Food, Culinary Identity, and Transnational Culture: Chinese Restaurant Business in Southern California

This article examines how restaurant business in southern California reflects the social background, life style, and ethnic identity of the post-1965 Chinese immigrants. Instead of wholesale assimilation, Chinese immigrants have maintained some cultural traditions such as food. With restaurants, grocery stores, and ethnic strip malls visibly congregated in the San Gabriel Valley, their transnational identity is no longer an abstract idea but a solid and tangible reality. Food culture of contemporary Chinese Americans brings out a seemingly paradoxical outcome of immigrant adaptation. It is possible and increasingly preferred for many immigrants to maintain their Chinese ethnicity while becoming American.