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From Hangzhou's Longjing tea fields to Guangzhou's dim sum tea houses, Chinese tea culture is a must-experience part of any trip. Here's everything you need to know.
Finding halal food in China is easier than you think. From Xi'an's Muslim Quarter to Beijing's halal restaurants, here's everything Muslim travelers need to know about eating in China.
Food tip for this week: if you see a restaurant with a plastic curtain at the door, plastic stools, and a crowd of locals eating with their heads down — go in. That's where the good stuff is. Not the place with English menus and laminated photos. I've eaten at ¥800-a-person banquets that I forgot the next day, and I've had ¥12 bowls of noodles from a street stall that I still think about years later. Trust the plastic stools.
My son asked me last week: "Mama, why do Chinese people eat with chopsticks?" I didn't have a good answer. So I asked my uncle, who's been a chef for 40 years. He said: "Because we cut everything in the kitchen. No knives on the table. The chopsticks are for picking up what's already ready." And that's actually a great way to understand Chinese food culture. Western cooking leaves the knife to the diner. Chinese cooking does all the work for you — meat sliced thin, vegetables bite-sized, everything ready to pick up and eat. The chopstick is just the tool that delivers it. The real skill isn't chopsticks — it's the rice bowl. Hold it close to your mouth and push food in. That's how locals eat. Keeping the bowl on the table and leaning down? That's what kids do (and my four-year-old still does it, sauce on his chin, every single meal). If you can handle chopsticks well enough to pick up a single peanut, you're better than most tourists. If you can pick up a slippery mushroom? You've graduated.
I took a British family to a Kunming night market. The dad bought a scorpion stick and said it was the best meal of his trip. Here's everything I've learned about Chinese street food over 15 years — what's safe, what's worth it, and how to eat like a local.
7 AM at my local market in Chongqing. The vegetable vendors are already on their second round of customers. An old lady selling bok choy sees me coming and shouts: Hey! The mom with two girls! Your youngest liked the spinach last time! She remembered. I have no idea how she remembered. She packed me an extra bunch of scallions and said free, for the girls. This does not happen in supermarkets. This does not happen anywhere outside China. This is what I mean when I tell my clients: come for the sights, stay for the people.
After 15 years of dragging hungry clients around Beijing, I've built a mental map of exactly where to eat — from the hole-in-the-wall jianbing stall that beats any hotel breakfast, to the Peking duck restaurants locals actually queue for.
Xi'an's Muslim Quarter at sunset is one of those places I'd send every traveller even if they had only one day in China. The narrow alleys fill with smoke from a thousand grill carts. Lamb skewers sizzle. Biang biang noodles get stretched and slapped on counters. Persimmon cakes fry in giant woks. The Yangrou Paomo (bread crumbled into lamb soup) at Lao Sun Jia is the same recipe they used 50 years ago. I bring every client here. The ones who love food leave overwhelmed. The ones who don't care about food also leave overwhelmed — because this place has a way of making you care. Two tips: go hungry (obvious), and start from the Drum Tower end working inward instead of the main gate. The crowds thin out and the vendors get more interesting the deeper you go.
From Peking duck to Chongqing hotpot, from Xiaolongbao to Guilin rice noodles — the 30 dishes you need to eat on your China trip, with where to find them.
Chongqing in summer hits 40°C — and I mean that literally, not as a figure of speech. The kind of heat where walking from your front door to the car feels like a bad life decision. So where do locals go? Underground. Not basements or malls. Real air-raid shelters dug into the mountains during World War II. Today they're converted into hotpot restaurants, tea houses, and even a museum. The temperature inside stays around 22°C year-round, no AC needed. I took a British family to one last week. We sat in a cave tunnel eating hotpot while outside the city baked at 41 degrees. The dad kept touching the stone walls, amazed that 80-year-old military tunnels now serve the best goose intestine I've ever had. That's what I love about this city. Nothing gets thrown away. Every space finds a new purpose.
After a lifetime of eating Chongqing hotpot, here's everything I wish every visitor knew — from what makes the broth different to how to eat it without embarrassing yourself.
Brought my clients to a tea house in Hangzhou this afternoon. The owner brewed seven different teas for us — Longjing, Biluochun, the works. My Australian guests kept filling their cups to the top until I stopped them. In Chinese tea culture you never fill it all the way. That is for noodles. Tea gets small refills. And you tap the table twice when someone pours — an old thank you gesture. Such small things, but they make the whole experience.
Pointing at menus, using your phone, and the one phrase that will get you fed anywhere in China. From someone who's been eating her way across the country for 15 years.
The bowl that defines a city — silky rice noodles in bone broth, topped with beef, peanuts, and pickled beans. Here's everything you need to know about Guilin's most famous dish.
Every foreign traveler asks this. Here's the Traditional Chinese Medicine explanation — and some practical tips for getting your cold drinks in China.
Everyone comes for the pandas. But the real magic of Chengdu is in its food alleys, tea houses, and the laid-back attitude you won't find anywhere else in China.
