Abstract: The part of the Yangtze River between Yibin, Sichuan Province and Yichang, Hubei Province is conventionally referred to as the Chuangjiang River. In the middle Qing Dynasty, or around the 18th century, shipping with wooden ships rose as a business here and players of this business soon divided into three regional factions whose names were borrowed in the 1980s by books on Sichuan cuisine to name the different regional culinary schools. Classifying culinary culture this way, however, is far from well grounded and scholars disagree, resulting in a variety of contending classification theories and names. This impedes development of Sichuan cuisine in general. Sichuan cuisine classification, too, needs to advance with the time. Instead of classifying and naming the dishes after the shipping factions, it is much more reasonable to do so after the names of their hometowns, such as Luzhou cuisine, Chengdu cuisine and Ya’an cuisine.

Key words: Yangtze River, shipping faction, Sichuan cuisine, school, gang