quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: Zomg. I've been meaning to make some sticky rice and mango. You, good sir/ma'am, have just encouraged me to do so.
Yeah, I've been kind of craving it lately too. Not sure when I'll get a chance to make it again, though.
quote:To everyone else in this thread, BOO to all of you. BOO because you have access to cool supermarkets and Asian food and French markets and...stuff. Fort Worth, Texas is the least cosmopolitan city in the universe, and I don't need evidence to back that up. In fact, I refuse to go look for it.
I was kind of surprised by this. Even podunk little towns in Kansas are likely to have an Asian grocery store. Not good ones, necessarily, but still. Anyway, I did a little googling, and it looks like there are actually a number of Asian grocery stores in Ft. Worth
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: My opinions used to be quite different, but you don't see me posting about them much anymore, because I'm much more of the mind now that I'm a product of my background, and not a recipient of universal truth.
Very cool, Ori. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you're experiencing this mental shift.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:A Big Mac is less similar to a home cooked BBQ hamburger than the typical American Chinese restaurant food is to authentic Chinese cooking.
While a Big Mac - not being cooked on a grille - is (slightly) dissimilar to a home cooked BBQ hamburger, if you go to for example Burger King there's really only a technical difference in preparation. In any event, I think you're seriously overstating the difference between home-cooked hamburgers (lots of folks fry hamburgers at home) and fast-food variety. What is more likely to be different is ingredient quality, though.
quote:Even if 1 in 4 Americans eats fast food ever day, that still makes 11 out 12 meals something other than fast food.
This is less compelling if it turns out those other three Americans are each eating entirely different sorts of meals. 1/12 meals being fast food is still possible for fast food to be the most popular, if the remainder range from hard boiled eggs to eggplant parmesean.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I disagree on all counts. A Big Mac is less similar to a home cooked BBQ hamburger than the typical American Chinese restaurant food is to authentic Chinese cooking.
I disagree. A Big Mac is recognizable as a hamburger and that is in fact how its recorded in the statistics. Like so:
quote:Although most Americans eat their evening meal at home, only one in three actually makes it from scratch, as takeout and convenience foods are becoming increasingly common on the dinner table.
A new study of trends in U.S. food consumption shows made-from-scratch dinners have dropped 7 percent over the last two years and now account for only 32 percent of evening dinners.
quote:The study, published in Food Technology, shows that hamburgers, french fries, and pizza were the top three most popular items ordered in restaurants overall by adult men and women. Men’s favorite order was hamburgers and women favored french fries.
On the other hand, the Google Chats version of Jennifer 8 Lee's talk shows her bringing back various elements of American Chinese cuisine such as General Tso's chicken and fortune cookies and they are totally unrecognizable.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Some Americans eat 5 out of 10 meals as Top Ramen Noodles. Is that American cuisine? There are two guys who work with me every night. One is married to a high ranking female Army Officer, he brings in leftover restaurant food every day (usually pizza). The other is a Filipino who is married to a Mexican. He brings in the best food, his wife makes both styles for him. Trying to judge what exactly is American cuisine is impossible. If you say it's steak and potatoes for the white people, you ignore the blacks and latinos. If you say it's chicken and okra you ignore the whites and latino's. If you say it's chorizo and menudo you igonore the whites and black. I've even ignored many categories in this statement and my picks may be stereotypically insensitive. It could be matza balls or borsh. Picking one thing in America is not like attributing potatoes to the Irish, American is too diverse. There is no American cuisine. Maybe in a way, the marketable, universal crap like McDonald's is the only food that is truly American; a product of our society for the rest of the world, rather than the rest of the world's contribution to our society. What type of cuisine does my Filipono coworker married to a Mexican eat? One American family that eats the food of two different cultures....you cannot identify American food as anything other than an ever changing hybrid. I look at American food like rap music, they take the best of others and mix into something different.
