China Travel Radar

Chinese culture for travelers

Language, food and tea for everyday travel in China.

Start here for the Chinese words on a screen, the logic of a food menu, the price of a tea tasting and the calendar references that appear between the headline sights.

  • Words you can show
  • Menus and tea
  • Names and calendars
Travelers walking beneath red lanterns and Chinese shop signs in Pingyao
街 · jiē Street life is where language, food and custom stop being abstract.

Use it today

Three field guides for ordinary moments

Open the one that matches the problem in front of you. Each guide keeps the Chinese characters visible so it can double as a show-on-screen reference.

Travelers walking through a lantern-lined market street in Pingyao

Language

Chinese phrases for travel

Twelve tap-to-show cards plus the words for taxis, toilets, prices, allergies and help. Open guide →
A street vendor in China with a display of candied fruit skewers

Food

How to order food in China

Decode common dishes, escape a blocked QR flow and communicate the ingredient that matters. Open guide →
Amber Chinese tea in a white cup beside a teapot on a wooden table

Tea

Chinese tea for travelers

Recognise the six categories, order without ceremony anxiety and check the price before buying. Open guide →

Decode the references

Small tools, fewer wrong assumptions

Pinyin is pronunciation, not a second writing system. Zodiac years follow the lunar New Year boundary, not January 1. These tools handle the rules that simple search snippets often flatten.

Browse all China travel tools →

Pinyin converter

Turn ni3 hao3 into nǐ hǎo and learn the sounds that do not behave like English.

Chinese name builder

Explore candidate characters by sound and meaning without treating a generated name as an official translation.

Chinese calendar

Convert dates and see the lunar month, zodiac year and festival dates.

Chinese zodiac

Check the lunar-year boundary instead of assuming the animal changes on January 1.

How to use this section

Context before certainty

  1. 01
    Regional is normal.

    Language, flavour and etiquette vary across a country this large. A local difference is not an exception to “real China.”

  2. 02
    Show, then confirm.

    Chinese characters on a screen are useful, but allergies, prices and tickets still need a human confirmation.

  3. 03
    Keep the exchange transparent.

    Whether it is tea, a street snack or a guided experience, agree on the unit and total price before it begins.