American Chinese Food and Chinese American Food美式中餐，中式西餐

Yesterday, my apartment-mate’s parents arrived in NYC, planning to celebrate their daughter’s graduation and travel around the US for a few days.  As a courtesy, her parents invited all of us to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant called Confucius.  When the food arrived, we all dug in.  I was hungry from an especially long day at work and they were craving an authentic Chinese meal after the horror of plane food.  Chewing slowly on the he fen though, my apartment-mate’s mom asked, “Why is this so sweet?”

“Haha this is Americanized Chinese food,” their daughter explained.  ”I told you it would be sweeter than normal.”

Ironically, Chinese food in America is often not exactly Chinese, as my friend’s parents discovered, but equally interesting is that American food in China is hardly American either.  In fact, I recently ate at a Pizza Hut in NJ with some friends from high school and was reminded about how different the Pizza Huts in China are.  The greasy, dim, and desolately empty restaurant (aside from me and my friends) was a far cry from the Pizza Hut I had been to in Beijing.  In fact, the Pizza Hut in Beijing could honestly be called a luxury restaurant.  The kind you could take a first date to. Or the in-laws.  Not only can you order pizza–and very fancy pizza at that (my favorite was the stuffed crust shrimp-crowned pizza)–but you can also order steak and even expensive wine.

The beauty of being Chinese American though, is that you have the chance to know and appreciate the authenticity of both American and Chinese food. Although if you do have to choose a side, at least for Pizza Hut, I’d definitely want to be on the Chinese side. Imagine being a traveler from Beijing and eating at a Pizza Hut in the states…