FOLLOW OUR STORIES · WHAT WE ATE
Sometimes our China food stories begin with a famous dish.
This one began with Dad looking at a sign and thinking:
RMB 9.60? In Beijing? 😳
We had found a casual Shaanxi noodle shop.
Yes:
Shaanxi noodles — in Beijing. 😂
And because Dad & Elaine have traveled around Shaanxi Province (陕西省, Shǎnxī Shěng) ourselves, we weren’t going to walk past without trying a bowl.
Dad’s simple Shaanxi-style noodle meal in Beijing.
🍜 What Was in the Bowl?
Dad chose the 秘制肉酱面 (mìzhì ròujiàng miàn) — noodles with the shop’s seasoned meat sauce.
The bowl arrived with thick noodles topped with minced meat, chopped green onions and preserved vegetables.
Nothing elaborate.
Nothing dressed up for tourists.
Just a quick, filling bowl of noodles.
And Dad rather liked it. 😂
😳 But RMB 9.60?
The shop was advertising selected noodle dishes for:
RMB 9.60
That caught Dad’s attention immediately.
For Beijing, this was very cheap.
In fact, this was probably the cheapest proper meal Dad ate in Beijing on this trip.
⚠️ Dad’s Price Reality Check
Please don’t use RMB 9.60 as your normal Beijing noodle budget. 😂
This was an unusually inexpensive promotional price.
From our own travels, a simple local noodle dish in China has more commonly cost us somewhere around the teens to RMB 20, depending on the city, neighborhood and what we ordered.
And location matters.
At touristy Qianmen (前门) in Beijing, for example, Dad paid RMB 20 for another simple bowl of noodles.
So the lesson is NOT:
“Noodles in Beijing cost RMB 9.60.”
The better lesson is:
Even in Beijing, you can occasionally stumble across remarkably inexpensive everyday food — especially if you’re eating simply and away from expensive restaurants.
🥢 Then Dad Noticed the Sign
There was another small detail that interested Dad almost as much as the price.
It said:
面汤自取 (miàntāng zìqǔ)
Help yourself to the noodle soup / noodle cooking water.
And:
小料自取 (xiǎoliào zìqǔ)
Help yourself to the condiments.
😂
This is exactly the kind of tiny thing Dad likes noticing when we travel.
You order the noodles.
Then you see what everybody else is doing.
Take some condiments.
Adjust the bowl to your own taste.
And if you want some 面汤 (miàntāng), help yourself.
No ceremony.
No explanation for international travelers.
It’s simply how the shop works.
🍵 Wait — What’s 面汤?
For an international traveler, 面汤 (miàntāng) can be confusing.
You may expect “noodle soup” to mean a flavored broth with noodles inside it.
But here it can refer to the hot liquid associated with cooking the noodles — something simple that can accompany the meal.
Dad loves little discoveries like this.
Not because 面汤 is some famous Chinese delicacy that you must travel across the world to taste. 😂
Quite the opposite.
It’s interesting because it’s ordinary.
Everybody around you understands what to do.
You are the traveler standing there thinking:
“What’s that?”
And one tiny piece of everyday China has just appeared.
🗺️ Shaanxi Food… In Beijing?!
There was another reason this little meal made us smile.
Shaanxi Province (陕西省, Shǎnxī Shěng) has become very familiar territory for Dad & Elaine.
We’ve eaten noodles in Xi’an (西安, Xī’ān).
We’ve traveled beyond Xi’an into other parts of Shaanxi.
And we’ve learned something important along the way:
“Chinese food” isn’t really one food.
Move around China and the noodles change.
The dumplings change.
The bread changes.
The breakfast changes.
Even the things sitting beside your bowl change.
So finding Shaanxi noodles in Beijing felt a little like encountering an old acquaintance somewhere unexpected.
And, of course, there’s a simple reason you can do this:
China’s regional foods travel too.
Beijing isn’t a city where you can eat only Beijing cuisine.
It’s a huge national capital where people — and their food traditions — have arrived from all over China.
If you’d like to follow more of the foods Dad & Elaine encountered across the country, continue with:
❤️ What We Ate — And What We Noticed
Was this the best meal Dad ate in Beijing?
No.
Was it the fanciest?
Definitely not. 😂
It was a cheap bowl of noodles.
But it gave us three little pieces of our China journey:
Shaanxi food in Beijing.
An unexpectedly cheap RMB 9.60 meal.
And:
面汤自取.
Help yourself to the noodle soup.
That’s why we’re keeping these little What We Ate stories.
Not every meal needs to be Peking duck.
Not every restaurant needs to be famous.
Sometimes Dad & Elaine simply sit down, eat what ordinary people around us are eating…
and notice something we didn’t know yesterday.
One bowl at a time, China gets a little easier to understand. 🍜
