Lactose tolerance is much more common among people with Northern European ancestry; people from other ancestries (such as Asian) are much more likely to be lactose intolerant. This article cites that 90+% of East Asian adults suffer from lactose intolerance.
Sure, but lactose intolerance is common in many places. It’s not like it can’t be overcome or mitigated. Or that Asians everywhere don’t enjoy pizza or other dairy. Or that there is no Chinese cheese (a Google suggests four common types but I had not heard of all of them.)
In medical school we learned of differences in how various people metabolize alcohol. It was still pretty popular the last time I checked.
I think that lactose-free dairy products (and medications like Lactaid) are a fairly recent development (i.e., within the last few decades), as is the availability of western dairy-based food products (like pizza) in China.
The historical fact that the vast majority of Chinese were lactose-intolerant likely explains why cheese was not a popular ingredient in the various traditional Chinese cuisines, which is what you seemed to be asking about:
I offered our Chinese waiter a taste of our wine (we’d known him awhile). He frowned and said, “Chinese people do not drink”.
Cheese, except for cottage cheese, is quite low in lactose. Most of the lactose is in the whey, a byproduct of cheese making process, and not the curds, which are formed into cheese. This probably explains why eating cheese is more popular than drinking milk in some places where rates of lactose intolerance are high.
That may be, but if pretty much everyone in a population is lactose intolerant, it might explain why a dairy industry (including the production of cheese) never really took off.
Fair enough. And thanks for the interesting link.
Mongolian cuisine has a lot of dairy and cheese. So that goes for Inner Mongolia as well. China is a diverse place.
I think the point is knowing the name of a dish but not knowing the culture might be less than optimal. Imagine a visitor from China puzzling over ‘Denver omelette’ or ‘toad in the hole’.
But…they can ask about it if they can read it.
A menu in Chinese is inscrutable to most Americans unless they have been taught the language. But, I can use translation tech which will show me there is a Beijing Egg on the menu.
I have no idea what that is but now I can ask the waiter. Without that tech I would never even know to ask.
That said, I have used it on Chinese menus and they do better than you’d think. The names are…descriptive. Not saying it is perfect but it helps some.
They may get the Hot Dog all wrong and never think to ask because it seems so evident. Would they be disappointed? Probably.
A couple of times, while travelling, I have been in a situation where the restaurant workers and I had zero languages in common. At that point, miming can distinguish, say, vegetables from meat, but you have to be prepared to pick something randomly and be surprised.
FWIW here is Google Lens translating a Chinese menu. I admit, I’d have many questions. But I am further along than with the menu I cannot read at all.
First pic is the original menu. Second pic is the Google translation:
Hot waist flower sounds interesting.
I kinda liked “Shoot the Cucumber.”
Definitely want to know more about that dish.
Too salty.
Gotta say, one of the most memorable meals I’ve ever had was a 4th of July picnic when I was in college. I was in a Bible study group that did a lot of outreach to the Chinese students, and they were all eating our food, and we were all eating their food, which had all identifiable ingredients and it was all delicious.
This has always been my assumption, but for some reason I never really dug into it… if I drink a glass of milk, I’m in for an unpleasant remainder of my day, but I can eat a half-pound of cheddar/swiss/mozzarella cheese with no problem.
I’m most curious about the “Saliva chicken” or the “Gluttonous Bullfrog”. Not saying I want to eat either, but the names are spectacularly intriguing.
Or the “Couple’s Lung Slices”, which is obscured by that black square in the screenshot.
There are several restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown that have the two-menu system. I went to them with people who were in on the “secret menu” thing, I had the impression the average non-Chinese tourist probably would never know the other menu even existed in most cases. The second menu is entirely in Chinese which makes ordering very interesting. At the time I had been eating enough Chinese food to be able to identify characters for certain items but it was a pretty crude understanding on my part.