When I first came to England, I was very confused when people asked me how many meals a day the Chinese used to have. He would simply reply, “Obviously three, but don’t you have the same?”

I found out later that he was wrong. Of course, different cultures have different eating habits (in Spain, people usually eat five times a day). Don’t even mention how different each meal could be.

Realizing the differences in terms of food culture between China and Western countries is probably the first thing that made me aware of cultural identity issues. I have been thinking about writing about this for a long time.

The bold statement “three meals a day in Chinese culture” is actually not accurate, especially considering how many different ethnic groups and different regions there are in China. People who belong to different ethnic groups or who live in different areas have slightly different eating habits.

For example, in the far south of China, people used to have an extra meal very late at night, after dinner. But in the north we usually have three meals: breakfast between 6.30 and 7.30 (depending on people’s working hours), lunch between 12 and 1pm and dinner around 7pm.

The common Chinese breakfast in the northern provinces might consist of congee with pickles, soy milk with ‘Youtiao’ (a kind of fried cake) or Chinese steamed ‘bread’. In restaurants that open in the morning for breakfast, you can also order noodles or ‘bao zi’ (steamed bread with fillings).

Lunch usually includes proper dishes and comes with stable food like rice. In the northern provinces, cakes with different fillings are also very common purchases for lunch. Students could bring lunch boxes and workers went home or ate in small restaurants. In any case, lunch is usually followed by a short nap.

Some time ago I read an article about German businessmen having meetings with Chinese in Shanghai. At 12:00, the Chinese would stand up and say, “now it’s lunch time, we’re going to have lunch, we can continue talking at the dining table.” The Germans were very surprised, because they were in the middle of a meeting. This shows how important food is in Chinese culture.

Dinner is normally prepared properly at home, although today, with many family restaurants at very reasonable prices, people have begun to buy food or dine out frequently. The homemade dinner usually includes a meat or fish dish and various vegetable dishes.

There is another saying in Chinese: “walking 100 steps after dinner can make you live to be 99 years old.” Although this is obviously a metaphor, in China you will see crowds of people strolling the streets or gardens around 7:30 pm or 8:00 pm, right after dinner.