Gastronomy | Cantonese cuisine fires up poverty alleviation opportunities

Trainees from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province learn to cook at Shunde Culinary Institute in Shunde, south China’s Guangdong Province

Dim sum, boiled shrimp, roast goose, bite-sized wontons and steamed spare ribs with pickled plums are all staples of Cantonese cuisine, one of the four major Chinese cuisines. A variety of seemingly simple methods have been used to keep the natural flavors of the ingredients for hundreds of years.

The culinary style is now experiencing a renaissance as Guangdong province steps up efforts to promote Cantonese cuisine training to boost employment and fight poverty.

Guangdong started the Cantonese cuisine training program in 2018. This year, the province will invest more than 20.8 billion yuan to help unemployed people find jobs, with priority given to the cooking program, according to a meeting on the province’s human resources and social security.

Guangdong province signed cooperation agreements with Tibet, Guangxi Zhuang, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions, and Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan province to train more Cantonese cuisine chefs as part of the pairing-off arrangement for poverty relief.

“Programs like this drive big change,” said Yang Hongshan, deputy head of the provincial human resources and social security department. “In the exquisite Cantonese dishes, we can also taste the sweet benefits of poverty alleviation.”

A NEW VOCATION

Lei Kalin, aged 46, had been working outside his hometown for nearly 20 years. But he decided to return to his hometown of Wangtong Village in the city of Xinyi when he heard about the Cantonese cuisine chef training class last year.

He soon mastered over 100 Cantonese dishes and 10 local specialties after a one-month course, and with the confidence gained and some of his savings, he bought a share in a local restaurant.

Lei is not alone. Local farmers and laid-off workers are actively participating in the training, said Li Ge, head of the city’s human resources and social security bureau.

“Those who are registered as living below the poverty line also receive subsidies for food, housing and transportation,” Li said. “After the training, qualified students will receive certificates with which they will be able to find jobs with a salary of 4,000 to 5,000 yuan per month, 1,000 to 2,000 yuan higher than what they earned in the past.”

So far, 147 vocational schools have opened Cantonese cuisine courses in Guangdong province, with 56,000 current students. The course has been taken around 15,000 times over the past year.

With start-up subsidies and loans, some have also opened restaurants and started businesses of their own.

THE POWER OF COOKING

Shunde District in the city of Foshan, which is well-known for good food and chefs, is one of the most popular destinations for Cantonese cuisine.

A total of 103 young trainees from three poverty-stricken counties in southwest China’s Sichuan Province – Meigu, Leibo and Jinyang – came to Shunde this year, hoping to step out of poverty and change their lives.

Dressed in a white uniform and a tall chef’s hat, Mahai Yangzi gets excited when talking about her dream of becoming a chef, despite it taking her more than 30 hours by bus to get here. “In my hometown, there aren’t many female chefs because people think we are too weak to lift iron pots. But I want to learn how to cook and become a chef to give my family a better life,” the 25-year- old woman said, according to Xinhua.

Mahai and her classmates will receive free cooking lessons for two months at the Shunde Culinary Institute and will have access to restaurant internships organized by the institute. After training, they can choose to work in Shunde or return to their hometown, according to Gan Muyi, a senior official with the institute.

“Taught by masters in Shunde, the students will not only learn how to cook traditional Cantonese dishes such as stir- fried milk and stuffed mud carp, but also innovative techniques combining Cantonese cuisine with Sichuan flavor, which is spicy, helping them become more competitive when going back to Sichuan,” Gan said. DB/Xinhua