Chinese Allergy Card: How to Say Your
Food Allergy in Chinese

The one sentence structure to know

Chinese allergy communication runs through a single pattern. Take the allergen, drop it into 我对…过敏 (wǒ duì … guòmǐn), and you have a complete, natural sentence:

Taiwan and Hong Kong use Traditional characters, and one of the characters in the core sentence changes: 过 becomes 過. The same sentence in Traditional Chinese:

For a severe allergy, two more sentences matter — these are the exact lines printed on the AllergyPass Chinese card:

Every major allergen in Chinese

These are the same terms the AllergyPass card prints — the words Chinese-speaking kitchens see on their own food labels, not dictionary translations. Simplified is used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia; Traditional is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Most food-allergen vocabulary is identical between the two scripts — peanuts, soy, sesame, crab, and the tree nut names in this table are written the same way in both. The differences cluster around a handful of common characters (过/過, 麸/麩, 鸡/雞, 鱼/魚, 虾/蝦), which is exactly why matching the script to the destination still matters even though most of the words overlap.

Simplified or Traditional: which one do you need

Chinese has two written forms in everyday use. Simplified Chinese (简体字) is the standard in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia. Traditional Chinese (繁體字) is the standard in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The two scripts share the same grammar and most vocabulary, but a meaningful share of characters are written differently between them, as the table above shows. A kitchen used to reading one script won't necessarily read the other one correctly, especially at a smaller family-run restaurant or night market stall.

Because of that, AllergyPass builds Simplified and Traditional cards separately rather than treating "Chinese" as one language. If you're headed to mainland China, Singapore, or Malaysia, build a Simplified Chinese card. If you're headed to Taiwan, build a Traditional Chinese card instead — our Taiwan food allergy guide covers the destination in full.

How to say gluten-free in Chinese

Gluten-free is 无麸质 (Simplified) / 無麩質 (Traditional), wú fūzhì. But it's a risky phrase to rely on, because the concept itself is poorly recognized across much of Chinese cooking, and there's no consistent labeling standard behind it the way there is for a mandatory allergen. The practical risk isn't visible wheat, it's soy sauce, which contains wheat and is a foundational ingredient across nearly every savory dish in Chinese cuisine.

The safer frame is the allergen itself: 小麦 (Simplified) / 小麥 (Traditional), xiǎomài, wheat. A written line like 我对小麦过敏 ("I am allergic to wheat"), with soy sauce called out explicitly, communicates what "gluten-free" alone doesn't. In Taiwan specifically, wheat is the base of beef noodle soup and most dumplings, and soy sauce runs through nearly every savory dish — our Food Allergies in Taiwan guide covers where it shows up dish by dish.

Why written Chinese beats spoken English

Across mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, spoken English reaches hotel staff and tourist-district restaurants but drops off quickly outside them — at a neighborhood restaurant or a night market stall, staff may have no functional English at all. A card in the correct script gets handed from server to kitchen and read by the person actually cooking, with no translation loss and no polite nodding through a request that wasn't understood. That's the entire design principle behind the translation card approach, and it holds everywhere Chinese is the working language of the kitchen.

Frequently asked questions

How do you say food allergy in Chinese?

Food allergy in Chinese is 食物过敏 (Simplified) / 食物過敏 (Traditional), pronounced shíwù guòmǐn. The sentence structure to know is 我对…过敏 (wǒ duì … guòmǐn) — "I am allergic to …" — for example 我对花生过敏 is "I am allergic to peanuts." In Traditional Chinese, used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the same sentence is 我對花生過敏. For anything severe, a written card removes the risk of a spoken sentence being misheard or misunderstood.

How do you say gluten-free in Chinese?

Gluten-free is 无麸质 (Simplified) / 無麩質 (Traditional), pronounced wú fūzhì — but the concept is poorly recognized in much of Chinese cooking, and soy sauce, a staple across nearly every savory dish, contains wheat. The safer approach is to communicate in terms of wheat itself — 小麦 (Simplified) / 小麥 (Traditional), xiǎomài — and to call out soy sauce specifically, since it's the most common hidden source of gluten.

Should I use Simplified or Traditional Chinese for my allergy card?

It depends on where you're traveling. Simplified Chinese is used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia. Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The two scripts share most vocabulary but use different characters, so a card in the wrong script can still cause confusion at smaller restaurants. AllergyPass builds separate cards for each: /tools/allergy-card-builder/?dest=CN for Simplified and /tools/allergy-card-builder/?dest=TW for Traditional.