Westernized Chinese Food and Westernized Chinese People

By Guest Writer | Friday, January 6, 2012 | 31 Comments

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8a food Westernized Chinese Food and Westernized Chinese People

By Calvin

The Montreal Gazette published an article in November about “vintage Chinese restaurants” in that city, meaning the “dying breed” of restaurants that served Canadian Chinese cuisine. These days, writing on Westernized Chinese food (see my review of Banquet and The Fortune Cookie Chronicles for some good book-length examples) often points out how foreign this cuisine is to Chinese people:

“When I first saw the menu, I was like, ‘What’s that? And what’s that?’ I was really curious,” he recalls. “Everything was sweet and sour, everything was battered and fried, tastes that in China we don’t do so much.”

New cooks coming from China had to be taught the fundamentals of Can-Chi cuisine, he says. “Like chicken balls with cherry sauce; you just don’t see this in original Chinese food. It was made for Western people. We prefer steamed and stir-fried foods, and to taste the actual flavour of the ingredients.”

Taste the actual flavour of the ingredients? That’s revolutionary.

My dad has a nickname for Westernized Chinese food: aak gwai lo tsaan (呃鬼佬餐), Cantonese for “food for swindling white people [into thinking that this is what Chinese people actually eat].” This moniker pretty much sums up my family’s attitudes towards this type of food. Living in the San Gabriel Valley, one of the top places to go in North America for “authentic” Chinese and Vietnamese food, we never went to Americanized Chinese restaurants (of which there were very few, usually situated next to Wal-Marts or Mexican supermarkets). Why would you, when you have hundreds and hundreds of “real” Chinese restaurants to choose from?

I remember being very intrigued the first time I had Americanized Chinese food. We were somewhere in northern New Jersey, on the first day of our bus tour of the eastern US and Canada. My parents insisted on vacationing with a Chinese tour group, and since the tour company figured that the Chinese are about as unwilling to expand their culinary horizons as mainstream Americans are, they dropped us off at all-you-can-eat buffets serving American/Canadian Chinese food almost every day. The only change was when we stopped in Toronto and Montreal, where there were “real” Chinese restaurants to be found.

Having only read about Americanized Chinese cuisine in books and seen it on TV, dishes like moo shu pork and crab Rangoon were possibly more exotic to 14-year-old me than to your average mainstream American. So many fanciful names! So many different shades of brown! This jade-dragon-subgum-wonton stuff is what the rest of America thinks is Chinese food? I was amazed… until I started eating.

I was primed to expect something horrific, and horrific it was. The food tasted like a farcical imitation of “real” Chinese food, a culinary caricature made by overemphasizing the most pronounced flavors and covering them all in MSG, grease, and corn syrup. My taste buds were the first to revolt against this explosion of sugar and fat; soon afterwards, my stomach joined the protest. I never wanted to eat this type of food ever again.

Only after moving to small-town Pennsylvania for college did I begin to develop a taste for Americanized Chinese food. I became re-acquainted with this cuisine that I rejected, mostly because there weren’t too many other dining options in the tiny borough of Swarthmore, and pizza gets old very fast. Eventually, I discovered that I actually like this stuff. The food is so familiar and yet so unfamiliar at the same time. It’s a new cultural experience, but one that’s familiar enough to (excuse the pun) digest with ease. I came to love dishes like moo goo gai pan and beef with broccoli, which remind me of my mother’s cooking, except with the much heavier sauces that Americans have come to expect. I haven’t had General Tso’s chicken, egg foo young, or chop suey yet, but those are at the top of the list of things to try the next time I order delivery.

As my relationship with Americanized Chinese food changed, I started to realize that Westernized Chinese food isn’t a pale, gloopy imitation of “real” Chinese food, but rather a cuisine in and of itself. Westernized Chinese food is a lot like Westernized Chinese people, created out of cultural encounters and the negotiations that followed. On the surface, it looks like the food indigenous to China, but it is definitely much more at home here in the West, being made with Western ingredients and according to Western preferences.

Purists may decry that it’s not “real” Chinese food, but what is real Chinese food, anyway? Is there some sort of ancient recipe canon, saying that this is how Chinese food should be? Saying that there is a difference between “authentic” food and “inauthentic” food is denying wonderful cultural mixes like Westernized Chinese food and Westernized Chinese people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Calvin N. Ho is a graduate student in sociology at UCLA, where he studies race, ethnicity, nationalism, and immigration. He has discovered that only non-Asians find it interesting that his hobby is eating around town and taking pictures of everything.

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http://thylacine.livejournal.com/ ErikaHarada

I definitely treat Americanized Chinese food as something different from “authentic” Chinese food — kinda like how I see Americanized Japanese food (with the weird, elaborate sushi) differently. I still think they’re tasty, though! Plus, it’s interesting to look at how cuisines change according to local tastes. Look at Jamaican Chinese food and Brazilian Japanese food!
SimonSlant

I think it’s interesting how most Americans recognize that Taco Bell is not “real” Mexican food but don’t give the same consideration towards American-Chinese buffets or even Panda Express, thinking that dishes such as General Tos’ Chicken or Sweet and Sour pork are authentic/exotic. I like Jenny 8 Lee’s take on it: “It’s more American than applie pie.” I agree, it’s like a new take, an inspired version of Chinese food.
mwei

according to the “authentic” Chinese in China, I’m a “fake foreign devil”

so that makes “Westernized” Chinese food “fake devil food?”
avaorac

it always fascinating to me to see Asians who actually enjoy this kind of food. Maybe if we suffer the abuses long enough we’ll grow to like it. This kind of Chinese food is dying anyway… I think there should be some study of this new American phenomenon of Korean-made Teriyaki places, where the so called Teriyaki is based on Korean dishes. You can find them everywhere in the East Coast and with a few exceptions they are all Korean-owned and operated, yet pretending to be Japanese. Sometimes they just add Chinese dishes to their menu to be All Asian to their white customers. Is there a study on those kinds of places? That is one dish I know you cannot find anywhere else in the world; American as fortune cookie.
Xxxtine

My boss actually asked me if I would eat anything from a Chinese-Canadian menu. I said, Deep Fried Lemon Chicken wings. They make me oh so happy!
http://www.erniehsiung.com/ Ernie H.

