By Isobel Chiang, 07/17/2019. Last night, I finally had the chance to try Indian-Chinese street food. Or is it Chinese-Indian street food? As I continue my research in India, I’m learning that this slight linguistic switch holds a lot of weight.
Luckily, I was having dinner with a local, so he did most of the ordering. Within a few minutes we had a table full of dishes, each unique and absolutely delicious. There were stir fried noodles, chilli fried paneer, Manchurian egg rolls, and a peculiar amalgam of stir fried vegetables and butter chicken. In total the meal cost 100 rupees, or $1.45 USD dollars. I was so full I could barely walk home.
I am very interested in the way that Chinese food is treated in India and by Indians. I’m not talking about Chinese food within Kolkata’s Chinatowns, I’m talking about popularized Chinese food for everyday Indians in cities like Delhi and Mumbai. I’ve been told by locals that Chinese food is massively popular, and I can confirm this by my observations while travelling: almost every restaurant I’ve eaten at has a “Chinese” section of the menu, with the same selection of dishes: Manchurian chicken, chop suey, chicken chow mein, stir fried chilli paneer, sweet and sour vegetables, and Sezwan paneer or potato (Szechuan is almost never spelled correctly).
The Chinese section is usually placed at the bottom of the menu or at the last page, under a heading like “Chinese Specials.”
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting with a woman named Shreeja, who’s a PhD student at JNU. She’s from southern India but living in Delhi, and we talked extensively about the popularization of Chinese food within India, and the problematic ways that it’s been assimilated and adjusted to an Indian palate. According to Shreeja, there’s “bad Indian-Chinese food” and “Chinese-Chinese food.” There seemed to be absolutely no middle ground. The former is ubiquitously available; the latter, a rarified and unlikely pleasure.
She went on to say that “Bad Indian-Chinese food” is a version of Chinese food, which sort of approximates Chinese-Chinese food, but is heavily tailored for Indian sensibilities. This means “a lot of gravy and sauces in the dishes.” You won’t find a single Szechuan pepper corn, but you will find a lot of cumin, coriander, and garam masala.
“It’s absolutely delicious,” she said, “but it’s not real Chinese food. That’s why we say it’s “bad.”
The assimilation of Chinese cuisine to accommodate and appease an outside palate is not new: we see it in America all the time, with American-Chinese restaurants (or is it Chinese-American?) like Panda Express and PF Chang’s.
As a person of Chinese descent, this raises a lot of questions. What is it about Chinese cuisine that makes it more susceptible to this type of culinary accommodation and appeasement? Why has it been so difficult to introduce and assert a more traditional version of Chinese food to the Indian and American market?
I’m eager to head to Kolkata to study the Chinese food within the diaspora. What kind of dishes are on the menu? Do they cater heavily to an Indian palate? How do dishes made at a restaurant differ from the dishes made in a Chinese-Indian/Indian-Chinese household?