Reading a Chinese menu
You do not need to read Chinese to read a Chinese menu — you need about sixty characters. Dish names are built to a formula: cooking method + main ingredient. Learn 炒 (stir-fried), 蒸 (steamed), 烤 (roast), 炸 (deep-fried), 牛 (beef), 鸡 (chicken), 鱼 (fish), 辣 (spicy) and you can decode most of a menu on sight.
What actually happens
Chinese dish names are unusually honest. Where a French menu might offer you a name, a Chinese menu almost always tells you what is in the dish and what was done to it: 红烧牛肉 is red-braised beef, 清蒸鱼 is plain-steamed fish, 酸辣汤 is sour-and-spicy soup. Once you can spot the method and the meat, the rest is detail.
That gives you a reading strategy rather than a vocabulary list. Scan a dish name for two things: an animal (牛 cow, 猪 pig, 鸡 chicken, 鸭 duck, 鱼 fish, 虾 shrimp) and a method (炒 stir-fried, 蒸 steamed, 烤 roasted, 炸 deep-fried, 煮 boiled, 烧 braised). If you find both you know roughly what will arrive, and that is usually enough to decide.
Then look for the two warning characters. 辣 (là) is chilli heat. 麻 (má) is the numbing tingle of Sichuan peppercorn, which is not heat and surprises people the first time. A dish labelled 麻辣 has both. Neither character is hidden — Chinese menus are not trying to catch you out.
What they'll say back to you
Understanding the reply is the half of the conversation phrasebooks skip. These are the lines you will actually hear in this situation — learn to recognise them, not to say them.
What to say
How it was cooked
What's in it
Warnings and staples
Reading a whole dish name
The bit that isn't language
Point your phone's camera at the menu. Live translation is imperfect on poetic dish names but excellent on exactly the characters that matter — the meat and the method — and it works offline once you download the Chinese language pack. Do that before you fly.
Quick quiz — 5 questions
Five questions built from the phrases above: you get the English, you pick the Chinese. No sign-up, no score kept — just a check that they have stuck.
How do you say this?
Common mistakes
| ✗ What visitors do | ✓ What works | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Reading 鱼香 as "contains fish" | Reading it as a sauce style | 鱼香 ("fish-fragrant") is a Sichuan flavour profile built from pickled chilli, garlic and vinegar. There is no fish in 鱼香肉丝. |
| Assuming 麻 is a typo for 辣 | Treating them as two different things | 麻 is numbness from Sichuan peppercorn and 辣 is chilli heat. A 麻辣 dish delivers both, and the numbness is the part first-timers are unprepared for. |
| Ordering only main dishes | Adding 青菜 and rice | A table of meat dishes with no vegetable and no staple is an unbalanced meal by local standards, and heavier than you want by the end. |
Reading a Chinese menu — frequently asked questions
How many Chinese characters do I need to read a menu?
About sixty gets you most of the way. Dish names follow a cooking-method-plus-ingredient formula, so a dozen method characters (炒蒸烤炸煮烧), a dozen ingredients (牛猪鸡鸭鱼虾) and a handful of qualifiers (辣麻丁丝片) decode the majority of what you will see.
What does 辣 mean on a Chinese menu?
辣 (là) means spicy with chilli. The related character 麻 (má) means the numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorn, which is a different thing entirely. 麻辣 means the dish has both — that is the classic Sichuan combination.
Does 鱼香肉丝 contain fish?
No. 鱼香 (yúxiāng) means "fish-fragrant" and refers to a Sichuan sauce of pickled chilli, garlic, ginger and vinegar that was traditionally used with fish. The dish itself is shredded pork. It is the most misleading name on a standard menu.
What do 丁, 丝 and 片 mean in dish names?
They describe how the ingredient is cut: 丁 (dīng) is diced cubes, 丝 (sī) is fine shreds, 片 (piàn) is slices. So 鸡丁 is diced chicken, 肉丝 is shredded pork and 牛肉片 is sliced beef.
Next
Before you fly
Work through the whole trip in Ready for a trip to China in 30 days, play Travel Survival Sprint to make the phrases automatic, practise saying them aloud in Airport Roleplay, or look up anything else in the Chinese → Pinyin translator.