China

'Chinese food' barely means a thing until you pick a region, because cross a single province and it changes beyond recognition. Spend a mid-morning in a Guangzhou tea house and the trolleys keep coming — bamboo steamers of dumplings, char siu and glossy roast meats, the whole leisurely ritual of dim sum. Sit down instead in Sichuan and a mouthful of mapo tofu sets your lips gently buzzing: this is málà, the tingling numbness of Sichuan peppercorn stacked on chilli heat.

The map keeps shifting. The inland west and Hunan burn; the eastern cities turn sweet and delicate, folding hot soup inside Shanghai's xiaolongbao dumplings that scald if you bite too fast; the wheat-eating north and the Muslim far west run on hand-pulled Lanzhou noodles, cumin-dusted lamb skewers and blistered flatbread. Two rituals bind the whole table together: lacquered Peking duck carved into paper-thin skin, and a bubbling hot pot everyone cooks in at once. Then tea — green, oolong or earthy aged pu'er — poured plain, the oldest drink on earth.