How to Read a Chinese Menu — A Traveler's Guide
A Chinese menu can run to eight pages and two hundred dishes, none of them translated, many named after legends rather than ingredients. It looks impossible until you notice that the same forty or so characters keep repeating. Chinese dish names are built like formulas: a cooking method, a main ingredient, a cut or a flavor. Learn the pieces and you can decode dishes you have never seen, which beats memorizing any single list.
How a Chinese menu is organized
A Chinese menu is not sequenced starter-main-dessert. It is grouped by type of dish, and everything arrives when it is ready.
| Chinese | Pinyin | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 凉菜 | liángcài | Cold dishes — served first, eaten as appetizers |
| 热菜 | rècài | Hot dishes — the main body of the menu |
| 汤 | tāng | Soups, often drunk at the end rather than the start |
| 主食 | zhǔshí | Staples — rice, noodles, buns; ordered to fill out the meal |
| 面点 | miàndiǎn | Wheat items — dumplings, pancakes, steamed buns |
| 饮料 | yǐnliào | Drinks |
| 招牌菜 | zhāopáicài | Signature dishes — the safest thing to order blind |
| 时价 | shíjià | Market price, usually seafood |
Dessert barely exists as a category. Fruit sometimes appears at the end, and that is it.
Cooking methods are the key
Most dish names begin with how the food was cooked. These prefixes do more work than anything else on the page.
| Chinese | Pinyin | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 炒 | chǎo | Stir-fried in a wok, the default method |
| 炸 | zhá | Deep-fried |
| 蒸 | zhēng | Steamed |
| 煮 | zhǔ | Boiled or simmered |
| 烤 | kǎo | Roasted or grilled |
| 红烧 | hóngshāo | Braised in soy sauce, sweet and dark |
| 干煸 | gānbiān | Dry-fried until blistered, usually with chili |
| 水煮 | shuǐzhǔ | Poached in chili oil — despite the name, one of the spiciest dishes on the menu |
| 麻辣 | málà | Numbing and hot, from Sichuan pepper plus chili |
| 酸辣 | suānlà | Sour and hot, vinegar-forward |
| 宫保 | gōngbǎo | Chili, sugar, vinegar and peanuts |
| 鱼香 | yúxiāng | "Fish-fragrant" — a garlic-chili-vinegar sauce with no fish in it |
The one to memorize is 水煮. Travelers read "water" and "boiled", assume something plain, and get a bowl of fish or beef floating in red oil under a lid of dried chilies.
Dish names that don't mean what they say
Dishes are named for texture, legend and appearance as often as for ingredients. A few recurring ones:
- 鱼香茄子 (yúxiāng qiézi) — "fish-fragrant eggplant" contains no fish. The name refers to a seasoning style once used for fish.
- 蚂蚁上树 (mǎyǐ shàng shù) — "ants climbing a tree" is glass noodles with minced pork. The ants are the pork.
- 夫妻肺片 (fūqī fèipiàn) — "husband and wife lung slices" is a cold Sichuan plate of thinly sliced beef and offal in chili oil. There is no lung in the modern version.
- 狮子头 (shīzi tóu) — "lion's head" is a large braised pork meatball, named for its shape.
If a name sounds like an animal you would not eat, it is almost always a metaphor. The real ingredient usually sits at the end of the name.
Common dishes you'll see on the menu
| Chinese | Pinyin | English | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 宫保鸡丁 | gōngbǎo jīdīng | Kung Pao chicken | Diced chicken, peanuts, dried chili |
| 麻婆豆腐 | mápó dòufu | Mapo tofu | Numbing and hot; usually contains pork |
| 回锅肉 | huíguō ròu | Twice-cooked pork | Boiled, then stir-fried with leeks |
| 鱼香肉丝 | yúxiāng ròusī | Fish-fragrant pork slivers | No fish; garlic-vinegar sauce |
| 糖醋里脊 | tángcù lǐjǐ | Sweet and sour pork | Battered, mildly sweet, very safe |
| 红烧肉 | hóngshāo ròu | Red-braised pork belly | Rich, sweet, slow-cooked |
| 水煮鱼 | shuǐzhǔ yú | Fish in chili oil | Extremely spicy despite the name |
| 酸辣汤 | suānlà tāng | Hot and sour soup | Vinegar and white pepper, not chili |
| 蛋炒饭 | dàn chǎofàn | Egg fried rice | The default cheap staple |
| 炒面 | chǎomiàn | Fried noodles | Regional recipes vary widely |
| 饺子 | jiǎozi | Dumplings | Boiled by default; sold by weight or count |
| 小笼包 | xiǎolóngbāo | Soup dumplings | Contain hot broth — bite carefully |
| 包子 | bāozi | Steamed filled buns | Breakfast standard |
| 馒头 | mántou | Plain steamed bread | No filling |
| 拉面 | lāmiàn | Hand-pulled noodles | Northwestern, usually in clear broth |
| 牛肉面 | niúròu miàn | Beef noodle soup | A signature dish in Taiwan and Lanzhou |
| 火锅 | huǒguō | Hot pot | You cook it yourself; order raw plates |
