Shandong cuisine is generally salty and fresh. It puts emphasis on the quality of materials and highlights the freshness with salt and broth; the seasonings are supposed to be salty, fresh and pure, so as to highlight the true flavor of food. Shandong cuisine is known for the salty and fresh taste, masterly heat control, excellent broths and seafood cooking.

Sichuan cuisine is characterized by the spicy taste. With diversified dishes, it attaches equal importance to both light and pungent flavors and is well known for the pungent and spicy seasonings (fish-flavor, spiciness, chili, tangerine-flavor, pepper, exotic taste, and vinegar-pepper).

Guangdong cuisine or Cantonese cuisine is mainly fresh and fragrant and characterized by the selected ingredients and the light, fresh, tender and agreeably fatty flavor. Guangdong cuisine excels at stir frying which requires the perfect control of heat and oil temperature. Also, it assimilates many practices of Western food and stresses the style and class of dishes.

Jiangsu cuisine features a light flavor. It emphasizes the strict selection of ingredients according to the seasons, color matching and style of dishes. Well-known for the cooking methods of stewing, braising and simmering, Jiangsu cuisine puts emphasis on broths, true flavor and soft texture, and makes good use of vegetables. Huaiyang cuisine, one of Jiangsu cuisine styles, is characterized by the selected ingredients, fine cutting skill and broth making; Southern Jiangsu cuisine has a lighter taste, stresses soy sauce, and often employs vinasse and rice wine as seasonings.

Fujian cuisine is characterized by the umami and flavorful taste. It is famous for cooking diverse seafood and woodland delicacies. On the basis of good color, aroma, taste and appearance, Fujian cuisine is especially good at "aroma" and "taste". It wins a place in the culinary world with the fresh, mellow, umami and agreeably greasy taste and a wide range of broths.

Anhui cuisine is basically fresh and spicy. It takes braising, stewing and steaming as the common cooking techniques and highlights oil, color and heating control. The heating control techniques vary with dishes to get crisp, tender, fragrant or umami flavor. Braised, stewed and smoked dishes can best show the features of Anhui cuisine.

Hunan cuisine features hot and spicy flavors and a wide range of dishes with dark color, strong oil and cheap price. It is spicy, fragrant, soft and tender, emphasizes the matching of materials and the infiltration of taste. Hunan cuisine is especially sour and hot. Relatively speaking, Hunan cuisine is better at stewing, which is almost perfect. Stewing can be divided into red and white one in terms of color change and into light, thick and milky broth in terms of seasoning. By stewing over the low heat, the original flavor is maintained.

Zhejiang cuisine mainly has a light flavor and features delicate dishes which look beautiful and elegant and tastes fresh, soft and crisp. It employs vinasse and rice wine as seasonings, uses many cooking techniques and excels at seafood. Zhejiang cuisine emphasizes the fresh, crisp and tender taste, and maintains the original and true flavor of ingredients. The dishes look exquisite, delicate and elegant. Cuisine in north Zhejiang Province is rather light, the west is rather hot and the southeast is rather salty.