Lodging & Dining

My first lesson in jiaozi came from a grandmother in Shenyang, not a cookbook She put a rolling pin in my hand, dumped a mound of soft dough in front…

Yantai rarely tops the list of China’s most famous beach destinations, and that is precisely its charm. Tucked into the northern coast of Shandong Peninsula, this low-key port city pairs…

The moment that tells you it worked is not the smell, and it is not the colour. It is when you lift the tied block of pork out of the…

The first time I ordered la zi ji in Chongqing, the waitress set the plate down and I genuinely laughed: it looked less like a dish and more like an…

You hear it before you see it: a low, furious hiss as smoking rapeseed oil hits a mound of chili flakes, minced garlic and ground Sichuan pepper. That hiss is…

The Sound of a Wok That Tells You It’s Right There is a moment, about forty seconds into the second frying, when the pork slices stop lying flat and begin…

The first time a plate of yu xiang rou si landed in front of me, it was at a cramped, fluorescent-lit Chengdu food guide hole-in-the-wall near Tianfu Square. I had…

Push a cube of properly made hong shao rou with your chopstick and it should tremble — not fall apart, not resist, just a slow, gelatinous wobble that tells you…

You Hear Peking Duck Before You Taste It Slice the breast of a well-made Peking duck and it answers with a soft, glassy crackle — the sound of thin ice…

The Night a Bowl of Mapo Tofu Shut Me Up The first time I ate real mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐, mapo doufu) I was sitting on a plastic stool in a…