I love crappy Chinese food. Don’t get me wrong, I love all types of Chinese food and would happily eat only rice for the rest of my days. But I love greasy, crappy mall Chinese food served in a plastic container with three divided sections: One for Canto-style chow mein noodles, one for sesame chicken, and one for steamed broccoli.

You may recoil and demand, “Zoe, aren’t you Chinese? How can you even stand this stuff? Why wouldn’t you want to profess your love for proper, authentic, wok-cooked Chinese food?” 

First of all, nothing tastes better after you’ve spent a day in Toronto’s crowded, overstimulating Eaton Centre. Second, who is to say what makes some Chinese food authentic and some not?

I recall my mom and I driving down Highway 401 as I proclaimed that chop suey, a Chinese stir fry dish—a category of Americanized Chinese cuisine—was a grossly inauthentic version of Chinese food and that “proper” Chinese food was better in every way. My mom disagreed; though modified for the North American palate, chop suey should be considered a valid version of Chinese food. She pointed out that it used to be one of the few ways newcomers to North America could earn a living, explaining its popularity compared to other jobs like working at laundromats or other menial labour.  Somewhere between the first waves of Chinese immigrants and the current domination of Chinese cuisine across North America, chop suey was created as a survival mechanism in a new and hostile environment.

To clarify, my mom doesn’t think that all chop suey is legitimate and told me that if Chinese people don’t cook it, it’s just glorified lo-fan (white person/American/foreigner) stir fry.

Being a second-generation Asian immigrant inspires reflection about my own authenticity. I love dim sum, but my limited Cantonese vocabulary means that all the pride I have in being able to order ha cheung (shrimp rice noodle rolls) in Chinese vanishes as soon as the cart lady begins conversing with me in a language I barely understand. If chop suey is automatically disregarded as culturally inauthentic, what chance do I have?

While criticized as an objective category, authenticity is commonly defined as something believed or accepted as real or true to itself. I argue that after years of enduring racism and xenophobia, what is more true to Chinese-American culture than a narrative of survival? No, they didn’t serve sweet and sour chicken before its creation in America, and no, you probably can’t order pig’s tongue at Panda Express. American-Chinese cuisine looks and tastes the way it does now because it was born through the innovation and early willingness of Chinese entrepreneurs to cater to a broader external market. This made Chinese restaurants distinctive among other ethnic minorities, perhaps explaining why the cast of Friends didn’t sit in their New York City apartment eating shawarma out of takeout boxes. Just as traditions are contingent and mutable, authenticity should be regarded in the same light.

Fuelled by American labour unions and anti-Chinese sentiments, the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a national movement to counter the growing popularity of Chinese restaurants. Many Chinese businesses were perceived to be menaces to society, as they competed with American enterprises and were alleged to threaten the safety and morality of white women. Boycotts were staged against Chinese restaurants, but Americans loved chop suey so much that the non-violent boycotts were largely unsuccessful. In our conversations, my mom emphasizes that Chinese people are hard workers, thinking of her own parents (my gong-gong and po-po) who came to Canada with so little and sacrificed so much for their children. My grandfather ran his restaurant, Lee Choi Chop Suey Restaurant, for 25 years in Chicago’s Forest Park. It’s a cliché but the typical immigration story for a reason. The survival of Chinese immigrants is a story about evolution and adaptation to a new environment that wanted nothing to do with them. Today, Chinese restaurants are a cultural fixture as American as pie. So yes, I’ll keep eating my $12.99 Shanghai 360 combo two—mostly because it’s the best food-to-price value in the food court.