The food was simplified to suit local tastes, and that’s how the US ended up with un-Chinese staples such as orange chicken and chop suey, and the UK with its chow mein and sweet-and-sour chicken balls.
These very basic, largely made-up dishes “clouded appreciation of the diversity and sophistication of Chinese gastronomic culture”, writes Fuchsia Dunlop in her new book, Invitation to a Banquet. Ms Dunlop, a British food writer, has spent her career cooking in China’s kitchens and studying its food.
Then there is the stereotype, dubbed the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, a partly xenophobic myth that the food can make people feel sick because of supposedly high concentration of additives, particularly the flavouring agent MSG. New research suggests MSG does not make you sick, and while older Chinese restaurants probably used shortcuts to flavour, they were hardly unique in using additives.
Now, a growing diaspora is making it possible for Chinese restaurants to stay true to their roots, knowing they have customers demanding “proper Chinese food”. And that has coincided with more adventurous palates in the world’s biggest cities.
When Thomas Tao was a student in New York in the 2010s, he says he rarely came across Chinese fine-dining, but Americans were very willing to pay for, say, Japanese sashimi.
Now he is the vice-president of the Green Tea Restaurant chain, which has more than 400 outlets in China serving fresh seafood and savoury soups from Zhejiang. It will open its first outpost in Singapore later this month.
And it goes beyond food, with “immersive” restaurants. Diners listen to the guzheng, a Chinese zither, while they sit at boat-shaped tables surrounded by landscapes around the West Lake, an icon of the coastal province.
“We want to help people be more accepting of our culture and to correct the idea that Chinese cuisine is ‘lousy’,” Mr Tao says.