Hi there,

I'm a 24 year-old guy and now I have been vegan for around four years and a half. I know some good places to eat. If anyone is interested in meeting to eat or hang around just send me an email.

1306856912@qq.com (Marc)

Why not just list them on the forum?

Yes, you're right :)

Writing email or phone.

The main thing to consider when eating out is what they cook the food in. Plenty of restaurants still cook with pork fat, so just ordering veggies isn't enough.

Aside from the bigger, fancier places, most restaurants don't mind you popping your head into the kitchen. If the place cooks with fat, they may promise to just use vegetable oil for your food, but you can expect the cooks to ignore that.
Also, ask about the soup stock. Plenty of soups are cooked in vegetable stock, but just as many are cooked in marrow stock.
And then, of course, if you just say "no meat", it usually isn't enough, because for a lot of Chinese waitresses with little vegetarian experience, that means that fish, eggs and sometimes ham are okay.

All in all, it shouldn't be too difficult, but it will definitely put your Chinese skills to work.
There are some good shops that sell vegetarian foodstuffs near the Yuantong Temple, but I'd give their vegetarian restaurant a pass. I do remember a decent veg restaurant down in Guanshang, near the airport. Maybe someone can chime in with the actual name and address...
Happy hunting.

I also recommend checking out the various Muslim restaurants in town. They definitely don't cook with pork fat, and there are a couple of good ones that cook with organic foods.

Thanks for the advice. I know it's impossible to be 100% vegan (even more difficult in China for the reasons you gave) but after 10 months here I learned quite a few things.

At the beginning the most stressing part is as you mentioned, chinese don't know anything about vegetarianism and if you say no meat they'll put fish, or other stuff. But you should make it very clear that you don't want any meat, egg, etc and even ask to write down for you "do not add meat" in chinese. After a while, some places know you so it's less probable that they forget. If you made it clear at the beginning but they still put meat, you tell them and they will change it without charging anything.
For the Muslim rest. you're right. And there are a lot around Wenlin jie.

Concerning restaurants there is one called "vegetarian restaurant" in Yuantong lu. It can be called vegan rest. because they don't use eggs or milk.

I know another vegan restaurant with, in my opinion, very good food. But very difficult to find. It's a vegan chinese friend who took me there. It's very close to the other one at Yuantonglu.
The one at the airport I don't know it. Hopefully someone can help with the address.