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(I just realized. Technically, that report doesn't seem to define "restaurant." I'm assuming that burgers and fries dominate because restaurants include fast-food. But I guess it is possible that they're recorded separately, with burgers and fries dominating American cuisine in restaurants even subtracting fast-food
For health's sake, I hope this is not true)
Edit to add: Still trying to find stats on what is the most popular home-cooked meal. Not having much luck.
quote:Maybe that's an uncommonly bad result, or maybe I'm misjudging the actual effect, but I wish my parents had been able to adapt as their children got older.
Well, I certainly wasn't having my family meals while contorted into a shiny ball of rage. Maybe it's because I knew how to sit next to my family without hating them.
Is there something about me that you have grown to dislike so much, that every interaction between us will now contain you reacting with scorn to the things I say? I'm asking this seriously, because I respect you and like to interact with you. I asked you to lay off the last time you did this, and you haven't listened. If this is going to be the pattern, I will absolutely leave here, and never come back. So please tell me what you think you want to do from here on.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Still trying to find stats on what is the most popular home-cooked meal. Not having much luck.
I'd just speculate that it isn't hamburgers, but probably pasta, specifically what Americans think of as Spaghetti, and what Europeans might call anything from Carbonara, to Spaghetti Marinara or Bolognese.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Is there something about me that you have grown to dislike so much, that every interaction between us will now contain you reacting with scorn to the things I say? I'm asking this seriously, because I respect you and like to interact with you.
No, I like you quite a bit. I just want you to stop trying so incredibly hard to be what you're trying to be. You're a very good, very intelligent person, and you don't need to put on airs.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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You notice, they edit out "Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness" in favor of something totally different.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: You notice, they edit out "Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness" in favor of something totally different.
I guess 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor (unless you suspect them of liberalism) wouldn't have really worked with the rest of the t-shirt.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I like how the commandments are all "sourced" to him saying things like "you know, there are people who live here other than Christians and maybe we should try to use faith constructively to build bridges instead of burn them" to mean "I'm God."
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: It's sort of like the Happy Holidays thing. Trying not to exclude other people is somehow actually an attack on Christians.
Apparently, they also feel mortal dread at the idea of non-Christ related ice breakers.
While that's a valid criticism MrSquicky, I've still noticed that some who use Happy Holidays for that purpose also get a slight kick out of aggravating the Christians that care about that.
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I'll grant that, but, c'mon, everybody gets at least a slight kick out of aggravating those types of Christians.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'll grant that, but, c'mon, everybody gets at least a slight kick out of aggravating those types of Christians.
From time to time I am amused by their behavior, but I'd never do it to their faces just to illicit a response.
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quote: I was kind of surprised by this. Even podunk little towns in Kansas are likely to have an Asian grocery store. Not good ones, necessarily, but still. Anyway, I did a little googling, and it looks like there are actually a number of Asian grocery stores in Ft. Worth.
I should have been more specific. I live in Aledo, a rural community about twenty to thirty minutes from Fort Worth. The closest decent Asian food market is in Haltom City, which is on the other side of Ft. Worth. It's a pretty far drive. In other words, none of those markets are close enough for me to run to when I'm out of peanut oil. This is very different from Tucson, where I had three quality Asian food stores within two miles of my house. *sigh*
However, i stand by my assertion that Ft. Worth is the least cosmopolitan city in all of creation. *pouts*
quote:The closest decent Asian food market is in Haltom City, which is on the other side of Ft. Worth. It's a pretty far drive.
Whine whine whine. I call Bozeman MT home. It has no Asian food markets of any kind (or at least it didn't a couple years back). The closest half decent Asian food markets (according the my Asian students) are in Salt Lake (425 miles) and Seattle (700 miles). I used to stock up on Asian food items about ever 6 months when I was in either Salt Lake or Seattle. You can't get fresh vegetables or seafood that way, but peanut oil, spices and rice paper will easily make it that long.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Yes, but Bozeman doesn't claim to be metro. It's embarrassing, living so close to a metroplex with 5 million people in it, to have to drive so far for that kind of stuff.
