Early in the morning when heading to work, or late at night when returning home, you can be faced one of the biggest temptations in China - street food!

Street food vendors are everywhere, selling all kinds of snacks that smell so delicious it is hard to resist!

But what if you want to enjoy Chinese fastfood and remain vegan at the same time? And what if you are new to China and cannot properly explain what you want?

Well, ChinaVegan has the answers and we are happy to share them with you here.

Bing (饼）

This is surely the most popular snack and can be found on most street corners. There are several types of this flat, round cake but the most popular are jianbing (煎饼) and shouzhuabing (手抓饼), to which can be added egg, onion, cabbage amongst other extras.

Now to the important part: how to order!

If you want a jianbing without egg you should say:

“煎饼一个，不要加鸡蛋” ("jianbing yi ge, bu yao jia jidan")

Some of the vendors have a selection of vegetables and other extras; if you want to add them you should simply point at them and say:

“加这个”（"jia zhege")

You can use the same phrases for shouzhuabing.

Malatang （麻辣烫）

Another popular street food is spicy malatang.

Surprisingly, a few of them are actually vegan, where the pots and utensils are used only for vegetables.

To find out if the malatang is vegan you should ask:

“这个汤是素食吗？” （"zhege tang shi sushi ma?")

If the vendor does not appear to understand you, show them the image below: