Chengdu had been officially approved to join in the Creative Cities Network and named “City of Gastronomy” by UNESCO. The press conference was held in Beijing on Feb 28, 2010. Chengdu is the 1st City of Gastronomy of Asia and the 2nd of the world, following Popayan, Colombia.
As the origin and now the center of Sichuan Cuisine, which is one of the most famous Four Major Chinese Cuisines, Chengdu has a long history of cuisine development and now is becoming one of the most important gastronomy centers of the world. Sichuan Cuisine features strong tastes, especially the spicy taste of peppers. Today there are more than 6000 dishes of Sichuan Cuisine that can be divided into five categories, the feast dishes, the refection dishes, the hotpot dishes, home-cooking dishes and the snacks. Chengdu owns the very first distillery and cuisine manufacturing base of China and is also the earliest center of tea culture. For more information about Chengdu food, visit http://www.chinatouronline.com/
Wang Zhonglin, the deputy mayor of Chengdu said that the government has already formulated the Developing Blueprint of City of Gastronomy according to the duty and obligation of membership of Creative Cities Network., in which the process of standardization and industrialization of Sichuan Cuisine was put in prior concern.
The Creative Cities Network was launched by UNESCO in October 2004 and it was designed to promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in both developed and developing countries. Cities applying to the network would be named after one of the seven titles as follows, “City of Literature”, “City of Cinema”,” City of Music”, “City of Design”, “City of Media Arts”, “City of Folk Arts” and “City of Gastronomy”. Chinese Cities Shanghai (http://www.chinatouronline.com/
