Eating out in China may seem very odd in the beginning but once you know the basic, you'll be able to adjust yourself. You will also find an incredible selection of vegetable dishes that have been part of the Chinese diet for centuries. You can identify the restaurants by their look and decoration and the better the decoration is, the more expensive the dishes are. Another way of recognizing the restaurants is that if the restaurant provides white table-cloth, it belongs to mid-level or above.
The restaurants in the four star hotels and above are quite expensive though they provide quality food, hygiene and excellent service. If you want to taste the variety of food available in China you have to go outside the hotel. One good thing about the restaurants in big hotels is that they normally provide English menus and the servants speak English. Otherwise, most restaurants neither provide English menu nor English-speaking servants unless the restaurants are located at areas where a lot of international guests live.
High level restaurants outside of the big hotels normally have good food quality and the service is excellent. For foreigners the price of dishes there, when exchanged into foreign currency, is not too expensive. Therefore, comparing with restaurants inside big hotels, such kind of restaurants is definitely of better value. These restaurants normally are targeting at corporate-funded Chinese guests. Mostly the servants do not speak English. So if you want to go to these restaurants, you must either speak Chinese reasonably well or go with your Chinese friends.
The food quality, featuring of food and service level is quite varied at mid-level restaurants. Their price is acceptable for Chinese who earn good salary. Chained restaurants providing special type of food are very common. The mass salary-earning Chinese citizens like this kind of restaurants most and for foreigners they are definitely worth a try. If you speak reasonably good Chinese and just want to experience ordinary Chinese people’s life, you can go to one of the small cheap restaurants, but be aware that the quality of food and hygiene of this kind of restaurants is not guaranteed.
A meal in China should be accompanied by lots of talk. That's what makes eating out in China such fun. The food always offers a topic if nothing else springs to mind. The main difference between Chinese and Western eating customs is that in China everybody shares the dishes placed on the table. If you are being taken out by a local, be prepared to tackle many dishes and a mountain of food. The Chenese are very proud of their food and your appreciation of it is important in their eyes.
If you are not skillful at eating with chopsticks and spill something it is not a problem; eating out in China is often a messy affair, but do not suck the tips of chopsticks and do not point the chopsticks at another person, it is considered very bad manner. If you stick chopsticks vertically in a bowl of rice; it implies the food is for the dead.
