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Plateful of plenty on Chinese dinner tables

By Kang Bing | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2026-04-07 08:56
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A spring pancake is prepared at a restaurant in Beijing's Chaoyang district on Tuesday, one day ahead of lichun. GENG FEIFEI/CHINA DAILY

What to eat and where to eat — questions once asked by a privileged few — have now become a daily dilemma for millions of Chinese. The confusion is not because of the scarcity of food, but because of the abundance of choices.

China has about 17 million restaurants. Some are big enough to host thousands of diners at the same time while others are modest mom-and-pop establishments that can seat no more than a dozen people. Beijing, with 21 million people, alone has more than 130,000 restaurants. Within a radius of just one kilometer of my home in the city, there are at least 100 restaurants for me to choose from if I decide to eat out.

There is a wide range of culinary offerings, from spicy Sichuan hot pot to sweet Cantonese dim sum, from sauerkraut fish from the southwest to Muslim beef noodles from the northwest. The dilemma does not end with choosing where to eat. Once you are seated in a restaurant, you will be puzzled by the vast options on the menu. Even mom-and-pop food stands can offer two dozen choices of dishes.

Given this enormous range, one can enjoy different dishes every single day without repetition for a year at my neighborhood restaurants. What's more, at just 20 or 40 yuan ($2.9 or $5.8) for a meal, the price is very affordable.

This abundance of delicious food at such low prices has spawned a generation that prefers to eat out rather than cook at home. Many of my young colleagues used to avoid the company-provided free lunch — which included six different dishes in the main course — to visit nearby restaurants for their favorite food.

The boom in the catering business is backed by sufficient food supply, rising incomes and the traditional interest of Chinese people in good food.

The contrast with the past could not be sharper. When I first came to Beijing 45 years ago, food was rationed. Near my workplace, there were just two or three restaurants, all serving simple fare. Eating out was a treat reserved only for distinguished guests because of the cost. Inviting two or three friends or relatives to a restaurant cost at least one week's income.

The newspaper I worked for in the early 1980s had an American editor who wrote a bi-weekly column on eating out. He relied on me to recommend restaurants and accompany him to eateries as his interpreter and guest. Eating good food for free sounded great but making recommendations was tough. I was not a foodie and there were simply not many restaurants to choose from.

As a result, his column mostly focused on restaurants in star-rated hotels. In the early years of China's reform and opening-up, such restaurants were largely inaccessible to ordinary Chinese because of high prices and other restrictions.

The story since then has been one of steady progress. Thanks to continuous investment in agriculture, China's per-capita grain reserves are now more than 500 kilograms — well above the United Nations' food security threshold of 400 kilograms and the world average of about 355 kilograms.

International trade also helps enrich the Chinese dinner table. When you go to a restaurant, the manager might boast that the crabs are from Canada, the beef from the United States, the salmon from Norway and the red wine from Australia. Tropical fruits, once rare and expensive, now fill fruit stores at affordable prices due to mutual trade agreements that reduce tariffs on fruit imports from many countries to zero.

Chinese people are very particular about food. It is one area where their creativity stands out. Forty years ago, the country had four main cuisines — Sichuan, Shandong, Guangdong and Jiangsu-Zhejiang. Then the pool expanded to eight cuisines and today many people argue that there are 12 cuisines in the country. Over the years, Chinese chefs have created hundreds or thousands of new dishes thanks to the profusion of new ingredients and cooking facilities.

Despite the abundance of choices, I hesitate to eat out or order takeout which can be delivered within 30 minutes in cities like Beijing. It's not because I can't afford it but because I think the food, though delicious, is too oily and salty for an old man who prioritizes his health. But that doesn't stop me from envying the younger generation for their good appetite for food from numerous restaurants.

Kang Bing

The author is former deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily.

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