I’m from a S.E.Chinese dialect group, Teochew (Cháozhōu / 潮州), whose speakers eat their food quite bland on the whole.
As a child, I’d hear these generalised statements, “The Cantonese eat their food very salty and oily.” (True or not, I’m just reporting what I’d grown up hearing the adults say.)
The Brazilian friend, who’s mentioned in the other Nature vs nurture blog (on the size of the cooked ingredients), dipped into a Chinese dish I brought one day and said, “You didn’t put any salt in it??!!”
She and her husband love Chinese cooking, and Chinese cooking ingredients (e.g., soya sauce). They don’t just add soya sauce to the food while it’s being cooked (which is what the Chinese do). They would also sometimes actually drizzle soya sauce fairly liberally over their Western cooking at the dining table.
She even makes what she calls “ramen”: Chinese egg noodles with a stir-fried mixed veg and meat. Yes, I did find it too salty for my palate.
So, it’s very much nurture when it comes to saltiness and other flavouring intensity.
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