China's Ultimate Foodie Paradise: Where Every Bite and Sip is Pure Bliss

The phrase "Eating in Guangzhou" has drawn countless gourmets to this world-renowned culinary capital. One foodie once boasted about trying all of Guangzhou's delicacies, but after a week, they were still lingering in the city's teahouses.

Guangzhou's tea culture is incredibly diverse. From Pu'er tea, Yingde black tea, chrysanthemum tea, rock tea, to Tieguanyin... and dishes like steamed spare ribs with black bean sauce, chicken feet, sticky rice chicken, siu mai, char siu bao, shrimp dumplings, pineapple buns, rice noodle rolls, stir-fried beef hor fun... From morning till night, Monday to Sunday, the variety never runs out.

In Guangzhou, popular teahouses are always bustling with customers.

This unparalleled morning tea culture is unmatched anywhere else in China. In Guangzhou's lively restaurants, you’ll find locals—ranging from white-haired elders in their eighties or nineties to toddlers as young as three or four—who are deeply devoted to the tradition of "one pot of tea and two dim sum items."

"Let’s have tea when free"—just four simple words reveal their love and reliance on tea. They cherish tea and commerce alike, hosting the nation’s largest tea trade market, Fangcun Tea Market, which dominates the industry. They also embrace tea fashionably, with around 12,000 milk tea shops, the highest in China, earning the title of "China’s Milk Tea Capital."

So, the question arises: Why are Guangzhou people so fond of tea? "Come, sit down, have a sip of tea, and let’s chat."

"On the grasslands, they eat lamb; by the sea, they eat crab—but Guangzhou people eat nature itself."

Guangzhou’s delicious food is a universally acknowledged fact, and its people’s love for eating is equally evident.

They eat widely, claiming, "If it swims, runs, or flies, and isn’t poisonous, it’s edible." Chicken, duck, goose, beef, lamb, and pork are staples, along with fish, shrimp, crab, and snails. Even dishes that might make others shudder—like snake (farmed), rat (field mice), water beetles (diving beetles), and ricefield worms—are considered delicacies.

Eel hotpot, water beetles, salt-and-pepper mantis shrimp, snake soup

Fig.1-2 / TuChong Creative; Fig.3-4 / Visual China Group

Of course, they also eat with refinement. Take congee, for example—cooked until the rice grains dissolve into a silky base, then paired with ingredients like pork offal (congee), century egg, fish slices with peanuts, pork blood, mustard greens with beef, or ginkgo nuts. Over 80 varieties nourish Guangzhou people daily.

Fragrant, glutinous, and lingering in flavor—utterly comforting.

"Eat with pride, live in comfort." For many old-school Cantonese, the taste of lychee is the taste of home, and the sweetest lychees come from "the tree in their own yard." Since ancient times, Guangzhou people have been obsessed with growing and eating lychees. As recorded in *New Tales of Guangdong*: "In Guangzhou, lychee and longan trees are planted along embankments, even replacing rice paddies." Once, areas like Xipantang and Lychee Bay were famed for "lychees lining both shores, their fragrance wafting for miles"—hence the name "Liwan District."

Even in today’s land-scarce Guangzhou, premium lychee varieties like Guiwei, Nuomici, Jinggang Hongnuo, Xianjin Feng, Liuxi Hongli, and Gualv thrive—juicy, fragrant, and beloved by locals.

"Little bug, little bug, fly away, fly to the lychee grove..."

This nursery rhyme about lychees has been sung in Guangzhou for generations.

Fortunately, blessed with the fertile Pearl River Delta, Guangzhou has always been a land of abundance, rich in rice, vegetables, fruits, and seafood year-round. Skilled Cantonese chefs transform these ingredients into countless delicacies.

Living in this food paradise, locals sit back, relax, and savor life, developing a dining rhythm of "three teas, two meals, and one late-night snack" ("three teas" being morning tea, afternoon tea, and evening tea; "two meals" being lunch and dinner).

A late-night bowl of beef offal is the ultimate comfort food.

For Cantonese people who have eaten their fill, tea is indispensable. With Guangzhou's long periods of scorching heat and excessive sweating, replenishing fluids daily by pairing with tea is the most comfortable way to beat the heat, cut the grease, and quench thirst.

Drinking tea is a daily ritual for old-school Cantonese. Early in the morning, you can see longtime Guangzhou residents, either with family or friends, queuing in small groups at the doors of their familiar old teahouses. As soon as seats are assigned at 8 a.m., the morning tea crowd files in, expertly settling into their usual spots, instantly packing the teahouse to the brim.

To greet a Cantonese morning, besides the sun, there's morning tea.

As the rattling dim sum carts appear, the aroma of food instantly fills the air. By then, the quick-eyed regulars have already snatched their favorite snacks, piling their tables high with char siu bao, har gow, luncheon cake, turnip cake, siu mai, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf, cheung fun, honeycomb tripe, steamed spare ribs, and phoenix claws (chicken feet)...