Noemon: It isn't technically Fort Worth, but it's considered a bedroom community. Fort Worth is nothing but sprawling suburbia anyway, and we're on the edge of it.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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My metro area only has a population of a million but we do have a few really good Asian markets, and lots of great Asian restaurants. I'm still wanting to try Vietnamese. There are none that I know of in town. But pretty much everything else is here.
The quality of restaurants in a town (as I found from my travels) is almost directly proportional to its population. In NYC or Toronto, nearly every corner restaurant features delicious tasty fresh food prepared well, and wonderful service. In my modest little city we have some pretty good restaurants. In small towns the food tends to be fairly bad. They serve wilted brown lettuce and act like we can't tell the difference? But occasionally you find some gem of a restaurant in a small town that surprises you.
In Waynesboro, Georgia for instance, a tiny town, there's a place called Taylor's Barbecue. If you like southern cooking, it's absolutely wonderful. Man I wish I had some now. Very high carb and high fat but wow they make some fantastic corn fritters. Another one is (was) Warehouse #1 in Monroe, Louisiana. Their hush puppies were so good we couldn't stop eating them. The fried catfish was wonderful there too.
So I guess that goes to show that eating local cuisine might be the best bet in small towns, while in big cities you can try pretty much anything and be in luck.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Oh my goodness, there is something major here that needs addressing that nobody else has touched on! I cannot let it slide.
quote:I like processed cheese. Whenever I move to new area I buy the store brand american cheese from all the nearby grocery stores so I can tell which one is the best.
You clearly need Cheese Educating. Americans and Canadians do not have access to the beautiful tart, subtle cheeses that make up the world's available quality cheese and it leads to horrible tragedies like the above quote.
American "cheese" can be tasty but to source it like it's a fine Double Gloucester, Brie or Wendsleydale... it's a tragedy.
Once upon a time, cheddar became the North American basic cheese, and that's a shame because of all the cheeses in the world, cheddar is kind of not a tremendously good example.
quote:Americans and Canadians do not have access to the beautiful tart, subtle cheeses that make up the world's available quality cheese...
Ahem. Look, I understand that you grew up in Third World countries and all, but I live in Wisconsin and I will gladly put the cheddars produced within 50 miles of my house against the best Brie you can come up with.
Brie is congealed boredom. Even the best Brie in the world merely manages to be pleasant. By comparison, a good cheddar is divine.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I keep meaning to learn to make cheese at home, but I forget to find out what exactly is required and then when I'm out and see one of the things I vaguely remember being required, I figure: what's the use of picking up only one or two parts of the cheesemaking operation? I'll clutter my house for NOTHING, because it will take ages before I remember to look up what all else is needed.
Posts: 628 | Registered: Nov 1999
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The brie one can get in the US is hardly the best example of international cheese making, in part because of what is allowed to get past our border controls. Many cheeses can't come to the US because they are illegal (usually illegally young).
edit: and if you read her post, the other two of the cheeses she mentions are hardly soft cheese such as Brie, so calling out Brie as the example of what she's advocating is rather silly. I would expect both Wensleydale and Double Gloucester to be quite pleasing to the palate of any Cheddar-lover, even if they ended up coming down on the side of Cheddar (and along those lines, I'd have to say I prefer basic Red Leicesters to most basic Cheddars; I haven't sampled enough at the high end of Red Leicester to compare to high end Cheddars).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I happen to really like Brie (and I have had the good stuff, in Paris), but I still think a really good Cheddar is superior.
That said, there are a whole LOT of awful, awful cheddars out there. The worst I can say about a mediocre brie is that it's bland; some lousy cheddars are a crime against humanity.
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Melted goat's cheese, on toasted French bread, with a topping of red onion caramelised in balsamic vinegar = Heaven.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Yes, yes, I deliberately didn't mention the Wensleydale because I happen to like Wensleydale, although not as much as I like a truly good cheddar. But to mention Wensleydale in a sentence meant to imply that it, like Brie, is a good cheese....*shudder*
But, yeah, the typical American "cheddar" is a crime against humanity. That's hardly fair, though; it's like impugning Swiss cheese because Kraft or Sargento make Swiss slices that somehow manage to taste like fermented wax.
