I have a wok, and do a lot of Chinese-style dishes at home. I am fortunate, in that I have several Chinese groceries nearby. Do you cook Chinese food at home? How does a typical Chinese restaurant fare compare, to what you cook at home?
Mrs Shibb is Chinese/Thai - she speaks Thai and English, her grandfather spoke Thai and Chinese. We cook stir fry sort of stuff about once a week. She’d eat rice every night if it were only up to her, but I prefer not to eat rice every meal.
I can’t offer an answer on the second part of your question, other than to turn it to Thai and say that most (all?) Thai restaurants only offer a few items that are vaguely like what you’d get in Thailand. Pad Thai tends to be the closest. Some places will have a separate Thai menu that you could order in, but none near us do. The Thai restaurant I ate at for dinner tonight (I’m on a business trip) did have an insert at the beginning that was only in Thai.
I don’t really like to cook Chinese food at home, as I can’t get close to what a Chinese restaurant can do (no wok hay, although my food tends to be a lot healthier without all the grease). As I have a radiant element cooktop, wok cooking is out for the most part, so I just use a non-stick Chef’s pan. My mostly Scandinavian wife, bless her heart, does try to cook in that style as well, but her skill (and desire) is, well, limited.
I’m personally more likely to cook Thai/Indian curries, Korean barbecue, Tex-Mex or Italian before I make something Chinese (unless I get a request from my in-laws). But since my wife does most of the cooking before I get home from work, I eat what she makes! 
I’m not Chinese, though I lived there for 2 years and have a great passion for the food of the Beijing/Tianjin region.
Without the proper oils and spices, I’ve been unable to create the best aspects of the food. I guess my wife and I can create some decent stuff, but the best stuff requires the right stuff.
So, do any of our Chinese Dopers get the right spices and oils to make the food?
Not all the time, but I do make it a point to cook Chinese every once in a while. There was a period of about two years where I would cook stir-fry with rice almost every single night of the week. I finally decided to try and get myself out of the rut, and have since been cooking a lot of pasta, pizza, vietnamese food, and mediterranean.
I do. I’m not really able to make anything else. I don’t know the first thing about baking, broiling, or roasting, but I’m damn good at stir-frying and steaming.
I usually make more homestyle cooking, stuff that my grandma and mom made for me growing up, like red-cooked stews, jingdu spareribs, lion’s head meatballs, steamed dumplings, stuff like that. My family’s originally from the Shanghai region, so that’s the kind of stuff I make.
When I have friends over, I sometimes make more restaurant-style dishes, but I almost never do it for myself- it’s just too much work.
As far as getting the right spices, I haven’t really had a problem. More unusual things like Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and tianjin dried peppers can be found at Chinese supermarkets fairly easily, and if you’re not close to a Chinese supermarket, there are some good places online that sell these things as well.
I’m the white devil but I have a relative who immigrated from Hong Kong and cooks Chinese food every day that I’ve seen. It’s a little different from what I’ve had in Chinese restaurants, but not by much and he uses ingredients that you can find in any American grocery store.
Love to have some of those recipes.
(Hint, hint)
I married a Korean and about three-quarters of what I cook is Korean. (I refuse to eat spicy food for breakfast.)
My Chinese friends seem to cook only Chinese food.