Abstract: Since the 1980s, Chinese cuisine culture research has been trapped in a self-important but self-confining notion of “Chinese cooking being the world's best”. An appropriate definition of “cuisine family” should be roughly “category of dishes of similar flavor and style”, over interpretation of which entails mis-judgment. Naming dishes after places is a theory that emphasizes natural and social ecology as the basic and core features of one particular cuisine culture, a practice that demonstrates the place of origin, natural and social elements (ingredients, customs and ethnics) and differences among the areas in question. Well based on four reasons, naming dishes after provinces is a practice in agreement to the previous practice to some extent in both reasoning and principle. The term “Chinese cuisine” denotes a variety of categories of dishes by native Chinese, in Chinese methods, from Chinese materials and with Chinese seasonings to delight the long-accustomed Chinese palate. The aesthetic doctrine of Chinese cuisine is to follow the Ten-merit Principlequality, fragrance, color, shape, tableware, taste, appropriateness, procedure, environment, and enjoyment. The best instrument for serving and eating Chinese food is chopsticks. Cuisine culture is a result of the theory of food cultural field theory–the survival space for central cities that promote the food service industry and cultural diversity.

Key words: naming dish after place, cuisine family, Chinese cuisine, cuisine culture, collective misunderstanding, mis-complex, food culture field theory