Editor�s Note

I still remember the first time that I went to a Chinese restaurant when I was a kid. Where I grew up there wasn�t too much ethnic food available, and eating things like chicken chow mein, egg foo young and chop suey seemed daring and adventurous.

It wasn�t until years later that I discovered that those dishes, and many others served in Chinese restaurants in the US, weren�t authentic Chinese food at all. That really didn�t matter to me then, though. At that age, I wasn�t yet the snob that I�ve become, and authenticity didn�t matter that much.

Even as I got older, going out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant continued to be an adventure. As a kid, I travelled all over the US with my family and ate at Chinese eateries from Washington D.C. to Seattle. Those places were great.

Sure, it was fun to eat something different from the usual meatloaf, hamburgers or mac �n� cheese, but the exotic change of scenery was what really got me excited. No matter what part of the US you went to in those days, the décor of Chinese restaurants was always the same.

They were tacky wonderlands, dimly lit by calligraphy-adorned plastic-and-paper lanterns that hung low over the tables. Every surface glittered with red Naugahyde, red Formica and red faux-velvet wallpaper. Accents of jade-green and gold and tanks filled with huge, bug-eyed goldfish completed the scene.

Those restaurants gave me my first glimpse of an Asian culture � inauthentic as that glimpse was. In places like Wong�s Village, the Snappy Dragon and Jimmy Woo�s Jade Pagoda, I learned how to use chopsticks, drank hot tea for the first time and had my mother�s accusations confirmed by the Chinese zodiac place mats � apparently, I really was a monkey.

As I got older and moved to a city with a Chinatown, I began to discover the pleasures and horrors of real Chinese food � dishes like steamed carp, jellyfish in sesame oil and deep-fried chicken feet. I learned that the best Chinese food was usually found in either large, cafeteria-style restaurants lit by fluorescent tubes or in dingy little hole-in-the-wall places that looked as if they hadn�t been mopped since the California Gold Rush drew the proprietors� ancestors across the Pacific. And most of the customers in the really good Chinese restaurants were, wonder of wonders, actually Chinese.

Now that I�m a white-haired old man with a pot belly and a goitre, I�m glad that I�ve been able to experience a little authenticity in my life. It�s good to know what other cultures actually eat and how they live their lives.

Despite that, there are times � usually when I�m trying valiantly to chew a mouthful of rubbery jellyfish or coughing up what seems like my millionth carp bone � that I really do miss that chicken chow mein.

Sean Vale
Editor
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