What and Where to Eat
From ChinaTravelGuide
Food culture is probably the best-known feature of Chinese culture by foreigners. You can find Chinese restaurant in almost every corner of the world. This fascination with food, however, is more or less a reflection of food insecurity in China's five thousand years' history. Today the question "Have you eaten already?" remains a popular greeting among Chinese people (much like "how are you?" in English).
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[edit] Basic information about Chinese Restaurant
Tea usually comes as soon as you sit down in a restaurant. The waiter/waitress then pours the tea for you while you are reading the menu. You can tap the table gently with your index and/or middle fingers for several times (meaning "thank you"), and the waiter/waitress will stop pouring. The tea pot is then left with you on the table for you to help yourself later.
Almost all the restaurants have picture menus with universally hard-to-understand translations.
Most restaurants, except for those ones catering to international tourists, do not serve ice water. When you ask for it in a traditional Chinese restaurant, they will have to put ice (if you are lucky) into the hot water, since tap water is not drinkable.
Traditional Chinese eating utensils are chopsticks, spoons and bowls. Forks are rarely used on the table and never will you see knives in traditional Chinese restaurants. However, most of the restaurants in China nowadays have forks available. If you are not used to chopsticks, you can ask for forks or even knives in modern restaurants catering to foreigners. Some restaurants will even provide several kinds of eating utensils for your choice.
Here are some common etiquette when using chopsticks:
- Do not stick chopsticks into your food, especially not into rice. Only at funerals are chopsticks stuck into the rice on the altar.
- If you are left-hander, do not sit too close to the right hand side of a right-hander (or vice versa). Or your chopsticks will fight against each other.
- Do not move your chopsticks around in the air too much. Do not play with chopsticks.
China is very populous, so do not be surprised by being surrounded by loud talking and laughing in restaurants (like a party). Chinese people like gathering with friends and relatives, and having meals together and talking about everything is an important part of their social life. If you want to taste good food, go to the restaurants with most noise. If you want privacy and a quiet place, they do provide individual small rooms called "Baoxiang (包厢)".
[edit] Where to eat
Everywhere. You can easily find different styles and different levels of restaurants almost everywhere. However, there are usually some famous spots in each city where you can find a cluster of restaurants, ranging from traditional Chinese restaurants serving different flavors of Chinese cuisine, Japanese, Korean and French restaurants, to western-style pizza places and fast food outlets like KFC and McDonald's. There are also many vegetarian and Muslim restaurants to suit any special needs and taste.
[edit] What to eat
When first visit China, the overseas visitor may feel quite flabbergasted at the diverse and bizarre options in the assortment of food.
Chinese cuisine is delicate and refined with delightful colors and distinctive flavors. Chinese cuisine can be roughly classified into four schools (the north, south, east, and west), which are further divided into eight main regional cuisines (Anhui (安徽), Guangdong (Canton) (广东), Fujian (福建), Hunan (湖南), Jiangsu (江苏), Shandong (山东), Sichuan (Szechuan) (四川), and Zhejiang (浙江)).
