What to eat, where to find it, what it costs, and exactly what to say — so you eat like a local, not like a tourist.
Prices are real 2026 street/local prices in RMB (¥7.2 ≈ $1). Tourist streets charge 20–30% more — the "where" and "when" below are how you pay local prices.
Eggs simmered for hours in soy sauce, black tea, star anise and cinnamon, with marble-like cracks in the shell. The 12-year internet meme foreigners are now trying (and failing) to copy at home — skip the kitchen, they're everywhere in China.
Savory mung-bean crepe cooked on a flat griddle, folded around a crispy fried cracker, egg, cilantro and hoisin. Made fresh in front of you in 2 minutes — China's favorite commute breakfast.
Roujiamo, xiaolongbao, stinky tofu, hulatang (the £13.80 London soup — ¥12 at home), hotpot and more — plus the Chinese phrase cheat sheet and the mobile-payment setup that gets you fed anywhere.
Get your free Chinese name → Free guide · 100% unlocked · no sign-upSlow-braised, cumin-spiced pork chopped and stuffed into a toasted flatbread. From Xi'an, 2,000 years old — arguably the world's oldest hamburger, and it beats most actual burgers.
Fluffy steamed buns stuffed with pork, beef, vegetables or red bean. Stacked in bamboo steamers at every morning stall — three of them and a soy milk is a ¥10 breakfast.
Shanghai's delicate dumplings filled with pork and a spoonful of scalding soup. Every tourist's first bite is a mistake — the soup squirts and burns. Eat them the local way.
Fermented tofu, deep-fried until crispy, drowned in chili-garlic sauce. It smells like a blocked drain and tastes like the best savory snack of your life — the classic China flex food.
Hawthorn berries (or strawberries, grapes, cherry tomatoes) coated in a glassy sugar shell that shatters when you bite. Sweet-sour-crunchy, impossible to eat without smiling.
A single-person hot pot: grab a bowl, pick skewers of veggies, tofu, meat and noodles from the fridge, hand it over, and it comes back boiled in numbing-spicy broth. You pay by weight.
Thick, peppery breakfast soup loaded with beef, tofu skin, vermicelli and mushrooms, eaten with youtiao (fried dough) dipped in. Henan's 36-year-old chains are now opening in London — at London prices.
The #1 food experience foreigners come for: a boiling pot in the middle of the table, raw plates to cook yourself, chaos and fun. Chongqing/Sichuan spicy broth is the real deal — but order smart.
China's viral snowman-branded tea chain, now taking over New York and London. In China the soft-serve cone costs ¥2 and lemon water ¥4 — the same cone is $1.19 in NYC and a comparable drink $3–4. The theme song will be stuck in your head for life.
You do not need to speak Chinese. You need a phone, a finger, and six phrases. This section — the phrase cheat sheet, the queue-following rules, and the mobile-payment setup — is part of the full guide.
| Chinese | Pinyin | English |
|---|---|---|
| 这个 | zhège | "This one" (point!) |
| 不要辣 | bú yào là | No spicy — the #1 survival phrase |
| 微辣 | wēi là | Mildly spicy |
| 这个多少钱？ | zhège duōshao qián? | How much is this? |
| 微信可以吗？ | wēixìn kěyǐ ma? | Can I pay with WeChat? |
| 打包 | dǎbāo | To-go / pack it up |
| 买单 | mǎidān | The bill, please |
| 好吃！ | hǎochī! | Delicious! (vendors love this) |
Every dish above — and a thousand more — one question away. Ask ChinaPal AI: "Where's the best hulatang near my hotel?", "Translate this menu", "How do I order this in Chinese?" It finds the spots, reads the menus, and tells you exactly what to say.
Get ChinaPal AI → Full guide included · works in English · chinapal.world