Editor's note: It's Breakfast Week here at CB, and to kick off the series, we first head to a street corner in the heart of Shanghai that offers a remarkable variety of breakfast foods. Stay tuned all this week for more morning dispatches from other CB cities. We’re all guilty of indulging in the complimentary hotel breakfast buffet a little too often while traveling. But in Shanghai, the widest array of street food is on full display in the morning hours, as young professionals and retirees alike gather at their favorite stands for a quick bite with friends or on their way to work.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I just moved to Shanghai, and while I’m looking forward to investigating all the street food options, I’d love to be able to make dinner at home too and would like to get into Chinese cooking. Where’s the best place to stock up my new kitchen?

The hotpot’s storied history stretches back over a millennium in China. The cooking method originated in Mongolia, where legend has it that warriors used their helmets as makeshift pots, boiling strips of horse and lamb meat over campfires to sustain them as they made their way south to breach the Great Wall. As hotpot cooking proliferated, regional variations took their toll on the meal’s simplicity, earning it the nickname of “Chinese fondue” among some Westerners.

Editor’s note: This post is the first installment of “Best Bites of 2013,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Stay tuned for “Best Bites” from all of the cities Culinary Backstreets covers. Deng Ji Chuan Cai Culinary bucket lists are some of the best ways to discover our friends’ hidden gems: expat foodies are only willing to give up their proprietary favorites when they’re heading home.

For expats, the holiday season can be a time of mixed emotions. The distance from home can intensify our feelings of nostalgia (and cravings for Mom’s apple pie). On the other hand, we are liberated from the customs that bind us to familiar feasts, and we have the freedom to form new holiday rituals with friends.

Dear Culinary Backstreets,I often have to dine with Chinese coworkers at banquets and want to make sure I am not offending anyone. Are there certain dining customs I should adhere to? China’s dining etiquette is more flexible and forgiving than that of other Asian cultures – like Japan, for instance – but there are a few rules you should know. Most are nonverbal cues that demonstrate respect, especially at work or government banquets.

North Korean cuisine is about as mysterious as it gets. Few travelers have ever actually been to the reclusive country, and news reports are more often about high-profile rescues and the dire food security situation than its national cuisine. Thanks to 10 North Korean restaurants in Beijing and 50 others scattered around Southeast Asia, those living in the Far East have plenty of opportunity to glimpse the country’s dining scene. Shanghai is home to seven branches of the Pyongyang restaurant chain, and food is only part of the draw. With a nightly show around 7:30 p.m., the song and dance numbers put on by the double-duty waitresses supposedly allow for a rare glimpse inside the traditional culture.

The Chinese have appreciated the finer qualities of roast duck for millennia, and in that time, they’ve refined their cooking techniques into a virtual art form. The first mention of roast duck (烤鸭, kǎoyā) dates back to the Northern and Southern dynasties (A.D. 420–589). By the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368), the tawny bird was gracing the tables of mandarins and emperors in then-capital Nanjing, and imperial kitchen inspector Hu Sihui mentioned it in The Complete Recipes for Dishes and Beverages, published in 1330, along with a record of how the duck was cooked.

Here at CB Shanghai, we’ve already confessed our undying affection for the scallion oil pancakes (葱油饼, cōngyóubǐng) at A Da. Mr. Wu’s are so beautifully crafted that they take on the aura of art with their precision and flair, but we’re also a little in love with the slapdash, unconventional version fried up by an elderly couple at A Po, just a couple of blocks away.

In Shanghai, a pretty surefire way to tell whether a dining establishment deserves your attention or not is by the presence of a line in front of it. (A corollary might be that the amount of attention the place deserves is commensurate with the size of the line.) Lao Shaoxing Doujiang passes the test. This ramshackle stand in the Huangpu district serves traditional breakfast foods all night long. Until recently, the stand was run by a granny in her nineties who would ladle out bowls of hot soy milk (豆浆, dòujiāng) into the wee hours of the morning. She retired this year, but her less-than-friendly son has taken over, and the buzz remains (as does the inevitable line).

Dear Culinary Backstreets, My family is planning a trip to Shanghai. We want to dine like the locals but also make sure our little ones get their fill. Do you have any recommendations?

It’s been two weeks of cycling through China’s Qinghai province, and the food selection is slim. The majority of the province sits on the vast Tibetan Plateau, well above the tree line in conditions too harsh for significant cultivation. Yaks graze on well-trampled grass as far as the eye can see, with white yurts and colorful prayer flags dotting the hillsides and each summit pass. By Chinese standards, six million inhabitants in the country’s fourth-largest province make Qinghai practically deserted. For long stretches, only nomadic yak herders can be spotted between the tiny villages. Stopping for a roadside lunch in the small, isolated towns inevitably means a bowl of either mutton or yak chopped-noodle soup (羊肉面片, yángròu miàn piàn or 毛牛肉面片, máo niúròu miàn piàn). Served up in a tomato-chili broth, it’s a tasty meal, but repeated daily, it inevitably becomes tiresome. Additional ingredients sometimes includes julienned zucchini or green peppers, depending on the remoteness of the particular town and their staggered vegetable shipments. After just one week, we’re eagerly awaiting more fruitful pastures, and Sichuan province, located just to the east on our route, is a culinary paradise.

At the dusty eastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, the ancient city of Dunhuang marked the intersection of the northern and southern parts of the Silk Road. Meaning “Bright Beacon,” Dunhuang was a historical refuge for weary travelers peddling their wares along the trade route, and this confluence of cultures influenced the ancient city’s cuisine. Merchants brought spices and cooking techniques from the West that combined with Chinese imperial culinary traditions and local ingredients.

Shanghai’s hottest summer on record is officially behind us, which can mean only one thing: Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner. Zhōngqiū jié (中秋节) is that memorable time of year when Chinese people gift (and regift) bite-sized treats known as mooncakes (月饼, yuèbǐng).

Dining at Buddhist temples in China can be a disappointing experience. Too often, these halls of worship have been turned into tourist traps that solicit enough donations to keep the monks in expensive trainers, meat-based meals and high-end smart phones. Independent Buddhist restaurants, like Wu Guan Tang (五观堂), are a breath of fresh air, maintaining the tenets of the religion while offering quality vegetarian food in a peaceful environment.