Chinese Food — What to Eat and What It Costs
Regional cuisines, street food, and what it actually costs — plus dietary needs done honestly.
"Chinese food" barely means one thing — Beijing's wheat noodles and roast duck, Xi'an's Muslim-quarter lamb skewers and biang biang noodles, and Shanghai's soup dumplings (xiaolongbao) and sweeter Jiangnan cooking are three different culinary worlds. A street or market meal runs $2–5, a casual sit-down restaurant $5–12, a nice dinner $15–35 per person. Chinese street food is generally very safe; the real skill is ordering, since English menus are inconsistent outside major hotels.
The single biggest misconception first-time visitors bring to China is that "Chinese food" is one cuisine. It isn't, even close — it's a whole continent's worth of regional traditions, and the dish you know from your hometown Chinese restaurant back home may barely resemble what's actually on the plate in Xi'an or Chengdu. Here's what to actually order in each region, roughly what it costs, and how to eat well without a word of Mandarin.