(Note: I am a total cheese nerd. But I am a sharp cheese nerd. The first time I visited Paris, on the very first day I was in Paris, I rushed to one of Frommers' favorite fromageries just to see exactly how different European raw milk cheeses were from American ones. The answer: different, but not sufficiently better to make soft cheese worth the purchase.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Just because Brie is a soft, mild cheese, doesn't mean it's boring. You clearly just don't like soft cheese.
My true, non-flippant, point is, cheddar isn't the only cheese in the world. There are zillions of cheeses quite similar to cheddar that aren't cheddar. There are about five that show up again and again: Brie/Camembert, Cheddar, Gouda, a blue cheese, the very occasional Edam etc. Where are all the others? Cheese is more expensive in Canada than it is in England, too.
I'm not against Cheddar; I eat it frequently. But I'm against the total monotonous domination of the cheese market by Cheddar. [url\http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_cheese]According to Wikipedia[/url], this is due to the British Government and WWII.
Tom, since you come from cow country, you probably have access to cheaper and more diverse cheese, but the fact that you can* come up with several (hundred) different types of cheddar instead of all different diverse types of cheese is sad-ish (although clearly you can get Wendsleydale-- which I can't )
I'm just bitter because I just got back from Cheese Country and I'm back to the same old five substandard cheeses.
*that is to say, you choose to come up with.
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quote:the fact that you can* come up with several (hundred) different types of cheddar instead of all different diverse types of cheese is sad-ish
Out of interest, why? (And, for that matter, why assume that I -- or any other random American cheese lover -- couldn't also come up with non-cheddar cheeses?)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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No kidding. I have access to hundreds of different types of cheeses. All the grocery stores around here (in the midwest of the USA!) have a good sized imported cheese section, and there are gourmet stores with larger selections. Plus mail-order, of course. And the farmers markets have a wide variety of locally made cheeses, from cow, goat, and buffalo milk.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Yeah, we have tons of great cheese available here (Bloomington, Indiana). Our local grocery has at least fifty major varieties represented, many with several good brands (the semi-fat hard cheeses are particularly well represented, probably because even the best of those are legal in the US, since they aren't a young cheese, but they're still a little exotic -- grana padano, for instance).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Supermarket cheese is the way it is because you can trust it to keep being the way it is, no matter what store you're in, or what color label it's got slapped on.
After spending my last few years at home on a farm where my mother made delicious goat's milk mozzerella regularly, I decided when I moved out that I wouldn'y go back to the supermarket brands ever again, but my first ventures at the imported cheese counter were a cheddar that cost three times as much as regular, but tasted not a jot different, and a smoked mozzerella that turned out to be a rubber ball rolled in creosote.
Until I can make my own, I'll be sticking with store brand.
Posts: 101 | Registered: May 2009
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Most of those imported cheeses you see in a typical grocery store are also by giant farms in Europe or wherever, and you can find the same import brands all over the country. Like your store brands, the imports are often the way they are because you can trust them to be the same no matter where you go.
If you want good cheese that you don't have to make yourself, I suggest looking for local cheese makers at your local farmer's market and similar.
posted
I was recently in Toronto at a conference and was taken to lunch by a colleague who is originally from Hong Kong but is a long term Toronto resident. Over lunch, I asked him whether the food was authentic. He said it was extremely authentic as were most chinese restaurants in Toronto. He also agreed with my other Chinese friends assessment that you can very frequently get better Chinese food in North America than you find in China. He said this was both because better quality ingredients are available in North America and because one can find foods from all regions of China in north American cities where as in China one tends to find regional dishes only in their region.
So I'm sorry Mucus, but even other Chinese Canadians don't agree with your assessment.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: The brie one can get in the US is hardly the best example of international cheese making, in part because of what is allowed to get past our border controls. Many cheeses can't come to the US because they are illegal (usually illegally young).
you can still get brie on par with anyone else's brie here in the united states. if somebody hates brie, it's simply because they have not acquired or can not (different people's mouths and senses of tastes can often be remarkably and mechanically different) acquire the taste for it, and they won't understand what makes brie awesome.
