Mandarin Monday: How to Order From a Chinese Menu Using Chinese Characters

Beijing’s a great place for culinary exploration. Most of us live surrounded by restaurants, and most of us have restaurants nearby serving cuisines we’ve yet to try. For many of us, our only limits are our time, our budgets, and our waistlines, but if you are one of the thousands of laowai living with Chinese menu illiteracy, do not despair. Walking into a restaurant, perusing the menu and ordering a meal is easier than you think.

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If you’re keen to conquer ordering in Chinese but you’re still stuck seeking out restaurants with picture menus, check out our list of 25 basic characters you’ll need to get started. These characters won’t automatically direct you to the best items on the menu, nor will they allow you to understand every menu item, but they will allow you to start confidently identify ingredients you enjoy without needing pictures or English translations.

肉 (ròu, meat)
羊肉 yángròu – mutton
牛肉 niúròu – beef
鸡肉 jīròu – chicken
猪肉 zhūròu – pork
鱼 yú – fish

Notes:
1. In most restaurants, 肉 by itself on a menu means pork but in Muslim restaurants肉 by itself usually means mutton.
2. If the thought of accidentally ordering offal fills you with dread, avoid menu items with characters that include the 月 radical. Most characters for offal include 月, including 肝 (gān, liver), 肠 (cháng, intestines) and 肺 (fèi, lungs).
3. Remembering mutton, beef and chicken is easy. 羊 has horns, 牛 has an ear tag, and 鸡 has an eye, a beak, and a crest.

菜 (cài, vegetables)
土豆 tǔdòu – potato
茄子 qiézi – eggplant
菇 gū – mushrooms
豆 dòu – beans and peas
葱 cōng – vegetables from the onion family

Note: On menus, the character 菜 usually refers to any kind of green vegetable. If you’re looking for greens, choose menu items that include the character 菜.

Other items
鸡蛋 jīdàn – eggs
豆腐 dòufu – tofu
面 miàn – noodles made of wheat
粉 fěn – noodles made of any other starch, including rice, sweet potato, or mung beans

Cooking methods
炒 chǎo – wok-fried or stir-fried
烧 shāo – braised
凉拌 liángbàn – prepared raw like a salad
干锅 gānguō – served sizzling in a small wok
丝 sī – shredded
辣 là – made spicy with the addition chili oil, chili paste, or dried or fresh chili

Note: On menus, characters with the 火 radical, like 炒 and 烧 usually refer to a cooking method.

The characters above are enough to get you in the door and ordering off a Chinese menu. Either memorize them – five a day for a week will get you most of the way there – or save this page as a cheat sheet. Once you’ve mastered the basics, the bonus section below will have you ordering like a pro.

Bonus
Below are our top 10 foreigner favorite menu items to look out for. If you are a laowai you probably like these dishes:

Kungpao Chicken (宫保鸡丁 gōngbǎojīding)
A dish of cubed chicken cooked with chili, Sichuan peppercorns, peanuts, and leeks (some lesser restaurants use cucumber). Named for Qing Dynasty 宫保 (palace guardian) and governor of Sichuan, Ding Baozhen 丁宝桢 (the 丁 is coincidental).

Shredded Pork with the Fragrance of Fish (鱼香肉丝 yúxiāngròusī)
The fragrance of fish is debatable, but the tastiness of shredded pork fried with wood ear mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots, and ginger is not.

Dry-fried Green Beans (干煸豆角 gānbiāndòujiǎo, a.k.a. 干煸四季豆 gānbiānsìjìdòu)
Often referred to as "the crack beans" by those unfamiliar with its Chinese names, this dish of green beans fried sometimes with minced pork but always with chili, salt, and MSG can be addictive.

Brocoli fried with Minced Garlic (蒜蓉西兰花 suànróngxīlánhuā) 
The Chinese dish most likely to make laowai say “If my mom made vegetables like this I would have eaten them.”

Pockmarked Grandmother’s Tofu (麻婆豆腐 mápódòufǔ) 
Named for a Qing Dynasty Chengdu restaurateur, this dish of tofu braised in chili bean paste, Sichuan peppercorns and minced pork is perfect for getting the rice down (下饭 xiàfàn).

Tomato Fried with Egg (西红柿炒鸡蛋 xīhóngshìchǎojīdàn)
Simple comfort food and ranked only behind 麻婆豆腐 (above) in its ability to 下饭.

READ: How to Make Smacked Cucumber Salad at Home

Smashed Cucumber (拍黄瓜 pāihuángguā. 拍 actually means beat, smack or clap) 
Sesame oil, minced garlic, cooking wine, soy sauce and vinegar lift cucumber to unimaginable heights in this classic cold dish. Best paired with a cold 燕京啤酒 yānjīngpíjiǔ on a hot afternoon but tasty anytime.

Return to the Pot Meat, or Twice-cooked Pork (回锅肉 huíguōròu) 
Fatty porked first boiled with green onions, ginger, Sichuan peppercorns and cooking wine before being cooled, sliced and fried with chili and green peppers. One of the world’s greatest combinations of oil, salt and spice.

Chicken Fried with Chili (辣子鸡 làzǐjī) 
The ubiquitous bones in this dish of deep-fried chicken pieces with ginger, garlic, Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilis turns some foreigners off, but for tenacious diners the rewards are great.

Fried Potato, Peppers and Eggplant (地三鲜 dìsānxiān)
Often a staple for foreign vegetarians, this garlic-fried trio often leaves laowai wishing for a higher ratio of potato.

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Images: Garth Wilson, dishmaps.com, createcn.com, xinshipu.com,Robynne Tindall,  pai-hang-bang.com