National Chinese Take-Out Day Date in the current year: November 5, 2024

The roots of American Chinese cuisine can be traced back to the California Gold Rush. In the mid-19th century, tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in to work as railroad workers and miners. Once the Gold Rush was over, many of them chose to stay and started their own small businesses, including restaurants.

Chinese restaurant owners cooked what they knew, but they had to modify their recipes, adapting them to American tastes and making up for the lack of certain traditional ingredients. Over time, they developed a distinct style of Chinese food that is not actually found in China. For the most part, it was inspired by Cantonese cuisine because a lot of Chinese immigrants came to the United States from Guangdong province in South China.

Popular dishes of American Chinese cuisine that are not found in China include Chinese chicken salad, chop suey, crab rangoon puffs, fortune cookies (which were actually borrowed from Japanese cuisine), General Tso’s chicken, pepper steak, and others. Some dishes, such as egg rolls or orange chicken, are known in China, but their American Chinese versions are different from the versions found in China.

The concept of take-out, i.e. cooked meals that can be eaten elsewhere, dates back to antiquity, but take-out food didn’t become widely available until after the Industrial Revolution. Chinese take-out became popular in the United States after World War II, when there was a huge increase in sales of foods that could be purchased from restaurants and heated at home. A lot of consumers preferred Chinese food because it was exotic (but not too exotic, since it had been adapted to local tastes), tasty, relatively inexpensive, and traveled well.

The signature folded paperboard containers for Chinese take-out were originally designed to transport raw oysters; they were adopted by Chinese restaurants because they could hold a variety of foods except for soups and other liquid dishes. Although oyster pails are used by other restaurants, they are strongly associated with Chinese take-out.

The origins of National Chinese Take-Out Day are unclear, but don’t let this stop you from celebrating and indulging in delicious Chinese food. Of course, the best way to celebrate the holiday is to order take-out from your favorite Chinese restaurant or discover a new restaurant to order from. A lot of Chinese restaurants offers discounts and promotions on the occasion of the holiday; make sure you don’t miss out on them!

Don’t forget to snap a photo of your Chinese take-out and post it on social media with the hashtag #NationalChineseTakeOutDay to spread the word about the holiday. Tagging the restaurant you’ve ordered your take-out from is also a good idea, especially if it’s a local, family-owned business that needs as much support as it can get.