By Zhouyang · Shanghai

Douzhi: The Breakfast That Tastes Better Than It Smells

Fermented mung bean liquid, served scalding in a chipped bowl beside a fried ring of dough and a dish of pickles — it hits you like a wet cellar and finishes like sourdough.

Changwang Mian: Blood, Intestine, and the Breakfast Guiyang Wakes Up For

Six in the morning in Guiyang: a bowl scarlet with pounded chili oil, silken cubes of congealed blood and hours-braised pork intestine, crowned with cracklings that shatter between your teeth.

Guilin Rice Noodles: You Eat It Dry, Then You Add the Broth

White rice noodles, flat and slick, dressed with dark master braise, blistered 锅烧 pork belly, cold sour pickles and peanuts — the Guilin breakfast you eat dry first, then finish with broth.

Wuhan Hot-Dry Noodles: Thirty Seconds to Eat, or It's Ruined

Pale-yellow lye noodles flash-dipped in boiling water, then tossed with dark sesame paste, chili oil and diced pickled radish — a bone-dry Wuhan breakfast you have about thirty seconds to mix and eat.

By Zhouyang · Shanghai

Shengjianbao: The Shanghai Breakfast That Fights Back

I was nine years old, standing on tiptoe outside a shop on Yunnan Road with my grandfather, watching a man in a white apron arrange sixty raw white …