Culinary China

Afternoon and evening. Pick-up at the airport and transfer to the hotel beside Taikoo Li. A first short outing to a teahouse in the People’s Park, to see Chengdu in the afternoon without a programme. Meal. Welcome dinner of mapo tofu and twice-cooked pork, in a house founded in 1862.

Meals: dinner.

Morning. Neighbourhood market at 7am: live fish, chillies drying at the door, tofu made that morning. Shopping with the guide, who translates what the sellers explain.

The morning is when the market tells you what the city eats: piles of drying chillies, fermented black beans in earthenware jars, live fish in shallow tanks and tofu made before dawn. The shopping for the afternoon’s class comes from here.

Afternoon. Cooking class: each participant makes two dishes in the wok — one spicy, one mild — and learns to season with bean paste and Sichuan pepper. Evening. Dinner on what you cooked, with a tasting of Sichuan green tea to clear the palate.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Sanxingdui Museum, at Guanghan, twenty minutes by train: bronze masks 3,000 years old, from a civilisation with no written records. Afternoon. Back to the city, a rest, then the Wide and Narrow Alleys for street snacks: starch noodles, rabbit ears with chilli and glutinous rice cakes. Evening. Sichuan hotpot dinner, with two separate broths on the table, thin slices of beef, tripe and mushrooms. This is the central meal of the tour.

There is one rule about Sichuan hotpot worth knowing before you sit down: you do not drink the soup from the spicy pot, because the broth concentrates the oil and the chilli over the course of the evening. You serve yourself from the mild one. The dipping sauce is mixed at the table, from garlic, sesame and chilli oil; in Sichuan it is customary to add vinegar, which cuts the fat.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Heming teahouse in the People’s Park, for the ritual of the pot and the wicker chairs. Lunch of dandan mian. Afternoon. Flight to Macau, about two and a half hours. Check in on the peninsula. Evening. First Macanese dinner: minchi, the minced meat with potato and fried egg that is the home dish of the community.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Ruins of St Paul’s and the Senate Square at 8:30. Tasting of egg tarts straight out of the oven in the bakeries of Taipa. Afternoon. On Taipa, lunch of African chicken and salt cod, two dishes that came from Mozambique and from Portugal and have been cooked here for two centuries. Evening. Dinner in Coloane Village, facing the channel, with roast pork dishes and Macanese curry. A conversation with members of the local community whenever it can be arranged.

Macanese cooking is not Portuguese cooking left behind: it is a cooking of encounter, made with ingredients that came from Africa, India and Malacca and acquired their own names here. Minchi and African chicken are the two home dishes, and they make more sense when someone from the community explains them at the table.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. Crossing to Guangzhou (via Zhuhai or by ferry, depending on traffic on the bridge). Check-in in the city. Afternoon. First circuit of the Thirteen Factories district and the city’s oldest food street: roast pork braids hanging at the door, taro pastries and bird’s nest soup. Evening. Seafood dinner at the market, chosen live at the counter and cooked on the spot, which is how Cantonese people judge freshness — or fail to.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Dim sum in a hall that opens at 8am, one of the ones that still pushes trolleys between the tables: siu mai, prawn dumplings, rice rolls and chicken feet in black bean sauce.

The traditional halls open early and are in full swing by eight: by midday they are serving office set menus and on Sundays there is a queue at the door. It is a meal to be had in the morning, at the pace of the trolleys moving between the tables, not at lunchtime.

Afternoon. Visit to the Qingping market — herbs, roots, dried insects — and a Pu’er tea tasting in a shop that has been there thirty years. Evening. Classic Cantonese dinner: sweet and sour pork done properly, roast duck and vegetables stir-fried with the “breath of the wok” that only a fierce flame gives you.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. Free time for markets or for recorded Cantonese opera. Transfer to the station. Afternoon. High-speed train to Shanghai, about seven hours in first class, with lunch served on board by our guide. Evening. Arrival and a first walk along the lit-up Bund, with coffee or a digestif on a terrace.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. Street breakfast: shengjianbao, the buns fried on the bottom with broth inside, and barley tea. Afternoon. Shanghai cooking properly: pork belly braised in dark sauce, or hongshao rou, in a neighbourhood restaurant in Jing’an.

This is where you notice that commercial China was decided in this city: Shanghai cooking is sweet and dark, with caramelised soy sauce and rice wine, and it sits side by side with the food of the regions its inhabitants came from. Dinner is in a neighbourhood house, in small rooms, with a handwritten menu.

A short steamed dumpling (xiaolongbao) class for anyone who wants it. Evening. Hairy crab dinner, between September and November, served with warm rice wine.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Thirty-minute train to Suzhou and the old town market. Lunch of Tai lake fish and freshwater shrimps. Afternoon. Back to Shanghai, and on to Yu Garden and the old city to try the sweets and the black sesame paste. Evening. Farewell dinner, chosen with the group the day before: it can be a chef’s restaurant of contemporary Chinese cooking or a twenty-year-old neighbourhood courtyard.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. One last visit to the spice market for things to take home: chillies, bean paste, tea leaves and clay pots. Transfer to the airport three hours before the flight.

Meals: breakfast.