Most people that I know who went to China never escaped from the tourist bubble. Flight attendants cared for them in the air and tour guides shepherded them through the cities; they stayed on the paths that were carefully designed for them by travel companies to both satisfy tourist expectations and generate healthy profits. Unfortunately, what these tours show their customers are not always a reflection of the everyday realities of the lives of the locals. The good, the bad and the interesting are hidden from sight. This is especially true when it comes to food.

Before coming to China I was told by many to expect the food to be terrible. While I understand why other people probably didn’t enjoy their daily fare, they probably never really had genuine Chinese cuisine. Having both followed the tour guides and hung with the locals in both Beijing and Shanghai, I believe that the restaurants on the bus tours are the absolute pits. While they claim to be quality authentic establishments, they aren’t really either.

There seem to be two ways to eat the local fare in China. One way is to dine at the nice Chinese restaurants that don’t cater to Westerners. While these are difficult for tourists to track down, the food is as nearly as awe inspiring as the items on the menu. Fancy menus will provide many choices including all of the dishes common in America in addition to the meal options that China is fabled for. Some of the more exotic attractions included: oiled bullfrog, sea intestine, pig’s face meat, duck feet, sea cucumber, braised bird’s nest, braised shark’s fin and cow stomach. I’m sure that list only scratches the surface of items that will give any American pause, but suffice it to say if it is part of something that moves, the Chinese have probably found a way to cook it.

Of the list above, I tried duck feet and cow stomach. While neither was terrible, neither did much for me either. Frankly, I thought they were rather boring.

As any Westerner would, I thought I was being quite adventurous by taking a bite of these two dishes. However, I was caught off guard when my local hosts asked me why it was so outrageous to try these foods – Americans do eat plenty of animals. While I responded by making the point that we are only accustomed to eating animal muscles, I left the meal wondering what made one body part less savage to eat than another. The jury is still out.

However, while these top notch restaurants have large and varied menus, it’s worth noting that rice is rarely present on the table. The Chinese consider rice a filler food, just as water is used to dilute down your fountain drinks, rice is used to lower the average cost of a meal. The nice restaurants don’t serve much of it and the cheap ones don’t server much else.

The other option is to take a seat at the dingy looking restaurants that usually have some variety of carcass up for display behind the grimy window that faces the street. This marketing tactic serves to attract the locals who recognize the foods and to scare away the tourists who like to believe that the food on their plate doesn’t actually come from animal bodies. These establishments are for the commoners and the prices are set to match. The ambiance is that of neglect and the entrees are presented as poorly as coleslaw at a run down diner in NYC. Despite the lack of pleasantries, the food is tasty and even one trek into a local joint can shed a sun’s worth of light on what it means to eat as a citizen of China.

Regardless of whether or not your dinner has a lot of rice on the table, there is one thing that is usually not included: napkins. Wet-naps, wet towels or bowls of lemon water appear the common attempt at a substitute; messy eaters probably leave the restaurant wearing a small piece of an appetizer.

Another expectation was broken during the trip; low-end American fast food chains are positioned as mid-tier establishments in China. KFC is hugely popular and serves excellent duck wraps and Pizza Hut is a sit down restaurant with a full menu, including an array of seafoods and non-pizza items.

Another cuisine stereotype was addressed during the trip. Upon passing a construction site in Beijing, I mentioned to my friend (who was born and raised a local) that the workers appeared a bit skinny. They typically work without shirts in response to the humidity, baring hints of their rib cages for all to see. He responded that the very low wages made this career particularly difficult in China, leaving many underfed. He continued to state that they are the reasons that there are no dogs in the City – the workers can’t afford other sources of protein and do in fact eat strays.

While the poor are underfed, an upper-class Chinese host will never let a guest be anything but the opposite. Tradition calls for hosts to order enough food to feed everyone at the table and the past three generations of their families, ensuring that many of the plates remain full when the night ends. Additionally, customs requires that checks are summoned and paid discretely, ensuring that the host covers the bill and the guest feels sufficiently guilty. These norms make for extremely generous hosts and wealthy restaurant owners.

Aside from over indulging on food, day seven included a trip to a local Jewish temple-turned-tourist museum that tells the story of Chinese hospitality to 30,000 Jewish refugees during the second World War and a quick stop back in Shanghai’s Old Town.