What to order, and where locals actually queue.

Skip the famous flagships with two-hour queues unless the ceremony matters to you. Mid-range sit-down places roast the same bird for ¥200-300 a duck. It's carved tableside; wrap slices in the pancakes with scallion and sweet bean sauce. One duck feeds two to three.

A jianbing (savory crepe with egg, crisp wonton and chili paste) from a morning window runs ¥8-12 and locals eat it standing. If a place has a queue of commuters at 8am, that's your endorsement. Pay with Alipay/WeChat — even carts take it.

The zhajiangmian and dumpling shops worth finding are a few blocks off the main drags, with handwritten menus and no English. Point at a neighbor's plate or use Alipay's camera translate. Nobody minds, and it's the best food-per-yuan in the city.

Order yuanyang (half fiery, half mild) and nobody loses face. The numbing buzz is the Sichuan peppercorn, not a mistake. Mix your dip from the oil-and-garlic station, and don't drink the red broth — even locals don't.

Cangying guanzi: scruffy hole-in-the-wall joints locals swear by: plastic stools, a short handwritten menu, and the best mapo tofu and twice-cooked pork in town. If it looks too humble to photograph, order more.

At a People's Park teahouse, ¥20-30 buys a bottomless cup and the right to sit for hours while snack vendors circulate. The traditional ear-cleaning is optional and louder than you expect. This is Chengdu's actual main attraction.

Chongqing hotpot is oilier and harder than Chengdu's and the 'mild' here is most cities' spicy. The nine-grid pot isn't decoration; different grids cook at different heats. Order tripe and duck intestine if you're going local; count seconds, don't stew them.

The city's breakfast is xiaomian: ¥10-15 spicy noodles from shops with plastic stools and a queue at 8am. Say 'xiao la' (less spicy) and nobody judges. A shop that also sells twenty other dishes is not a xiaomian shop.

Dunhuang's dish is huang mian: hand-pulled yellow noodles, often with donkey meat (a regional staple, not a dare). A bowl runs ¥15-25 in shops off the night market; the market stalls charge more for the same thing with a show.

Shazhou night market is genuinely fun but price-tag-free at some stalls, so ask the price before they pour, grill or wrap anything. Dried fruit is sold by the jin and adds up fast; agree the amount, not 'a bag'.

Yum cha starts early. The famous tea houses are full of locals by 9am and the carts thin out after 13:00. Order chrysanthemum tea, tap two fingers when someone pours for you, and get the har gow, siu mai and char siu bao before experimenting.

A proper siu mei shop hangs its ducks and char siu in the window and sells out by evening. Rice plate with roast goose runs ¥30-45; if it's still fully stocked at 20:00, that's not the shop.

Guilin rice noodles (mifen) are a ¥8-12 morning ritual; locals are done by 10am. Choose broth or dry-tossed, then add pickled beans and chili yourself from the counter. A shop that's busy at 8am and empty at noon is doing it right.

Yangshuo's signature dish is sold by weight, and tourist spots weigh the fish after cooking when you can't argue. Agree the price per jin and the rough total before it goes in the pan. A fair beer fish for two runs roughly ¥100-160, not ¥400.

On West Street you pay for the neon. The same stir-fries and river snails cost half one street back, where the menus drop the English and the food gets better. Worth the 60-second walk.

Longjing shrimp (tea-leaf stir-fried), dongpo pork (braised belly named for the poet-governor), and West Lake vinegar fish. The first two travel well to any decent restaurant; the fish is divisive, so order one for the table, not per person.

Restaurants with a lake view charge roughly double for the same dishes you'll get two streets inland. Pay it once for sunset if you like, then eat where the Hangzhou office workers do, around Hefang street's side lanes, not on the postcard strip itself.

Harbin's dish is guobaorou: sweet-and-sour crispy pork in the pale, vinegary northeastern style, not the red Cantonese one. Locals judge restaurants by it. Order one for the table with cucumber salad and you've eaten like the city.

The Russian inheritance is hongchang, a smoky red sausage sold whole at delis, and lieba, a dense sourdough loaf the size of a wheel. Both travel well and make the train picnic. The Qiulin brand queues are locals, not tourists.

The Yunnan dish is a bowl of scalding broth that arrives with raw toppings you cook yourself, in strict order: meats first, vegetables next, noodles last. A proper version runs ¥20-40 and the broth stays steaming to the end. Versions with everything pre-dumped are cafeteria shortcuts.

From roughly June to September, Yunnan eats wild mushrooms and talks about little else. Hotpot restaurants will time the boil and tell you when it's safe to eat; respect the timer, it exists because some species need real cooking. Out of season, 'wild mushroom' usually means frozen.

The dish worth the table is laparigu hotpot: Naxi cured pork ribs stewed with tomato and mint. The flower cakes sold on every corner are airport gifts; buy one, not a suitcase. Yak jerky by the bag is mostly markup.