The scramble for food around the carts repeats daily in teahouses.

Then, leisurely, they take out their own prepared tea leaves or order a pot of fine tea—perhaps Pu'er, Yingde black tea, Fenghuang Shuixian, Wuyi rock tea, or Maliu Mie (a premium Tieguanyin).

The locally beloved lychee black tea is a teahouse staple. As the leaves unfurl in boiling water, the mingled scents of lychee and tea evoke memories of summers when lychees reddened the trees and their fragrance filled the streets. A sip of the fruity, sweet, and smooth brew brings instant bliss.

The fusion of lychee and black tea is uniquely Lingnan.

Its distinctive sweet flavor leaves a lasting impression.

Click the image to purchase lychee black tea via the mini-program.

Photo by Zhu Mengfei

Now, with water boiling, tea fragrant, and dim sum ready, they sip and nibble, slowly savoring (the Cantonese "tahn" means to enjoy) and chatting, embodying the relaxed joy of "drinking tea and eating buns."

Cantonese people channel nearly all their joy and indulgence into "tahn cha" (enjoying tea). Behind every "peaceful tea meal" lies their easygoing, free-spirited attitude toward life—and the robust strength of Guangzhou, a millennial commercial hub.

In Guangzhou, life is unthinkable without tea. And tea, leveraging the city's prosperity and strategic location, continues to conquer markets domestically and abroad, achieving repeated glories.

What Cantonese people savor isn’t just tea—it’s life.

The mighty Pearl River surges down from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, churning over 2,000 kilometers, carrying silt to the estuary where it forms the vast Pearl River Delta and the majestic "three rivers converging, eight outlets meeting the sea." Guangzhou, blessed by geography, enjoys both river transport and three exclusive estuaries, linking rivers to the sea with a historic "single-port trade" advantage.

Nurturing the prosperity of a millennial trading capital.

Witnessing Guangzhou's ever-evolving growth.

Over 1,000 years ago, Guangzhou was a starting point of the Maritime Silk Road; over 100 years ago, it opened China's door to global trade; and 40+ years ago, it pioneered the path of Special Economic Zones.

Building on the commercial legacy of a thousand years, Guangzhou is also tea's second starting point.

In modern times, tea boats carrying tea from Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, Fujian, as well as western and eastern Guangdong, sailed downstream with Guangzhou as their destination. Hundreds of vessels came and went, and tea merchants gathered around the Thirteen Hongs of Guangzhou, selling tea to all corners of the world. As a result, Guangzhou residents enjoyed authentic teas from various regions, nurturing the city's rich "tea appreciation culture."

As early as the Tang Dynasty, Nansha was an important hub for China's foreign trade.

Bringing the silk, tea, and porcelain of the ancient Eastern kingdom to the world.

In the 1960s and 1970s, tea merchants from Hunan, Zhaoqing Guangning, and other places spontaneously gathered in Liwan, the most prosperous old district of Guangzhou, to engage in the tea trade. After over a decade of development, by the 1980s, more than 50 township tea enterprises and individual tea merchants had gradually emerged in areas like Dongqishi Road in Fangcun, forming a small-scale tea market—the precursor of the Fangcun Tea Market.

Over the turbulent 30-plus years of Fangcun Tea City, countless tea merchants have forged ahead, writing countless thrilling entrepreneurial stories on this "tea market" hotbed. Today, the "Fangcun Tea Market" has grown into a vast market cluster, comprising over 20 independent markets of varying sizes, attracting tea merchants from across the country and hosting nearly 20,000 businesses dealing in various tea types, tea utensils, and tea-related products.

Well-known among seasoned tea drinkers are Qixiu Tea City, Jingui Tea City, Fangcun Tea Industry City, Jiangnan Tea Expo Garden, Guangzhou Tea Trading Center, Xinlao Huayu, Guqiao Tea Street, and others—all part of the "Fangcun Tea Market." This is also the largest, most densely concentrated, and most far-reaching tea distribution hub in China.

The Fangcun Tea Market is not a single market but a cluster of markets.

Yet, among the many gold-rush stories of the Fangcun Tea Market, the most frenzied and volatile was the "Pu'er craze," which altered the fates of countless tea merchants.

Indeed, the fate of Pu'er tea was rewritten here. Before 2005, tea farmers deep in the mountains of Yunnan could never have imagined that their Pu'er tea, usually sold for just a few yuan or a dozen yuan per cake, would fetch astronomical prices of over 100,000 yuan in Guangzhou.

"Poor at midnight, rich by dawn." This intoxicating "Pu'er craze" drew tea merchants from all over China to the Fangcun Tea Market, scrambling to buy, hoard, and sell tea in a frenzy. At its peak, over 70% of the 20,000-plus businesses in Fangcun dealt in Pu'er tea—almost every merchant, even those selling tea utensils, might have dabbled in Pu'er. Daily transactions in Fangcun at that time even reached billions.

