Breakfast is not a terribly important meal in China. Chinese people start the day early, but that means breakfast is often just a question of wolfing down whatever’s to hand in order to fill the belly until lunchtime.

A typical Chinese breakfast is a bowl of congee (粥), a rice porridge brightened up with the addition of pickles, peanuts or meat. Beijingers also love youtiao (油条), deep fried sticks of dough to dip in huge bowls of steaming soya milk (豆浆). There are also puffy sheets of steamed bread, also to be dipped in soya milk. Any of these breakfasts could be accompanied by a couple of boiled eggs.

A bigger breakfast could include a range of cold dishes, especially nuts and greens and a variety of pickles, the most common of which is zhacai (榨菜) which is made from the pickled stem of a type of mustard.

For the adventurous one thing not to be missed (and also not to be mistaken for anything else) is doufuru/xiandoufu (豆腐乳/咸豆腐), a pickled, fermented tofu. It looks like tofu, but ranges from off-white to a deep red in colour. The taste is far too strong and salty to eat it alone, but it goes down very well if you dilute a tiny scraping with a chopstick’s worth of plain rice.

There’ll also likely be a ‘Western section’ which might include toast, sausages, scrambled egg and even something vaguely resembling bacon if you’re lucky, but don’t pin your hopes on a decent English breakfast.

Source: beijingmadeeasy.com