Chinese food was the first Asian cuisine to land in the New World. Chinese food was the first ethnic cuisine to be highly commodified as a type of food primarily to be prepared and consumed away from home at a national level. By 1980 Chinese had become the most popular ethnic cuisine in the United States as a result of changes in Chinese immigration. Moreover , Chinese food has also been a vital lifeline for Chinese Americans, existing as one of the two main sources of employment for them (the other being the laundry business) for decades. Its development, therefore, is an important chapter in American history and a ……此处隐藏3061个字……od for common immigrant laborers from China.
The rise of Chinese food was not a purely story about changes in palate but was intimately intertwined with historical developments that shaped and transformed the United States and Chinese America after the mid-19th century. It also bespeaks the historical agency of Chinese Americans in their efforts to maintain their identity and pursue the American dream in defiance of racist forces that despised their culture and desired to exclude them.Therefore, Chinese food remained largely a convenient and inexpensive type of food. It would not receive the recognition and appreciation it deserves until American society
fundamentally altered its perceptions of the Chinese and their culture.
