NYTimes reporter Jennifer 8. Lee talks about her culinary mission for the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes, that in many cases aren’t really either one and in others have combined to form a new cuisine.
Let me present the question to you: If our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie, you should ask yourself, how often do you eat apple pie, versus how often do you eat Chinese food..If you think about it, a lot of the foods that Americans think of as Chinese food are barely recognizable to Chinese. For example, I took a whole bunch of fortune cookies back to China, gave them to Chinese to see how they would react.
What is this? Should I try it? Try it! What is it called? Fortune cookie. There’s a piece of paper inside! What is this? You’ve won a prize! What is this? It’s a fortune! Tasty!
So, where are they from? The short answer is, actually, they’re from Japan.
Watch the video for an educational and amusing 16 minutes.
Organikos 
That is absolutely true. I worked two years in China and I can assure you that the food of the western Chinese restaurants has nothing to do with Chinese food. Not only fortune cookies (invented in California –not Japan- by either David Jung, a Chinese immigrant living in Los Angeles or in San Francisco by a Japanese immigrant named Makoto Hagiwara) but also “chop suey” and their flagship “spring rolls”. All them unknown in China.
-Noodle soup with beef.
-Beef, yes.
You get three-delice fried rice…
-Sorry, this is not noodle soup with beef…
-Beef, yes.
-Are you an asshole?
-Asshole, yes. 🙂