Exactly. Chinese friends tell me "Chinese" food one finds in Chinatowns in western cities is heavily adapted to western tastes and nothing like what is eaten in China.
I have a hunch that the 'Tso' is actually a corruption of 'sauce', meaning instead of being named for a military general, 'general' is the name of the sauce.
What laws are these? I find it strange to hear anyone claim that US laws determine what is made and sold as Chinese food. There are some laws regarding food safety, but they apply to all foods.
This is probably not what either of you meant, but until 2005, it was illegal to import sichuan peppercorns. This resulted in a lot of dishes missing a fairly important taste, even in otherwise authentic Sichuan restaurants.
As an AU/NZ/DE citizen who has been mostly based in China (but also a year in LA, 2 weeks SF) since 2001, I can tell you that Auckland is a best case example.
Compared to SF (which has one of the oldest Chinatowns in the US... unlike LA's, which incidentally was ruthlessly bulldozed to make way for a 'required' freeway by racist local government) much of Auckland's Chinese population is recent, which is perfect. Recent mainland immigration brings real Chinese food as Chinese eat it.
SF is dealing with Americanized interpetations of Chinese food that persist from the modified cuisine of multiple generations of Cantonese immigrants distilled through American popular culture. You know:
(1) Paper box
(2) Disposable chopsticks
(3) Fujian/Guangdong style egg (yellow) noodles
(4) Canto-Americanisms like 'chop suey' (Mandarin 'chao cai') and 'dim sum' (Mandarin 'dian xin') and such.
(5) Total overuse of meats and a relative lack of vegetarian options
(6) Total overuse of heavy sauces (oyster, sweet and sour, etc.)
By contrast, despite an early presence of Chinese in New Zealand, just fifteen years ago you would be hard pressed to find any Asian food at all in central Auckland, and certainly there was no or next to no honest mainland-style Chinese cuisine available at all, anywhere in the city.
FWIW I upvoted you! I'd always wondered if the Chinese in Auckland was any good or not compared to China (I'd suspected yes, but good to know!). It has been crazy watching all the good asian food popup over the last 20 odd years. It all feels so natural and part of NZ culture now (e.g. there are 7 Korean, 3 Japanese, 2 Chinese and 1 French restaurants directly across from the office!).
seattle and the east side are 'okay' but nowhere near what you'd find in the sunset/richmond, san gabriel valley, or manhattan + queens
for example in a single neighborhood you can find halal chinese, dim sum, szechuan, hot pot, proper roast duck, chinese bakeries, shanghai style dumplings, fresh noodles ...
the bar for comparison should be beijing, shanghai, singapore, hong kong, taipei, etc.
Not at all. There are good restaurants and there are bad restaurants. Most of the customers in the SF Chinatown restaurants are Chinese, so you know there are going to be some good restaurants.
I imagine there are over a billion people in China and Taiwan who would beg to differ ;-)