Chinese Cooking Classes in English: Where to Book in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Xi'an

Yes, you can take a hands-on Chinese cooking class in English, and four of them publish their details on their own websites: The Hutong in Beijing, UnTour's dumpling walk and class in Shanghai, and Chilli Cool's classes in Chengdu and Xi'an. The Beijing and Chilli Cool classes end with a meal of what you cooked, and the two Chilli Cool classes start with a walk through a local spice market. In Shanghai you taste snacks along a food walk before a short dumpling class. Book as early as you can, and check the cancellation terms before you pay. The table below puts the four side by side.

Where to take an English-language cooking class

Beijing: The Hutong

The Hutong runs public classes in a courtyard at 1 Jiudaowan Zhongxiang, Beixinqiao, in Dongcheng District. A public class lasts 2.5 hours, you cook three dishes, and you take the recipes home and eat the meal with free-flow soft drinks. The listed price is 350 yuan per person, or 300 yuan for members, and a private class costs 380 yuan per person with a minimum spend of 1,520 yuan — check the class calendar on The Hutong's cooking classes page for current dates and prices. Class themes include Sichuan dishes such as mapo tofu and kung pao chicken, soup dumplings, Shanxi noodles, dumplings, Xinjiang hand-pulled noodles and knife skills. The class page doesn't mention a market visit or a cancellation policy, so ask about both when you book; if your date isn't on the calendar, you can also book by email at [email protected].

Shanghai: UnTour's dumpling walk and class

UnTour's "Hands-On Dumpling Delights" is a 3-hour outing that starts at 10:00: you walk about 2 km tasting 8 to 9 snacks, then spend one hour learning to make har gow (虾饺, xiājiǎo), the Cantonese shrimp dumpling. Groups are capped at 10 guests plus a bilingual guide, and the meeting point near Jiashan Road metro station is emailed after you book. Adults pay 595 yuan (US$90), children aged 6 to 12 pay 450 yuan, and drinks and recipes are included. Public dates can be limited, while private tours can be booked most days with a minimum of 8 adult tickets — check the booking page for open dates before you plan your day around it. Our Shanghai food guide covers where to eat afterwards.

Chengdu: Chilli Cool, and the Sichuan Cuisine Museum

Chilli Cool's Chengdu class takes 4 to 5 hours: about an hour in a local spice market with a small scavenger-hunt task, about two hours cooking with a chef in a courtyard, then the meal. Morning sessions start at 9:00 and afternoon sessions at 14:00, and you meet at Exit D of Liangjiaxiang station on Metro Line 6, which you can find on our Chengdu metro map. An English-speaking guide, tea, a beer or soft drink, a souvenir and recipes are included; tips and hotel transfers are not. Prices go up to 700 yuan depending on the option you pick (three or five dishes, private class, child ticket), and the booking page shows the exact price once you choose. Booking asks for your passport details; for group classes, cancelling less than 12 hours before the start gets no refund, and rescheduling within 24 hours costs 30% of the total.

If you want more Sichuan background, the Sichuan Cuisine Museum in Sandaoyan town, Pidu District, northwest of central Chengdu, is a national grade-2 museum with an interactive hall of about 2,000 square metres used for cooking sessions. The museum doesn't publish class prices or English availability online, so ask your hotel to call ahead before you make the trip. Our Chengdu food guide covers the dishes you'll meet in restaurants.

Xi'an: Chilli Cool's biangbiang noodle class

In Xi'an, Chilli Cool teaches biangbiang noodles (biángbiáng miàn), the wide hand-pulled noodles of Shaanxi. The class takes about four hours, starting at 8:00 or 14:00. You visit a local spice market, then cook with a chef in a traditional courtyard and eat together; families are welcome, children under 5 are free, and a vegetarian option is available. The class page shows no price, so you'll see it in the booking form, and a group class cancelled less than 12 hours before the start is not refunded. See our Xi'an food guide for the other noodle dishes to try.

Yangshuo

Several guesthouses and small schools in Yangshuo run cooking classes for travellers, usually built around local dishes and a market visit. We couldn't confirm a current class page run by any of the schools themselves, so we don't name one here: book through a platform such as Cookly or through your guesthouse, and read recent reviews before you pay. Our Guilin and Yangshuo guide covers how to fit a class around the Li River.

What you'll cook, and the heritage behind it

Most classes pick one regional style. For the bigger picture of how these styles differ, start with our guide to Chinese cuisine by region.

• Sichuan dishes (Chengdu, and some Beijing classes). Sichuan cooking techniques (川菜烹饪技艺) were added to China's national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2021. The Sichuan provincial records office counts more than 40 cooking methods, split into hot dishes (stir-frying, braising, steaming and others) and cold dishes (marinating, smoking, pickling and others).
• Shanghai food. Shanghai's local benbang cuisine (本帮菜, běnbāng cài, "local-style cooking") and the making of Nanxiang soup dumplings (南翔小笼, Nánxiáng xiǎolóng) were both added to the national heritage list in 2014. The UnTour class in Shanghai teaches the Cantonese har gow instead, so if soup dumplings are what you want to make, The Hutong's soup-dumpling class in Beijing is the closest option.
• Noodles and dough (Xi'an, Beijing). Pulling and folding dough is slow, hands-on work, so it suits nervous cooks and children; in Xi'an the noodles are often finished with hot oil poured over chilli, so keep children back at that step.

Above all of these sits a national heritage item for Chinese cooking techniques and food customs as a whole, listed in 2021. The official listing for Sichuan cooking is on the Sichuan provincial government website.

Taking spices and a cleaver home

China's customs rules say luggage must stay within reasonable quantities for personal use; anything beyond that is treated as goods. A few bags of Sichuan peppercorns or chilli-bean paste for your own kitchen are normally fine on the Chinese side, but your home country's food and quarantine rules decide what you can bring in, so check them before you pack. Jars of paste and chilli oil are safer in checked baggage, since airport security may treat them as liquids. A Chinese cleaver (菜刀, càidāo) can go in checked baggage but not in your carry-on, while daggers and knives with locking blades can't fly at all, according to China Southern Airlines' security guidelines.

Last updated: November 2026