If you think Chinese food you think of rice, rice was first cultivated in China. There is archaeological evidence of rice along the Yangtze river since around 5,000 BC. People in acient times cooked rice in boiling water as we do today. Or they made rice into wine which had been popular since prehistory of China.

But rice doesn’t grow in northern China, which is much drier and colder. People in northern China gathered wild millet and sorghum instead. By 4500 BC, people in northern China were farming millet. They ate it boiled into a kind of porridge.