Why do people in China think the United States is not delicious?

Before traveling to America, my parents prepared several packages of pickles and a large piece of Wenzhou fish cake. "If you don't like it, you can be a side dish."

Of course, I scoff at this remark: Just kidding, can't a country with a population of more than 300 million and 5 million people in China even find food to fill its stomach?

But in fact, those packets of pickles played a huge role. It was made into pickled mustard tuber and egg drop soup, fried pork slices with Chinese cabbage and stewed beef with sauerkraut, which soothed the stomach of China's whole family. There is also Wenzhou Fish Cake, which was heroically crushed to death under the nose of the police dog at the airport security check. We shared it cleanly before entering the customs. According to the elders, it is: "the best thing in America for more than half a month."

Although I spare no effort to recommend all kinds of American food to them, I don't like it or not, and "America is not delicious" has become their knowledge.

Probably most people in China who have been to the United States have this judgment.

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Is there really a shortage of good ingredients and skilled chefs in America?

Of course not. There are world-famous bread crabs, salmon and mussels on the west coast. In the fertile valley of California, the best beef in North America is raised and a large number of standardized vegetables and fruits are planted. Even a barren land like Mojave Desert is a famous nut producing area, and huge American pistachios and almonds are produced in this sunny land.

As for chefs, under the banner of "American Dream", as a place that mainly attracts talents, there are of course many best chefs all over the world. In Las Vegas, I even ate the most authentic Yunnan rice noodles and Lanzhou beef noodles, which are as authentic as the old brands on the streets of Kunming and Lanzhou.

However, the characteristics of individual cases can't cover up the overall unpalatability. The most intuitive and simple reason is that Americans inherited from Britain don't pay attention to diet.

As the main source of American culture, Britain, which is famous for its dark cuisine, has contributed a lot. This is like the culture of immigrants from Guangdong and Fujian setting the tone for the "Nanyang" region. Even if other ethnic groups toss and turn, they can still eat some delicious soups from Thailand, rice rolls and Malaysia.

Rotten country is the most ridiculed food in the world, which is simple and rude, and even the dishes are excellent (you can search for star pie and black pudding yourself ...). Except for sausage, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, baked beans and toast for breakfast, it barely maintained the living habits of medieval nobles, and the rest is almost useless. As the writer Mao Mu said: Eat like a king in the morning and like a beggar at noon.

During the Reformation in the16th century, Calvin and other reformers strongly criticized the extravagant life of the Vatican and advocated that believers should focus on spiritual life. Later, lord protector Cromwell in England popularized Puritanism, opposed all kinds of hedonism and advocated hard work. Invisibly, people began to follow simple and light eating habits.

This habit was brought to America by Mayflower. In the process of competing for resources with Indians, British immigrants found that it is the most practical life to replace cheese with yogurt and flour with mashed potatoes. Although the food is not as luxurious as French food, it can ensure that you are not hungry in a foreign land.

In essence, today's America is still a conservative Puritan country. Whether same-sex marriage and abortion are legal is still the focus of bipartisan election debate. Few people talk about "sex" in public. In addition to a few places such as Las Vegas, all states crack down on whoring, and policewomen even pretend to be call girls. As long as a man takes the bait and drives to a hotel, he will be copied directly.

Call girls have long been an open secret in Europe.

Treating sex like this, the same "erotic" food can naturally cope. Although people in China eat three meals a day, Americans tend to eat three meals more casually. "Eat when you are hungry" is a common practice. Apart from breakfast, there is almost no fixed "meal rush hour". Even if you go to a fast food restaurant at three o'clock in the afternoon or ten o'clock in the evening, you can see people chewing a hamburger in a hurry.

It is said that in several States that were once French colonies, such as Louisiana and Missouri, it is obviously better than other States in the United States, which also confirms this truth.

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Simple way of thinking is another reason why America is not delicious, and it is also the biggest difference between American food and Chinese food.

