In contrast to the refined dishes served at elegant banquets are a wide variety of local foods generally known as siao-chih in Mandarin (“small eats”), which are something like a delicacy, snack, or one dish of a main meal. These are local dishes with the taste of the countryside. They are the product of folk culture and represent popular aesthetics. Superficially, therefore, siao-chih seem to be quite the opposite of banquet dishes: folk as opposed to elegance, of different classes, with different flavors.