@mwei Kind of. We’ve all seen the “Chinese people look at fortune cookies for the first time” video, correct?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp4IGgQoVQE
http://thylacine.livejournal.com/ ErikaHarada

@avaorac@SimonSlant I disagree. They don’t give a shit about Mexican culture or Mexicans either. Taco Bell is just more “Americanized”, I think, and the perpetual foreigner stereotype wrt Asian-Americans prevails.
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avaorac

@SimonSlant Because white Americans take Mexican culture more seriously than they do Asian cultures. We just don’t matter that much.
http://thylacine.livejournal.com/ ErikaHarada

@avaorac I’ve always found that weird. It also makes me feel “cheated” when I’m expecting “real” Japanese food and the stuff I order turns out to be all “wrong” (sorry about my over-use of air quotes)
SimonSlant

@ErikaHarada@avaorac Like many things with “Westernized” foods, a lot of Mexican dishes were adapted through trade as well (like the burrito, since flour tortillas weren’t prevalent in traditional Mexican cuisine). And Tex-Mex food. Interesting that some foods remain a little less Westernized (like Thai food), but all food cultures seem to adapt when they get exported. Look at McDonald’s dishes across the world or what pizza is like in Bosnia. Now I’m just rambling AND hungry.
Danny_Ahmed

Um, you all know that Americanized Chinese food is what they serve at Vegas buffets, right?
Vaughan

@SimonSlant Taco Bell is really Mexican when you put Frito corn chips in a burrito – Chipotle ALL THE WAY!
mwei

@SimonSlant like Korean pizza china Mr. Pizza’s squid pizza. yum!
mwei

@Danny_Ahmed I don’t think Asian gamblers go to Vegas for the food.
mwei

@Ernie H. didn’t she also have one on who’s General Tsao and does his descendants even know his famous chicken recipe?
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Danny_Ahmed

@mwei If there were a lot of authentic restaurants in Vegas (I know there’s some), I’m making a guess that the Asian gamblers will also make it rain there.

Other than the hardcore whales and desperados, the other thing that can come between the average Asian player and his/her game is food. But it better be damn good.
mwei

@SimonSlant like Korean pizza chain Mr. Pizza’s squid pizza. yum! ^_^
avaorac

@mwei@SimonSlant is the squid alive when you chow on it?
mwei

@avaorac I sure hope not. I never had any of their delectable selections of seafood, like lobster and shrimp pizzas.

http://www.mrpizza.co.kr/menu/premium_list.asp

If you’re in LA and want to try the one in Ktown, then let me know. ^_^
avaorac

@mwei@Ernie H. I think there is a book by an Asian chick with a funny name (Jennifer 8) about the General… although he’s a real general and all, the dish was invented by Taiwanese immigrants to fill that whitey taste for greasy sweet and source friend meat dishes. There’s no such a dish in Taiwan or China. Kinda like Egg Fuuyong and Lemon Chicken – great American dishes.
avaorac

@mwei Hey that looked good… I tried some Pizza Hut pizza in Taiwan and it’s just not the same… I just thought about the live squid thing cus I know it’s a popular dish in some parts of Korea and I thought they may have just added a western touch to it… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFWnSS5D2kw
avaorac

@ErikaHarada Yeah I’ve kinda grown to like it since I’m into Korean BBQ now… it’s practically the same dish, except they don’t use the traditional spicy Korean marinade for Chicken and pork and use that weird-ass Yoshida slimy Teriyaki sauce instead. I just tell them to hold the sauce and I’ll enjoy the chicken with my own condiments.. hehehe… I mean there are so many of them I sure hope there’s some study of these places… some just does weird version of Asian dishes like fried rice made with soy sauce so it’s like all black and shit…
Danny_Ahmed

@avaorac@mwei That’s actually kind of dangerous if you don’t keep chewing on it. Oh well.

I heard there were a few places in the US that has that. Not just live octopus but also small live fish, you dip into a thick sweet and spicy sauce.
Danny_Ahmed

@mwei@avaorac For some reason, that reminds me of love letter, the restaurant chain.
guobaorou

I wonder what white people think of Hong Kong “soy-sauce western” style restaurants. If you’re in the SGV, you know what I’m talking about (EG: Garden Cafe or HK Cafe). I heard they’re around Toronto too.
Danny_Ahmed

@guobaorou These is from some people I know. Some White Americans might be ok (not too terribly bad or wow good) with Hong Kong Style Western food, cause a lot of food nowadays is moving towards those similar tastes. White Europeans are kind of picky and they might have more of a love or hate feeling. I know a few Europeans like that.
wilbur orville

sorry bro but real chinese food means the stuff chinese people from china have spent over 5000 years of history culture and tradition making and eating. It tastes good. General Tso’s and all that taste nasty by comparison. That’s why I kinda treat it like going out for fast food when my pals want “Chinese.” If you compare it with a chicken mcnugget General Tso’s tastes amazing!
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