Growth of Authentic Chinese Food in the United States -- Drug Dealing Opens Even More New Frontiers For Chinese Dining

Once upon a time, authentic Chinese food could only be found in American locales where there was a large Chinese population, such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.  Because of the accident of the patterns in the earliest Chinese immigration to the United State, being a large city did not ensure the presence of real Chinese food.  Until 50 years ago, you could not find authentic Chinese food in cities like Dallas or Atlanta, but you could in Augusta, Georgia, Clarksdale, Mississippi or Butte, Montana.

 

 

After changes in American immigration laws in 1965 ended an eighty year period of near Chinese exclusion from migrating to the United States, large numbers of Chinese came to the United States from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and eventually Mainland China, as well as other Asian countries.  Unlike the original Chinese migrants from the 19th century who were almost exclusively migrating from rural areas, the new wave of Chinese migration was almost entirely urban.  As such, this migration channeled into the big cities, both those with existing Chinese populations, as well as places like Dallas and Atlanta which did not.  But still many big cities missed this wave, so even into the 21st century, access to authentic Chinese food was restricted to a lucky minority of Americans. 

However, around 2010, a real sea change began with authentic Chinese food starting to become available in locales where previously only the most primitive Americanized Chinese food was available.  The triggering event was the arrival of large numbers of mainland Chinese students at American universities. These students have helped proliferate authentic Mainland Chinese restaurants and food trucks in and around hundreds of university towns. Cities like Fayetteville, Arkansas; Ithaca, New York; and Iowa City; had never been exposed to authentic Chinese food of any kind.

Meanwhile resident Chinese helped the spread of Chinese food with their love of gambling.  While Las Vegas cashed in on this decades ago with late night Chinese kitchens and more recently fancy meals for Chinese high rollers, the surge in Native American  casinos has resulted in a like proliferation of Chinese food.  While larger casinos have established their own on premises Chinese restaurants, in the case of smaller casinos it is unrelated Chinese restaurants that have set up in small towns proximate to the casino.

This was followed by the arrival of large numbers of Mainland Chinese tourists in triggering the first-time establishment of authentic Chinese food options. For example, Chinese tourists heavily patronize regional shopping malls in and around Los Angeles, including Hollywood’s City Walk at Universal Studios, Glendale’s Americana, and Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza, resulting in the initial introduction of authentic Chinese food in these locations.  

Then authentic Mainland cuisine appeared in more general U.S. tourist attractions, such as California’s Monterey Peninsula, Maine’s Bar Harbor, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, among many others.  Indeed, there are numerous authentic Mainland Chinese dishes available in the restaurants outside of Yellowstone that are yet to be offered in Los Angeles Chinatown, which has stubbornly remained a bastion of Cantonese food with very little in the way of Mainland Chinese food to be had.

And now we have another influence of Mainland Chinese nationals bringing authentic Chinese food to a locale that was previously unfamiliar with the subject, illegal marijuana farms in Oklahoma.  As I have written before, migrants from Fujian province have come to dominate the Chinese restaurant industry in the eastern United States, operating perhaps 80 percent of the Chinese restaurants in that area.  Based on my studies, I had assumed that restaurants were the sole economic focus of the Fujianese-American community.  However I was wrong, for as it turns out, the Fujianese have come to dominate the marijuana growing business, not just in the United States, but also around the world.  The activity in the United States probably would have remained unpublicized but for a multiple murder at a Chinese owned marijuana farm in rural Oklahoma.   With that information in hand, some poking around now reveals the existence of authentic Chinese restaurants beyond campus Chinese food, in both Oklahoma City and Tulsa, a Fujianese American regional association in Edmond, and social service resources available in Oklahoma City for Chinese residents.  And if you go to Expedia, Travelocity or other travel websites, you will find quotes for flights from Fujian to Oklahoma City or Tulsa (albeit not nonstop) via several different international carriers.  

At this point I'm particularly curious about the effects of Fujianese marijuana farming, on both Chinese restaurants and otherwise, in other locales where the existence of these operations has not been publicized.   My guess is that while Chinese marijuana farms have attracted attention in Maine, New Mexico and Colorado, Oklahoma is the only location where anything resembling a new Chinese community has arisen.  The magnitude of the economic activity appears to be by far the greatest, bringing people in and out of town from the business and operational side, in addition to the laborers (who might be isolated in their work space).

I actually have been personally affected in one way by all this.  In the past couple of years, the supply of Chinese speaking nannies, eldercare givers and housekeepers in the Los Angeles has dried up, sending the price of such workers skyrocketing.  All I had heard were vague references of Los Angeles providers moving to Northern California to work on marijuana farms.  Now knowing that the Fujianese in fact dominate the illegal marijuana growing business on farms near Sacramento and elsewhere in Northern California, on a scale far larger than I had assumed, everything now makes sense to me.