Similar phenomenon occurs with olives, beets, wine, and even sweet potatoes.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You can only get the very best, freshest brie illegally (not that it is very hard to do so).
However, I agree that even the brie we can import can be quite awesome. I like it baked, personally.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:you can still get brie on par with anyone else's brie here in the united states.
No you can't. At least not legally. The best brie is made from unpasteurized milk and is not legal to sell in the US.
That said, even though I find the real Brie available in Europe to be clearly superior to the stuff that is legal in the US, I doubt very much that someone who hates American Brie is going to love real French Brie. They aren't that different. It is however possible that someone who finds American Brie to be nothing special might find real French Brie to be quite awesome.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: He said it was extremely authentic as were most chinese restaurants in Toronto.
*shrug* I'm from Toronto. Toronto and Vancouver are hardly representative of North America with their very large Chinese populations, at least 10% in Toronto's case. That said, you don't have to go far to only Mississauga for the non-authentic restaurants to outnumber the authentic ones.
Remember, there is only a roughly 4% Chinese Canadian population in Canada as a whole and less than half that in the case of the US. (But very unevenly distributed)
quote:He also agreed with my other Chinese friends assessment that you can very frequently get better Chinese food in North America than you find in China.
*shrug* Your hypothetical Chinese friends would greatly disagree with my friends (bosses, work colleagues). Just today I've heard a story about a fellow alumni who gained many pounds after going back to China due to the massive change in food quality and this is not an isolated case.
Also, it is not as though Chinese chefs are often homegrown! The restaurant industry is an exceedingly common destination for immigrants but rarely for Canadian-born. But it is not usually the well-off that immigrate to work in restaurants, but the lower class trying to make a better life for themselves. These comprise the vast majority of Chinese restaurant workers and rarely have formal training.
However, the high-end has related issues.
Example:
quote: .. the principal obstacle to improving Chinese fare here is the difficulty of getting visas for skilled workers since 9/11. Michael Tong, head of the Shun Lee restaurant group in New York, has said that opening a major Chinese restaurant in America is next to impossible because it can take years to get a team of chefs from China. Chinese restaurateur Alan Yau planned to open his first New York City restaurant last year but was derailed because he was unable to get visas for his chefs. ... When authentic Chinese cuisines reach our shores, we can expect a revolution in ingredients and styles that will change the way we prepare food for years to come. Look how quickly our taste for offal, sous-vide cooking and tasting menus have grown. We have a much more ambitious dining culture today than we did 150 years ago.
quote:The visa restrictions have had an impact on quality, the owner of the Shun Lee Palace, Michael Tong, said, pointing to what he called the decline of good Chinese food in the city over the past 30 years.
"It's difficult for top Chinese chefs to get to America, and with a booming Chinese economy they don't need to leave," he said.
Things are slightly better in Canada, but the superior economics in China still win out.
quote:... and because one can find foods from all regions of China in north American cities where as in China one tends to find regional dishes only in their region.
Sorry, but this is just wrong. Going back a dynasty or two, Beijing food has always been an amalgamation of various regional dishes due to officials and trade going to the imperial court. Hong Kong has it to a lesser extent as well due to rather more forced immigration. Market reforms since the 80s have contributed to this trend in other major cities.
But food variety is already a step removed from quality and a bit of a red herring.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Your hypothetical Chinese friends would greatly disagree with my friends (bosses, work colleagues).
What's hypothetical about the Chinese scientist I had lunch week in Toronto two weeks ago? Perhaps your command of the English language is weak and you meant to say that you doubt that I actually had lunch two weeks ago in Toronto with a Chinese colleague and that we actually had this conversation -- but that isn't what hypothetical means.
