Tools

Small, useful tools for the things that come up when you are travelling in China: a dish name you cannot read, a price written as ￥2.35万, a red envelope you do not want to get wrong.

Everything here runs in your browser. No sign-up, no upload, and it keeps working when the signal drops.

Food and menus

• Chinese Dish Translator Type or paste a Chinese dish name and get the real explanation, not a machine translation.
• The Eight Great Cuisines What each of China's eight classical cuisines tastes like, and which dishes to order from it.
• Chinese Spice Scale Our 0 to 5 heat scale mapped to things you already know, with real dishes at each level.

Language and culture

• Chinese Number Converter Read 二百三十五 or ￥2.35万 as digits, and turn digits back into Chinese.
• Chinese Number Symbolism Why 8 is lucky, 4 is avoided, and what 520 and 250 mean.
• Chinese Zodiac Lookup Find your animal and element, and see which signs you are meant to get along with.

Coming next

Tea, festivals, regional breakfasts and a phrase trainer are in progress. If there is a tool you want, tell us.