The desserts encompass a wide variety of ingredients commonly used in East Asian cuisines such as powdered or whole glutinous rice, sweet bean pastes, and agar.

Due to the many Chinese cultures and the long history of China, there are a great variety of desserts of many forms.

These sweets often consists of nuts or fruits that are mixed into syrup whole or in pastes to flavour or give the candies their textures.

These rice-based snacks have a wide variety of textures and can be chewy, jelly-like, fluffy or rather firm and unlike bings very different from western pastries.

Some of these soups are made with restorative properties in mind, in concordance with traditional Chinese medicine.