By Visitor7 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, from Wikimedia CommonsAs a child growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the early 60’s, I had no access to “real” Chinese food. My Mom used to make Chinese food by opening up a can of “Chun King Chicken Chow Mein” or “La Choy Chop Suey” and heating up the mixture in a pot on the stove. We would put crispy “chow mein noodles” on our plates and slop the chop suey on top of the noodles. “Chinese vegetables” were a mixture of celery, carrots, snow peas, bamboo shoots, and bean sprouts. We always had a bottle of soy sauce on the table to sprinkle generously on the top. Our favorite Chinese restaurant, the Pagoda, had fancier dishes. There we could get shrimp fried rice (my favorite), pressed duck, egg rolls, and sweet and sour pork. Pots of tea were free. At the end of the meal, the check came on a small platter with enough fortune cookies for everyone at the table to have one of their own. In the middle of each sweet, bland cookie shaped like a Chinese ignot, there were words of wisdom like, “Your dreams will all come true.” and “Wealth awaits you very soon.”
In all my years in China, I’ve never once seen Chop Suey on a Chinese menu, nor have I been given a fortune cookie at the end of a meal. Chinese food in middle America was a combination of real Chinese food, American ingredients, and cooks who did their best to modify Chinese flavors to suit their perceptions of American tastes. To a young boy in middle America, eating fried rice off a plate with chopsticks was not only exotic but challenging. My low point was a restaurant in Oklahoma City called The Chopstick. When we asked the blond haired teeny bopper waitress what she would recommend from the menu, she told us she’d never tried the Chinese food, but said the cheeseburgers were pretty good. Ignoring her advise, we ordered Chinese shrimp. Unable to find the shrimp in the breading, we all wished we had taken her advice.
The Panda in the Room PD 