For example, in order to eat, people in China can take pains to stew fresh shrimp, green crab, squid and good japonica rice for three or four hours until protein is decomposed into small molecular amino acids and starch becomes dextrin or maltose with shorter carbon chain. A spoonful of seafood porridge is slightly sweet, and finally a thumb is raised: "fresh and sweet"!

But Americans are different. If you want to eat sweet, just a few spoonfuls of sugar. Why save the country? For example, American ice cream is a dessert. Just put sugar in it. In the face of Italian ice cream that is not sweet or greasy, I will definitely sigh: "Europeans live in trouble."

For another example, China people emphasize that cooking should be "fragrant". In the case of limited seasonings, they use civil and military fire, knife work and boiling to cook, so that the flavor can penetrate into the food. But Americans will think, isn't this just for saltiness and flavor? Just sprinkle salt.

This is why many people eat American hamburgers, which are too salty.

When reading hofstede's Culture and Organization, I didn't have much emotional understanding of what he said: Americans are more accustomed to the single-task mode, while everyone in the Middle East and Latin America prefers the multi-task mode.

In fact, China people's thinking is also the representative of this "multi-task mode".

From the two search engines, GOOGLE and Baidu, we can see the difference between these two ideas. For platforms and web pages developed with American thinking as the starting point, such as GOOGLE, all links are opened in a window and will not jump to the newly opened page; Web links developed by Baidu and other China people are all links to a newly opened page. This determines that you can only use GOOGLE mode to follow a vine in foreign websites, and you can only keep going backwards if you want to return to the original point. And the websites of China mode are all traceable. You will open many melons and windows, browse a lot of information and do different things at the same time.

This kind of thinking difference can't simply evaluate which is better or worse, but when it comes to food, it is hard for China people to accept it.

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Being good at everything may be a cultural advantage in other aspects, but in terms of food, it is definitely a BUG of American food.

This kind of compatibility is by no means the gourmet capital of Hong Kong, which truly reflects the tolerance of global cuisine. Unlike the Japanese, who changed the west point into foreign fruit in order to improve the taste.

Perhaps out of strong cultural self-confidence, American chefs tend to make food from all over the world conform to American lifestyle and eating style as the first priority, followed by taste.

For example, Americans, like Britain and other European countries, have the problem of "only getting in but not getting out" when eating. They think it is impolite to spit out what they have eaten in their mouths, such as bones and shells.

I ate a plate of fish with Chinese sauerkraut in a small town on the side of Highway No.1, and the fillets were all big and spineless Sabah fish. It tastes good, but it loses the fun of picking bones when eating pickled fish, and it also makes the fish "dull" and loses its sense of hierarchy.

By analogy, things like chicken wings, lake crab and pecans are also excluded from the mainstream American diet and can only be bought in China supermarkets frequented by Asians.

For another example, America's Mexican neighbors like to eat spicy food. It is said that the world's hottest peppers are produced in Mexico, and China peppers were first introduced from Mexico in the Ming Dynasty.

But Americans are not as good at spicy food as Lao Mo, so American Mexican food, on the one hand, inherits the characteristics of Mexicans frying heavy sauce, and is not boring at all. But the appetizing peppers were castrated.

Therefore, American Mexican food is too greasy to eat, even in Tijuana, a small town next to the United States. It's not absolutely heavy, and it's definitely unacceptable.

For example, Japanese food in the United States has also obviously increased the strong flavor suitable for the local area. For example, as I mentioned before, the Yayoi on Stanford University Street is almost as sweet as dessert.

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What should I pay attention to when eating Chinese food in America?

In fact, it is very simple: you must go to a place where Chinese restaurants are concentrated. A place where Chinese restaurants are concentrated means a Chinese community, where Chinese supermarkets have authentic ingredients and cooking methods that have not been assimilated by the environment-otherwise, are you sure that the shallots in cold tofu can be replaced with rosemary or coriander?

If you really want to eat Chinese food, but you can't find a Chinese community, remember to eat less stir-fry and try to choose hot pot: the sea and the sky are the same color, and the north gathers a pot with thick ingredients, so you can't eat it clearly in the southeast and northwest.

Well, what's the saying? It is not enough to talk about the world outlook without eating all over the world.