I'm an engineering professor. I've spent nearly thirty years of my life on US University campuses doing science and engineering. Given the very large number of Chinese people who come to the US to do graduate level work in science and engineering, it is hardly a far out proposition when I claim that I have had many Chinese colleagues, friends and students. In fact, given my particular background its almost unimaginable that I would not have known a large number of 1st generation Chinese immigrants.
If you are accusing me of lying, I guess that's your prerogative but come out and say it rather than couching it in incorrect English.
quote:Sorry, but this is just wrong. Going back a dynasty or two, Beijing food has always been an amalgamation of various regional dishes due to officials and trade going to the imperial court. Hong Kong has it to a lesser extent as well due to rather more forced immigration. Market reforms since the 80s have contributed to this trend in other major cities.
I hope you will understand why I'm not going to take the word of some one on the internet who claims to be a 2nd generation Chinese immigrant living in Canada over what I have been told many times by the numerous 1st generation Chinese friends and colleagues I know in real life.
I know that there are a lot of non-authentic Chinese restaurants in north America. But there are also a lot of very authentic Chinese restaurants around. And I've been around enough to know the difference. Toronto and Vancouver aren't the only places in north America with large Asian populations. San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, and even Chicago have significant numbers of Asian residents. The state of California is nearly 15% Asian. Pretty much any where in the US where there is a concentration of high tech industry, there will be a significant chinese immigrant population. In all those places you can find restaurants that serve quite authentic Chinese cuisine. What's more, Chinese cuisine isn't very different from any other cuisine in this respect. America is full of Italian restaurants that have little in common with real Italian cuisine. The same is true for French, German, Japanese, Mexican, Spanish, Greek, Ethiopian, etc. But one can also find authentic cuisine from all or most of those regions.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Perhaps your command of the English language is weak and you meant to say that you doubt that I actually had lunch two weeks ago in Toronto with a Chinese colleague and that we actually had this conversation -- but that isn't what hypothetical means.
Sure, attack the language. Classy
But seriously, hypothetical is the best word I can think of to describe what I think is happening here. I don't doubt that you had lunch with a Chinese colleague and I don't doubt that you "think" you got agreement with your points.
But I also know that you're dead wrong and the description of a Hong Kong native that would claim that the food in Toronto outranks that in Hong Kong itself is so foreign to my experiences, the best explanation is that your perception of events has totally separated from the reality of what happened.
In any culture, one can use leading questions to get the answers that one wants, but this is especially true in Chinese culture. I am told that this actually happens quite often.
For example,
quote:Sometimes foreigners feel like their Chinese friends lie to them. They say they agree even when they don’t, and reply, “OK” even when they mean, “Not really.” Even if the foreigner later realizes that their Chinese friends didn’t intend to disrespect them, the foreigner might then feel like Chinese politeness requires lying. Chinese cultural expectations sometimes seem to demand a daily dose of “white lies” and multiple possible meanings to the word “yes.”
I guess when here and constantly interacting with foreigners that want to tell me something about my culture, one can go the Raj route and be often frustrated that Sheldon wants to tell me something about my culture (a trap that I seem to be falling in) or one can just agree politely and move on. Sometimes hurting feelings and breaking illusions is just not worth it.
quote:I hope you will understand why I'm not going to take the word of some one on the internet who claims to be a 2nd generation Chinese immigrant living in Canada over what I have been told many times by the numerous 1st generation Chinese friends and colleagues I know in real life.
*Shrug* And I hope that you understand that I'm not going to take the word of someone on the Internet that claims to have had a couple conversations with Chinese friends over an entire life living with Chinese parents and relatives, or over what I have been told many times by both 1st and 2nd generation Chinese friends and colleagues that I know in real life (or my own experiences abroad for that matter).
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Toronto and Vancouver aren't the only places in north America with large Asian populations. San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, and even Chicago have significant numbers of Asian residents. The state of California is nearly 15% Asian.
Contrary to popular perception, Asians are not interchangeable
Technically, British Columbia is 9.66% Chinese whereas California is only 3% Chinese. Ontario as a whole is more comparable at 4.8% Chinese but as I've noted before we're very concentrated in Toronto (Markham and Richmond Hill to be exact).
