It’s Not Just Chinese Food

As we waited for the elevator, I started to get that sweaty feeling that spreads when you know someone you care for is about to offend you. “Don’t say it, don’t say it,” I thought to myself as my friends and I decided on a restaurant for dinner. Food isn’t always as harmless of a topic as one might think. “They serve Chinese food, but …” he paused as I braced myself, “elevated.” 

To be fair, his comment was nowhere near the worst thing you could say to someone whose entire extended family had worked in Chinese restaurants for decades, starting as dishwashers and eventually becoming proud owners. But after watching one too many episodes of reality cooking shows where the judges’ main criticism of Chinese dishes were that they weren’t “elevated enough,” I lost it. What is so inherently undesirable about Chinese food that it must be elevated to be deemed worthy? Why is Chinese food more celebrated by the general public when it’s served in a restaurant that has twinkly lights, a name that could also be mistaken as a startup or allergy medicine, and a largely white customer base?

Chinese food in America is riddled with stereotypes about exotic mystery meat, cheap and greasy takeout, dirty kitchens, and the sleep-inducing flavor enhancer MSG. More recently, Chinese restaurants have become stigmatized as COVID hotspots. These stereotypes have consequences.

When you talk about food, know that you’re talking about people.

When my mother and grandparents first came to the U.S. as ethnically Chinese Cambodian refugees, they had their first big break in the Chinese American restaurant business. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, mother, and cousin all lived in the same tiny apartment when they fled to Houston from a Thailand refugee camp. To survive, my three uncles and grandfather worked long hours as dishwashers while my aunt cleaned houses. My grandfather would commute to Chinatown to work at a xiao long bao, or soup dumpling, restaurant. After years of this labor, my family finally had enough savings to pool their money and became co-owners of a restaurant called Joy Luck. 

“Joy Luck was really successful, especially because of the wedding banquets we would host,” my mother reflects. “After Joy Luck, some of us could move out of the apartment.”

More recently, behind the statistics of Chinese restaurants closing during the pandemic are family stories like my own. In 2020, the number of Chinese restaurants in New York’s Chinatown fell from 270 restaurants to 40, and Asian restaurants more broadly saw nearly 20% less foot traffic than other restaurants. At the same time, Asian people were targeted in hate crimes as the narrative of COVID as the “Chinese virus” unfolded. When people stopped eating at Chinese restaurants and started calling them COVID hotspots, they weren’t simply upset with Chinese food. They were angry at and maybe even afraid of Chinese people. And Chinese people, not just food, bore this cost. 

For families like my own, Chinese restaurants were not only the main source of income, but also a source of pride. After the success of Joy Luck, my uncles, aunts, and mother were able to open a few more Chinese American restaurants. Sesame chicken put my brother and me through school, and my lunches included Mongolian beef from my uncle’s restaurant. Even though Joy Luck has been closed for decades, all my cousins and I started cheering last holiday when my uncle started frying Joy Luck-style chicken wings. We laughed about how I had only lasted one day working at my aunt’s restaurant before my mother let me quit the role many of my older cousins had dutifully performed for years. Chinese American restaurants were an inseparable part of my family’s start in America and have continued to be an integral part of our story generations later.

Maybe this pride is why stereotypes about Chinese American takeout food, like sesame chicken being sleep-inducing or Chinese restaurants being “dirty,” feel so misinformed to me. In 1968, the term “Chinese restaurant syndrome” was dubbed by a doctor to describe feeling ill or drowsy after eating Chinese food. Despite being a scientifically debunked myth, this term became so commonplace that in 1993, Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary. Deeming Chinese food suspicious or unclean calls upon a dark history of discrimination against Chinese people. In the 19th century, as Yellow Peril propaganda spread, Chinese immigrants in America were branded as suspicious perpetual foreigners. Implying that Chinese food is questionable, even through seemingly harmless comments, perpetuates this narrative.

As I spent my undergraduate years delving into Asian American history, I started to understand that the history of Chinese American food evolving into dishes like chop suey was a nuanced story about both discrimination and resilience. From 1910 to 1930, when the number of Chinese restaurants in America greatly increased, Chinese restaurant workers adapted their cuisine to survive anti-Chinese sentiment that can be traced back to an immigration law that banned Chinese immigration in 1882. These restaurants also became a way for Chinese immigrants to obtain the necessary special merchant visas and bring relatives to America as a loophole during the immigration ban.

Like my grandfather and family decades later, these early Chinese restaurateurs negotiated their place not only in American cuisine but in the country itself.

For a while, I couldn’t quite pinpoint what made me so frustrated when my friend suggested we go to a restaurant with an “elevated version” of Chinese food. He didn’t mean anything malicious by it, and the restaurant itself looked fine. But it is exactly  this casual undermining of Chinese food that is troubling. Somewhere along the way, it became normalized to call upon stereotypes on race and class without even realizing it. Chinese food doesn’t need to be elevated, because there was never a cultural deficit in the first place.

People have different experiences with food and should be able to like or dislike it openly. But when we comment on a cuisine, we often use language and call upon histories that aren’t just about the food. We are talking about a group of people, race, and culture. And I hope, before our next meal, we can remind ourselves of the people preparing it and the rich history of struggle and resilience that a cuisine can represent.

Cover: Cottonbro studio / Pexels, Images courtesy of Sabrina Wong.