Markets and food streets in China

If you want to understand China in an hour, skip a museum and walk into a market. Everything the country does well is visible there: organisation, noise, vegetables arranged like architecture, live fish in tanks, three generations of one family working the same stall, and food cooked in front of you for the price of a coffee at home. It is also where the best meals of most trips are eaten.

This is a practical guide to using them: what the different kinds of market are, how to choose a stall, how to order without speaking Chinese, what things should cost, and how to spend three weeks in the country without spending three days in a hotel bathroom.

Wet markets, night markets and food streets: three different things

A wet market is the everyday neighbourhood market, open from early morning to mid-afternoon: vegetables, meat, fish, tofu, spices, noodles, pickles and household goods, laid out in aisles. It is not built for visitors, prices are marked or negotiable, and it is where the city actually provisions itself. Kunming's Zhuanxin market and Guangzhou's Qingping market are the two best known, and both are worth a morning.

A night market is the evening version, focused on cooked food: skewers, grills, noodles, dumplings, fried snacks and sweets, usually on a street that closes to traffic after dark. Xi'an's Muslim Quarter and Kaifeng's night market are the classics. A food street, by contrast, is often a permanent tourist strip with a rebuilt facade, such as Beijing's Wangfujing snack street or the lanes around Nanjing's Confucius Temple: convenient, photogenic and overpriced.

Knowing which one you are standing in tells you what to expect. In a wet market you are a curiosity and prices are normal. In a night market you are one of thousands and prices are fair. On a tourist food street you are the product, and a skewer costs four times what it does two streets away.

The market is a morning activity

Wet markets are at their best between seven and ten in the morning. That is when the fish is freshest, the vegetables are still wet, the breakfast stalls are at full tilt and the whole neighbourhood passes through on its way to work. Arrive after two in the afternoon and you will find half the stalls shut and the rest packing up.

Breakfast is the meal to eat there. Across the country, a bowl of noodles, a steamed bun, a savoury pancake with egg, a bowl of congee with pickles or a plate of dumplings costs CNY 5–20 and is eaten standing or on a plastic stool in five minutes. It is the cheapest and most authentic meal of the day, and no hotel buffet comes close.

• Early morning: wet markets for breakfast, produce and the real life of a city.
• Midday: covered food halls and neighbourhood restaurants for noodles and rice dishes.
• Late afternoon: bakeries and snack shops, when fresh bread and pastries come out.
• Evening: night markets and barbecue streets, busiest from seven to ten.
• Late night: skewer stalls and hotpot places, which often run until two in the morning.

Where to go: food streets worth the detour

Every city has its own version, and the ones locals use are usually a street or two behind the famous one. The list below is a starting point rather than a rule, and the fastest way to improve on it is to ask at your hotel reception for the market they shop at themselves.

Three signs that a stall is worth your money

The single most reliable indicator of a good stall is turnover. If the food is being cooked in front of you, in batches, and the queue is moving fast, the ingredients are fresh by necessity. A stall with a mountain of pre-cooked food sitting under a lamp and nobody waiting is a stall whose food has been there since lunchtime.

The second sign is a short menu. Three or four dishes done constantly beat twenty dishes done occasionally, every time. The third is who is eating: if the customers are local families, drivers and office workers on a break, you have found the right place; if every table is holding a guidebook, you have found the exit.

1. High turnover: food cooked to order, queues that move, nothing sitting under a lamp.
2. A short menu of three or four things, done properly and repeatedly.
3. Local customers: families, workers and students rather than groups with flags.
4. A visible kitchen: you can see the wok, the hands and the ingredients.
5. Reasonable prices: if it costs the same as your hotel restaurant, keep walking.

How to order without speaking the language

You need less Chinese than you think. Pointing at what someone else is eating is completely acceptable, and a smile plus a raised finger for the number of portions closes most transactions. The camera on your phone is the best menu translator you have: photograph the menu, run it through a translation app, and order from the picture.

Two phrases repay the effort. Bu yao la means no chilli, and it is understood everywhere. Duo shao qian means how much, and it is worth asking even when the price is written, because occasionally it is not the price you will be charged. For everything else, gestures, photographs and a calculator held up by the vendor will get you a hot, cheap meal in under two minutes.

Payment is by QR code: nearly every stall has a printed square to scan with Alipay or WeChat Pay, and many genuinely prefer it to cash. Set up one of the two before you fly, linked to an international card, and your market life becomes frictionless. Carry some smaller notes anyway, because a few older vendors still deal in cash and may not have change for a large note.

What things should cost

Chinese street food is remarkably cheap by Western standards, and knowing the going rate protects you from tourist pricing. Expect a skewer at CNY 5–15, a bowl of noodles at CNY 10–25, a steamer of dumplings at CNY 15–30, a large fresh juice at CNY 10–20, and a full grilled meal with beer at CNY 60–120. Prices are subject to local published rates and vary with the city, but not by as much as you would think.

Produce is sold by weight, and the unit you will meet is the jin, which is 500 grams. A jin of apples, tomatoes or greens is usually CNY 5–15 depending on the season and the city. In the south, fruit is peeled and cut for you; in the north, it is sold by the box. Either way, ask the price before the vendor starts weighing, which is normal practice and not rude.

Bargaining: where it is done and where it is not

In a market, bargaining is normal on clothing, souvenirs, crafts and household goods, and completely pointless on food, which has a fixed price per jin and a vendor who will simply ignore you. The rule is straightforward: if there is no marked price, there is room to negotiate; if there is a price board, there is not.

When you do negotiate, do it with good humour and a calculator rather than with irritation, offer around half to sixty per cent of the opening price in a tourist market, and be willing to walk away, which is the only move that actually works. And if you are not going to buy at a fair price, do not spend ten minutes haggling: it costs the vendor real time and earns you nothing.

Vegetarian, halal and allergies

Vegetarian eating in China is easier than it used to be but still requires care, because dishes described as vegetable frequently contain meat stock, lard or dried shrimp. The phrase wo chi su means I eat vegetarian, and the Buddhist restaurants attached to temples are the safest places to eat, with a full menu of meat-free dishes and no ambiguity.

For halal food, China has a long-established Muslim tradition and the sign to look for is the Chinese characters for qingzhen, often written in Arabic alongside. Xi'an, Lanzhou, Beijing's Niujie and the northwest all have excellent halal streets. For allergies, the reliable method is a written card in Chinese listing exactly what you cannot eat, shown to the person cooking rather than the person serving.

Drinks, and the two things to avoid

Tea is the national drink and free hot water is available almost everywhere, including in train stations and on trains; carrying a thermos is entirely normal and saves a fortune. Freshly made fruit juices, soy milk and coconut water are cheap and safe. Beer is light, ubiquitous and inexpensive, and baijiu, the local spirit, is around fifty per cent alcohol and best approached with respect.

Do not drink the tap water, and be careful with ice in small places where it may be made from tap water. Bottled water costs CNY 2–5 in a shop and three times that inside a tourist site, which is another argument for carrying your own. If you have a sensitive stomach, start with hot tea and boiled water for the first few days and let your system adjust.

Markets are also the reason many travellers come back from China talking about the food rather than the monuments, and they are exactly the place where a local guide pays for themselves: someone who knows which stall is worth the queue, which dish to order first and how to ask for it mild. ChinaTour.es, the English-language site of the JoyoTour group, runs market walks with licensed English-speaking guides, small food groups capped at twelve travellers, and no compulsory shopping stops anywhere in the itinerary.