Breakfast in Shanghai: what people actually eat

Shanghai breakfast is excellent, cheap, and invisible to most visitors because it happens very early and involves standing on pavements.

It is also one of the best windows onto ordinary city life. Between 7 and 9am the lanes are full of people doing the same thing they have done for years, and nobody cares that you are there.

The four pillars

Shengjianbao — pan-fried buns with broth. Xiaolongbao — steamed soup dumplings. Rice porridge (粥 zhou) with pickles and a youtiao for dipping. Cifan — sticky rice rolled around a youtiao, sometimes with sugar and sesame, sometimes with pork floss.

Add soy milk, sweet or savoury; and malingshu — a fried potato croquette sold from breakfast carts.

How it works at the counter

Most Shanghai breakfast places are small counters with a cash point and a hatch. Point, pay, take your token, collect your food. Some require payment on collection — watch the person ahead.

Takeaway is normal. Ask for 打包 (dabao) to take away, or 在这儿吃 to eat in. There is often nowhere to sit.

Where to find it

Near metro exits and at the mouths of residential lanes, particularly in the older districts. Any street with a primary school nearby will have breakfast infrastructure.

The morning market streets are the richest hunting ground: a couple of hundred metres of competing counters.

When it ends

Most dedicated breakfast places close between 10am and 2pm, often earlier when they sell out. If you are up at 7 you get everything; if you are up at 11 you get whatever chain cafés are open.

Congee and noodle shops run later. Shengjianbao and cifan are morning-only in most places.