Regional Cuisines of China: A Traveller's Map

The single most useful thing to understand about eating in China is that there is no such thing as Chinese food.

There are eight canonical regional cuisines, a dozen more that are not on that list but should be, and cooking traditions separated by more distance and difference than French cooking is from Turkish. A traveller who eats hotpot in Chengdu, dim sum in Guangzhou and lamb skewers in Xi'an has not eaten three versions of one thing. They have eaten in three countries.

This is a map of what to eat where, organised by the places you are likely to go.

The eight great cuisines

The traditional classification — 八大菜系 — is worth knowing as a frame, even though it does not map cleanly onto where visitors go.

Sichuan (川菜) — numbing and hot, from Sichuan pepper and chilli together. Cantonese (粤菜) — precise, fresh, lightly seasoned, steamed and roasted. Shandong (鲁菜) — the northern classical tradition, seafood, braises, clear soups. Jiangsu (苏菜) — refined, slightly sweet, knife-work heavy. Zhejiang (浙菜) — fresh, delicate, river fish and bamboo. Fujian (闽菜) — soups and broths, seafood, sweet-sour notes. Hunan (湘菜) — hot without the numbness, smoked and cured, sharper than Sichuan. Anhui (徽菜) — wild ingredients, braising, mountain vegetables.

The list is incomplete for a traveller. It excludes Xinjiang, Yunnan, the northeast, Shaanxi and Guizhou, all of which are more distinctive to a visitor than Anhui or Zhejiang.

By city

Beijing

Northern, wheat-based, robust. This is dumpling and noodle territory rather than rice.

Eat: Peking duck, obviously — book, because the well-known houses queue. Also zhajiangmian (noodles with fermented soybean paste), jiaozi (dumplings), shuan yangrou (Beijing lamb hotpot, clear broth, copper pot, entirely different from Sichuan hotpot), jianbing (savoury crêpe, breakfast, from a street cart), and luzhu huoshao if you are feeling brave.

Skip: the "Beijing snacks" tourist streets selling scorpions on sticks. Nobody in Beijing eats those.

Xi'an and Shaanxi

Wheat, lamb, cumin, and the clearest Silk Road influence in Chinese food.

Eat: roujiamo (braised pork or lamb in a flatbread, the original of the "Chinese hamburger" description), biangbiang noodles (hand-pulled, belt-wide, named after a character so complex it does not exist in standard fonts), yangrou paomo (lamb soup with torn bread you shred yourself), and lamb skewers with cumin.

The Muslim Quarter is where most visitors eat this, and it is touristed and still good. See the 7-day itinerary.

Chengdu and Sichuan

The famous one, and misunderstood.

Sichuan food is not simply hot. The defining sensation is málà (麻辣) — má is the tingling numbness of Sichuan peppercorn, là is chilli heat. The numbness is the interesting part and it is what people are unprepared for. Your lips will buzz.

Eat: hotpot, mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, fuqi feipian (sliced beef and offal in chilli oil), kou shui ji (mouth-watering chicken), zhong dumplings, and chuan chuan — skewers cooked in hotpot broth, the casual version.

Not everything is spicy. Sichuan has a large repertoire of mild dishes — kaishui baicai (cabbage in clear consommé) is one of the great refined dishes in Chinese cooking. Ask and you will be given options.

If chilli is a problem: ask for a yuanyang (鸳鸯) split hotpot, half clear broth. Completely standard, nobody will think anything of it. "微辣" (wēi là, mildly spicy) is still spicy by most standards. "不要辣" (bú yào là) means no chilli and is the phrase to use if you mean it.

Chongqing

Sichuan's neighbour and hotter. Chongqing hotpot is the origin of the form and it is meaningfully more aggressive than Chengdu's — heavier on the beef tallow, heavier on the chilli.

Eat: hotpot, xiaomian (breakfast noodles, the city's real signature), jianghu cai — the rustic river-and-lake style dishes like laziji, chicken buried in a mound of dried chillies.

See the Sichuan and Chongqing itinerary.

Guangzhou and the south

The best eating city in China, and the argument is not close.

Cantonese cooking prizes freshness and restraint. The technical benchmark is whether you can taste what the ingredient actually is.

Eat: morning tea (yum cha) — go early, point at trolleys, order har gow, siu mai, char siu bao, cheung fun. Roast meats — char siu, roast goose, soy chicken — from a counter with things hanging in the window. Wonton noodles. Claypot rice. Double-skin milk pudding for dessert.

Guangzhou rewards organising an entire day around food. See the Guangdong itinerary.

Shanghai and the Jiangnan region

Sweeter than the rest of China, oil-heavy, refined.

Eat: xiaolongbao (soup dumplings — the Shanghai ones are delicate; Nanxiang is the famous name), shengjianbao (pan-fried, thicker skin, arguably better), hongshao rou (red-braised pork), drunken chicken, hairy crab in autumn if you are there between roughly October and November.

