Expats find and create vegan dining options in China

A dish of purple potatoes cooked by a Beijing vegan restaurant. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Kendra Schaefer, an expat and vegetarian living in Beijing, was once served a "vegetarian" soup with ham in it. The waitress thought the soup adhered to Schaefer's requests for food without meat because it didn't have the character "肉" in it.

Though it's easy to eat vegetarian food in Beijing, Schaefer says, it's extremely difficult for people who are new to China, largely because of language barriers.

"When you first arrive and don't have any familiarity with the cuisine, you're not sure what to order, you don't know which sauces and ingredients are made with meat and don't know how to ask, and even saying 'I'm vegetarian' won't necessarily get you a meat-free meal, so it feels difficult during that acclimation process," she says.

Mike Shaw, an expat who organizes vegan dinners through a group called Plant-based Beijing, says it's already difficult to navigate life as an expat. Finding vegan or vegetarian food can seem even more difficult, leaving expats with plant-based diets feeling isolated.

Knowing they have a place where they can eat is comforting for expats, Shaw says. Through the group's Vegan Outreach Dinners, the vegan and vegetarian community educates people on what plant-based diets are about. The dinners are also a way for restaurants to reach out and show people with plant-based diets that they want them to eat at their restaurants, Shaw says. For the first few dinners, Shaw contacted restaurants he knew to see if they were interested in participating. Now, restaurants reach out to him wanting to participate.

The first dinner had 35 guests attend. After that, every dinner has had 50 people. The participating restaurants usually give a 50-person limit, Shaw says.

He says the Vegan Outreach Dinners show chefs that it's easy to incorporate vegan options into their menus even though cooking vegan food might seem intimidating. Since the first dinner in February, all but one of the participating restaurants have added vegan options to their menus after hosting a dinner for the group.

Shaw says a lot of Chinese restaurants have vegan options and there are even entirely vegan Chinese restaurants, like his personal favorite, Vegetarian Tiger. However, he says Western restaurants in Beijing tend to have fewer vegan options because they catered to people who miss their favorite foods from home.