Is this soup, stew, or something else? I ate some East Asian dish recently and it looked something like this:



[image source: http://www.thetabletopcook.com/images/tabletop-cooking-homemade-taiwanese-hot-pot.jpg]

I had never eaten anything that looks like it. I was confused, is it a soup with some solids added to it?

I want to know about nomenclature for this type of food and how they would be classified (not according to taste, but according to how they look/are arranged/are mixed).
It's a hot pot or steamboat as we call it in Malaysia. It's a clear soup made from stock. Raw ingredients are gradually added to it as it simmers. Soup and the cooked ingredients are fished out when they are done (each time when the pot boils). At the end, you are left with a rich, delicious soup that has flavours of all the ingredients intermingled and it is usually eaten with noodles.

Going by this, it would be classified as a soup or broth. It wouldn't be a stew as flour has not been used to thicken it.