Why Does Northeastern Cuisine Culminate in Harbin Boxed Meals?

Boxed meals, one of the most basic forms of Chinese fast food. But for most people, they are merely a stopgap solution during busy work or travel, holding no special significance.

However, in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, boxed meals have long transcended the simple concept of fast food, becoming a sizable street food culture and a lingering hidden flavor. Even those who usually flaunt their wealth in high-end venues—driving luxury cars and wearing fur coats—often duck into no-frills self-service boxed meal joints, pile a big box of ten-yuan dishes, and wolf it down with gusto before slumping back in satisfied exhaustion.

On short-video platforms, nine out of ten Harbin food bloggers are eating boxed meals: rosy-cheeked young men and women clutching overflowing boxes of food, devouring them with voracious appetite and heroic gusto. This spectacle has southerners from thousands of miles away clamoring in the comments to visit Harbin for a taste of this epic collision of carbs and fats.

In the Northeast, where nightlife is notoriously scarce, Harbin’s boxed meals stand out, offering a few vibrant oases of warmth in the long, frigid nights. Drunk patrons stumbling out of barbecue joints and bathhouses, night-shift taxi drivers, students after evening classes, nightclub performers, mysterious passersby, hungry travelers, and even out-of-towners drawn by viral videos all converge in these boxed meal spots, casting the ambiguous undertones of a Northeastern city into the spotlight.

Why is the ultimate form of Northeastern cuisine a boxed meal?

One key reason for the scale of Harbin’s boxed meal culture is the absence of a dominant noodle-based fast-food tradition in the city’s culinary ecosystem—unlike the rice noodles of the southwest, the wheat noodles of Shaanxi and Shanxi, Yunnan’s mixian, or even Shenyang’s chicken skeleton and hand-pulled noodles.

Photo / Da Lin Darlin

On the other hand, Northeasterners have an exceptional fondness for stir-fried dishes paired with rice. In the past, many families would even treat breakfast like lunch or dinner, cooking up several hearty dishes to eat with rice, sparing no effort for the groggy first meal of the day.

Thus, Harbin’s boxed meals are fundamentally uncomplicated, featuring heavy, rice-friendly Northeastern staples: twice-cooked pork, braised pork, stewed eggplant, stir-fried potato-green pepper-eggplant, oil-braised green peppers, tomato and scrambled eggs… paired with sweet, unlimited white rice. Northeastern dishes and rice cling together like magnets—one bite of dish, three bites of rice—a cycle that drowns out the stomach’s protests of fullness.

Among the classic dishes in boxed meals, none is more noteworthy than twice-cooked pork (liurouduan).

Many outsiders confuse liurouduan with another Northeastern classic, guobaorou. Simply put: guobaorou uses thinly sliced meat, while liurouduan features thicker chunks; both are double-fried for crispiness before seasoning. Guobaorou is sweet and sour, with flavor from a final glaze that preserves the crispiness, while liurouduan is savory, relying on a thick starch-based sauce.

The subtlety of liurouduan lies in this sauce. In upscale restaurants, the sauce is applied thinly and evenly to preserve crispiness while coating the meat. But in boxed meals, this principle is utterly discarded.

Here, liurouduan is nominally a meat dish, but the batter (used for frying) dominates—a thrifty tradition from hard times now preserved only here. The sauce must be thick and long-soaked, softening the crispiness into a sticky, gooey mass. Only when you bite into a greasy, doughy lump wrapped around a tiny piece of fat, evoking childhood memories of leftover banquet dishes, does it qualify as a decent boxed meal liurouduan.

Photo / Ju Siji

Beyond liurouduan, almost every Northeastern dish in boxed meals undergoes adaptation: stir-fried green peppers with dried tofu must have an ultra-thick sauce to soak the rice; tomato and scrambled eggs must be watery and egg finely scrambled (it’s considered a vegetarian dish here, with free refills). Eggplant must be fried until oily and salty, maximizing its rice-pairing potential.

