Wow, I’m late, and China Guy pretty well covered the bases. I will add a couple things from my perspective as a fellow picky eater with no tolerance for spice, who spent two weeks in China a few years back:
Before you go, plan to be more adventurous. I’m serious, commit yourself in your mind to try new things. They’re not as scary as you think. No, you don’t have to eat scorpions on a stick, but if you don’t eat dumplings at home, try some in China. Congee is a sort of rice porridge that you can make in just about any flavor you want, and it’s basically just rice, water, and whatever extra is thrown in, like chicken meat and broth. I still talk today about the tastiest broccoli I’ve ever had, in a second-story restaurant in Nanchang; blew me away.
Breakfast is a good meal to front-load your day, most of the foods are “safe”. Fresh fruit is plentiful and unlikely to make you sick (just be careful of fruit with skins, like apples, that may have been washed in unfiltered water). Especially take advantage of dragonfruit, which is hard to come by in the States and mighty tasty.
Pork is king in China, and they know how to make it tasty. I would actually order a pork dish over a chicken dish, for one primary reason: the Chinese are, apparently, not as freaked out about bones as we are, and so chicken that you get may have just been chopped up with cleavers and have tiny bone shards in it. They don’t care, you might.
Spiciness can be predicted somewhat by region. I was in Nanchang for almost a week, one of the spiciest regions apparently (our guide called the babies in our adoption group “spicy girls”). They also say that, in Jiangxi province, they will eat anything with four legs except a table, anything that flies except an airplane, and anything that swims except a submarine.
But, failing all of that, big Western chains are easy to find in the big cities, especially near hotels that cater to Westerners. They probably even have picture menus you can just point at to order what you want. Interesting note: we were told in one city that McDonalds and KFC would deliver, but Papa John’s and Pizza Hut would not.
