Is there anything that warms the heart of a food-obsessed traveler more than civic pride in a local culinary specialty? In a country that more often celebrates a particularly polarizing political leader, the great affection among the people of Lanzhou for their famous noodles – which the city has reportedly even sought to trademark – gets our stomachs rumbling.

There is often some confusion when it comes to the many varieties of dumplings in Shanghai. The city’s most famous snack, xiǎolóngbāo, is a soup dumpling that neatly encases its broth inside a thin dumpling skin. It is not, as many first-time visitors assume, a dumpling floating in soup. For that, we turn to the humble wonton soup.

The three states of naan may not have any political standing, but they do enjoy culinary representation at one of Shanghai’s finest Uighur restaurants, Xinjiang Yining Yuanzheng, aka Xinjiang Expedition. We’re talking bread without borders, dough diversity at its finest, and a refreshing change of pace from the Chinese staple grains of noodles and rice.