Undergraduate Fellowship in Digital Humanities (UFDH)

TikTok has become a popular source for trend, news, and controversy, pushing out constant videos catering to a new age of digital information. From TikTok came the Chinese food debate, a war between American Chinese cuisine and British Chinese cuisine on which is “better”. Americans, disgusted by British Chinese cuisine’s excessive use of curry sauce and seemingly inauthentic Chinese dishes of prawn crackers and other fried staples, encouraged British diners to expand their palates beyond their seemingly bland and saucy dishes. Even large creators such as Soogia, a Korean American TikToker prominent in Asian American spaces, commented on the debate. Brits, on the other hand, defend their unique cuisine claiming that while it may not be “authentic”, its history born from Chinese diaspora in Britain makes it not as different from American Chinese cuisine as it may seem.