Suzhou and Hangzhou nearby are the refined end of this tradition — Suzhou noodles, West Lake vinegar fish, Longjing shrimp.

Yunnan

The most distinctive regional cuisine in China and the least like anything else.

Southeast Asian influence, wild mushrooms, flowers, fresh herbs, goat cheese — which barely exists elsewhere in China.

Eat: crossing-the-bridge rice noodles, wild mushrooms in season from roughly June to September, rushan (grilled goat's milk cheese), Dai-style grilled fish, erkuai rice cakes, and pineapple rice in Xishuangbanna.

The mushroom season is a genuine reason to plan a trip. See the Yunnan itinerary.

Xinjiang

Central Asian. Lamb, cumin, hand-pulled noodles, flatbread, and no pork.

Eat: laghman (hand-pulled noodles with lamb and vegetables), polo (pilaf), kawap (skewers), nan bread, dapanji (big plate chicken, shared, with wide noodles underneath).

You do not have to go to Xinjiang for this. Xinjiang restaurants exist in every major Chinese city and are among the best cheap eating available. Look for the halal sign — 清真.

Hunan

Hotter than Sichuan in a different way — no numbness, more sourness and smoke, chillies used fresh and pickled rather than dried.

Eat: duojiao yutou (steamed fish head with chopped chillies), xiang la cured meats, stinky tofu from a Changsha street stall — black, deep-fried, and much better than the smell suggests.

Changsha is a serious food city that almost no foreign visitors go to. See the Changsha city guide.

The northeast

Big portions, wheat, pickled cabbage, and Russian and Korean influence.

Eat: guobaorou (sweet and sour pork, the original), suan cai (fermented cabbage) stews, dilisanxian, cumin lamb, and in Harbin the Russian legacy — sausage, bread, and beer.

Guizhou

The underrated one. Sour rather than sweet, fermented, with chilli used differently from either Sichuan or Hunan.

Eat: suantang yu (sour soup fish), siwawa, rice noodles. If you are doing the Guizhou villages on a second trip, the food is a large part of the reward.

How to order

Dishes are shared. Everything arrives in the middle and everyone eats from it. Ordering "a main course each" produces far too much food.

Rough rule: number of people plus one dish, plus rice. Four people, five dishes. Restaurants will tell you if you have over-ordered — many actively do, which surprises visitors used to being upsold.

Balance the order. One meat, one vegetable, one tofu or egg dish, one soup, something starchy. A table of five meat dishes is a mistake every group of foreign visitors makes once.

Cold dishes first, then hot. Soup often comes at the end in the south.

QR code menus are standard. They open in Alipay or WeChat and many have an English toggle buried in the corner. The eating guide covers how to navigate them, and the phrases guide has the dietary cards.

Find places on Dianping, not Google. Sort by 口味 (taste) rather than overall score, and check 人均 (average spend per person). The Chinese apps guide explains how.

Eat by season

Chinese cooking is seasonal to a degree that Western restaurant food generally is not, and several of the best things in the country exist for a few weeks a year.

Spring (March–May). Pre-Qingming Longjing tea, the first picking, from the hills west of Hangzhou. Bamboo shoots across the Jiangnan region. Toon shoots (香椿) with egg, which appear for about three weeks and taste like nothing else. Wild vegetables generally.

Summer (June–August). Wild mushrooms in Yunnan, which is the single most compelling seasonal food event in China — dozens of species, sold in Kunming's markets, cooked in hotpot. Roughly June to September and worth planning a trip around. Also: lychees in Guangdong, cold noodles everywhere, and the beer-and-skewers street culture that only really works in warm weather.

Autumn (September–November). Hairy crab in the Jiangnan region, roughly October to November, steamed and eaten with vinegar and ginger. Expensive, ritualised, and a genuine event. Also persimmons, chestnuts, and the start of hotpot season.

Winter (December–February). Hotpot, properly, when it makes sense. Beijing lamb hotpot in the copper pot. Cured and smoked meats in Hunan and Sichuan, hung through the winter. Nanjing salted duck. Sugar-coated haws (糖葫芦) on sticks from street carts.

Chinese New Year shuts a large proportion of independent restaurants for a week or more as staff return home. This is a genuine planning consideration — see the holiday calendar.

Where the food alone justifies the trip

Guangzhou for Cantonese. Chengdu and Chongqing for Sichuan. Changsha for Hunan. Chaozhou for the most refined regional cooking in the country and almost no foreign visitors. Kunming in mushroom season. Xi'an for the Silk Road end of it.

If you are planning a second trip to China and cannot decide on a region, choosing by cuisine is a legitimate way to do it.

Related

• Eating in China: Ordering Food, Allergies and Dietary Requirements
• Street Food Safety in China
• Vegetarian and Vegan Travel in China
• Muslim Travellers in China: Halal Food, Mosques and Prayer
• Using Xiaohongshu and Dianping to Research China Travel

Last reviewed: 30 July 2026.