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“the person who invented the 144-hour visa exemption is truly a genius!”

due to the implementation of the 144-hour visa-free policy, china travel has become extremely popular this summer.

all major popular tourist attractions are filled with curious foreigners. teahouses in guangzhou and hot pot restaurants in chengdu are full of foreigners who come to china to shop and eat.

judging from the data, the number of inbound tourists this year has achieved a leap in quantity. in the first half of the year alone, the total number of foreigners entering various ports reached 14.635 million, an increase of 152.7% year-on-year.

data source: national immigration administration

as the summer vacation is over, the enthusiasm of foreigners to travel to china has gradually subsided, but another sentiment has spread on the internet. i can summarize it in four words:

hard to leave china.

people returning to their home country from china have all suffered from withdrawal symptoms.

some people miss the unique scenery here, with rolling sea of ​​clouds, towering mountains, ancient and mysterious.

some people miss the convenience of life here, where they can still wander around freely in the middle of the night and order takeout whenever they want to buy food or vegetables.

some people are more direct and transit through neighboring countries such as japan and south korea and start the next 144 hours directly, with the tag "china, i'm back".

however, what makes people linger the most is the delicious food they eat in china.

having tasted a wide variety of authentic chinese food, how can one calmly eat fish and chips and dry bread?

if knowing china with your eyes is superficial, then when your stomach also becomes a captive of chinese food, there is no going back.

no travel blogger who comes to china can escape the fate of becoming a food blogger.

@twomadexplorers is a couple from germany. as it was their first time in china, they were quite cautious at first, but after trying chengdu food, they couldn’t stop.

it is just a common small shop with tables and benches on the street. the most common dishes they sell are fuqi feipian and dry potato chips. a mouthful of feipian with rice is simply irresistible.

image credit: @twomadexplorers

the husband luke has another characteristic. when he eats something particularly delicious, he will roll his eyes slightly, as if he is about to be intoxicated by the smell. during the few days we traveled and ate in china, we often saw him chewing with his eyes rolled up in ecstasy.

image credit: @twomadexplorers

the couple visited china twice, choosing the famous food capitals - chengdu, chongqing, guangzhou, yunnan. they ate all the way, from sichuan and chongqing hot pot and jianghu cuisine to guangzhou morning tea and yunnan mushroom hot pot...

every time they changed cities, they had different food maps. after a few days, the couple became much fatter. naomi, the wife, told the audience: "if you come to china in the future, you will definitely gain a lot of weight."

image credit: @twomadexplorers

@lam小方 is a korean who has lived in china. he brought his korean friend who calls himself a "foodie" to visit china, and they couldn't do without eating the whole time.

although chinese food is very popular in korea now, it is limited to hodgepodge foods such as hot pot, malatang, and spicy hot pot. as for more authentic individual items, it is difficult to find them in korea.

they selected foods with more local characteristics, such as noodles with scallion oil, pan-fried dumplings, cantonese rice rolls, yunnan rice noodles, peking duck... every meal was a surprise and completely refreshed korean friends' impression of chinese food.

image source: @lam小方

the peking duck was the highlight. every bite of the authentic roast duck was so delicious that his friend exclaimed, "it feels like i've never eaten duck before."

image source: @lam小方

the two of them returned to korea after eating out in chongqing. from time to time, they would feel craving for sichuan and chongqing food and go find the most authentic hotpot.

especially for those who come to china from countries where food culture is not prosperous, it is like opening the door to a new world.

previously, some netizens revealed that the school’s foreign teacher was amazed after taking his first bite of scrambled eggs with tomatoes in the cafeteria on his first day, and then he ate scrambled eggs with tomatoes for the entire semester.

it is no wonder that foreigners fall into chinese food withdrawal after their china travel. chinese food has a wide range of options, rich variety of food, and caters to all tastes. even the most ordinary home-cooked meal embodies the life wisdom of thousands of years.

an asian kid who settled in the united states went back to china for a summer vacation. after returning home, he said he couldn’t accept american life no matter what. when he saw his mother, his mouth drooped and he started crying: "i want to go back to china!"

image source: @croissant in charge of symbols and lightning

there were also children who returned to the uk after spending a few days enjoying a feast of delicious food in china. they couldn't enjoy their meals every day and "didn't want to stay in the uk for even a minute."

image source: @中英家庭 (uncle keith from the uk and aunt from northeast china)

it's not their fault. after all, european and american countries are already ruled by minimalist white people. who would choose boiled pork over whole wheat bread?

it's not just foreigners who suffer from withdrawal symptoms, the most pitiful ones are the chinese immigrants.

going from a country rich in gourmet food to live in a country rich in white food is like being exiled for a chinese food lover. although his professional skills may not improve much after a semester, his cooking skills will definitely improve by leaps and bounds.

it is no wonder that pre-prepared meals, which are much criticized in china, have received strong support from liuzi.

"when will the trend of pre-prepared meals reach the uk? i don't want to eat british food anymore!"

if it is expected that the big dishes can conquer foreign tongues, then what is unexpected is that the snacks that are readily available to us have become popular among foreigners.

image source: @karissaeats

in order to control costs, many travel bloggers choose to travel on a budget, and those breakfast stalls and food stalls that can be found everywhere have become their check-in points.

a couple of bloggers were traveling in beijing. they tried soup dumplings, jianbing, grilled cold noodles, wontons, fried chicken fillets and fried dough sticks during breakfast.

what we thought was just a meal to fill our stomachs on the way to work, they praised it repeatedly, saying that the fried chicken fillet was "perfectly crispy and tender" and that the grilled cold noodles were "the best thing so far."

even a random flatbread or sausage bought from a roadside stall would be praised to the sky.

chinese audiences were dumbfounded. are these things like belike so delicious? how come i never found out...

indeed, when it comes to street food alone, european and american countries pale in comparison to china.

the wisdom of chinese cuisine is not only reflected in the exquisitely presented high-end dishes and the home-cooked meals with the smell of hot woks, but also in the unprepossessing street snacks.

we never hesitate to use our brains on snacks. each region has its own style, just like the hidden items in a blind box, which can always reveal the most authentic appearance of the city. street snacks gather in the morning market and night market, just like the secretly beating pulse of the city.

image source: visual china

it only costs a few dollars a portion, and you can buy it and eat it while walking. the chopped green onions and sauces paired with the street scene in front of you is the most local way to experience a city.

in addition to street snacks, foreigners have also set their sights on side dishes for drinking.

some time ago, a foreign blogger published a recommended way to eat cucumbers, and the recipe unexpectedly became the most popular recipe on douyin.

how to do it?

just slice the cucumber, then add salt, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, chili oil, msg, and minced garlic in turn, mix well, and you will get a delicious cold cucumber dish.

image source: @internet-garcon-pdf

the blogger's recipe comes from din tai fung, which is the most familiar cold cucumber salad. chinese netizens saw this and wanted to give advice: "next time, remember to take a picture of the cucumber in advance, it will taste better."

because it is crisp, refreshing and helps reduce fat, this cold cucumber dish has become an instant hit on the internet. foreign supermarkets even sell cucumber slices in disposable packages, while cheaper whole cucumbers are sold next to them on the shelves.

image source: @internet-garcon-pdf

the funniest thing is that due to the surge in demand for cucumbers, there was a shortage of cucumbers in iceland, and farmers had to work so hard to restore supply after a week.

an entire country’s cucumbers are eaten up, and the result is actually the most common cold cucumber salad that we have been eating since childhood.

i can only say that foreigners have explored less than one-tenth of chinese food.

going back further, there is the old internet celebrity lao gan ma.

foreigners who love it love it to the core, and even set up a lao gan ma fan homepage for it. every day, fans from all over the world gather here to communicate: where can i buy lao gan ma?

this well-known brand in china was initially just a hot commodity in foreign chinese super leagues. as word of mouth spread in the chinese community, lao gan ma's famous dishes became well-known around the world.

although lao gan ma is much more expensive abroad than in china, with a bottle costing 8 to 10 yuan in china and 8 to 15 u.s. dollars on amazon, its price positioning makes it a luxury product in the condiment industry.

but this has not stopped foreigners from loving lao gan ma. there are rumors that in major prisons in the united states, lao gan ma is the dominant hard currency for barter. there are also foreign brands that print lao gan ma on their clothes and appear on the new york fashion week.

however, for a long time, foreigners have not had a high opinion of chinese food.

they generally have stereotypes about chinese food, such as chinese people like to eat offal, chinese food abuses msg and is unhealthy, and chinese food can only be considered fast food and is not high-end.

in the first season of "ugly food", there is also a social experiment that invites a group of foreigners who are prejudiced against chinese food to express their hatred for msg. some people claim that they will feel unwell whenever they pass by a chinese restaurant.

image source: ugly food

however, the american puffed foods distributed to them by the program team also contained a lot of msg, but they ate them with gusto.

so, the problem is never about the food itself, but about the prejudice in people's minds.

as for the stereotype of fast food, it is really unfair. chinese restaurants are one of the few restaurants abroad where delivery is cheap and they rarely close, so chinese food is the first choice when ordering takeout. we can also always see people eating fried noodles with chopsticks in an unskilled way in american tv dramas.

the big bang theory characters often eat chinese takeout at home

although there is no shortage of chinese restaurants and chinatowns in europe and the united states, most of them are cantonese cuisine mixed with vietnamese, thai and other cuisines and then adapted to local tastes.

general tso's chicken and li hongzhang's chop suey sold in panda express in the united states, and the popular tianjin rice in japan are all foreign local products that we have never heard of.

american chinese food sold in panda express

that doesn't represent real chinese food.

the breadth of chinese cuisine can only be appreciated by coming here and tasting it yourself.

from the north to the southern border, from the shores of the east china sea to the western plateau, every piece of land and water has given birth to a unique eating style, which together form a feast for the eyes.

the eight major cuisines have their own characteristics, including the numbing taste of sichuan cuisine, the spiciness of hunan cuisine, the freshness of cantonese cuisine, the mellowness of min cuisine, the sweetness of jiangsu cuisine, the elegance of zhejiang cuisine, the delicacy of anhui cuisine, and the salty and fragrant flavor of shandong cuisine.

the cooking methods are even more complicated and varied, including frying, deep-frying, stir-frying, braising, roasting, grilling, boiling, stewing and steaming, the same ingredients can be cooked in hundreds of different styles.

when chinese people travel around, food is always a big priority.

eat hot pot hot pot in beijing in late autumn, have a bowl of authentic snail rice noodle in liuzhou town, eat fried kidney at the foot of mount tai, taste authentic chopped pepper fish head at yueyang tower, eat hairy crabs at yangcheng lake, and cook mushroom hot pot in yunnan...

image source: visual china

this does not include pastries and cakes. festival foods such as mooncakes, glutinous rice balls, and rice dumplings have several new flavors updated every year.

the more local characteristics include henan guokui, shanxi huamo, hebei gangda mo, inner mongolia milk fried rice, jiangsu soup dumplings, hunan rice noodles, tianjin mahua, hainan bamboo tube rice, guangxi new year's zongzi, hong kong and macao malagao... and so on.

this is not only because we have vast land and abundant resources, but also because generations of working people have incorporated their life wisdom into it, giving birth to such a brilliant food culture.

i believe that no one will fail to be amazed by the richness of chinese cuisine once they have witnessed it with their own eyes.

just like japanese cartoonist ogawa etsushi, who was so impressed by the chinese food in asahi encyclopedia world cuisine that he created the first generation of food competition series "cooking master boy" entirely based on china;

there is also fuchsia dunlop, a native british who went to chengdu to study cooking because of her love for sichuan cuisine. she tried all the street restaurants and wrote books about what she saw and heard, such as "shark's fin and sichuan peppercorn" and "looking for flavors", and she can be called an ambassador of chinese cuisine.

@chef dai guangtan, who is now a food blogger in china, had a similar experience. he was originally a business elite, but came to china as an exchange student and was deeply attracted by chinese cuisine. after returning to france, he switched to studying cooking. now he is dedicated to studying the fusion and innovation of chinese and french cuisine.

perhaps even today, there are still many people who have an unfriendly attitude towards chinese food, but changes are also happening.

more and more people who know nothing about china are willing to put aside their prejudices and come here from afar to see with their eyes and taste with their tongues.

there are also more and more chinese brands going global and opening stores in vast overseas markets.

tea beverage brands are leading the way, with brands such as heytea, mixue, nayuki, luckin coffee, and kudi all expanding outward.

at the end of 2023, heytea's first store in the united states officially opened on broadway in new york, with sales exceeding 2,500 cups on the first day of opening; in the same year, mixue ice city announced its entry into japan and australia, and its first store in sydney achieved a turnover of 24,000 yuan on the first day of opening.

the grand opening day of bo xi tea in new york

at the same time, sub-businesses such as full meals, fast food, and snacks are also actively expanding outward, and many of them are brands we are familiar with.

zhengxin chicken steak has opened in tokyo, japan; waipojia successfully opened its first store in new york this year; xinrongji also opened its first overseas branch in tokyo; not to mention haidilao, whose overseas business revenue last year reached us$686 million and net profit was us$25.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 161.2%, ranking 14th in the 2024 top 25 global catering brand value list.

haidilao's store in dallas, usa

global growth consulting firm frost & sullivan predicts that by 2026, the size of the overseas chinese food market is expected to reach nearly 3 trillion yuan.

and this is just the beginning of the world's understanding of chinese food.

it is said that the land and water nurture the people, but delicious food knows no borders.

this food culture that has been passed down for thousands of years will continue to be passed on by our generations.