gonna talk a lil about Chinese American food bc it's honestly so fierce that a bunch of amateur cooks working with unfamiliar ingredients managed to create a cuisine style that captivated America even under intense discrimination (1/?) 
so the first wave of Chinese immigrants to America were mostly from Toishan, Guangdong in the South of China, where the tastes notoriously skew sweet. they were mostly men who had no idea how to cook bc cooking was seen as a woman's job (2/?)
BUT LABORERS GOTTA EAT, so a bunch of them improvised with cooking techniques and ingredients. China also had a very developed restaurant culture, so the first Chinese American restaurants opened in the mid 1800s in San Francisco (3/?)
there were a few fancier restaurants for the richer Chinese Americans, but most were in nooks and crannies of Chinatown and served mainly other Chinese immigrants. white people were scared to go to them bc of rumors that they cooked with rats and dogs (4/?)
but as the Gold Rush ended, white people started throwing hissy fits about IMMIGRANTS TAKING OUR JOBS (what's new) and discrimination against Chinese Americans culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time America banned immigration from a specific country (5/?)
this act legitimized discrimination in that white mobs were storming into Chinese communities and throwing their stuff out on the streets, and Chinese Americans were driven out of the labor force. most could ONLY be self-employed by establishing laundromats and restaurants (6/?)
there's a reason it's laundromats and restaurants bc like...do y'all even know how much work those professions demanded back then?! those weren't "desirable" careers. they demanded long hours and rigorous work. even nowadays, running a restaurant is TOUGH (7?)
the discrimination on the West Coast also got so bad that Chinese Americans fled east across America (on the very railroads they built) and established restaurants in tiny towns so they didn't compete against each other (8/?)
around the 1900s, Chop Suey was invented. it actually just means "bits and pieces / leftovers" but white hipsters looking for "exotic food" went NUTS for it. THEY WERE FOOLED BY RANDOM IMPROVISED INGREDIENTS THROWN TOGETHER!! for some reason it rapidly spread across America (9/?)
so because middle-class white Americans were all YEAHH!!! CHOP SUEY!!!! WHOOOOOO!!!!, Chinese restaurant owners became eligible for visas in 1915 and the restaurants steadily gained popularity throughout the 1920s (10/?)
the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally appealed in 1943...but bc mainland China had a communist revolution, Chinese restaurants got shunned. it took Nixon visiting China in 1972 for demand to rise again. people were SO CURIOUS about the "actual" Chinese food he was served (11/?)
the Communist revolution also ushered in new waves of immigrants from Taiwan and eventually people from provinces beyond Guangdong, who added new spins to popular Chinese American dishes. General Tso's chicken was created at this time from Hunanese inspiration (12/?)
if you're wondering why every small town in America seems to have a Chinese restaurant, it's because new immigrants were taught how to cook popular dishes and assigned territories by regional Chinese associations. they maxed out their coverage like cell phone towers lol (13/?)
anyway, Chinese American food was developed through improvisation and innovation by immigrants under intense discrimination. they understood that people wanted comfort food, so they adjusted the tastes until even racists couldn't stop coming for their fried chicken balls (14/?)
dismissing Chinese American food and chain restaurants as "inauthentic" is whack bc like..it was all done by actual Chinese Americans!! it's a massive success story!!! the creator of Panda Express is a BILLIONAIRE and the company is still private!! THAT'S FIERCE
to conclude the thread, the next time someone's like "haha that's not real Chinese food!!" when you're eating Chinese takeout, look em right in the eye and go "it's real CHINESE AMERICAN food, clown."
DAMN i didn't even get into how Chinese American food pioneered takeout and delivery!! that's a thread for another day lol this one got too long
more history tweets: linktr.ee/xiranjayzhao
more history tweets: linktr.ee/xiranjayzhao
