What do people in China eat in a day?
People in China eat a quick breakfast of soy milk, buns or congee, a simple lunch around noon, and a shared dinner of several dishes with rice between 18:00 and 20:00.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is quick and often bought from a street stall between 7:00 and 9:00. Hot soy milk with youtiao, a long fried dough stick, is the classic pair, along with baozi, steamed buns filled with pork or vegetables, and congee, a soft rice porridge. In Guangzhou people go out for morning tea instead, dim sum with a pot of tea.
Lunch
Lunch is around 12:00 and kept simple: a bowl of noodles, or rice with one to three dishes of meat and vegetables, often from a work canteen or a takeaway. Many people then take a short nap before going back to work. A plate of Yangzhou fried rice, with egg, ham and shrimp, is about 550 kcal.
Dinner
Dinner, between 18:00 and 20:00, is the main meal of the day. Everyone gets a bowl of rice and the dishes in the middle are shared, usually a soup, some meat, fish and vegetables, eaten with chopsticks. In the north, jiaozi dumplings can be a whole dinner, about 270 kcal for six, and many families make them together for Chinese New Year.
Starters
At home there are no separate courses, but at a restaurant or a banquet the table opens with cold dishes, liangcai, such as smashed cucumber with garlic, wood ear mushrooms in vinegar or sliced beef. In Guangdong families often drink a slow cooked soup at the start of the meal. Two spring rolls, a common snack, are about 250 kcal.
Desserts
A meal usually ends with sliced fresh fruit rather than a sweet. Sweets belong to festivals: mooncakes, dense pastries filled with lotus seed paste and sometimes a salted egg yolk, at the Mid Autumn Festival, and tangyuan, glutinous rice balls in a sweet soup, at the Lantern Festival. A mooncake is often cut into wedges and shared.
Drinks
Tea is the everyday drink: green tea in much of the country, oolong in Fujian, pu'er in Yunnan, 0 kcal without sugar. Many people drink plain hot water all day. Beer such as Tsingtao goes with dinner, and baijiu, a strong grain spirit, is for toasts with ganbei, empty the glass. Bubble tea is about 350 kcal a cup.
Street food
Jianbing is the classic street breakfast: a thin crepe with egg, scallions, sauce and a crisp cracker folded inside, about 350 kcal. At night markets you find chuanr, lamb skewers with cumin and chilli, roujiamo from Xi'an, a flatbread stuffed with braised pork, and stinky tofu, fried fermented tofu with a strong smell and a mild taste.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Hot water is drunk all year, even in summer, and restaurants and trains offer it free, a habit public health campaigns encouraged from the 1930s on. Chicken feet are a favourite at dim sum. And a nap after lunch is so normal that many office workers rest at their desk with a small pillow.