On my third evening in China I ordered green beans and said, slowly and clearly, "no peanuts, allergy." The waitress nodded, smiled, and my beans arrived crowned with crushed peanuts.
She wasn't being careless. She had heard "not too many peanuts," which in a Sichuan-influenced kitchen is a completely reasonable order. I learned the hard way that in China, a translated sentence about an allergy is a suggestion, not a guarantee — until you change how you deliver it.
Three months of eating around a serious peanut allergy later, here is the system that actually works. Nothing here is medical advice, and no trick below is a substitute for carrying your own medication. But if you're about to land in China with a food allergy, this is the stuff I wish someone had told me at the airport.
The nod is not understanding
This is the core problem, and it's cultural-linguistic, not about kindness. In a busy restaurant, a waiter hearing a foreigner struggle through a phrase will often nod to be encouraging. The nod means "I'm listening," not "the kitchen has been informed and the risk is understood."
What works instead is moving the conversation from sound to sight. Chinese restaurant staff read character-based information far more reliably than they parse spoken English-inflected Mandarin. So the fix isn't a better sentence — it's a screen or a card.
The three-step script I use at every restaurant
Step 1 — Show, don't say. I open my phone to a note that reads 我对花生过敏 (wǒ duì huāshēng guòmǐn — "I am allergic to peanuts") and hand the phone to the waiter. Showing beats speaking every single time.
Step 2 — Point at the dish. Allergies are dish-specific in practice. A general "I'm allergic" floating in the air attaches to nothing. I point at the menu item and ask 这道菜里有花生吗？("does this dish contain peanuts?") while pointing. Now the question is tied to the exact stir-fry I'm about to eat.
Step 3 — Get a real answer, not a nod. If the answer is a smile, I follow up by pointing at the phrase and raising my eyebrows. A real answer usually comes back as one of three things: 有 ("yes, it does"), 没有 ("no"), or the waiter walks to the kitchen to ask — which is the best outcome of all, because it means the message actually landed.
If the answer stays fuzzy after two rounds, I don't gamble. I order something else. That's the whole decision tree, and it has kept me out of trouble ever since.
The words that actually matter
Save yourself an evening of dictionary work. These are the allergen words worth having on a screen or card:
- 花生 (huāshēng) — peanut
- 坚果 (jiānguǒ) — tree nuts
- 海鲜 (hǎixiān) — seafood
- 贝类 (bèilèi) — shellfish
- 鸡蛋 (jīdàn) — egg
- 牛奶 (niúnǎi) — milk
- 小麦 (xiǎomài) — wheat
- 大豆 (dàdòu) — soy
- 芝麻 (zhīma) — sesame
Two extra phrases that earn their spot: 我对...过敏 ("I'm allergic to...") as your fill-in-the-blank template, and 清炒 (qīngchǎo, "plain stir-fried") as your escape hatch for ordering something simple.
Where allergens actually hide
The dish name will lie to you. This is the part no phrase card solves, so it's worth knowing before you order:
- Cooking oil. Peanut oil is extremely common in Chinese kitchens. A "plain" stir-fried vegetable may still be wok-fried in peanut oil. If your allergy is severe, ask about the oil: 是花生油吗？("is it peanut oil?") — and treat an unclear answer as a yes.
- Sauces. Satay sauce is basically peanuts. Chili crisp and many chili oils contain peanuts or sesame. Hoison, oyster sauce, and soy sauce cover shellfish, wheat, and soy respectively. The sauce is where the allergen usually lives, not the main ingredient.
- Garnishes. Crushed peanuts and sesame get sprinkled on finished dishes — noodles, greens, even desserts — after the kitchen has already "removed" the allergen.
- Shared woks. In a small kitchen, one wok might cook everything. In my experience, asking for allergen-free in a tiny family restaurant is much less reliable than in a larger restaurant or a hotel restaurant, where tickets and separate pans are more normal.
Order the boring dish on day one
Steamed rice, plain congee, steamed dumplings with known fillings, qīngchǎo vegetables, plain noodles with the sauce on the side. It's less exciting than the mapo tofu, but boring food is how you eat safely while your phrase card is still in your back pocket. Once you've confirmed how a restaurant handles your allergy, you can get braver on the next visit.
Delivery apps: read the ingredients with suspicion
Delivery apps in China list ingredients inconsistently, and reviews won't tell you about cross-contact. My routine: filter for simple dishes, read the ingredient list if there is one, and skip any listing where the sauce composition is a mystery. Chain restaurants are usually better on delivery apps, because their menus are standardized. And a screenshot-translation feature built into the payment and chat apps most foreigners already use will translate the ingredient list for you — no extra app needed.
If it goes wrong anyway
The emergency number for an ambulance in China is 120 (110 is police, 119 is fire). Save these in your phone before you need them, and keep your hotel's address card in your pocket — showing it is the fastest way to tell anyone where you need to go. Larger pharmacies in cities usually stock antihistamines over the counter; show the pharmacist your allergy phrase and they can usually point you to something. If you carry an epinephrine auto-injector, keep it in its original packaging with the prescription label, and never let it leave your day bag.
The card I carry now
After my peanut-garnished green beans night, I stopped freestyle-translating and started carrying a single screen: my allergy phrase, the specific dish question, and the fill-in-the-blank allergen list. Show it, point at the dish, confirm. It takes ten seconds and it works at hotpot counters, street vendors, and hotel buffets alike.
I keep the full step-by-step version of this exact routine — the show-point-confirm script and the allergen lookup — at https://chinaunstuck.com/fix/phrases-food-allergy/ if you want the same card before your own first dinner.
If you've eaten your way around China with an allergy: what's the one trick that saved you? I'm still collecting them.
Travel and food-safety tips from personal experience, not medical or legal advice. Verify anything critical with your doctor before you travel.
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