No tea lover can resist the red hue, rich flavor, aged aroma, and mellow taste of Pu'er tea.

Because of this, the Fangcun Market has become the undisputed "Wall Street of Chinese tea" in tea circles. Today, Guangdong, home to the Fangcun Tea Market, is both China's top tea-consuming province and its top tea-trading province, with about 250,000 tons of tea consumed or sold annually in the region. Now, whether among tea enthusiasts or the general public, the praise "To see China's tea markets, look to Guangdong; to see Guangdong's tea markets, look to Fangcun" has long spread far and wide.

From selling tea to drinking it, Guangzhou is unmistakably a city of tea—moreover, a city that loves tea. In this city where almost everyone adores tea, tea culture has endured for millennia and continues to set trends, now leading the charge in the roaring wave of new-style tea beverages.

Guangzhou is steeped in the aroma of tea from morning till night.

When a tea leaf arrives in this world-famous city of culinary delights, there's usually only one fate: to be drunk.

When tea lands in the cups of teahouses, it joins forces with delicacies like Malay sponge cake, rice noodle rolls, chicken feet in black bean sauce, sticky rice chicken, turnip cake, honeycomb tripe, and salty dumplings to conquer Guangzhou's stomachs. When it reaches milk tea shops, it teams up with milk, coconut milk, soy milk, lemon, mango, lychee, and more, transforming into milk tea and taking over the city's streets and alleys.

Half of a Guangzhou local's stomach must be filled with tea, right?

Sweet, sour, icy, and refreshing lemon tea—cooling and appetite-whetting.

A staple beverage for Guangzhou's gourmands.

Strolling through the alleys frequented by Guangzhou's old-timers, one can't help but notice milk tea shops at every turn. This is no surprise, as this tea-loving city is home to over 12,000 milk tea shops—China's only "10,000-store new tea beverage city" and the undisputed "Milk Tea Capital of China."

Take a stroll along Tianhe South First Road and Xihua Road, and you'll witness firsthand how fanatical Guangzhou residents are about milk tea.

Standing on the "Milk Tea Street" of Tianhe South First Road in Guangzhou, a row of milk tea shops stretches from one end to the other—almost one small shop every three steps and one large shop every two steps. Virtually every well-known milk tea brand can be found here. Crowds gather in front of each store, and nearly every passerby, laughing and chatting, holds a cup of milk tea, basking in the joy of "milk tea freedom." The intoxicating aroma of milk and tea wafting through the air irresistibly draws people into the ordering queues.

How can you visit the Canton Tower without milk tea?

Photo/Lana Gai

Unlike traditional morning tea, milk tea—unbound by formality or location—brings Guangzhou residents the joy of sipping anytime, anywhere. Combined with the city's deep-rooted "tea appreciation culture," the recent viral "3 o'clock tea time" meme, and the need to beat the perennial heat and humidity, Guangzhou's love for milk tea knows no bounds.

With the Fangcun Tea Market—China's largest tea trading hub—readily supplying tea bases for Guangzhou's milk tea, blends like Duck Shit Aroma, Phoenix Dancong, Da Hong Pao, Tieguanyin, jasmine tea, and Yingde black tea are paired with fresh fruits, toppings, cheese foam, nuts, and more, creating endless innovations. This is truly a paradise for milk tea lovers.

Only by brewing high-quality tea leaves can you make delicious milk tea.

Thus, it’s no surprise that Guangzhou has earned the title of "China’s Milk Tea Capital."

In Guangzhou, food means the tenderness of white-cut chicken, the crispiness of roasted suckling pig, the freshness of slow-cooked soup, the silkiness of steamed spare ribs with black bean sauce… a feast of flavors to savor slowly. Tea in Guangzhou is the richness of Pu'er, the sweetness of Yingde black tea, the fragrance of jasmine tea, the smoothness of Tieguanyin… countless tea notes to relish leisurely.

Eating a meal and sipping tea reflect Guangzhou’s unhurried, joyful approach to life—a philosophy of staying composed and adaptable in all situations.

Without tea, Guangzhou locals can’t even enjoy their meals properly.

For Guangzhou natives raised in tea houses, tea is second nature, and their "homegrown" lychee black tea leaves an indelible mark. For many elders, lychee black tea was their first "introductory" tea. The intense lychee aroma mingled with the sweetness of black tea has long been imprinted on the palates of old Guangzhou, becoming a generational flavor of memory.

Click the image to get the same lychee black tea as the locals!

Editor | Ou Hantian, Shi Mei

Planning & Review | Ou Hantian

Cover Image | Visual China

"Cultural Geography of Guangdong" by Situ Shangji

"Fangcun’s 'Business Card' Under Market Economy: Four Decades of Transformation at Fangcun Tea Market," Jiemian News