It's really only in the last 20 years or so that China has opened its borders to Western tourists and even as thousands of people prepare to descend on Beijing this summer the fact is most of China is still untouched by mass tourism — that may be changing. Stuart Woods gets the low down from Toronto food-writers and authors of Beyond the Great Wall Recipes and Travels in the Other China, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, on culinary traditions beyond the urbanized eastern third of China.

Stuart Woods is a journalist living in Toronto. Brendan Woods is a producer also living in Toronto. Yes, they are brothers, both in the biological and spiritual sense of the word.