There are a couple of reasonable restaurants round the Yongfu Hotel, and the hotel restaurant itself - a tiny place round the back of the building - has a cheap menu. If you want to sit outside, walk around the building to the right from the hotel entrance, and there's a Muslim restaurant with a terrace and awnings. For excellent noodles, or a local breakfast of zasui soup made with ox and sheep entrails, try the place a couple of minutes to the south down the main road from the Yongfu. It's the last building in a little row of shops and has a mosque-like exterior.

The best places to eat in Xining, however, are the markets downtown. The street leading east of Da Shizi fills up with food stalls during the evening and you can walk up and down sampling what you like. The shaguo - earthenware hotpots full of tofu, mushrooms and meat cooked in broth - are excellent. You can also get excellent jiaozi, hundun soup and other basic dishes prepared on the spot. The yoghurt here is good, too. The covered market, Shuijing Gang, offers an even wider variety of options. From the main street, walk down through the market, past the shops, to reach the area where you can sit and eat. For something more upmarket, try the Chinese-Western restaurant on Bei Dajie, just north of Da Shizi, or the restaurant in the Qinghai Hotel.