One standout in Harbin’s boxed meals is parou (braised pork belly), a local specialty rarely seen elsewhere. Evolved from Shandong’s bazirou, these massive, succulent slabs of spiced pork are a Harbin icon. Traditional parou joints are packed with burly men at mealtimes, few ordering veggies—just plates of meat and bowls of rice, devoured with gusto. The meat is tender, aromatic with herbs and spices, truly “fat but not greasy.” A boxed meal with parou is already elite; drizzled with its braising sauce and paired with a bite of garlic, it’s sinfully delicious.

The classic form of Harbin’s parou.

In short, if Northeastern cuisine’s essence is using high-calorie dishes to shovel even higher-calorie rice, then boxed meals—where dish and rice merge seamlessly—are its ultimate form. Perhaps separating Northeastern dishes and rice into different containers was a mistake from the start.

The schools and origins of Harbin’s boxed meals

Harbin’s boxed meal trade thrives citywide, broadly divided into fixed stores and mobile stalls.

Along Tongda Street, there are numerous boxed meal restaurants, many with a history of over 20 years, earning it the nickname "Boxed Meal Street." At mealtime, the street is packed with taxis and bustling with diners, creating a lively scene.

Harbin's Boxed Meal Street: The canteen for taxi drivers.

The boxed meal restaurants on Tongda Street mostly operate buffet-style. Chefs cook large batches of dishes, served on big metal trays. Pricing is based on the number of meat dishes, while vegetables and rice are unlimited, ensuring everyone leaves full. Typically, for just over ten yuan, you can enjoy a high-quality meal, making Harbin boxed meals the pinnacle of cost-performance in fast food—a paradise for big eaters.

It's said that many owners of these buffet-style boxed meal restaurants were once canteen chefs in workplaces.

Twenty years ago, in cities across Northeast China, almost everyone worked for state-owned units, and eating in workplace canteens became a collective memory. For instance, I still remember my mother’s workplace had two chefs, both surnamed Yu—one fat, one thin—nicknamed "Fathead Fish" and "Shriveled Fish" by the staff. Later, with layoffs and workplace reforms, canteens gradually disappeared, and many former canteen chefs turned to selling boxed meals. Now, for most people, these meals are the only way to relive fragments of those happier times.

Diners at a 12-yuan buffet boxed meal restaurant.

Photo by Su Yunpeng.

Besides fixed boxed meal shops, many are sold by mobile vendors who appear unpredictably in busy areas or late-night street corners, serving only regulars and lucky passersby.

These vendors usually don’t let customers choose their dishes—you get what’s served, like a surprise blind box. The most old-school ones use traditional aluminum lunchboxes, packed full for just ten yuan. It evokes memories of factory workers on rotating shifts, schoolchildren, or homemakers who prepared meals before dawn, packed in these boxes to be reheated at noon on factory or school stoves. The food itself is secondary; the nostalgia from the packaging alone is enough to stir emotions.

A ten-yuan aluminum lunchbox meal.

Some boxed meal spots are more unique, like the now-trending "bus boxed meals," where abandoned buses are converted into fast-food joints. In the early 2000s, such repurposed buses were common across Northeast China, though now they’re rare. In winter, icicles hang from the bus exteriors, while inside, the cramped space buzzes with activity—a peculiar sight.

The term "bento" originated in the Song Dynasty and was later adopted by the Japanese. With Japan’s railway boom and increased travel, bento culture flourished and spread across rice-eating East Asia. Harbin’s boxed meals represent China’s own bento culture, though their origins are more complex and nostalgic than Japan’s.

Ice harvesters on the Songhua River enjoying a warm boxed meal during their break.

Those familiar with Harbin’s lifestyle know the essence of boxed meals isn’t just about filling hunger. Late at night, after a long drinking session, tipsy revelers often grab a boxed meal on the street to "sober up." No matter how lavish the world or how exquisite the banquet, everything eventually returns to this humble boxed meal—a comforting finale before sleep. This is Harbin’s late-night philosophy of warmth and the hidden essence of a simple boxed meal.

Header image | Da Lin Darlin.

Cover image | Da Lin Darlin.