It seems that for a lot of 16th century the main import was pepper (and silver, but you want only food stuffs). The southern ports of China were presumed to import annually slightly more amount of pepper the Portuguese were importing to Europe. The value is presumed to be 30,000 quintals for China which is approximately 1700 tons (Source for this number "The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500-1700", Subrahmanyam, page 111-113)

Here is also an account of a Portuguese traveler/diplomat Tome Pires made in 1510s, where he really stresses out that the chief Chinese import is pepper

The chief merchandise is pepper — of which they will buy ten junk-loads a year if as many go there — cloves, a little nutmeg, a little more pachak, catechu; they will buy a great deal of china incense, elephants’ tusks, tin, apothecary’s lignaloes; they buy a great deal of Borneo camphor, red beads, white sandalwood
brazil, infinite quantities of the black wood that grows in Singapore (Syngapura); they buy a great many carnelians from Cambay, scarlet camlets, coloured woollen cloths. Pepper apart, they make little account of all the rest.

Further he states about Chinese merchants trading in Malacca:

They pay twenty per cent [tax] on pepper, fifty per cent on brazil, and the same amount on the Singapore wood; and when this has been estimated a junk will pay so much in proportion. They receive their dues on the other merchandise at ten per cent; and they do not oppress you; they have genuine merchants in their dealings. They are very wealthy. Their whole idea is pepper. They sell their foodstuffs honestly; business over, each returns to his own country. The common people are not very near to truth, and the commoner things in their business are all false and counterfeit.

You can read the whole account for free here on archive.org, from around page 120 (quotes are on pages123-124) where you can read more about what Chinese export (mostly silk, cloth, colours, also pearls) and what else they trade in (salt, musk, etc). Just be careful, this is account of what a Portuguse contemporary travel saw, or possibly even just heard was being sold, and traded, and as he came from Malacca (and here the spice trade was the rage) he might only have heard one part of the story.

However it is a good indication of what Europeans traded with Chinese. In fact, for the most of 16th century, especially second half when the trade really picked up, Portuguese were sending ships from Malacca to Macau ladden with mostly pepper and spices to Macau to trade for silk and porcelain, which they would send to Japan where they would get mostly silver, which they would again sell in China for silk, chinaware etc which they would return to Malacca. It was one of the most profitable routes of Portuguese Empire in the East