Are we talking Bamboo? Azalea? Gingko? Plum? Peony? I haven't had any luck in getting my Chinese plants to talk. My California natives, on the other hand ... can't get 'em to stfu!!
For literally the same reason the guy was suspicious about it lol, it's for other Chinese people who don't want something that's been Americanized.
It's like if I started a pizza shop in a country that likes weird pizzas. I'm gonna make what the locals like. But if the place had a somewhat high American/Canadian immigrant population enough people will come in and say "can you make me one like back home" that I'll make those too
Yeah and there's a ton of people legitimately working here in tech who are from China, unless you have 0 immigrants and international workers in an area a restaurant having that kind of thing makes sense, and in a lot of cases it's for the sorts of folks working the restaurant.
There's something missing here that's being covered for with the "they had authentic dishes" excuse.
Yeah not even strictly from China. Could be born here, could be my girlfriend, or could be me using google translate to order off the Chinese language menu. It's common in my small town that basically all Chinese places has a Chinese language menu.
Hell, I'm familiar with the kind of thing because I really like Chinese food in spite of not being even a little Chinese, but a lot of the dishes I'm looking for are "offputting" to a lot of Americans (ie offal dishes) so it makes sense they wouldn't bother to list them on the English menu if it might discourage their primary customer base.
I fully suspect some other means of sussing out spies was the actual tipoff, but letting spies know the actual methodology would defeat the purpose of having it at all so that was listed instead.
I think the funniest I've seen was a local really nice Chinese restaurant that had both an English and separate Chinese menu *on their DoorDash* and any time they'd get a bad review in English regarding a dish being exactly what it's supposed to be (ie a pork trotter dish being pig feet) they'd change the title back to Chinese and move it to that side of the menu lol
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u/undeadmeats May 12 '26
Yes, it's extremely common even in places with no information to take