Pick a region and meal context. The card shows flavor intensity (salt, spicy, sweet, umami, sour) plus signature dishes.
Why this exists
Chinese food gets treated as one cuisine. Eight major regional cuisines disagree on the most basic assumptions - sweet vs salty, chili vs peppercorn, soup vs stir-fry. Choosing a region before cooking changes everything.
Who this is for
Anyone picking a Chinese cookbook. Travelers planning a food tour. Cooks confused why Sichuan in their city tastes different from Sichuan in Chengdu.
How to read the result
Bars are relative to other regions, not absolute. Salt 5 in Shandong means saltier than other Chinese regions, not saltier than the ocean. Meal context matters - banquets tone down regional intensity; street food pushes it.
Honest limitations
Cities within regions disagree. Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong have very different Cantonese food. Within Sichuan, Chengdu is spicier than Ya'an. The 8 great cuisines are a simplification.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
What are the common mistakes when using Region Flavor Map?
Most common mistakes come down to four habits: entering 20 when the field expects 0.2 because the field is a percentage; leaving a field blank and accepting the default without checking what it stands for; changing one input and reading a result that was calculated before the change; and quoting the output as an exact figure when the page describes it as a reference estimate. Press calculate again after any edit, and treat the number as a reference point rather than a final answer.
How do I read the result from Region Flavor Map?
Read the final figure first, then come back to this section for the conditions behind it: Bars are relative to other regions, not absolute. Salt 5 in Shandong means saltier than other Chinese regions, not saltier than the ocean. Meal context matters - banquets tone down regional intensity; street food pushes it. Keep two things apart: the number itself, which comes from the values you typed, and the assumptions it depends on, which decide whether that number is meaningful. The page sets out what a higher or lower result means for your case, so check that direction as well as the magnitude.
Can I act on the Region Flavor Map result directly?
Treat it as one reference sheet before you decide, rather than as the answer itself: Cities within regions disagree. Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong have very different Cantonese food. Within Sichuan, Chengdu is spicier than Ya'an. The 8 great cuisines are a simplification. The output describes a magnitude under the conditions you entered. It does not include what it actually costs to act, what might change while you act, or how the other side behaves. Before you commit, compare the result against reality and note which assumptions do not hold where you are.
What inputs does Region Flavor Map need?
Region Flavor Map takes 1 inputs: Meal context Home cooking Banquet / restaurant Street food. They are listed in the order they feed the calculation, so an earlier value can change a later one. Do not skip a field you do not recognise - work out what it means first, because a silently guessed value produces a number that looks reasonable and is not. Before typing anything, make sure every figure uses the same unit and the same time period.
What should I check before I run Region Flavor Map?
Three checks pay for themselves. First, confirm the question you need answered is really inside the scope of this tool rather than a neighbouring one. Second, confirm that the figures you have are drawn from the same source and the same period - mixing monthly and annual numbers, or two different definitions of the same quantity, quietly distorts the result. Third, keep the key inputs written down, so that later you can tell which set of numbers produced a figure you are about to quote.
What about Xinjiang, Beijing, Northeast? Northern cuisines span a huge area. Xinjiang is heavily cumin/lamb; Northeast is pickled-vegetable heavy.
What is the 8 great cuisines? The traditional 8: Sichuan, Hunan, Cantonese, Fujian, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong.
Why does restaurant Chinese food taste different? Restaurant versions tone down regional extremes for non-local customers.