The United Nations recently celebrated Chinese food at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in mid-November. Chinese representative Liu Jieyi described how cooking food was much like regulating a country. According to him, like leaders who want the best for their countries, “chefs would choose the best material from the season. They would concentrate on flavor, taste, and also how a dish looks.” In addition, like the people who populate a country, the foods and cuisine may also serve as a benchmark for diversity. Chinese cuisine is an ideal representation of such diversity, as it encompasses a wide range of flavors and local tastes. Like painting and dance, the culinary arts are also mediums of expression that represent people and their respective contemporaries. Chinese food in particular breathes a life of its own, constantly evolving with people’s tastes over the years.

Chinese cuisine in New York City is a melting pot. Since its beginnings in the city, it has been an amalgamation of different cultures of different time periods. When Chinese food first started in the city, due to the lack of Chinese people, it was catered more to Americans and non-Chinese people. According to Fanny Wong, a former Chinese restaurant worker who has lived in the city for over 30 years, in her experience, Americans “enjoyed big flavor so they were not accustomed to white rice. It was too bland for their tastes.” Bolder tasting food like fried rice and chow mein that were enhanced with soy sauce became American staples, which according to Tim Zagat of the Zagat Survey, was “a radical departure from the spicy, chili-based dishes served back home.”

For years, the Cantonese Chinese dominated the scene in New York, modifying traditional recipes to suit the tastes of Americans. A classic example is Chop Suey. Roughly translated as “odds and ends,” Chop Suey was traditionally a simple stir-fry mix of leftover scraps from a previous night. However, the Americanized version came to include various vegetables and meats served over rice and topped with sauce. Americanized dishes like Chop Suey became immensely popular. This dish in particular allowed Chinese food to take hold in America, let alone New York.

As the times progressed and more Chinese immigrated to New York, Chinese cuisine in the city expanded to more than just egg rolls and Chop Suey. Wong noted that “initially, there wasn’t much variety in Cantonese restaurants; everything was just about the same.” Chinese immigrants were now not only limited to Cantonese-speaking areas from China, importing a wider range of dishes. Different traditions of Chinese cuisine took hold of the food scene in the city, ranging from Sichuan to Shanghai to Hunan. These cuisines were made possible by an ingredient base expanded by imports, sprouting new popular dishes like General Tso’s Chicken and orange beef. As more Chinese populated the city, it became less common for restaurants to suit the tastes of Americans, as Chinese eaters also provided a steady source of consumption. The various Chinese neighborhoods that developed from the new influx of Chinese became hubs of different Chinese traditions. Chinatown is still heavily Cantonese while East Broadway is mainly populated by people from the Fujian province. Flushing is generally Taiwanese.

Tastes for food continued to change throughout the years as new cultures moved to the city. There was a new Polynesian trend in Chinese restaurants, calling for more tropical and sweeter palates, and as John Mariani notes in his account of the restaurant culture in America, “wonton soup, egg rolls, barbecued spare ribs, sweet-and-sour pork, and beef with lobster sauce were all concocted to whet Americans’ appetites.” The Hawaiian influenced variation of Chinese was the first of many fusion cuisines. Many ethnic minorities experienced Chinese food from the many restaurants that were open year-round and had economical prices. These groups of people experimented with fusion, which was (and still is) the new direction that Chinese cuisine began to take. To this day, there are many different Chinese hybrids: Chinese-Indian, Chinese-Mexican, Chinese-Jamaican, etc. In many cases, the blending of styles is seamless as the combinations that are cooked up range from kosher egg rolls to Indian chicken lollipops to Peruvian beef stir-fry. Due to its popularity and flexibility, Chinese food represented a common ground that allowed various cultures to come together.

Some of the latest additions to Chinese cuisine include bubble tea. This specialty from Taiwan has taken hold of younger generations. Bubble tea itself represents a wide variety of tastes and palates as many teashops in Chinatown and Flushing offer a number of flavors and toppings, creating colorful combinations of juice, pudding, tapioca, etc. Bubble tea is popular not because it is visually pleasing and tasty, but because it caters to many people’s preferences.

It becomes a little difficult to look at Chinese food as merely rice in a take-out box without contemplating how multiple cultures and tastes came together to create such good-tasting food. United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, recognized that Chinese cuisine fosters a type of diversity and creativity that has allowed it to spawn a countless number of dishes. Sporting a harmonious integration of various ingredients taken from different ethnic textures, Chinese cuisine has taken New York City by storm, as its presence in the city has proven to make a positive contribution to cultural diversity. Its ability to cater to a wide range of interests and palates has allowed it to cement its place in not only in New York City culture, but also in the global scene – a true melting pot, or wok for that matter.

Works Cited

Chinese Food: A Brief History. Perf. History Channel. YouTube. YouTube, 28 June 2008. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.

Chinese Food Festival in UN. Prod. Larry Lee and Baijia Liu. Perf. Liu Jieyi and Ban Ki-moon. YouTube. YouTube, 14 Nov. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.

Mariani, John F. America Eats Out: An Illustrated History of Restaurants, Taverns,           Coffee Shops, Speakeasies, and Other Establishments That Have Fed Us for 350            Years. New York: Morrow, 1991. Print.

Moskin, Julia. “NEIGHBORHOODS; Craving Hyphenated Chinese.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2005. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.

Wong, Fanny. Personal interview. 17 Nov. 2013.

“Chinese Food Festival Kicks off at UN Headquarters – People’s Daily Online.” Chinese Food Festival Kicks off at UN Headquarters – People’s Daily Online. Ed. Yao Chun ZhangQian. Xinhua, 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.

Zagat, Nina Zagat And Tim. “Eating Beyond Sichuan.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 June 2007. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.