Yongxing Fang sits just inside the city wall on the eastern side of Xi'an. It opened in 2014 as a single street dedicated to traditional food from all ten prefecture-level cities of Shaanxi, so a visitor can eat Yan'an millet dishes, Hanzhong rice noodles, Baoji noodles and Xi'an pastries within two hundred metres of each other.
How it works
Stalls are grouped by region and most of them cook in front of you. You order at the counter, take a number or a receipt, and eat at shared tables in the middle of the street or in the small courtyards behind. The portions are deliberately small so that people can work through several regions in one visit, and prices are fixed rather than negotiated.
What to eat
Look for Qishan minced noodles in sour soup, cold liangpi noodles with chili oil and vinegar, steamed buckwheat noodles, fried persimmon cakes, hulutou or similar pork offal dishes from the north of the province, and sweet jinggao sticky rice with red dates. The vinegar used here is often the aged Qishan vinegar, which is darker and softer than the standard rice vinegar used in the south of China.
The bowl ritual
One well-known ritual at Yongxing Fang is the wine bowl that you drink and then throw to the ground. Visitors queue for a small bowl of rice wine, shout a blessing and smash it into a stone pit. Staff sweep up the pieces continuously. It is a performance as much as a drink, and it has become the most photographed thing on the street.
Practical notes
The street is busiest from about 6 p.m. and stays lively until 10 p.m. It is a five-minute walk from the Yongningmen area, or ten minutes from the Bell Tower, and there are also shadow puppet performances and a small opera stage on some evenings. Cash is rarely used; bring a phone with a payment app or ask a companion to pay. Vegetarians will find enough to eat but should confirm whether broth is meat-based.
