I got the same feeling. I read recently that fortune cookies are only made in the United States, and the rest of the world (including China and Japan) don’t really even know what they are.
Most Americans would not eat the food they actually serve in China. My in-laws took a long tour of rural China about 10 years ago -- they learned the hard way to stash granola bars and biscuits from the hotel in their pockets. They said the food was unrecognizable (and inedible).