We're trying to ruin China

[Jenise]

From CBS.com:

Little known fact: The Chinese food served in restaurants in the U.S. bears little resemblance to the Chinese food served in China. Fortune cookies are an American invention, as is Panda Express' sticky orange chicken. Even the ubiquitous square take-out boxes are a novelty that doesn't exist in China. But as CBS reports, American Chinese food has finally entered mainland China thanks to two Cornell graduates.

Heinz ketchup is used in the sweet-and-sour recipes; the fried noodles contain Skippy brand peanut butter.

A year and a half ago, Fung Lam and Dave Rossi opened a location of Fortune Cookie, a restaurant based on Lam's family's restaurant, in Shanghai. Today, Fortune Cookie serves "sweet-and-sour pork, General Tso's chicken, orange chicken, chow mein, crab rangoon," and other dishes that the former classmates say cannot otherwise be found in Shanghai today.

Fung's family runs Chinese restaurants "from Brooklyn to Texas" so the venture is partly a family affair. As they discovered when they first opened, finding ingredients to cook Americanized Chinese food in China is tricky. They have been importing certain ingredients in order to give dishes that "American-ized flavor." Heinz ketchup is used in the sweet-and-sour recipes; the fried noodles contain Skippy brand peanut butter.

When Fortune Cookie first opened, clientele was mostly made up of American ex-pats. Today, Chinese youth visit the shop to get dishes they see on American television, including General Tso's chicken, a dish with elusive origins.

Any particular reason you a posting this two days before the annual celebration of Chinese Takeout?

You raise an interesting discussion point.....

Some years ago when I was working on an international project in Stockholm our hosts took us to an 'authentic Chinese' restaurant.

None of the diners recognised Swedish Chinese food as being the same as the 'Chinese' food in restaurants back in their home countries.

Wasn't there a report about the first Chinese delegation to the UN who were taken out to a NY Chinese restaurant in order to make them feel at home and afterwards when asked what they thought of their meal politely said American food was interesting.

To survive a restaurant must adapt to the demands of the host country: authenticity or survival? No contest.

American's who've travelled to Europe will no doubt be as bemused by the 'genuine American' restaurants we have here.

Also

Food doesn't stay static, recipes change, ingredients change and tastes change. If they didn't, Italian food wouldn't include tomatoes, Irish food would lack potatoes, and Indian curries wouldn't have chillies.

I knew a wine industry fellow whose father was a diplomat and he had been raised in China. When he invited me to lunch in New York's Chinatown, he asked me to allow him to do the ordering. Everything was off-menu and I recognized none of it--but it was fantastic!

Jenise, if you think we are trying to ruin China, take a walk along Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

[Jenise]

None of the diners recognised Swedish Chinese food as being the same as the 'Chinese' food in restaurants back in their home countries.

I can relate with a memory of Scottish Chinese food. The very few vegetables involved were all canned, and the oolong tea had milk in it.

Similarly, Chinese in this area have adapted to the local's mistrust of foreign/unusual by exploiting the preference for sweet/deep fried/bland. Very different from the complex, soulful Chinese I grew up on in L.A. I won't eat Chinese here; instead I go to Vancouver.

[Jenise]

Jenise, if you think we are trying to ruin China, take a walk along Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

Oh I know! And we're doing that to China too. When we were there in 2006, our guide pointed out a single city block that had, say, a Pizza Hut, a KFC and a Burger King on it and bragged that we didn't even have that in the U.S.! We all exchanged the "should we tell him?" glances. KFC is HUGE in China, btw.

It's pretty well known here that a number of the Chinese restaurants that are run by actual Chinese people have two menus. There's one that people like me get, which contains all of the standard American-Chinese restaurant stuff. Then there's a second one that you can get if you are Chinese, speak Chinese, or can convince them that you REALLY want it. The second menu will list food that people in China eat. I've been to a couple of these with a friend who's Taiwanese, and the food I've had with her is not like the regular stuff.