Life Style in Yangtze Area

 Diet and Cuisine
Diet in the Yangtze Area is different from other regions in China due to the geographic, historical, and cultural features; however, even at the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the river, eating habits can vary greatly.

In the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau, where Yangtze River originates from, mutton, beef, tsampa (roasted barley), and Tibet butter tea are major food because the plateau area is not suitable for other crops such as rice and wheat, and those food helps people to keep warm and prevent mountain sickness.

The spicy and hot Sichuan Cuisine represents the diet in upper reach of Yangtze River. The home of Sichuan Cuisine - Sichuan is a rich land, where all the necessary ingredients for Sichuan Cuisine can be found, such as vegetables, fungus, meat, game, and all kinds of fishes. The upper reach of Yangtze River, including Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, features deep valleys geographically, so gets less sunlight and is very humid. Therefore, people in the areas eat spicy and hot food to drive off moisture. That is why Sichuan Cuisine features spicy and hot.

In the middle reach of Yangtze River, Hunan Cuisine and Hubei Cuisine are the most popular. Hunan Cuisine is usually spicy and sour. Mountains and low humid lands cover most of Hunan, and salt was not easy to get in ancient times, so spicy and sour food was used to make meals taste good and help to drive off moisture. The Hubei Cuisine, however, tastes much milder. Hubei is also known as “the Province of One Thousand Lakes” and is rich of fresh water fish and shrimps, which is the major food of Hubei Cuisine.

The fertile lower reach of the Yangtze River has long been known as “the Home of Fish and Rice” since ancient times, so rice is the staple food in the area. Rice is also used to make all kinds of cakes, such as sweat dumplings made of glutinous rice and Zongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in a pyramid shape using bamboo or reed leaves). Cuisines in the lower reach of Yangtze River features sweat, mild and fresh, and are represented by Anhui Cuisine, Jiangsu Cuisine, and Zhejiang Cuisine.

 Residential House
Regionally, residential houses in the Yangtze River basin are different from the houses of other areas in China, and that of the upper, middle and lower reaches of the river also show distinct features due to different geographical and cultural reasons. Historically, residential houses of the Yangtze River basin changed as time went by. After the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD), culture of northern China spread to the Yangtze River region, so architectures were also influenced by the northern styles, Buddhism, and Confucianism. When western culture entered China in the Ming and Qing Dynasty, the western architecture styles were also taken into the houses in Yangtze River region, so we can still see many buildings converging both Chinese and western styles in the Yangtze River cities, such as Shanghai, Nanjing, Hankou, and Chongqing.

Residential houses along the Yangtze River can be categorized into two major types: suspended wooden houses (ganlan style houses) and wood-earth structure houses.

 Suspended Wooden Houses
Suspended Wooden Houses (Ganlan Style Houses) was the traditional building in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River. The Sites of Hemudu Culture and Liangzhu Culture indicate that early in the primitive period, people of lower reach Yangtze River lived in suspended wooden houses. In the middle reach, Three Gorges area, where there are many “V” or “U” shape valleys, so houses were usually built to semi-suspended style with staked front parts and rear parts connecting to ground. Suspended houses made people close to water and repelled moisture at the same time. As the improvement of architecture techniques, less suspended houses are built, only some made of wood and bamboo have been kept in Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, and Yunnan.

 Wood-Earth Structure Houses
The earliest of this kind has been discovered in the Qujialing Cultural Site in Hubei Province, which is the relic in middle reach of Yangtze River of five to six thousand year ago. Wood-earth structure houses, as the name suggests, are built of wooden columns and bricks. When building the houses, people usually dug a foundation trench first, buried stakes in earth as the base of the house, and then piled bricks and columns on top.

Influenced by the architecture style in northern China, court-yard houses with patios in the center appeared at the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River. During the Ming (168 - 1644) and Qing (1644 - 1911) Dynasties, more and more luxury court-yards were built, and the unique gardens in southern Yangtze River were derived from the court-yards.

 Other Styles
In some regions of Yangtze River, people living on fishing stay in boat houses. They sleep, eat, and even get married on their boats.

People of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau live in castle-shape houses made of rocks and earth. Some nomadic people also live in tents which are easy to build and tear down.