Not a huge Chinese food fan, never have been.. but learned a lot about the americanization of their “food” when I moved to Cali.
(Grew up in south and rust belt)
Nearly every staple dish you found in every chinese restaurant in the east, was non existent in the chinese restaurants on the west coast where I lived at the time.
As I said I never cared much for Chinese food anyway, but it was pretty obvious that a lot of the standard american Chinese food was not Chinese at all.
Not sure I care whether it’s ‘authentic’. Gained a lot of weight at one in the Midwest where good food is tough to come by. Only ate two dishes and never had to ask for more heat, although rarely did you ever see white people eating there. Finally asked the owner why the food tasted like a mixture of Korean and Chinese, and the owner explained that while she was Chinese, her husband doing the cooking was from Korea.