Authentic Chinese Food History

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Authentic Chinese food and Chinatowns in Los Angeles An idiom in Chinese goes “Min yi shi wei tian”. If translated verbatim, it means “people view eating as the sky,” while the sky often refers to the God. As an indispensable part of the culture, the Chinese cuisine entered America with the first wave of immigrants during the Gold Rush. The development of Chinese food in Los Angeles is always related to the Chinatown, immigration, and immigration laws enforced in the twentieth century. With increasing immigrants after the World War II, the authentic Chinese food evolved rapidly and gradually replaced American Chinese cuisine. In 1864, thousands of Chinese men were hired by Central Pacific Railroad Co. for work on the western portion of the …show more content…
By 1870, the estimated numbers of residents of this earliest Chinatown was two hundreds. Most of them were laundrymen, market gardeners, agricultural and ranch workers, and road builders (Cheng and Kwok). Eventually the dominant position in Los Angeles laundry and produce industries expanded the Chinatown eastward from the Plaza across Alameda Street and attained a population of over 3000. However, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 put an end to the increase in Chinatown population for many years. Although the exclusion act made entrances into America virtually impossible for Chinese immigrants, the established community did not decline and continue to prosper. From 1890 to 1910, it extended from only one street to include approximately 15 streets and 200 building units. During this time, various restaurants, together with opera theatre, temples, and telephone exchange were built, and the first pioneering American tourists began their …show more content…
The shift in geographic location from the old Chinatown in downtown to Saint Gabriel and other ethnic suburban areas only reveals one aspect of the fluidity of the Chinese food. The other aspect is that the style and the variety of dishes are always changing, from mostly non-Chinese chop suey to half-Chinese orange chicken, and then to the authentic Peking Duck, Chongqing dry hotpot, Dim Sum, and hundreds of dishes from different parts of China. One of latest evolution of Chinese cuisine lies in dessert, something that was usually neglected by Cantonese restaurants. Chen said that when he was a child, the only place that had a special section on menu for desserts was Green Jade, the first non-Cantonese restaurant opened in Los Angeles (Chan). But now, there is Phoenix on San Gabriel Blvd that serves Hong Kong style desserts made of mango, coconut, sago and grass jelly; Blackball on Valley Blvd just two blocks away that serves Taiwanese dessert such as taro balls. Boba tea is everywhere, and 85 Degree becomes a part of the bruinwalk in
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