Some years ago, I (an American) got Chinese takeout with an Australian friend, while living in South America. We both got exactly what we were expecting when we ordered orange chicken, despite being from two different countries and being in a distinct third country.
"Chinese" takeout is fairly uniform throughout the world, and all of it distinct from actual Chinese food. Why is this?
Chinese restaurants began in the US during the middle of the 19th century with what was known as “chow-chows”. These small restaurants served the many Chinese laborers who came to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. [1]
Despite mass racism in the US known as the “yellow scare”, Chinese restaurants kept going. Their early menus though, are definitely not what we are used to now. Featuring foods like Grilled Dinner Steak Hollandaise and Roasted California Chicken. Even into the 1940s, Chinese restaurants had little that was Chinese. Anthropologist Fei Xiaotong even saying “It was called a Chinese restaurant,” he wrote, “but … nothing made me feel the slightest at home.” [2]
The 1950s are what brought the American Chinese food we know today. With a new wave of immigrants coming in, these restaurants became an area of multiple ethnicities. Coming back to Fei Xiaotong, he wrote about his experiences in one of these restaurants, saying “Looking up from the table, I saw right in front of us a troupe of half-naked women doing Spanish dances. … Suddenly the dancing stopped and, to the same kind of ‘music,’ a young woman whom one would guess to be Cuban came on … various cultures of different origins came helter-skelter together.” [2]
While originally, these restaurants would carry two menus. One American and one Chinese, the American one soon dominated in part, from the canning of food. The sweet, packaged fruits and food canned and found in America where cheap and easy to get to. Their inclusion made the American menus immensely popular for their sweetness and low prices. [3].
The takeout foods also had some very untraditional vegetables. Yellow Onions, Broccoli, carrots and Tomatoes are all nonnative to China. The split from traditional Green Onions, Daikon and Bok Choy for the more sweeter vegetables also aided in the popularization of American Chinese. [3]