Restaurants in Guangzhou serves a wide range of food items, with each pertaining to specific ingredients or dishes. Most commercial restaurants in the city were established in the late Qing period and boomed in the early Republican period. The city came under siege in 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In this period, many restaurants ceased operation or were destroyed from warfare. Following the 1945 Chinese victory, the restaurant industry in Guangzhou once again boomed, pertaining to the city's population and economy boom.
With the communist takeover in late 1949, many restaurateurs fled the city, leaving many restaurant operating at limited capacity. In the 1950s, most restaurants first became joint ventures before becoming fully nationalized during the Great Leap Forward. Major establishments also saw renovation and expansion in this period and became venues for official reception. The Cultural Revolution saw closure, renaming, and restructuring of gastronomic establishments throughout the city. Many restaurants survived the period and restored their original name and original service menus.
Since the reform and opening up, meeting exponentially growing demands and patronage, many restaurants expanded their operation and renovated their venues.
History
Imperial Period As a major commercial port and provincial capital, along with a wide range of geographical features surrounding the locality, Guangzhou has historically been endowed with a dynamic culinary culture. Since the early medieval period, culinary practices in the region representing contemporary Guangzhou confluenced with those introduced from the various Chinese imperial territories, as well as from overseas. For the rest of the imperial period, the region's culinary culture continued to interact with their counterparts in places far and near.
Guangzhou's identity as a commercial port continued to see reinforcement in the Qing times, with commerce and wars engendering a vibrant economy surrounding food and drink services. Restaurant industry began to take hold in the city as a major economic sector. Restaurants in Guangzhou catered to an increasingly diverse population. Banquet halls (花酌馆, Flower and Wine Halls) represented high end dining, combining in one place a restaurant, a brothel, and a casino; for the wider public, restaurants (酒楼, wine halls) offers meals among a few tables and private rooms, tea houses (茶肆, tea places) often took shape as street side tents with a few tables and chairs.
In late Qing, Guangzhou's restaurant industry boomed along with the city's flourishing domestic and overseas trades. This period witnessed the birth of Guangzhou's tea house culture, where the establishment served tea and snacks. In 1860, Xu Laogao established the Taiping Restaurant (太平馆, Taiping Hall), the first major Western-style restaurant in the city. The rest of the restaurant industry also expanded in scale and number, serving a wide range of audience. To this point, Guangzhou's restaurant industry became a major component of the city's commercial economy.
Republican Period In the Republican period, Guangzhou's restaurant industry experienced growth and decline, as the new state experienced period of peace and warfare. The period saw the establishment of various notable restaurants and tea houses, many of which lasted to the present as time-honored brands (老字号).
The restaurant industry amassed an ever larger and diverse workforce. In 1920, a restaurant named Equal Rights Women's Teahouse (平权女子茶室), marking the first time in which women joined the restaurant workforce. Following the establishment of the Women's Teahouse, restaurants and teahouses around the city began to hire female workers.
Guangzhou saw relative social and political stability in the late 1920s and most of the 1930s, the number of gastronomic establishments soared. Restaurants and teahouses expanded with growing business demand, with some major establishments offering 300 – 400 seats. Many restaurants also served tea and dim sum in the morning, taking on the role of dedicated teahouses. High end establishments served increasingly exquisite ingredients, such as shark fins, birds’ nests, and other dry goods. Banquet culture among officials and the wealthy became standardized in high end establishments in various formats, such as the “ten pieces,” the “eight big and eight small dishes (八大碟八小碟)” with meat and vegetable dishes both hot and cold, and the lower end “six big and six small dishes” banquet. Many restaurants integrated both gastronomic and entertainment functions, where patrons smoked opium, gambled, solicited prostitutes, and commissioned singers. In the booming industry, Guangzhou's restaurant-goers identified four major establishments – the Wenyuan (文园, Wen Garden), Nanyuan (南园, South Garden), Dasanyuan (大三元), and Xiyuan (西园, West Garden).
In 1938, Japanese forces invaded and conquered Guangzhou. In this period, many restaurants were destroyed or closed, as restaurant owners fled the war. After the Chinese victory in 1945, despite the Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in the north, the restaurant industry in Guangzhou once again boomed. In 1948, the recorded number of restaurants, teahouses, and eateries reached 12,000. Competition grew increasingly fierce in the industry, and business owners each came up with various ways to attract patrons. Some restaurants such as the Zhongyang Dining Hall (中央餐厅, Central Dining Hall) opened a dance hall, whereas the famous Tao Tao Ju (陶陶居) hung famous paintings and calligraphy, both as efforts to attract business. Restaurants and teahouses became increasingly synonymous, with some serving both dim sum and regular meals during all meal periods.
