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Q: Why can't most Chinese people stand American food?
Or any food other than Chinese food?
Every Chinese person I've ever met -- if they were born and raised in China -- refuses to eat anything except Chinese food. My ex girlfriends and their friends, my wife and all of her friends, my friends -- everyone! I don't understand it.
I have no problem eating most of the food from other countries. I don't know anyone who does.. except Chinese. I can eat almost anything, but Chinese won't eat anything but Chinese food. In many cases, they won't eat anything except the food they cook in their city/province/village.
WTF?
Everything has to be seasoned the same exact way in China: a dash of salt, MSG, crushed red peppers; and occasionally there will be chopped chives, garlic or ginseng, and some soy sauce. It's all the same. Here in America, we have a billion spices. None of them like it.
I really don't understand it. It honestly kinda frustrates me a lot. What gives?
EDIT: edited to say "most." Didn't like that I was generalizing an entire population... also agree with you.
i had a friend who went on holiday with a bag full of our local food. He refused to eat the food of the different countries he visited. Without even trying it, he called it all 'muck.' For me, that is the whole thing about being in a different country: the FOOD ! It could just be the stubborness to believe that anything other than local food might taste good. 
I have met people from many countries who refuse to try things because 'they might not like it'.......
Hulk:
That's always an issue too, but I'm mainly referring to those who actually try the food, and decide they don't like 95% of it. It's so strange. I don't NO WHY.
GuilinRaf:
One of my favorite dishes, guilin mifeng, would not have been discovered by me if I had the same outlook as your friend.
many people seem to be that way, not just Chinese. I know of many expats who wont eat in Chinese restaurants ever.
Like you say, that is the fun of going to a different country, to see different sites and to taste different food. some will be liked, some wont and some will become favorites.
Hulk:
Other expats do that? Man, I haven't really met 'em then.
I've had dinner with a few, and it's always Chinese food. Well, except with you. lol But that doesn't count. 
GuilinRaf:
In Guilin, there were expats who only ate Chinese food and were offended if you suggested western. Then, there were expats who only ate western food, and were offended if you suggested Chinese. They also complained about being broke all the time.
Most of us ate from both "sides". Sometimes, Western, sometimes Chinese, depending on mood, company and budget.
As Sorrels favorite idiom says, "every coin has two sides". 
oh god. she is gonna kill me....
i have cooked food for Chinese friends (at home) and they described my very popular fresh salmon dish as '
'. Maybe because you could taste the fish and fresh vegetables and they weren't smothered in oil or chilli peppers 
. (for some reason, i can't add a comment Admin, any ideas?)
Hulk:
It's your fault for not smothering it in gutter oil, red hot chili peppers and copious amounts of salt and MSG.
Isn't it really freaking weird? I've never came across something so consistently awkward to me. I love food from pretty much every country on earth... I don't see how anyone else can't.
Nessquick:
That is exactly same here. Whenever I cook food my way, wife almost everytime say, that the fish is bad taste, vegetable too fresh ... no msg, no zhou, no soysauce drive them mad. When we was in Czech, She mainly eaten the food there, many she like, some don't. but after few days she start cry for rice. we eat rice maybe once a week there, we call it "hungry food".
Last time some friends was shocked, when I prepared lunch for them - macaroni with beef and fresh green pepper, cucumber salat only with lemon juice and salt, and tomato salat with onion and olive oil. the most tasty food for them was ... the one I bought outside, some beef in f2cking spicy soysauce and mas and zhou and I eat all the vegetable 
Chinese people believe they must eat Chinese food and what regular people cook is boring to me, basically soup. It's not only Chinese people, try Brits or Scots. Even second generation in Canada and they just eat bangers and chips. One of my friends growing up was Scotish, he was almost 30 before he would even try sour cream. Things like Borscht, perogies, just no way. Brother inlaw is the same.
I think the reason many of us are more open to different foods is because we have such diversity in our home countries. Well some do. But thank God for that or us Canadians would still be eating blubber, cod tongues and beaver tails.