| 烤鸭 | kǎoyā | Roast duck | Beijing's best-known dish, carved at the table |
| 白切鸡 | báiqiē jī | Poached white-cut chicken | Cantonese, served cold with ginger sauce |
| 麻辣烫 | málà tàng | Pick-your-own spicy soup | Choose skewers, pay by weight |
| 凉皮 | liángpí | Cold wheat noodles | Chewy, vinegary, a summer staple |
| 肉夹馍 | ròu jiā mó | Braised pork in flatbread | Often called a Chinese burger |
| 煎饼 | jiānbing | Savory crepe | Street breakfast, made to order |
| 粥 | zhōu | Rice porridge | Also written 稀饭; breakfast or late night |
| 油条 | yóutiáo | Fried dough stick | Eaten with soy milk |
| 豆浆 | dòujiāng | Soy milk | Served hot, sweet or savory |
| 空心菜 | kōngxīncài | Water spinach | Stir-fried with garlic |
| 地三鲜 | dì sān xiān | Potato, eggplant and pepper | Northeastern, vegetarian |
| 西红柿炒蛋 | xīhóngshì chǎodàn | Tomato and egg | The national comfort dish |
| 干煸四季豆 | gānbiān sìjìdòu | Dry-fried green beans | Often cooked with minced pork |
Words worth spotting for dietary reasons
辣 (là, chili-hot), 花椒 (huājiāo, Sichuan pepper — the numbing one), 香菜 (xiāngcài, cilantro), 猪肉 (zhūròu, pork), 牛肉 (niúròu, beef), 鸡 (jī, chicken), 虾 (xiā, shrimp), 蛋 (dàn, egg), 素 (sù, vegetarian), 花生 (huāshēng, peanut).
Two cautions. 素 usually means "no visible meat" — stocks, lard and oyster sauce are common in otherwise vegetable dishes. And a dish called 不辣 (bú là, not spicy) can still carry Sichuan pepper, which is a separate sensation from heat.
Useful phrases for ordering
| Chinese | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 你好 | nǐ hǎo | Hello |
| 服务员 | fúwùyuán | Excuse me (how you call a server) |
| 有英文菜单吗？ | yǒu yīngwén càidān ma? | Do you have an English menu? |
| 这个，谢谢 | zhège, xièxie | This one, please (while pointing) |
| 两个人 | liǎng ge rén | Two people |
| 推荐什么？ | tuījiàn shénme? | What do you recommend? |
| 不要辣 | bú yào là | No chili, please |
| 不要香菜 | bú yào xiāngcài | No cilantro, please |
| 我吃素 | wǒ chī sù | I'm vegetarian |
| 打包 | dǎbāo | To take away / a box, please |
| 买单 | mǎidān | The bill, please |
| 谢谢 | xièxie | Thank you |
Pointing is standard practice and carries no rudeness. Numbers are shown on one hand in China, so two raised fingers can be misread; saying 两个人 avoids it.
Simplified and traditional characters
Mainland China uses simplified characters; Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau use traditional ones. The dishes are largely the same but the writing differs, so 面 (noodles) appears as 麵 and 饺子 as 餃子. Expect two written forms per dish when you cross between them.
How much to order, and how to pay
Chinese meals are shared. Dishes go in the middle of the table and everyone eats from them, so ordering a portion for yourself is not really a thing. The working rule is one dish per person, plus one, then rice or noodles on top of that. One dish each for four people produces far too much food.
Tipping is not practiced in mainland China or Taiwan, and staff may chase you down to return money left behind. Hong Kong and parts of Guangdong differ: many restaurants add a service charge of around ten percent, and teahouses charge a per-person tea fee (茶位费, cháwèi fèi) simply for sitting down. Packaged tissues are sometimes billed too, so check what is on the table before you open it.
Payment is overwhelmingly by phone. Small restaurants may keep no cash float and have no card terminal, so set up a local mobile payment method before you depend on anything else.
When the menu has no English at all
Outside hotel districts this is the normal case: a wall of handwritten strips, a laminated sheet of characters, or a photo book covering a quarter of the dishes. Photographing the page and reading it back in your own language turns two hundred unreadable lines into an actual choice, and it also shows which of them contain what you are avoiding — usually the harder question.
FAQ
How many dishes should we order? Count the people, add one, then add a staple such as rice or noodles. Order in rounds rather than all at once; portions are larger than most visitors expect.
Is it rude to point at the menu? No. Pointing and saying 这个 (zhège, "this one") is a completely normal way to order, and locals do it too.
Will asking for "not spicy" actually work? Usually, though the baseline varies by region. In Sichuan, Hunan and Guizhou, 不要辣 may still arrive with visible chili, because a small amount is not counted as spicy. Ask for 微辣 (wēi là, slightly spicy) for a realistic middle setting.