Diasporic Chinese Cuisines

Abstract

Diasporic Chinese cuisines (defined here as those outside China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) have emerged from the countless adaptations to local conditions of ingredients, cooking techniques, and tastes by successive generations of Chinese migrants around the world. Closely tied to the global history of Chinese migration, diasporic Chinese cuisines have emerged as an important means of livelihood, generally conforming to one of two patterns. In Southeast Asia, where significant numbers of Chinese traders began to do business from the 16th century onward and where the largest number of overseas Chinese in the 21st century now live, Chinese-influenced ingredients, cooking techniques, and dishes were absorbed into Southeast Asian foodways writ large, becoming integral features of Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai, Filipino, and other Southeast Asian national cuisines. Elsewhere around the world, in North and South America, and Australia, Chinese laborers arrived in significant numbers from the nineteenth century onwards, working on plantations and mines, or building railroads, before some opened their own small businesses, such as laundries, groceries, and restaurants. In these non-Asian societies, Chinese cuisine was treated with disgust and suspicion, on the one hand, and with exoticizing fascination and curiosity, on the other. Postwar World War II migration and the opening of PRC borders starting in the 1980s have resulted in a new wave of Chinese global migration, bringing a wider array of Chinese regional cuisines to the world.