Your best bet when going to China for the first time is to simply not eat anything that hasn’t been thoroughly cooked/smoked/preserved. And you’ll still probably get sick, but it won’t last as long, or be as severe if you stay well away from raw foods - yes, even the ubiquitous melons and citrus served for ‘dessert’ in many restaurants.

Beijing’s cuisine shares a large part of its spectrum with the American/Western pallate, if one can only get over the Western disdain for knowing where one’s food came from that has arisen in the last fifty years or so.

For those few who may be going to Qingdao for the boating events, you will find it even easier to get familiar foods. The Shandong diet is possibly the overall most familiar I have encountered in my travels across China. One could easily survive on Tsingtao beer and various meat-stuffed breads for several weeks. I certainly have…

Then again, for those who haven’t learned at least a bit of Chinese, remember that pointing at pictures in a restaurant serving unfamiliar regional cuisine can get even experienced travelers into trouble…so just try to have fun and keep a sense of humor when you end up with plates of pigs’ feet and duck tongues. Try them, they might just be good.

The water here is NOT POTABLE, so unless your salad fixin’s are cleaned using purified water, you may very well spend the next few days within sprinting distance of your hotel room toilet.