But I think a city level is more relevant and going through the list, little else really compares.
Toronto is at 537,000 and Vancouver is at 402,000. New York is at 361,000 (but less than half percentage-wise compared to Toronto*) and San Francisco is already a big drop at 152,000 (albeit with a percentage similar to Vancouver which is heartening).
Everything else is pretty small fry.
Anyways for arguments sake, let's say I grant you these two cities which are already both a step down. This is still hardly representative of the American experience!
(God, I wish it was though. No 8 years of Bush, no Iraq War ...)
I would also note that the differences between the Canadian policy of multiculturalism versus the US melting pot and the much more intense Canadian immigration policy also play a role.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:But seriously, hypothetical is the best word I can think of to describe what I think is happening here. I don't doubt that you had lunch with a Chinese colleague and I don't doubt that you "think" you got agreement with your points.
I'm sorry I insulted your language but hypothetical simply doesn't work here. I don't even know what you mean by it if you aren't accusing saying you doubt the conversation ever occurred, even after your further exposition of the idea. Hypothetical implies that the situation described is suppositional, a thought experiment presented solely to allow further exploration of a hypothesis. Saying something is "hypothetical" means it is purely made up or imagined. Hypothetical is the opposite of "factual", "concrete" and "real".
This isn't a situation I made up or even contrived to me able to make a point on this forum. It was a very real and congenial lunch conversation which I thought I'd relate here because it was so relevant to the conversation we'd been having. I wasn't making any points over lunch, I asked the guys opinion on whether the restaurant was authentic because I was interested. He answered the question and volunteered the piece about being able to find better quality and variety of Chinese food in Toronto than in Hong Kong.
Maybe he was just trying to impress us with his choice of restaurants or boasting about the greatness of Toronto but it didn't seem like that at all. Plus, what he said was consistent with what I've heard from other Chinese immigrants under completely different circumstances.
quote:But I also know that you're dead wrong
Excuse me, but I don't think you were at the table. Unless you happen to be the bus boy who was speaking cantonese with my colleague, I can't see how you have any authority by which to make the claim that I am dead wrong about what was said by my colleague over lunch.
quote:and the description of a Hong Kong native that would claim that the food in Toronto out ranks that in Hong Kong itself is so foreign to my experiences, the best explanation is that your perception of events has totally separated from the reality of what happened.
Get off your high horse. Being the son of Chinese immigrants doesn't make you an expert on the opinions of everyone from China or even Hong Kong. You aren't the only one here who knows many first generations immigrants from China. Your experiences are simply quite different from mine. I don't doubt that your Chinese friends and acquaintances get nostalgic about the food back home, that's pretty typical immigrant behavior. But its really insulting for you to say you can't believe anyone from Hong Kong or China might behave differently from your friends and that I must be deluded in some fashion if I report anyone from China behaving differently from your circle of aquaintances. If you had been there when I ran into a former student from Beijing at a scientific meeting, how would you have interpreted it when I asked him how he liked living and working Manhattan and he went on and on about how the Chinese food in Manhattan was better quality and more varied than he could get in Beijing. I never even asked about food, or restaurants or the chinese community -- Just "How do you like living in Manhattan". How would you have interpreted it if you had been in my office when a Chinese friend from Hongzhou dropped in to tell me I needed to try a new chinese restaurant she'd discovered where the cooking was even better than her mother's. (BTW this same friend often waxes poetic about her mother's cooking and even invited me to dinner when her mother visited the US so I could see what she was talking about.) And I wasn't asking her for restaurant recommendations or seeking her opinion on the local food, she knows I'm a bit of a food and came to share her enthusiasm.
And yes, the "if you had been there part" is hypothetical, but the rest of those situations are not. They really happened and my report of them is very accurate. If you can't even imagine that these events happened as I described them, then your imagination is sorely lacking.
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Very cool, Ori. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you're experiencing this mental shift.
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