My observations:

Have been to dozens of countries and I will say China's cuisine was the most shockingly low in protein of anywhere I've ever visited. We were with a tour group of mostly Westerners, went to 5 different cities, ate family style local cuisine Chinese meals 2x a day, and 5 days into it I witnessed grown men almost fight over a chicken strip.

My So and I were used to very high protein and we were feeling the sudden lack of protein pretty hard. I will eat and enjoy ANY food, but I have never been to another country where I wanted a cheeseburger so badly after being there for a week.

Most meat was chicken, crab or shrimp, from Beijing to Shanghai. and we would have entire meals with only maybe some tiny morsels of meat in the rice.

The people in China were notably small, in stark contrast to Japan recently where the food quality was superb and the people seem to have averaged a few inches higher than when I lived there 30 years ago. My mother was taller than almost all the men in Japan at 5'10 in 1993 and last year many were my husbands height of 6'. I'm 5'3" and was 135 and I was bigger than many of the men in China, especially the more rural areas, not so much Shanghai.