# Chinese Puzzle **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 3, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492 "2010-09-03T14:45:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/21 "2010-09-06T14:55:05Z")
Indian Chinese food is a distinct cuisine: > **[Indian Chinese cuisine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Chinese_cuisine)** > > Indian Chinese cuisine, Chinese Indian cuisine, Sino-Indian cuisine, Chindian cuisine, Hakka Chinese or Desi-Chinese cuisine is a distinct style of Chinese cuisine adapted to Indian tastes, combining Chinese foods with Indian flavours and spices. Though Asian cuisines have mixed throughout history throughout Asia, the most popular origin story of the fusion food resides with Chinese labourers of Calcutta (now called Kolkata), who immigrated to British Raj India looking for work. Opening res Chi... It’s the food served by Chinese who emigrated to India over the past 250 years. Some of them have then emigrated from India and now have restaurants in other parts of the world. ---
**Author:** ![oogabooga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/c68b51/32.png) [@oogabooga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oogabooga)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/22 "2010-09-07T12:44:11Z")
For rice to taste good, it needs surprising amounts of salt. Or (hot) spice, but not many westerners like that. I’ve noticed the same thing with pizza, and I’ve determined it’s because of the anchovies I love so much. I’m _ravenous_ shortly after eating a well made pizza with anchovies (and all the other tasty stuff) piled on it, but if I’m forced to leave them out because of a whiny companion who can’t even stand 1/2 and 1/2 or whatever, it’s as filling as you’d expect it to be. I’m fairly certain it has something to do with the meal breaking down and emptying from the stomach quicker and more completely (I have read about the volume in the stomach making you feel full somewhere before; it has pressure sensitive nerves in the lining) because salts are alkaline, and they react nicely with the acid in the stomach thus ‘sucking’ the nutrients out of the food in the process. That’s as far as I can theorize, but a lead to follow for some proper research and a proper answer perhaps…? Not to say there isn’t an element of culture in it. Americans in particular are fat slobs, and for a very good reason - they are simply unused to having empty stomachs because they can just grab a quick snack anytime they want. For many other cultures, hunger is a daily part of life, as food making is treated with respect, and quality is considered important. Understandably, this requires alot more effort than dropping week old bits of chicken into a day old vat of boiling oil for 60 seconds, so meals are few and far between, albeit larger and more nutritious. Some more interesting notes/experiences: -The germans put alot of salt in their potatoes too. It’s called ‘Kartoffelbrei’, and it also makes you hungry a short time afterwards. -A normal north-asian meal is several bowls of different tasty meats and vegetables and a large bowl of rice shared amongst many people. If the other stuff is good enough, the rice doesn’t need to be salted so much, and these kind of quality meals have easily lasted me until the next one. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/23 "2010-09-07T14:26:15Z")
> [@Ayatollah Yawuntz](#): > > Another place I know, lovely place, bills its fare as “Indian style Chinese cuisine”, as the owners are from Calcutta, and over the generations have included such items as bhajia and pakoras, roti etc. Where is this place? ---
**Author:** ![yawuntz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a5b964/32.png) [@yawuntz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yawuntz)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/24 "2010-09-07T17:21:00Z")
Vancouver B.C. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/25 "2010-09-07T17:34:11Z")
Dang. Too far way. ---
**Author:** ![Spiff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiff/32/9852_2.png) [@Spiff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiff)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/26 "2010-09-07T17:55:02Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > In fact, it is actually surprising that the Europeans never adopted the custom of not using a knife at the table. Considering that the history of Europe is filled with regular cycles of neighbors slaughtering neighbors, this is not at all surprising. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/27 "2010-09-07T18:41:10Z")
Actually, I fancy it had more to do with a greater taste for (and an economy that encouraged the consumption of) steaks, _etc…_ Chivalry, too, may have something to do with it; assassinating your enemy at the dinner table is far worse than murder, it is ungentlemanly. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/28 "2010-09-07T22:06:27Z")
acsenray, there are quite a few Indian-Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Where do you live? Google on the terms “Indian-Chinese cuisine,” “restaurant,” and the name of your city or state. Some nearby restaurants should come up. ---
