As a Chinese person, I don’t find the existence of Western style Chinese food problematic. What I hate is people assuming that it’s the definitive Chinese Food. That’s like saying McDonald’s is representative of all American food, or Tim Horton’s is all Canadian food, or fish and chips is all British food, etc etc.
Even if you had 100% authentic Chinese food, China is the third largest country in the world, almost as big as the entirety of Europe, with a continuous, 5000 year old history of meshing and overlapping cultures and traditions. So there’s no way you could say you had “Chinese food” as if you could go anywhere in China and that’s what everyone eats.
Actually, the West has this reductive view of literally all foreign foods.
As a Chinese person, I don’t find the existence of Western style Chinese food problematic. What I hate is people assuming that it’s the definitive Chinese Food. That’s like saying McDonald’s is representative of all American food, or Tim Horton’s is all Canadian food, or fish and chips is all British food, etc etc.
Even if you had 100% authentic Chinese food, China is the third largest country in the world, almost as big as the entirety of Europe, with a continuous, 5000 year old history of meshing and overlapping cultures and traditions. So there’s no way you could say you had “Chinese food” as if you could go anywhere in China and that’s what everyone eats.
Actually, the West has this reductive view of literally all foreign foods.