Most of us have fielded the question: \u201cSo where are you from?\u201d To say I\u2019m not a fan of this question would be an understatement, considering how my response \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m Chinese\u201d \u2013 is often met with palpable disappointment. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t have a rare nationality, like Bruneian, nor am I a fun Korean. But before I can spiral into an identity crisis, my appetite always anchors me in the comfort of being Chinese.<\/p>\n
My Chineseness surfaced in embodied and reassuring ways when I first moved overseas a good decade ago. It was in how I instinctively rejected iced water<\/a>, obsessed over fresh-cut fruits and cooked leafy greens, and made a weekly pilgrimage to Manhattan\u2019s Chinatown<\/a> for dim sum and groceries.<\/p>\n In a somewhat unexpected way, New York introduced me to more Chinese delicacies than I could count, from roujiamo, the Chinese answer to a burger popularised by the now ubiquitous Xi\u2019an Famous Foods, to tieguodun, a generous Northeastern stew cooked in a massive wok, corn bread lining its sides.<\/p>\n Indeed, as New York\u2019s Chinese food scene expanded beyond the golden trinity of Cantonese, Shanghainese and Sichuanese to include Hunan, Shaanxi, Yunnan and more, the signifier \u201cChinese\u201d began to feel inadequate. Lumping these regional cuisines together makes as much sense as calling Portuguese, French and Georgian cuisines simply \u201cEuropean\u201d.<\/p>\n