The People's Republic of China
Early PRC The power transition that took place in 1949 resulted in a significant decline in Guangzhou's restaurant industry. According to the 1996 Guangzhou Gazetteer, in that year, the registered number of food and drink establishments in the city dropped sharply from the 1948 figure of 12,000 to 1,380. Though this number is likely an underestimation due to the relatively late establishment of the Guangzhou municipal government in late October that year.
The restaurant industry would recover briefly and to a limited extent in the early 1950s. Many major establishments re-opened in 1945, though only with partial capacity. For instance, the Beiyuan (北园, North Garden) Restaurant, which was destroyed during the Second Sino-Japanese War, operated near the original site in tents made of bamboo. During the New Democracy period between 1949 – 1952, market condition stabilized, and the restaurant industry began to recover. By 1952, registered food and drink establishment rose to 4,861, with a workforce of 17,059. The same year, the restaurant industry in Guangzhou recorded a retail revenue of 49.66 million Yuan, taking up 12.8% of the city's total retail revenue.
Socialist Transformation During the First Five Year plan (1953 – 1957), the restaurant industry in Guangzhou a general decline. In 1953, the industry's retail revenue reached 78.52 million Yuan, taking up 15.3% of the city's total retail revenue. In the following year, the municipal government pushed for publicly owned dining establishments by establishing numerous public canteens. With this push for public establishments, the government prioritized material supply away from the privately owned restaurants. This resulted in a drop in revenue by almost 14 million Yuan in 1955, a 3% drop in its proportion in the city's retail revenue. The year also marked the establishment of the first joint venture restaurant, a result of an ownership reconfiguration in the Datong (大同, Grand Unification) Restaurant.
The year 1956 saw the establishment of the Guangzhou Food and Drinks Company (广州饮食业公司), marking the beginning of unified management. Also took place that year is the whole sale ownership transition in the whole industry, forming joint ventures through official purchases. For smaller establishments, the government implemented a “closure, combine, and migrate (撤、并、迁)” policy, combining two to three smaller establishments into one. By the end of the year, the number of registered gastronomic establishments dropped by almost half, from 1952's 4,861 to 2,801, though the workforce remained relatively stable, declining 14,354 from 1952's 17,059.
The Food and Drinks Company also began to classify gastronomic establishments in the city. In the 1956 classification scheme, each of the city's establishments will fall into one of the seven categories – teahouses, banquet halls, restaurants, snack shops, dessert shops, ice shops, and herbal tea shops. Each category provides a different set of goods and services. For instance, the teahouses and banquet halls serves brunch, lunch, dinner, as well as formal banquets; the restaurants do not serve brunch; snack shops may serve congee and noodles, but does not serve rice, lunch and dinner dishes, or liquor.
The same year also marked the city's first attempts to professionalize and promote local culinary practices. Between June 1 and July 1 of 1956, the Food and Drinks Company held an exhibition for famous dishes and delicate dim sums. The exhibition committee tallied 5,457 dishes, 825 varieties of dim sums, 273 kinds of snacks, and 28 types of cooking methods in Guangzhou's culinary trade. Professional certification also took place for the first time since the founding of the People's Republic.
Major establishments also saw renovation of major establishments. That year, the Datong Restaurant, the Guangzhou Restaurant, Taiping Guan (太平馆, Hall of Peace), and Beiyuan (北园, North Garden) Restaurant saw repairs and expansion. According to the 1996 Gazetteer, for reasons unspecified, the number of registered establishments more than doubled, reaching 5,728; the workforce also saw growth to 19,674 – marking a new peak in both establishment and workforce headcount since the founding of the People's Republic. Retail revenue grew to 97.11 million Yuan (an almost 50% growth compared to the 1955 figures), but only represented marginal growth in relation to the city's total retail revenue compared to the preceding year (13.5% in 1956, versus 12.2% in 1955).
Great Leap Forward and Famine The restaurant industry in Guangzhou saw significant decline during the Great Leap Forward, and especially so during the famine that followed. One of the contributing factors is a city-wide readjustment of workforce, where restaurant workers were drafted into industrial and transport sectors. Most of the drafted workers were men, and despite industry-wide effort to hire female workers to fill in the labor gap, the sudden withdrawal of trained personnel meant that service standards declined since the beginning of the Great Leap Forward. In 1958, the city government also enacted a radical mandate to nationalize all gastronomic establishments as “enterprises owned by the whole people (全民所有制),” a principal policy for all state-owned enterprises in China. The retail revenue in the restaurant industry declined by 10.56 million Yuan, to an 11.3% proportion of the city's total retail revenue.
The restaurant industry remained operational in the city, though the city's Food and Drinks Company implemented austerity measures to counter the dwindling food supply. Restaurants reduced supply standards to one round of each meal in each day, on the basis of availability. The austerity measures demanded “paying special attention to special demographics, guaranteeing supply for important patrons, and making arrangements for the general public (照顾特殊，保证重点，安排一般)” for the city's establishments, specifically: