By Arnold Vis
Chinese food is AMAZING. If you enjoy Chinese food in your home country, you will absolutely love it in China. There’s so much choice and variety, and in most restaurants eating out is also very affordable.
When you first arrive, ordering in restaurants can be a bit of a mission though. The main reason for this is that in most restaurants, there are no waiters that take orders.
Here are 4 key steps to ordering food in a restaurant in China.
Finding the menu
When you sit down to eat, there won’t be a paper menu on the table.
China has fully embraced technology, and each table has an individual QR code.
When you scan the QR code, the menu opens. In almost all cases, the menu is exclusively in Mandarin, so unless you can speak Mandarin, you’ll need to translate it.
Using your translation app
There are many good translation apps to choose from nowadays; I use Apple Translate.
A key functionality you need is the ability to translate screenshots, and Apple Translate can do that.
So when you’re browsing the the menu and see dishes you’re interested in, take screenshots of them.
With the help of your translation app, you’ll then see the menu like this.
Ordering & enjoying the food
In all the restaurants I ate in on my trip to China this summer, the food arrived within minutes of ordering.
The QR code of the menu indicates your table number to the restaurant’s staff, so all you need to do is select your dishes to order, there’s no need to specify your table.
Paying
You will pay before you eat, through an online payment with Alipay or WeChat.
When paying online, make sure to turn off your VPN when you put through the payment, because VPN’s are not compatible with Chinese payment systems. Similarly, ensure that Bluetooth is on when you pay.
Tips or service fees are not a thing in China, so those are not part of the online payment.
The meal in this picture cost just 29.9 RMB (about £3 / $4.20).
I hope this helped, this system of ordering takes a little getting used to but once you get your head around it, it’s efficient and seamless.
If you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at arnold@impact-teaching.com
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