Chinese

Chinese cuisine is the most widespread, most global, most popular of all cuisines. Wherever you go, anywhere in the world, you will find a Chinese restaurant. How is that? Okay, so they are the most populous nation in the world and Chinese immigrants have settled everywhere – they took their cuisine with them. But Indians are the second most populous and have also settled everywhere – but Indian cuisine is not as globally ubiquitous or popular.

You may not realise it, but Chinese food has found favour with every other culture and nation. Everybody likes Chinese. Let me rephrase – you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t. Even Indians, almost all one billion of us, like Chinese. The thousands of Chinese eateries in India are testimony to that. Sure, we ‘tweaked’ their cuisine to make our own Punjabi, Gujarati and South Indian versions of it, but it’s still billed as Chinese. I doubt you’ll find the reverse in China. I don’t think China has thousands of Indian restaurants.

What is it about Chinese food that first makes it so globally accepted – and second, so addictive? Is there some secret ingredient (which is actually really bad for us) that makes everyone susceptible to it? Like a drug – you try it once and you’re hooked? Is it the famed Ajino Moto? Is that it?

It is often said that the US symbols and icons like Hollywood, McDonalds (KFC), Coke (Pepsi), Levi’s, MTV and more recently, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook… are its great cultural exports, its soft power – whose influence has spread across the world, corrupting the youth and permeating the very fabric of foreign societies.

For China (by sheer chance I grant you that), its cuisine is its greatest export. Omnipresent across all price ranges, accepted by all social strata, consumed by rich and poor alike, it is the greatest example of China exerting and projecting soft power across the globe -more than all the sweat shops and outsourced factories that manufacture for the world.

Unfortunately, it’s disorganised. Chinese food, without any grander design or strategic planning, is everywhere. On a global level, the only cuisine that can rival Chinese are McDonalds and KFC – and these are giant multinational corporations with billions of dollars in marketing spends and extremely well-defined expansion strategies.

When we think of world wars and soft power, we rarely think of food. Think again – ‘unbranded’ Chinese Food versus Branded American Fast Food – the battle for hearts and minds and stomachs rages on silently 🙂