**Author:** ![signal11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4da419/32.png) [@signal11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/signal11)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/29 "2010-09-08T04:00:12Z")
> [@oogabooga](#): > > For rice to taste good, it needs surprising amounts of salt. Or (hot) spice, but not many westerners like that. Rice can be incredibly sweet, smokey and everything in between, with great a deal of flavor variation within any one type of rice coming from the length of soak, cook time and type of heat used. Most NE Asian rice cooking methods add no salt to the rice. And there’s usually more water in the rice. > [@](#): > > -The germans put alot of salt in their potatoes too. It’s called ‘Kartoffelbrei’, and it also makes you hungry a short time afterwards. I can’t think of anything that makes me not want to eat anything else for the rest of the day than a big roesti for breakfast. Or for that matter, a traditional Georgia farm breakfast. Salt pork with eggs fried in the salt lard. Tasty, but too filling. I think your theory needs a little work. > [@](#): > > -A normal north-asian meal is several bowls of different tasty meats and vegetables and a large bowl of rice shared amongst many people. If the other stuff is good enough, the rice doesn’t need to be salted so much, and these kind of quality meals have easily lasted me until the next one. North asia is a big place. The part I’m most familiar with, rice is traditionally delivered covered to the table directly from the kitchen, in personal bowls and is considered uncouth to share once the chopsticks have touched the rice. Three full meals every day. > [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > Actually, I fancy it had more to do with a greater taste for (and an economy that encouraged the consumption of) steaks, _etc.._ Chivalry, too, may have something to do with it; assassinating your enemy at the dinner table is far worse than murder, it is ungentlemanly. I think it has more to do with most Europeans not figuring out table utensils until fairly recently. It wasn’t that long ago that European nobility ate with two knives and their hands. The Chinese, OTOH, have been using chopsticks for thousands of years. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > acsenray, there are quite a few Indian-Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Where do you live? Google on the terms “Indian-Chinese cuisine,” “restaurant,” and the name of your city or state. Some nearby restaurants should come up. I thought I was more or less eating a generic Indian-Chinese mixage in Burma a couple years ago. The Chinese and Indian spheres of influence are so big and have such a long history, everyone’s got their own variations. Run of the mill Chinese restaurant menus in Japan, Korea, or the US have very menu items in common. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/30 "2010-09-08T06:36:05Z")
signal11, read the Wikipedia entry on Indian-Chinese cuisine that I linked to in my earlier post. Indian-Chinese cuisine is not something that you can get in a American restaurant (or a restaurant anywhere else outside of India and China) that just randomly combines elements of Indian and Chinese cuisine. Nor is it just Burmese cuisine (or the cuisine of any other country vaguely near India and China). It’s a cuisine created in India (particularly near Calcutta) in the past 250 years by emigrants from China. Descendants of some of those people than emigrated to North America and other places and opened restaurants to serve the food they had created. That is what is meant by Indian-Chinese cuisine. The fact that Chinese restaurants in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. have a lot of items in common may be true, but that’s irrelevant to what I was talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/31 "2010-09-08T12:28:24Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > What about the use of MSG providing a richness to the food so that you think you’re satiated without filling up? I have heard this theory alot recently, I wonder what research has been done. I am a big eater with a high metabolism and I am almost always hungry from 30-60 minutes after eating Chinese food. IMHO I believe it’s the rice and breaded dishes that absorb liquids and expand in your stomach filling you up faster but are easily processed by your body and you’re hungry again. If, say, I’m at a buffet I will limit the amount of rice and breaded servings and how much I drink and I feel satiated much longer. If I have dine-in or take out I usually will order enough for a doggy bag or a snack later.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/32 "2010-09-08T12:36:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > acsenray, there are quite a few Indian-Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Where do you live? Google on the terms “Indian-Chinese cuisine,” “restaurant,” and the name of your city or state. Some nearby restaurants should come up. I have never seen an IndianChinese restaurant in the U. S. I’ve even been to a place run by Chinese from Calcutta but they served standard American Chinese food. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/33 "2010-09-08T13:29:23Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > acsenray, there are quite a few Indian-Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Where do you live? Google on the terms “Indian-Chinese cuisine,” “restaurant,” and the name of your city or state. Some nearby restaurants should come up. I found some in the Boston area, not too far away, and now I’ve got to try this. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/34 "2010-09-08T19:15:04Z")
> [@elkyyy](#): > > In all of these deliberations, one thing has been overlooked so far. The lowly FORTUNE COOKIE. > > To hold it in one’s hand, to fondle, consider and then break it … to contemplate the whiteness of its paper message before reading the deep philosophical meaning. The astonished realization of its import to one’s previously meaningless existence. The exuberance of recognizing its healing message, the joyous acceptance in physical exhortatious respondence and stunned appreciation of its transformatory healing significance! > > All that can hardly be underestimated. > > And yet! In the same vein as Mao-Tse and Tchiang-kai centuries ago agreed on, and many new ice cream parlors in Shanghai now pronouce: the Fortune Cookie is NOT, nor will it ever be, just a paper inclusion! NO! It is the quintessential expression of our new age, the predicatory signage of things to come in bed. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/35 "2010-09-08T23:36:51Z")
