"Chinese" Foods They Don't Eat in China

I love Chinese take out in America, even the smallest towns seem to have them and in cities they are everywhere.  However, the food offered in these restaurants is typically quite different from what is served in China.  In fact, and in my experience, the most common Chinese menu items in the US are either heavily adapted from their Chinese origins to suit American tastes, or these foods simply don't exist in the home country. Here are a few examples:

Egg Rolls



I love egg rolls, especially in the North of the US (I have yet to find a good one south of the Mason-Dixon line).  Whether they are filled with pork, shrimp, or god knows what, they are unhealthy and deep-fried.  Small wonder we Yanks love them.  However, in six years of travels through the "Middle Kingdom", I have never seen one in China.  The closest thing they have, and these are fairly common, is the Spring Roll which is much smaller, lighter, and filled with vegetables.


Fortune Cookies



The fortune cookie, that small, sugary after dinner item containing a typically lame message and some lucky numbers has its roots in Japan, not China, and its familiar version was created in America around 1890.  There is nothing similar in China, although the concept of a food item with a surprise inside in not too far removed from the "Moon Cake"


Chop Suey



I distinctly remember referring to this nasty, gloppy collection of someone's leftovers as "chopped sewage" when I was a child.  Of course, in our house chop suey came not from a restaurant, but out of a can from the culinary masters at La Choy".  Ahhh, memories....

No self-respecting soul in China would serve this - EVER!!


General Tso's Chicken



While this is one of my favorites, it was introduced in the US around 1970 in New York.  It is supposed to represent Hunanese food, but having experienced no small amount of Hunan cuisine myself, trust me, it doesn't!  Hunan food is typically spicy and often oily, but not sweet, not deep fried, and never covered in a syrupy sauce.  It also appears this dish has no connection with the actual General Tso, who at least was a real person.


Chow Mein



Sorry "La Choy" fans (assuming there are any), this is another one of those dishes developed I am sure by a frugal immigrant chef who needed a way to get rid of yesterday's leftovers.  I don't really know where this dish comes from - Wikipedia is rather ambivalent on the subject, but I have once again never seen to or anything really like it in China, and small wonder.  True Chinese cooking is art!  This crap is nothing of the sort.