After coming to the United States, almost every weekend, the whole family would drive out and have a meal outside, mostly at Chinese restaurants. There are several obvious signs of a Chinese restaurant: First: the owner of the restaurant must be Chinese and can communicate with you in proficient Chinese (of course fluent in English). I asked a few, and most of them were from Guangdong or Fujian. Second, all the dishes on the recipe are Chinese-flavored and labeled in Chinese. Here are some: Tofu mixed with green onions, tomatoes mixed with sugar, Big Harvest, Braised elbows, shredded red oil ears, hot and sour soup, assorted tofu soup, West Lake beef soup, garlic broccoli, tomato scrambled eggs, braised tofu, hot and sour potatoes Shredded pork, Kung Pao chicken, Xinjiang chicken, sweet and sour pork ribs, braised pork with pickled vegetables, sizzling beef fillet with black pepper, shredded fish-flavored pork, ants climbing a tree, shredded pork with Beijing sauce, cumin mutton, old Beijing fried noodles ...Seeing these, you will really feel that this is really a domestic hotel moved here. Third, no matter where you go, Chinese restaurants are not difficult to find. They are almost everywhere. Fourth, not all people who come to eat in Chinese restaurants are Chinese. The diners I saw were white, African-American, Hispanic, etc., and together there were often more people than Chinese. They all ate with gusto with chopsticks (some with their left hand) skillfully.
In the United States, Chinese restaurants are the first pillar industry on which Chinese Americans depend for their survival. According to statistics, there were 35,779 Chinese restaurants in the United States in 2000, 41,350 in 2005, and the latest statistics exceeded 50,000, with annual sales of US$21 billion. Among restaurants in the United States, Chinese restaurants are twice as popular as Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and other types of restaurants. There are 19,500 McDonald's restaurants in the United States, and Chinese restaurants are more than twice as many as McDonald's.
After nearly two hundred years of integration and change, American-style Chinese food has long been integrated into mainstream American society and has an indissoluble bond with the American stomach. Someone has made special statistics: among current Americans, 93% of adults have eaten Chinese food, more than 36% of Americans eat Chinese food at least once a month, and 39% of children aged 10 to 13 like Chinese food. Chinese restaurants in the United States are roughly divided into three consumption levels: about US$10 per person, US$20-30 per person, and about US$100. Chinese tend to go to mid-range places more often, while other Americans go to both low-end and high-end places. Our family of three adults and one child goes to a Chinese restaurant to eat. Whether we eat stir-fries or Little Sheep Hot Pot, we spend about US$70 to US$90 each time. The few times I went to Little Sheep Hot Pot Restaurant and the central area of ??Washington DC to eat hot pot or stir-fry, I had to wait in line for a while.
Why do so many Chinese restaurants open in the United States? To answer this question, we have to trace the development history of Chinese Americans.
There are precise written records that the Chinese first set foot on the United States in 1785. At that time, four Chinese sailors arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States on a U.S. merchant ship, but their whereabouts were later unknown.
Historically, the first wave of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred in the 1850s. The history of Chinese immigration in the United States generally regards this time as the starting point of Chinese immigration to the United States. According to this calculation, Chinese immigrants to the United States have a history of one and a half centuries. In the 1850s, China experienced social unrest due to the outbreak of the Opium War and later the Taiping Rebellion, and the people were in dire straits. At this time, the west coast of North America was rapidly developed during the California Gold Rush. In order to make a living, male laborers in Guangdong first received advance payments, signed long-term contracts, and traveled across the ocean to build railroads in the United States. In order to support their families, they moved overseas without hesitation, with no intention of coming back alive and sending all their hard-earned money to their families. According to records, in 1850, there were 4,018 Chinese Americans in the United States.
In 1877, the U.S. economy entered a downturn and a wave of anti-Chinese anti-Chinese policies emerged. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, prohibiting Chinese immigration. However, the law stipulates that some people can enter the United States as businessmen. In this way, the number of Chinese restaurants in the United States increased sharply. By the time the Chinese Exclusion Act was banned in 1943, Chinese food had become accepted by mainstream American society. By 1950, there were 117,629 Chinese Americans.
Taking 1950 and 1980 as two obvious time nodes, the number of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan, China, and mainland China to the United States gradually increased explosively.
There is a saying: Wherever the sun rises on the earth, there are Chinese people. According to incomplete statistics, there are currently 50 million overseas Chinese in the world, distributed in 198 countries and regions. The United States is not the country with the largest number of overseas Chinese residents. There are three countries where overseas Chinese live in front of the United States: Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia.
Since the 1950s, Chinese immigration to the United States has accelerated. In 1943, the United States abolished the Chinese Exclusion Act. Since 1950, many Chinese from Taiwan have come to the United States to study, stay and work. By 1980, the number of Chinese living in the United States increased from 117,629 in 1950 to 806,040.
Since the 1980s, mainland China has implemented the policy of reform and opening up, opening up the country, and increasing exchanges between China and foreign countries. Chinese immigrants from mainland China have been immigrating to the United States in waves. This change can be seen from the following data :
1980: 806,040 Chinese living in the United States
1990: 1,645,472 people,
2000: 2,432,585 people
2010 : 3,347,229 people
2016: 4,888,040 people
The above data shows that from 1980 to 2016, the number of Chinese in the United States increased from 806,040 to 4,888,040, an increase of 4 million people in 36 years . 70.6% of the current Chinese Americans were born outside the United States, which means they are new Chinese immigrants from outside the United States. Of these 70% new immigrants, 59.5% are from mainland China, 25.5% are from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and the remaining 15% are from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and other places and are secondary immigrants. The main immigration channels for new immigrants from mainland China are studying in the United States, family reunion, and individual illegal immigrants.
On the one hand, Chinese people in the United States are hailed as "model minorities", but on the other hand, they feel discriminated against. The reasons for this are very complicated.