Food:

There is so much variety of food in China that a section must be included in this book to help you order something recognisable or just avoid pointing at the pictures.

Food is not just food to the Chinese – it is a way of showing love, sealing business agreements or emphasising deep-rooted friendships.

Restaurants tend to serve specific food and often have a speciality. Generally, there are two kinds of eating – the smarter restaurant, with some friends and a large variety of dishes, or the quick noodle bowl eat-and-nap approach. Some of establishments serve dog (increasingly less common), some specialise in frog or even bird meats that some foreigners may find rather undesirable.

China has been given a rough ride internationally in terms of eating ‘anything that goes’ but actually most people do only eat the same meats and veggies that we’re used to around the world. The word for meat is ‘rou’ (pronounced like ‘row’ as in ‘row the boat’) and the meat word is put before it. Therefore, dog meat is ‘gou-rou’ (‘gou’ being dog) – so now you know how to avoid that! Other meat types are ‘new-rou’ (beef), ‘jee-rou’ (chicken), ‘yang-rou’ (lamb), ‘ya-rou’ (duck), ‘zhu rou’ (pork) – pork being the most common of all meats.

If your visit takes you to Muslim Xinjiang do not ask for ‘zhu rou’ but ask for ‘da rou’, which is still pork, but without the direct reference to the pig. Of course, try to avoid asking for pork if the restaurant is clearly Muslim run or the clientele are mostly Muslim.

We’ll be putting together a handy menu-style list so you can order the most common dishes pretty much anywhere in China. Obviously, there are many dishes which are specific to certain province (like I said at the intro of this website, China “is a big place” so expect great changes and differences in what they eat province by province). T

he Chinese take immense pride in their selection of food and no doubt you’ll find many more kinds of dishes during a long stay in China, which are specific to the area you’re in. You may also find some crazy local delicacies but they are all far too numerous to mention here (scorpions can be eaten in Beijing and barbequed kebabs (‘kao-rou’) are common in many provinces, for example). Many dishes (especially in the South and around Sichuan province) get peppered in harsh spices.

To find out how to avoid these spices check out our upcoming ‘spice and intolerances’ section.

A final comment about seeds must be made. They love them! On trains, in waiting rooms, huddled around a small TV in your local shop, even on high speed trains, seed shells will litter the floor creating an impressive mess. Many Chinese also have jagged front teeth, probably from a lifetime of seed crunching.

So, we cannot give Chinese food anywhere near the justice it deserves in these few paragraphs but we can introduce it briefly enough to give you a heads up on what, where and how to enjoy it.

Just one more thing, don’t ask for steamed duck eggs in Suzhou, they love them embryonic, that is, with the chick visibly developing inside while you eat it. Pass.

(See Eating with friends, Eating habits, Spice and intolerances and Breakfast).