〖Fushan of Yantai, the cradle of Shandong courses〗

Fushan has rich dietetic cultures and a long cuisine history, which could be dated back to the spring and autumn period. Fushan course, Lixia course of Jinan and Kongfu course of Jining are the three backbones of Shandong courses and well known in the cuisine field.
In the August of 2001, experts from China Cuisine Association went to Fushan district for special inspection and demonstration. The expert team come to an unit idea that Fushan courses are solid founded with a long history and play a backbone role in Shandong courses, and the cooks in Fushan are famous in the cuisine field throughout the nation. After studied by the association, Fushan is named as the cradle of Shandong courses, and the district government of Fushan is awarded with the using and managing right of this name.
As the one of the earliest cradle of Shandong courses, Fushan can just answer for its name. First, the advantageous geology and natural conditions established solid foundation for its name. There is fertile soil, agreeable climate, abundant of natural resource, as well as various grains, fruit and vegetable here, and it is consequently named the hometown of fruit and vegetables; it faces Huang sea and Bo sea in the south with long coast line, so it is endowed with rich high-quality sea products, such as holothurians, abalone, prawns, mullet eggs, dry shellfish, clam, whelk and etc. These titbits and choice seafood is the top one throughout the nation. 2nd, Since 1860, when Yantai port is opened for business, the developed economic, prosperous business and the convenient communication both in water and on land have absorbed a lot of merchants, which boomed the restaurants and provide advantage for Fushan district to be the hometown of Shandong courses. 3rd, Fushan is endowed a long history of cuisine. The rich cuisine culture has created generations of cooks with high cooking skills as well as experience, which is one of the most important aspects for Fushan to become the hometown of Shandong courses. The cooks’ team in Fushan was initiated from an early age. The team is generally called cooks gang in the cook industry. And the cook gang in Fushan are mostly named by their places, such as Gaotuan gang, Menlou gang, Guxian gang and etc. Each gang has its own master, who takes charge in teaching, helping and leading the next generation in the cook skills. The development of generations of cooks gang as well as the passing on and improvement of the cooking skills have injected great power to the development of Fushan specialty courses and create new ground for the hometown of Shandong courses to improve itself. In Fushan not only cooks are all with high skills but almost all of the housewives are skilled in cooking and capable of serving their guests a big meal. There is a saying goes in the Yantai, “if you want a rich meal, just go around in Fushan”. And 4th, the restaurants, Fushan overseas Chinese guesthouses of Fushan, Fuyuan hotel, Xiyuan hotel, Baikeyuan hotel in representative, are well-known. Other top restaurants and public houses with considerable storefront are distributed in the main avenue of Fushan. In additional numerous restaurants in all kinds of scale can be found everywhere in the town and downtown of Fushan. Statistics has said that there are more than 800 restaurants throughout Fushan with over ten thousand of workers. Now the rapidness of the development of restaurants in Fushan, the greatness of its scale, the number of its practitioners and the height of its level have all recorded in history.