Canal-side cafes in the old town charge city-center-Shanghai prices for average pours. Two lanes uphill the same coffee is half price and the rooftop views are better. Same rule as everywhere: the prettier the seat, the worse the deal.

Luoyang breakfast is a bowl of beef or lamb soup with flatbread torn in, served from shops that have done nothing else for decades. Locals argue about which one matters the way other cities argue about football. Go before 9am, pay around ¥10-15, add the chili oil.

The famous 'water banquet' is a parade of soupy banquet dishes with a thousand-year backstory. It's worth experiencing once at a proper restaurant, ordered as a half set for two people. Ordering the full set solo is how you end up with twelve bowls of warm regret.

Forget roast duck; here it's salted duck (yanshuiya), sold by the half from shops with queues at dusk, and duck blood vermicelli soup, which tastes far better than it reads. Both run cheap; the famous chains are fine but the neighborhood shops are better.

Nanjing's soup buns are bigger and soupier than Shanghai's. The straw is not a gimmick; drink first, then eat, or wear it. Confucius Temple area sells the photogenic version; the better ones hide in the lanes east of it.

The city meal is gala (clams) stir-fried with chili, plus fresh beer. Yunxiao Road and the streets behind the brewery do it for ¥20-40 a plate. The clams should taste of the sea, not the sauce; if everything arrives drowned in chili paste, you've found a tourist kitchen.

Tuandao market sells the morning catch, and the nearby stalls will cook what you buy for a small fee. It's the cheapest seafood education in the city. Agree the cooking fee per dish before handing anything over.

Xiaolongbao are steamed with hot soup inside: bite a small hole and sip first or you'll burn your mouth. Shengjianbao are pan-fried with a crisp bottom and even more soup. Locals queue at unglamorous shops; much above ¥30 a basket downtown is tourist pricing.

Jianbing, youtiao (fried dough), warm soy milk and scallion pancake: the classic four, sold from corner windows before 9am. Follow the office workers. A full breakfast costs less than a downtown coffee.

The photogenic 'old street' restaurants by Yu Garden charge triple for average food. The rule that works: eat where the queue speaks Shanghainese, skip where the menu has six currencies.

A migrant city means every Chinese cuisine done properly somewhere. Skip 'Shenzhen specialties' (there barely are any) and hunt by region instead: Chaoshan beef hotpot and hand-pulled Lanzhou noodles are the local consensus picks.

The thing locals actually queue for. Cuts arrive named by muscle and cook for seconds, not minutes; the waiter will time it for you if you look lost. Dip in sha cha sauce, order the beef balls, and let the broth stay plain.

Suzhou's morning religion is a bowl of aozao or shrimp-roe noodles: clear, faintly sweet broth, toppings ordered separately by name. The famous shops sell the good broth out by late morning; this is a before-9am errand, like Guilin's mifen.

Suzhou cooking runs sweeter than the rest of China; the gravy on squirrel-shaped mandarin fish is supposed to taste like that. If you want salt and fire, order the seasonal greens and river shrimp; don't fight the cuisine's thesis.

Wuhan treats breakfast as an event with its own verb, guozao. The anchor is hot dry noodles: sesame-paste coated, ready in a minute, eaten standing or walking. Any shop with a fast-moving line before 9am qualifies; the famous chains are fine but no better than a busy corner stall.

The other breakfast star is doupi, a pan-fried square of sticky rice, egg skin and braised bits. The good shops sell out by mid-morning, and the corner pieces with the crisp edges go first. If the tray is fresh, ask for a corner.

Roujiamo (the original meat-in-flatbread), yangrou paomo (lamb soup; you tear the bread into the bowl yourself, that's the ritual, don't rush it), and biangbiang noodles (one belt-wide noodle, named after the sound of dough hitting the counter). All three under ¥40 total in the right alleys.

Off Beiyuanmen's photo lane, the side alleys around Sajinqiao are where locals actually queue: same dishes, half the price, no posing scorpions. If the menu is handwritten and laminated, you're in the right place.

Suanmeitang — sour plum drink, sold everywhere for ¥5-10, iced. It's what cuts through a lamb-heavy Xi'an day. The cloudier it looks, the more likely it's house-made.

Tanks outside, scales inside. Agree the per-jin price and watch the weighing, or order from places that print prices. A normal seafood dinner for two is low hundreds of yuan; surprise thousand-yuan bills are a choosing-badly problem, not a Xiamen problem.

Xiamen's bowl is sha cha mian: peanut-satay broth, your choice of add-ins, done in minutes for under ¥20. The shops with laminated picture menus near Zhongshan Road are fine; the ones with no menu and a queue are better.

The local dish is sanxiaguo, a dry hotpot of smoked pork, tofu and radish that tastes like a reward for 20,000 steps. Order it in town where it's a ¥60 dinner, not inside the park where everything doubles.

Restaurants inside the scenic area charge mountain prices for average food. Carry fruit, nuts and water from town, eat the big meal after descending, and treat in-park corn and cucumbers as fair-priced snack staples; they usually are.