At least we get some new food out of it

The New York Times highlights the upside of the recent surge in Chinese immigration: different kinds of Chinese food. "Fujian, on the southeast coast, is still the primary source of immigrants, but many who arrive from there actually have roots in the north, center and west of China... The shift means that the food now includes dishes that don’t fit American notions of Chinese food: griddle-baked sesame bread from China’s large Muslim minority, potato-eggplant salad from Harbin in the northeast, Beijing-style candied fruit, and grilled lamb skewers from China’s long-unreachable western frontier near Kazakhstan. There is now a mind-bending variety of noodles and dumplings: the flour foods (mian shi in Chinese), those wheat-based staples that feed China’s north and west, as rice traditionally feeds the southeast. (The Yangtze River is the divider.)"

Rico says he loves Chinese food (most of it, anyway) and looks forward to this sort of variety migrating to the Philly area...