Location: Guilin — The Mountains on the Money
You’ve made it through the whole book — a Hong Kong breakfast, a dim sum trolley’s worth of small plates, chapters’ worth of soups, noodles, mains, sauces, celebration dishes, and a closing chapter of desserts light enough to end any meal properly. Seventy-eight recipes, eight regions, and a wok that never really stopped moving.
If you’ve ever seen a photograph of China without knowing exactly where it was taken, there’s a good chance it was Guilin — the limestone karst peaks that rise straight out of the Li River like something from a classical ink painting, so iconic they’ve appeared on the 20 yuan banknote for decades. The peaks formed over 300 million years, as an ancient seabed was pushed upward and slowly dissolved by rainwater into the jagged, otherworldly shapes that define the landscape today.
Locals have a saying: “Guilin’s scenery is the best under heaven.” Drift down the river at dawn, when mist clings to the peaks and the water turns to glass, and it’s easy to understand why poets have been trying to capture this exact view for over a thousand years and never quite managing it. It felt like the right place to end. Every chapter of this book has taken you somewhere specific — a harbour, a mountain, a garden, a palace — and Guilin closes the loop with the image most people already carry in their heads when they picture China, even before they’ve ever been.
Over eight chapters, this book has taken you from a bowl of congee in a Hong Kong tea house to a whole Peking duck dried for two days before it ever sees an oven, by way of Guangzhou’s dim sum trolleys, Chongqing’s fire, Xi’an’s noodle stalls, Zhangjiajie’s impossible peaks, Chengdu’s fermenting jars, Beijing’s imperial kitchens, and Suzhou’s quiet gardens. Seventy-eight recipes, each one built to keep everything that made Chinese food extraordinary in the first place — the wok hei, the balance of flavours, the technique passed down through generations — while leaving behind only what your body doesn’t need.
A Note from Gisele Costello
Thank you for cooking your way through this book. China’s cuisine is vast enough that no single volume — mine included — could ever claim to cover it completely. What I’ve tried to do instead is give you a genuine cross-section: the noodle carts and the imperial banquets, the five-minute stir-fries and the two-day braises, the everyday and the ceremonial.
If there’s one thing I hope carries over from these pages, it’s a bit of respect for the wok itself. Chinese cooking rewards patience with technique far more than it rewards expensive ingredients — a hot pan, good timing, and a willingness to have everything prepped before you start will take you further than almost anything else in this book.
Xièxiè, and good cooking.
— Gisele
If this book leaves you wanting to keep traveling, the same approach continues across an entire series of regional cuisines at internationalketocookbook.com. Same care, same commitment — just a different stamp in the passport.