The cuisine: Generations of emperors and blue-blooded residents have set the standard for high-end Chinese cuisine. The city is famous for imperial cuisine, or guan cai, which uses only premium quality ingredients and is cooked with complex techniques.

The dish: A perfect kaoya is roasted to a reddish color; its skin remains crispy and the meat oozes a fruity flavor.

A whole roasted duck is typically served in two ways: the juicy meat and crispy skin are wrapped in mandarin pancakes with scallion, cucumber and hoisin sauce; and the bones are slow-cooked into a tasty soup.

The cuisine: Even compared with food from Sichuan, China’s mecca of spicy dishes, Chongqing cuisine scores high in spiciness and numb-inducing ingredients.

The dish: La zi ji combines crispy chicken breast cubes with a fireplace of peppercorn, toasted sesame and dried bird’s-eye chilis to create a plate of hot, red deliciousness.

The cuisine: Located along the southeastern coast of China, Fujian is famous for fresh seafood, but its flavorful shrimp oil and shrimp paste make the region’s cuisine stand proud.

The dish: Legend has it that this dish is so irresistible that Buddha jumped over the wall for a taste.

Fo tiao qiang is made of 18 pricey ingredients, including shark fin, abalone, sea cucumber, ginseng and scallops, all simmered together for hours with premium Shaoxing rice wine.

The cuisine: This Islamic province makes hands-down the best noodles with beef or lamb in the country.

The dish: The perfect Lanzhou lamian is made with five ingredients: a clear soup, white radish, green coriander, red chilis, yellow noodles.

The best way to experience this regional mainstay is seated in a humble lamian joint, slurping down noodles amid hungry eaters.

The cuisine: Like foodies in Sichuan and Hunan, Miao tribespeople in hilly Guizhou loves their food sour and spicy.

The dish: The soup is made with fermented rice or tomatoes, pickled chilis and various herbs, and then cooked with freshly caught river fish for a super sour blend.

The thick, delicious broth has a persistent aroma. You can throw in tofu and other vegetables and eat it hot-pot style.

The cuisine: Much as it is in neighboring Beijing, Hebei cuisine is savory and sauce heavy, with an emphasis on the cut and color of the dishes.

The dish: Brace yourself. Locals reckon donkey is as delicious as dragon meat, even though no one can provide much in the way of documentary evidence of having eaten the latter.

Donkey meat is high in protein, low in cholesterol and has a finer fiber than beef. It's leaner than pork and lacks the funky odor of mutton. Sliced donkey meat is stewed and served between two pieces of ciabatta-like bread to make a Hebei-style sandwich.

The cuisine: Heilongjiang is among the coldest provinces in China, and its people eat lots of meat and Russian bread. The cuisine is typified by heavy sauce and deep-frying.

The dish: In the early 20th century, Russian traders brought this smoked pork sausage across the border into Harbin. Since then it's become a specialty of the city.

Flavored with garlic and black pepper, hongchang is the perfect companion to dalieba bread and tastes even better with a pint of Harbin beer.

The cuisine: Three words sum up Hubei cuisine: steamed, fishy and soupy.

The province is also famous for its delicious breakfast snacks, such as hot dry noodles and sanxian doupi.

The dish: Sanxian doupi is Hubei's answer to lasagna.The traditional breakfast from Wuhan is made with a delicious stuffing, a mixture of soft glutinous rice, egg, mushroom and pork, tucked into two pieces of tofu skin and then pan-fried until golden brown.