Updated November 14, 2026 at 5:00 AM CST
In China, the cuisine varies from province to province. But there is one item that is common to almost every region: the bun.
Stuffed with a variety of meats, vegetables or both, buns are a breakfast staple across the country.
Outside of Tuan Jiehu Park in Beijing, a busy shop sells buns, or baozi. The line is constant, but it moves fast.
Staff pluck stuffed white buns from bamboo steamers, and plop them into flimsy plastic bags — piping hot. Buns are one of the few Chinese foods people here can eat on-the-go. And, they're affordable.
Two soy sauce pork buns — a bestseller at this shop — one pickled veggie bun, another with eggplant and green peppers, plus two cups of fresh soybean milk, comes out to 19.50 yuan. That's about $3 in the U.S.
"Breakfast items in China are all relatively cheap," Michael Zee, author of Zaofan, a book about breakfasts in China, said.
His favorite bun comes from a shop in eastern China's Shaoxing city.
It starts with buns without a filling: mantou.
"They use a sourdough rice ferment and they make these incredibly light mantou," Zee said. "Then when you order them, they get a pair of chopsticks, they crack it open. They put a massive chunk of hong shao rou inside."
That's red braised pork, sticky and sweet.
Beijing resident Samantha Zhao says pork and fennel buns are her favorite, though she doesn't eat buns as often as before.
"Baozi is a bit unhealthy," she said. "It's easy to eat too many, like four in one go and they contain quite a bit of dough and oil."
Still, she couldn't resist when passing by Bao Er Jiu, a trendy bun shop near Beijing's Confucius temple and Imperial College.
This shop likes to experiment with fillings. Its signature bun is filled with chocolate and red bean.
The shop also holds workshops where the resident baozi master teaches people to make buns.
Bai Qiufei attended one, and it turns out, he says, it takes a lot of skill to make a simple bun.
The shop's cofounder Lu Yao, says that making baozi is a good way to disconnect.
"A lot of people I know are feeling anxious about the development of AI," she says, "Plus, living in Beijing is stressful."
Her big dream is to expand overseas. After all, Chinese people are all over the globe. And food, she says, like baozi, is the best way to connect to home
Dhanika Pineda adapted this story for the web.
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