TedDBayer:
no offence intended, just trying to make a point. people that only eat certain ways, don't like change.Chinese are not different, but they do eat some weird sh*t.
Hulk:
We seem to have completely different experiences. The world is funky, isn't it? Most of the people I know are willing to try pretty much any food in existence, except super gross stuff.
Perhaps the question/statement is an over-generalization. However, especially the old generation usually are unwilling to try any non-Chinese food. I know many [younger] Chinese people who often go to foreign food places/restaurants. I frequently cook European or American food [even bbq hamburgers] for our Chinese friends and they always are eager to try and eat all the food. Obviously, not everybody does not like every food, but that happens in any country, any ethnic group.
Hulk:
Yeah, probably is a bit of an over-generalization, and I should've worded it better, but I've never met anyone who liked much western food. Sugar and/or oil-laden food seems to be the only thing they'd accept.
We recently had dinner with some Chinese folks. It was incredibly delicious to all of us Americans, but none of the Chinese liked it. I found it a little weird that they all rejected it.
It's because their bodies are special. Chinese food is normal, everything else is different. Different is bad. You might as well ask why Muslims don't eat pork.
bayuvar139:
Indeed, as they always love to point out out to us foreigners: it is our different bodies. LOL
Hulk:
If I have to hear "the Chinese body is different than American body" excuse one more pucking time, I will flying jump kick my mother-in-law in the teeth. In fact, she told me to do everything "the Chinese way" after my wife gave birth, "because Chinese bodies are different."
CHINESE BODIES ARE DIFFERENT, YOU HAVE TO TAKE TCM
CHINESE BODIES ARE DIFFERENT, YOU CAN'T EAT APPLES
CHINESE BODIES ARE DIFFERENT, YOU CAN'T PURCHASE SOFTWARE
CHINESE BODIES ARE DIFFERENT, YOU CAN'T PURCHASE MOVIES
CHINESE BODIES ARE DIFFERENT, YOU CAN'T *WURIejrwrjtgkedxjfkjjrtgykxfjjjastgq34jh8tgajkfd* *manic spasming continues*
Scandinavian:
....."Chinese bodies are different, they can survive in a cesspool of heavy metals and feces"
well im introducing my gf parents to:
italian food, indian curry, japanese salads and apetizers.....
when you like to cook and you can reward them....remember Skinner?...
seem to like the hell outta McD's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, KFC, Starbucks here in Guangdong...
Hulk:
McDonalds in China is much different than in America.
Pizza Hut is too.
Papa John's? Never tried it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's different.
KFC is different too, other than the chicken.
Never been to a Starbucks in China, or anywhere.
Not saying there's Chinese who like actual western foods, but I really haven't met any of them. I don't consider these few things in China to be western food, especially when most of it is changed for a specific audience. Nice marketing, but almost none of it is the same.
They haven't developed a taste for your delicious cornbread and fry-bread yet.
Hulk:
Oh man, I love those things. My wife likes cornbread. Maybe I should cook frybread too? 
Well I think it's because they are not used to good things like butter and cheese and rosemary-mustard-honey baked chicken... A good Mac n cheese. A home made burger. My Chinese friends won't even have salad, cause its raw n cold n not cooked or whatever bla bla bla...
Well, the fact that Pizza Hut is considered western high cuisine probably says it all about the quality and authenticity of western style food in China.
Seriously, though, I think it's the relative homegenity (is that even a word?) of the country, people grow up eating the local style of food and it's what they get used to.
When migrants first came to a relatively homogenous Australia in the 50s, most of us had little interest in their strange foreign food... the odd Italian joint and ubiquitous 'Chinese' restaurants were about all we could handle. Obviously, things changed, but it's taken time.
Hulk:
homogeneity. 
I agree. Ma
ybe it's because China is just opening up. Thirty years ago, you'd probably get killed by a firing squad for trying to get people to eat Pizza the Hutt, lol.
