 There were also some exotic foreign foods imported to China from abroad , including raisins , dates , Persian jujubes , and grape wine ; rice wine was more common in China , a fact noted even by the 13th century Venetian traveler Marco Polo . Although grape @-@ based wine had been known in China since the ancient Han dynasty Chinese ventured into Hellenistic Central Asia , grape @-@ wine was often reserved for the elite . Besides wine , other beverages included pear juice , lychee fruit juice , honey and ginger drinks , tea , and pawpaw juice . Dairy products and farming were foreign concepts to the Chinese , which explains the absence of cheese and milk in their diet . Beef was also rarely eaten , since the bull was an important draft animal . The main diet of the lower classes remained rice , pork , and salted fish , while it is known from restaurant dinner menus that the upper classes did not eat dog meat . The rich are known to have consumed an array of different meats , such as chicken , shellfish , fallow deer , hares , partridge , pheasant , francolin , quail , fox , badger , clam , crab , and many others . Local freshwater fish from the nearby lake and river were also caught and brought to market , while the West Lake provided geese and duck as well . Common fruits that were consumed included melons , pomegranates , lychees , longans , golden oranges , jujubes , Chinese and Japanese quinces , apricots and pears ; in the region around Hangzhou alone , there were eleven kinds of apricots and eight different kinds of pears that were produced . Specialties and combination dishes in the Song period included scented shellfish cooked in rice @-@ wine , geese with apricots , lotus @-@ seed soup , spicy soup with mussels and fish cooked with plums , sweet soya soup , baked sesame buns stuffed with either sour bean filling or pork tenderloin , mixed vegetable buns , fragrant candied fruit , strips of ginger and fermented beanpaste , jujube @-@ stuffed steamed dumplings , fried chestnuts , salted fermented bean soup , fruit cooked in scented honey , and ' honey crisps ' of kneaded and baked honey , flour , mutton fat and pork lard . Dessert molds of oiled flour and sugared honey were shaped into girls ' faces or statuettes of soldiers with full armor like door guards , and were called " likeness foods " ( guoshi ) . 
