Vegan Chinese
Options

Chinese restaurants in the United States range from authentic regional kitchens to American-Chinese fast food, and the vegan ceiling varies hugely. Authentic regional Chinese cooking is heavily vegan-friendly - Buddhist vegetarian dishes have been a major thread for centuries, and traditional preparations rely on vegetables, tofu, and rice. American-Chinese fast food is harder because most sauces contain oyster sauce or fish sauce, and the wok seasoning carries residual animal product across orders.

Dairy and egg trapsDairy is uncommon in Chinese cooking; the bigger traps are egg, oyster sauce, and fish sauce. Egg shows up in fried rice (almost always built with scrambled egg by default), egg drop soup (by name), hot-and-sour soup, dumpling wrappers, and many noodle preparations. Oyster sauce is in most stir-fry sauces unless the dish is specifically labeled Buddhist or vegan. Fish sauce is less common in Chinese than in Southeast Asian cooking but still appears in certain seasoning blends. Honey is uncommon.

What tends to clearVegetable lo mein or chow mein ordered with no egg in the noodles and no oyster sauce in the wok. Tofu and broccoli, tofu and vegetables, or Buddha's delight - the latter is often the most reliable vegan order on an American-Chinese menu because it is explicitly built as a Buddhist vegetarian dish. Steamed vegetables with brown rice. Vegetable spring rolls when the wrapper is vegan (most are, but ask). Mapo tofu when the chef builds it without the ground pork variant.