>>27337852Now hang on that's only half true. A good portion of chinese food in the modern era is already pre-westernized because 80% of traditional chiense food from any of the major distinctive culinary styles uses rearrangements of the same 7 ingredients with varying degrees of incoherent preparation. The classic style of "chinese food" at least overseas is usually based on Cantonese recipes which by default are actually significantly more westernized in appearance and ingredients than other styles. A lot of chinese culinary styles had basically completely stagnated for literal centuries, and some of the more recognizable ones are basically stockholm syndrome. Sichuan style is distinctly different from Fujian which is different from Cantonese which is different from Hunan, but the differences kinda end there despite there also traditionally being Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong, and Jiangsu cuisine listed as identifiable styles. Most of those last 4 kinda blend into eachother or one of the first 4.
Now some of these styles are good, cantonese became well known for a reason and Fujian has some pretty identifiable cultural exports. However, some of these are bad and their badness is the only thing that makes them identifiable and unique. Traditional Sichuan cuisine is flavored almost entirely in sichuan peppercorn infused oil, which means everything is horrifically greasy and also you can't taste most of it cause the pepper numbs your tongue. Zhegiang is just bland, and Shandong is boring, but they're not offensively shit like sichuan. Unfortunantly, the uniqueness of how bad traditional Sichuan cuisine is has spread it far and wide, so a lot of people associate traditional chinese cooking with it cause it's one of the most identifiable styles based on how painful it is. It's overly spicy, has very little flavor variation, and I'm half convinced it maintains relevance only because the smoke inhaler population needs it to clear their sinuses.
Now going back to Cantonese cuisine which is the major style known outside of china, it was always fairly westernized even in it's pre-globalization form. Due the area that cuisine was developed with more imported ingredients and foreign influences, it's fairly recent as are a lot of well known chinese dishes actually. Traditional sweet and sour chicken or pork calls for ketchup and bell pepper, that is considered authentic cause it's what they really do in Hong Kong. It doesn't sound authentic, but due to how recently developed that style of cuisine is, it unironically is more authentic for cantonese cuisine to appeal to the worldwide market than the chinese one. Even in china there are huge populations of foreign educated citizens returning to china and bringing foreign food concepts with them, many of which the local population are realizing they prefer immensely. Like many other places asia the Chinese are coming around to cheese, smoking meat, and seasoning things with more than just chili oil. It's a cultural revolution happening slowly and kind of under everyone's noses because it technically started a hundred years ago, but the chinese are slowly replacing or at least readapting their own traditional foods with modern ingredients. So in a certain sense, yes, a lot of traditional chinese food sucks, but the modern ones that were made in the post colonial world that feel "inauthentic" like orange chicken and chow mein are far more authentic than you realize, they're just the modern form of authentic that took into account existing in a timeline where china actually got access to spices from other countries.
