HISTORY

The 1965 liberalization of immigration laws brought new arrivals and new food, from Sichuan and Hunan and Shanghai. Multiculturalism and Nixon's visit to China in 1972, meanwhile, inspired an "authenticity revolution"—a transformation further fueled by a changing clientele. Charles Lai, the director of the museum, recalls wandering into a Chinatown restaurant as a boy in the '60s and realizing that everyone else in the place was white. "I felt like, what am I doing here?" he says. But no more: Today, Chinese and Chinese Americans are important customers, as are other Asians and Asian Americans, and some restaurants are once again catering to newly arrived workers. How "authentic" they are, though, depends on how you define "authentic." "It is and isn't a return to the way things were at the beginning," says Lee. She points out that with globalization, food is changing quickly even in Asia; what constitutes Chinese food is evolving.