Eating in China with allergies or a religious diet

Two things are true at once. First: Chinese food culture can accommodate almost any diet — it has a 1,000-year-old vegetarian tradition, one of the world's largest halal food networks, and kitchens that cook everything to order. Second: none of it is labeled. Menus don't list allergens, "no meat" doesn't rule out lard or chicken stock, and the waiter's reassuring nod is not a safety system.

The gap between those two truths is bridged by knowing exactly what to say, what to trust, and what to avoid. Here's that bridge.

Allergies: the hard truths first

• Cross-contact is standard. Wok kitchens cook everything in the same pans at speed. If your allergy is severe, treat every stir-fry kitchen as shared-equipment territory.
• Soy sauce contains wheat. The "rice-based cuisine, so it's gluten-friendly" assumption fails on the first sauce. Gluten hides in soy sauce, vinegar blends, and wheat noodles masquerading as rice ones.
• Peanut and sesame travel invisibly — in cooking oils in some regional cuisines, and in the sesame paste that dresses noodles and hotpot dips.
• Shellfish hides in sauces — oyster sauce, shrimp paste, dried-shrimp seasoning in "vegetable" dishes.

The phrases that work

Don't improvise — show the sentence. The template is 我对……严重过敏，绝对不能吃 ("I am severely allergic to …, I absolutely cannot eat it"), with the blank filled from this table:

Safe-default strategies: steamed dishes over stir-fries; plain rice and congee as anchors; hotpot is sleeper-good for allergies because you control a broth cooked in front of you — order a plain one and skip the dipping-sauce bar if sesame or peanut is your enemy.

Halal 清真

China's halal infrastructure is enormous — you just need to recognize it. The sign to know is 清真 (qīngzhēn, usually on green signage). Your everyday anchor: Lanzhou beef-noodle shops (兰州拉面), which are halal by tradition and sit on practically every block of every city — hand-pulled noodles in beef broth, made in front of you, reliably excellent. One tier up: Xinjiang restaurants — cumin lamb skewers, big-plate chicken, pilaf. In major cities, certified restaurants also cluster around mosques. Tier-1 cities are easy; in small towns, plan around the noodle shops.

Kosher

The rarest tier, honestly. Chabad houses in Shanghai and Beijing maintain kosher kitchens and Shabbat meals — contact them ahead of your trip. Beyond that, the workable strategy is certified imports from international supermarkets plus the Buddhist vegetarian restaurants below.

Vegetarian & vegan

The good news: China has real vegetarian restaurants, not sad option-menus — the Buddhist 素食 tradition is a full cuisine, often found near temples (Shanghai's Godly 功德林 has been at it since 1922). The trap: everyday "vegetable" dishes are routinely cooked with lard (猪油), chicken stock (鸡汤) or oyster sauce (蚝油).

Phrases: 我吃素 ("I'm vegetarian") for the simple case; for vegan or strict, show 全素，不要猪油、鸡汤、蚝油 ("fully vegetarian — no lard, chicken stock, or oyster sauce"). Plant-based dining in tier-1 cities is growing fast, up to and including fine dining — worth one booked-ahead night.

Other religious needs

No beef: 我不吃牛肉. No pork: 我不吃猪肉 — useful daily, since pork is Chinese cooking's default meat and appears unannounced in "meat" dishes, dumpling fillings and broths.

The honest summary: you can eat spectacularly well in China with any of these constraints — if the message reaches the kitchen accurately. That's the part Kora does: set your profile once, and restaurant picks respect it; send any menu photo and risky dishes get flagged before you order; for the serious cases, Kora messages the restaurant in Chinese before you arrive.