Must-Try Food in China: The Regional Map Nobody Gives You
If the most interesting thing you can say about Chinese food is that you have eaten sweet-and-sour pork from a takeaway carton, this is the article for you. The real map of Chinese cooking is the Eight Great Traditions — Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui — plus Northern Beijing, street food, and the dishes worth the flight: Peking duck in Beijing, mapo tofu in Chengdu, xiao long bao in Shanghai, and dim sum in Guangzhou. An opinionated guide to what to actually order, and where.