Real Chinese food, like real Japanese, real Korean, and every other kind of ethnic homecooking including US, includes a lot of “poor people need to eat, so cook it if it’s cheap and available” dishes. I respect this. That’s the kind of thinking that let our ancestors survive long enough for us to descend from them.
OTOH, there is such a thing as being too authentic and down-home.
Um, yeah. I ate the Three Kinds of Octopus at that Boston Chinese restaurant, but the baby octopi were almost too much for me because I felt sorry for them. And the Korean seaweed slaw wasn’t a big success for me either, even though I normally like seaweed. So even though I actively enjoy eating blue, green, and black foods, I don’t think sandworms in aspic with octopus on the side is going to be my happy plate.
This is Xiamen, once known as Amoy. So you know what to look out for.
