China 101
Food and drinks
What people are actually eating and drinking - hotpot nights, snail noodles, and tea drink empires.
Hot pot
火锅
China's beloved communal meal where diners cook raw ingredients in a simmering pot of broth at the table, with regional styles from Chongqing's chili inferno to Beijing's mild copper pot.
Malatang
麻辣烫
A customizable spicy-numbing street hot pot: pick skewers of ingredients, have them boiled in a chili broth, and pay by weight or skewer.
Luosifen (river snail rice noodles)
螺蛳粉
The famously funky rice noodle soup from Liuzhou, Guangxi, flavored with river snails and sour bamboo shoots, which became a national obsession and a packaged-food export hit.
Milk tea (bubble tea)
奶茶
Tea with milk and toppings like tapioca pearls, the everyday treat drink of young China and the foundation of a powerful chain-store industry now expanding globally.
New-style Chinese tea drinks
茶饮
The category of freshly-made tea-based drinks, from cheese-foam fruit teas to lemon teas, that Chinese chains built into one of the country's hottest consumer industries.
Luckin Coffee
瑞幸咖啡
The app-first coffee chain that overtook Starbucks in China by store count with cheap coconut lattes, infamous for a 2020 accounting scandal and then a remarkable comeback.
Mixue Bingcheng
蜜雪冰城
China's ultra-budget tea and ice cream chain, famous for one-dollar drinks, a catchy jingle, and one of the largest store counts of any food chain in the world.