going to be able to impress Da Dong?

It takes a lot to impress him!

I've cooked for 52 years, but right now I feel like I'm back in school.

Oh, thank you.

And now for mine.

To end our time in Beijing, Da Dong has made us a feast of duck delicacies.

It's a homage to the grand Imperial Court banquets of China's past.

Salted duck livers...

Oh!

-..braised duck tongues...

-This is beautiful.

..and stir-fried duck hearts.

Oh, my goodness, that is rich.

It feels good in your mouth and Cathays call it hoisin.

Oh, hoisin?

Yeah, it's like, mmm!

I'm so surprised and so touched

that I see this in my lifetime.

When I used to come to China, I thought,

"Oh, my God, we're so behind, is it ever going to catch up?"

Now, I see people like Da Dong

and I'm sure I'm going to see many places in China,

how it's changing

and it makes me proud.

It's a full circle, coming to terms with who I am

and, erm...

I was right to be proud to be Chinese.

Cheers!

It's fantastic.

Next time we journey to the Sichuan province,

the spicy heartland of China.

Wow!

It's a really numbing heat.

Where the food is fiery and the chilli pepper is king.

This is likely to blow your head off, Ken.

We'll explore one of the world's fastest growing mega-cities.

I thought there would be a lot of change, but it's shocking.

But it's still deeply Chinese.

He's massaging your ear.

I love it!

We'll venture into the rural backwaters to cook traditional dishes.

This pig's ear's really good. Cartilagey. It's good.

And find out why Sichuan cuisine is now being celebrated around the world.

I'm discovering things here that are an inspiration to me.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd