咖啡海的天堂

Food Journal- The Orientalism and Americanized Chinese Food

Where is the authentic Chinese restaurant?

Before I came to America, a lot of friend told me that Chinese foods in America have been localized or Americanized, which is not as good as “real Chinese food” and Taiwanese can not get used to eat them. After arriving Pittsburgh, I still heard Taiwanese and Chinese students have the same descriptions to Chinese restaurants here and my friends only recommend me to go to few of them because they think these few with authentic taste and others not. But, what is their standard? What are Americanized Chinese foods?

Actually, when you ask Chinese or Taiwanese students to define authentic Chinese food, they usually can not have an clear answer; however, they still claim that they can distinguish which restaurants have real Chinese taste from others based on their experience of Chinese food in China or Taiwan. Similarly, when they describe those restaurants selling non-authentic Chinese food, they also don’t have clear standard in their mind, but keep complaining that all these restaurants suck and only Americans like them.

Chinese and Taiwanese students’ classification is arbitrary: the authentic Chinese restaurants provide delicious Chinese food but others don’t. So Taiwanese and Chinese avoid eating in those restaurants with bad reputations in Chinese or Taiwanese circle; or they only went to there once and never step into there again. Shanna Liu, a graduate student, said:

“I tried once to Taiwan Cafe for a lunch. What they sell are like other simple Chinese restaurant, not really special from Taiwan. I ordered beef noodles, and the taste was awful, not as like as Taiwanese taste at all and I never step into that restaurant again.”   

She thinks that restaurant only non-Chinese like to go to that restaurant and the taste is Americanized. I have heard this kind of description for a lot of times, even some people never go to these restaurants; however, their judgments are just based on their experience and they never give more proof to their words. Chinese and Taiwanese students just imagine those worse restaurants provide worse Chinese foods for Americans who don't know what good Chinese food is.

What those non-authentic Chinese restaurants sell, in my personal experiences, is just not tasty food; but we should not quickly assume there are Americanized Chinese foods. Comparing with other Chinese restaurants with better reputations, foods in these restaurants are much simpler and without careful processing as in good ones. For example, the vegetable in a barbeque pork with rice in Oriental Express, were cut for shorter easier eating, the barbeque pork are too dry without juice, or the ration of rice and meat is not right. The General Tso's chicken lunch box only has chicken, fried rice, and few vegetables, which is different with Taiwanese lunch box’s standard that, beside main dish, at least three vegetables. However, these problems also happen in restaurants in China or Taiwan.

These students’ comment or restaurants and classification are obvious biased. They think that only Chinese or Taiwanese can understand Chinese food and know how to choose authentic Chinese restaurants; but they also partly assume that non-Chinese must not know how to choose good ones and assume that there is a category of restaurant for Americans. Taiwanese and Chinese put their taste in a superior position which only based on their nationality and give the westerners an inferior position on consuming Chinese food.

Chinese and Taiwanese students are used to enjoying Chinese cuisines with lower price in their hometown than charging in America and that is why they could not accept that a Chinese restaurant is expensive and has bad taste.[1] Moreover, most Taiwanese and Chinese students could cook simple family style dishes at home, which reduce their will to have a simple Chinese meal in a restaurant with worse taste. When some students try some restaurants and find the foods are not tasty, they naturally will not step into that restaurant again. Their reason usually is “Why should I spend my money on bad taste food and for Americanized Chinese food. I can cook a better one than that” To them, eating non-authentic Chinese food with bad taste is a “double waste”, which, on the one hand, wastes their money, on the other hand, wastes their taste.

What is Chinese and Taiwanese students lack a comprehensive understanding to American food culture. Before studying in America, Taiwanese and Chinese students only know American food culture through Television programs or Hollywood movies, in which only lonely women order Chinese fried noodles for food delivery in holidays, or FBI agents fight with Chinese mafia in a Chinese restaurant and mess there around. On the other hand, they also only remember that the representative of American food in Taiwan and China are McDonalds’ hamburgers, or TGL Fridays’ grilled ribs. They disregard the diversity of American food culture, in which Chinese food has been introduced into the U.S. by immigrants. The localization of Chinese food in America naturally happens just as what happens in different China’s province or what happens in Taiwan; and this process of localization can not approve that a category of “Americanized Chinese food” with inferior taste. They may try different levels of Chinese restaurant in China or Taiwan, but they choose to forget the differences which also exist in China or Taiwan, when they only study in American’s classroom rather than I a real society. They also ignore that the non-Chinese also could tell Chinese food’s taste with their plenty of experience; the reason they choose to go to restaurants with bed reputation not for specific taste, only cooked for America, just because they want to save money.

These cases lead me to think about the “Orientalism”, in which Said indicates that “the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. (1979:1-2)” In Orientalism, Said focus on how west literate and scholar interpret the Orient and how its process of “othering” structured and restructures the west’ view to the east. What angle that Taiwanese and Chinese students use to view Chinese food in America is just as what the western Orientalists’ biased view to the Orient. In both discourse, the natives always have no voice and are put into a inferior position. Both of them essentialize the Occident and the Orient setting off from their stands and don’t give chance to “the other” to response.

Reference

Edward W. Said

1979        Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.