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, eating habits vary greatly between the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the river.

On the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau, where the Yangtze River originates, mutton, beef, tsampa (roasted barley), and Tibet butter tea are the major food because the plateau area is unsuitable for growing other crops such as rice and wheat, and the popular diet helps people to keep warm and prevent mountain (altitude) sickness.

The spicy and hot Sichuan Cuisine represents the diet in upper reaches 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, mushrooms, meat, game, and all kinds of fish. The upper reaches of the Yangtze River, including Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, geographically features deep valleys which gets less sunlight and are very humid. Therefore, people in the areas eat hot and spicy food to which controls body temperature; the main reason that Sichuan Cuisine features spicy and hot ingredients.

In the middle reach of Yangtze River, Hunan Cuisine and Hubei Cuisine are the most popular. Hunan Cuisine is usually sour and spicy. 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 control body temperature. However, Hubei Cuisine,  tastes much milder. Hubei is also known as "the Province of One Thousand Lakes” and is rich of fresh water fish and shrimp, which is the major ingredient of Hubei Cuisine.

The fertile lower reaches of the Yangtze River have long been known as “the Home of Fish and Rice” since ancient times, so rice is the staple food in this 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 reaches of Yangtze River feature sweat, mild and fresh tastes, and are represented by Anhui Cuisine, Jiangsu Cuisine, and Zhejiang Cuisine.

 Residential House
Regionally, 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), the 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 that blend 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 reaches of the Yangtze River lived in suspended wooden houses. In the middle reaches, the Three Gorges area, where there are many “V” or “U” shape valleys, houses were usually built in a 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 building techniques improved , less suspended houses are built, and only some made of wood and bamboo have been kept in Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, and Yunnan.

 Wood-Earth Structure Houses
The earliest of this style has been discovered in the Qujialing Cultural Site in Hubei Province, which is a relic in middle reaches of Yangtze River of from 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 the 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 courtyards were built, and the unique gardens in southern Yangtze River were derived from the courtyard-style houses.

 Other Styles
In some regions of Yangtze River, people who make their living from fishing live on boathouses. 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 put up and tear down.