acsenray, here, for instance, is a restaurant about four miles from where I live that offered Indian-Chinese at one point: > **[Subcontinental Drift - Washington City Paper](https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/248700/subcontinental-drift/)** > > Philip Mathew stands over my table, his anxiousness palpable despite the practiced graciousness of his manner. “All right, who put you onto this?” he asks. Mathew, the owner of Bombay \[…\] Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer it anymore. Tell us where you live and we’ll help you find a restaurant offering Indian-Chinese food near there. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/36 "2010-09-08T23:43:10Z")
I’m in NoVa. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/37 "2010-09-08T23:54:53Z")
There’s the Wah Taj restaurant and the Masala Wok restaurant, both in Herndon. ---
**Author:** ![signal11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4da419/32.png) [@signal11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/signal11)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2010, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/38 "2010-09-09T03:31:53Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > signal11, read the Wikipedia entry on Indian-Chinese cuisine that I linked to in my earlier post. Indian-Chinese cuisine is not something that you can get in a American restaurant (or a restaurant anywhere else outside of India and China) that just randomly combines elements of Indian and Chinese cuisine. Nor is it just Burmese cuisine (or the cuisine of any other country vaguely near India and China). It’s a cuisine created in India (particularly near Calcutta) in the past 250 years by emigrants from China. Descendants of some of those people than emigrated to North America and other places and opened restaurants to serve the food they had created. That is what is meant by Indian-Chinese cuisine. I understand what you were saying, you’re not reading me correctly. Burmese cuisine particularly, and SE Asian (“Indo-Chinese”) cuisine in general, IS a mixture of many elements of the Indian and Chinese spheres. I mentioned it more in as a joke, but I guess that didn’t come across. > [@](#): > > The fact that Chinese restaurants in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. have a lot of items in common may be true, but that’s irrelevant to what I was talking about. The word “few” was missing between “very” and “items in common.” It is relevant, mainly because your interpretation and indeed the Wikipedia interpretation of “Indian-Chinese” cuisine is very narrow. The fusion of Indian and Chinese cuisine is very common throughout the world and are specific culinary traditions and not just a random mixture, as you put it. I’d say half the Chinese restaurants in Nairobi are Indian influenced Chinese. The same is true for Kampala and my favorite Indian restaurant in Mbale is Chinese owned. And that’s just East Africa. The Chinese and Indian diasporas are so large that cross pollination didn’t just happen once and in one place. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2010, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/39 "2010-09-09T07:08:14Z")
signal11, it may well be true that there were a number of other places where there were fusions between Chinese and Indian cuisines. I was going just by the definition of “Indian-Chinese cuisine” given in Wikipedia, which is the definition I have heard other people use. I have no idea what the general use of this term is. I don’t see any point arguing about this. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492/40 "2010-09-09T16:56:18Z")
I submit that the _“hungry an hour after eating”_ Chinese puzzle may be explained in small part by the calorie-burn of Western chop stick handling (i.e. amusingly inefficient). But, the primary reason for the adage is due to the type of Chinese food eaten (i.e. Americanized swill) by Westerners at the time the adage become popularized. In the 60’s and 70’s, Asian cuisine at its finest, at least in my neck of the Western Hemisphere woods, may be summed up thusly: _ **La Choy** _ and _ **Chun King** _. _“Oriental Night”_ at my house (and, no doubt, millions of other American homes) consisted of mom opening up the familiar red duplex cans of Chun King Chop Suey. Suey in the top can; “noodles” in the bottom can. I can’t locate _Chung King’s_ Chop Suey list of ingredients, but I recall it containing a great deal of cellulose-rich things, like bean sprouts, celery chunks, bamboo shoots and, I think, wood chips. Now, as we are all aware, you actually [lose weight](http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery.asp) when you eat things like celery (in fact, I’ve finally regained my boyish svelte figure by giving up my gym membership and concentrating on a rigid aerobic celery-eating work-out program). OK, so we’ve established a negative-calorie sink in the top can of Chung King Chop Suey, but what about that illusive _bottom_ can…the _“noodles”_? You remember …those thin, hard, vermiform structures you pour the stove-top heated suey on top of. If they were indeed some type of processed grain noodle, this would render my _Chop Suey Negative Calorie Sink Theory_ dead in the water (carbohydrates are both calorie-rich and satiate one’s appetite for at least an hour). Therefore, I strongly suspect that Chun King’s “noodles” are, in fact, dried tape worm larvae—reanimatable from their desiccated hibernation upon contact with Chop Suey juice. (BTW, ingesting desiccated tape worm larvae is part-two of my comprehensive weight-loss program—soon to be published and available on [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com)). Furthermore, on special occasions and holidays, mom (meaning all Western Hemisphere mothers during the 60’s and 70’s) would upgrade our _ **Chun King** _ entrée to the house special, labeled, as I recall, _Chicken Chow Mein Kompf_ (rough translation, _“my struggle with processed chicken that tastes like house cat”_). The resulting gastroenteritis, diarrhea and vomiting would most assuredly give one a feeling of emptiness an hour or so after eating. Ignorance fought and slain. You’re welcome. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-puzzle/552492.md?page=3)