![Diners enjoy brunch outside Hatched in Town & Country Village on Saturday morning. The restaurant, which opened in January, is Palo Alto’s second Hatched location and focuses on egg-centric breakfast and lunch options in an area that previously lacked breakfast spots. Manager Craighton Poon said the restaurant has been well-received by the community. “People are receiving us [Hatched] really, really good and it’s pretty busy every day,” Poon said.](https://chompmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/IMG_1052-1200x800.jpg)
Chinese food offers an abundance of flavors with sweet, sour, spicy, salty ingredients using kung pao chicken, hot pot, guo bao rou, and much more. With its long history and huge distinction between each city’s lifestyle, Chinese food’s culture is diverse and unique. These styles tell a story of the people behind the food — and each flavor represents innovations in adapting to new tastes.
According to Paly history teacher Katya Villalobos, the history and pattern of food tells the story of the people it belongs to, and it can be used as evidence for Chinese immigrants’ history.
“Food history is a huge section of history,” said Villalobos. “You can trace the immigration patterns to the food that has been developed in America because they adopted them all.”
According to the University of Los Angeles, the emergence of Chinese dishes in America can be traced back to Chinese prospectors lured to California by the promise of gold. The Office of the Historian said that during the 1840s, China had just lost both opium wars against the Western powers. China had to sign multiple “unequal treaties.”
According to the National Archives, the official archive of the UK government, these included The Treaty of Nanjing (1842), which ended the First Opium War and the Treaties of Tianjin and the Convention of Peking (1860), which put an end to the second. All had many economic and political concessions.
Paly history teacher Austin Davis said that political conflict was widespread across the country.
“Times were tough in China in the mid 1800s. A lot of people fled Southern China and left for other countries,” Davis said. “One of the places they came to was the United States.”
According to Villalobos, many Chinese migrants came to California in search of gold. However, behind the lustre of a new start was the harsh reality of racism.
“Citizens in California were worried that there were too many Chinese people coming in and that they were changing the culture too much,” Davis said. “The government actually created a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 1800s to stop the flow of Chinese people.”
Villalobos said that it was the anti-Chinese sentiment that brought the Chinese together into the packed Chinatown, mainly in San Francisco and New York, where their food and culture began to flourish.
“American Chinese food and Chinese restaurants appeared in San Francisco almost immediately,” Villalobos said. The growing existence of Chinatown was the result of the anti-immigration movement at the time, where American Chinese had nowhere else to live.
Stepping into a foreign and unfamiliar land, food was a lifeline for cultural connection and survival.
“In order to stay afloat and to actually sell food and make a living, they [restaurants] had to adapt to Americanized tastes,” said Paly chemistry teacher Margaret Deng, whose parents are from China.
Finding the exact Chinese ingredients was a challenge, so substitutions with local goods were made. This fusion of flavors was the birthplace of American Chinese cuisine. Even today, American Chinese still combine ingredients to make dishes.
“A lot of the time, she [her mom] will make Chun Bing, but then sometimes if we run out of the wrap, we’ll use [tortilla] instead,” Deng said.
But is this combination an abomination? Deng says that there is a tension between different groups about what type of food is superior to the other. For Deng, as long as one is celebrating and respecting the culture of origin, cultural fusion in food is a welcome addition.
“As long as there’s no hierarchical difference between foods, then it’s fine,” Deng said. “It’s food, you enjoy food. It’s delicious.“
