It’s really a toss up. Thing is, for a lot of people (I fall into this category), when they go abroad they want to experience life as the locals do. So for example, whenever I eat at a Chinese family’s home, I tend to get a little disappointed when they attempt to Americanize their meals. Then again, food (and especially breakfast) can be a very personal thing as well, and some people aren’t so adventurous with what they put in their mouth. My best advice is to ask your exchange student what he eats for breakfast before he comes. Realistically, most Chinese breakfast food is pretty tough to come by in the US, however these days more and more Chinese are adopting the “Western” breakfast of milk and bread. So it’s possible you might be fine with the staples. Best thing is to just ask him up front. Good luck in Kankakee

I’m staying in the Saint Laurent Hotel Apartment. It’s on hongmei lu in the southwest part of the city. Not the greatest hotel, but the breakfast usually does the trick.

The Nanjing Central Hotel usually had three kinds of zhou for breakfast – millet, red rice, plain etc.
I like the red rice congee for breakfast, and also the doufu nao (tofu brains) with lots of hot peppers.
One can get used to pickled vegetables for breakfast.

happy eating!

In a small Yunnan town recently, I talked the chef of a little fry house to make what I called a Chinese/Western breakfast. He cooked up hash browns, scrambled eggs, a bacon-esque dish, and some veggies. All of these were Chinese dishes; and with my packet of Nescafe made for a damn nice pre-cycle breakfast.

I guess it all depends on the province you are living in.

But Don Tai- no doujiang for breakfast? Come on! I’ve breakfasted on youtiao washed down with doujiang in Jinghong, Tianjin and Beijing- and that was at regular, local breakfast stands, no hotels or other places laowai would normally be looking for breakfast.

Actually, a youtiao and a bowl of doujiang is a pretty good way to start the day. Especially good as a hangover breakfast, but good to start any day. Just make sure you’re buying from where the locals get theirs (hints: There are no hotels, only apartment blocks, in sight, everybody else is speaking the local dialect, and there’s a queue).

And that red porridge I’m guessing is made from a grain other than rice, I’m just not sure which grain. It certainly does not look like any Western porridge I know. There are many different kinds of zhou/porridge. One of my favourites is made of millet, and it’s thick, loess yellow, and tasty- more nutritious than rice, too, especially when it’s my mother in law’s organic millet.