Noodles & Dim Sum Name Guide
Fifty noodles, buns, dumplings, flatbreads and sweets with the English name to order by, the literal meaning, and how portions are counted.
Noodle shops and snack stalls sell by portion, not by dish. A basket, a liang of dumplings, a large or small bowl — the name on the wall rarely says which. This guide lists 50 buns, dumplings, noodles, rice-noodle bowls, flatbreads, fried snacks, sweets and breakfast items, each with the English name to order by and the detail that decides how much arrives.
Search noodles and snacks
Type Chinese, pinyin or English. Eight category buttons narrow the list.
Portions and pricing
The unit on the price list is the thing worth asking about.
Dim sum and dumplings are priced per basket, usually three to four pieces. One basket is not a meal; order two or three.
Northern dumpling shops sell by weight: one liang is 50 g of dough, about five or six dumplings. "San liang" is a normal order.
Noodle shops charge by bowl size, not by noodle type. "Da wan" is large, "xiao wan" small; a dry-tossed bowl often comes with soup on the side.
An egg, extra noodles or a side of greens usually costs a little more. Say "jia yi ge dan" for one egg, "jia mian" for extra noodles.
Names that do not translate
Baozi, jiaozi, huntun, mantou and shaobing are the words Chinese menus use in English too. Replacing them with "bun" or "dumpling" alone loses the difference between steamed, boiled, pan-fried and soup-filled.
When a snack is named after a place — Lanzhou, Guilin, Wuhan — keep the place name and describe the food after it: Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles, Guilin rice noodles, Wuhan hot dry noodles.