On a business trip to the United States, a client took me to a restaurant claiming to be "the most authentic Chinese restaurant in New York."

When the dishes arrived, the peanuts in the Kung Pao Chicken were raw, the Fish Fragrant Shredded Pork was overly sweet, and underneath the Szechuan Spicy Beef was a bed of raw lettuce leaves.
Before I could speak, a middle-aged man with a Chinese face at the neighboring table suddenly stood up and shouted at the kitchen in Chinese: "Boss, what kind of stuff are you making?"
The entire restaurant fell silent. He turned around, looked at me, and then said, "Are you from China?"
I said yes. He walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down. He said, "Do you know how many of these scam Chinese restaurants there are in New York?"
I said I didn't know. He said three hundred. Each menu is identical, all featuring sesame chicken, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, and fried noodles.
Americans have been eating this for decades, thinking it's Chinese food.
I asked what he was cursing at just now.
He said he wasn't cursing the food. It was his father. His father is the chef of this restaurant.
Twenty years ago, he sneaked into the U.S. from Fujian, and has been frying sesame chicken here for twenty years.
Last week, he sold his house back in his hometown and sent the money home to buy a house for his son, while he still lives in the basement.
He picked up the plate of Fish Fragrant Shredded Pork, looked at it, then put it down.
And said something that I remember to this day—"You curse the gutter oil back home, while we fry sesame chicken abroad. Neither side should look down on the other."
He put down the plate, stood up, and before leaving, said one last thing to me: "When you go back, tell the people in China not to say that foreign Chinese food is bad. The dish that tastes terrible is the rent we pay here."