Changing Chinese Food Availability

Immigrants from elsewhere in China did not arrive in large numbers until after Congress rescinded Chinese exclusion acts. Therefore, before the 1940s, almost all Chinese food in the United States was Cantonese as the earliest immigrants were from the southern province then called Canton (now Guangdong). After 1965, major immigration restrictions eased, and the Chinese population grew to about 500,000 men and women. Many of the newer immigrants came from regions other than southern China. When immigration restrictions eased even more in 1981 and 1987, additional immigrants came from all over China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and a few came from Cuba and Latin America. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were about 3.5 million legal Chinese immigrants and many undocumented residents.