Can a new wave of restaurants help China win the hearts?

Grilled fish on a generous bed of hot pepper and pepper from southwestern China, Chongqing; Sheep lamb’s skewers from Xinjiang in the far north; The fiery rice pasta with snail flavor from the famous rivers in Guangsheshi, south.

All this is on a picnic on Liang Sele Street in Singapore.

Chinese food has a moment outside China, driven by great success and intense competition in the country. There is no more clear place than Singapore, as the Chinese ethnic people make up more than three quarters of the multiple population.

This trend is not surprising, given that the soft Chinese power appears to be a height – think about the dolls of Labubu viral, human robots and future cities that impress travelers.

Chinese cooking for centuries and advanced, among the list of Beijing’s priorities to turn the country into a “force in culture” by 2035.

However, since the growing authoritarian authoritarian China is trying to gain all over the world, the luxury table may be just its most effective drawing, and reduces this.

Lukeen, China’s answer to Starbucks, opened the first overseas store in Singapore in March 2023. After two years, there are more than 60. Last month, the series appeared for the first time in the United States with two stores in New York.

Five major Chinese brands, including Luckin, 124 outlets in Singapore, are running twice the number they own in 2023. It is difficult to miss evidence: huge and bright ads of hot pepper dishes, and sometimes Chinese breakdowns, in shopping centers, buses and metro stations.

From the chains established to the mother, pop, and elegant restaurants that challenge tired stereotypes, all of which took off here before they jumped further, to other places in Southeast Asia and then around the world.

Thomas Dubuis, the modern China historian, says success in Singapore is “evidence of the concept of subsequent expansion and persuading potential investors that the series is ready to go to the world.”

It is an easy place enough for new restaurants to create a store. It is diverse, which makes it a great kitchen for testing for very different tastes, from South Asia to European.

More importantly, Singapore is a travel center where, as Mr. Dubua says, eating is similar to a national hobby: “People go to Singapore to eat.”

What they will find is the lists that exceed dumplings everywhere and a hot bowl. Entrepreneurs behind the new Chinese cooking wave want to show people the wide and varied comfort of China. They cannot fake it.

Many Chinese ethnic Singapore visitors – not only from China, but from Bangkok, Palala Lamborning, Manila, Jakarta, etc. – with an advanced understanding of the Chinese cuisine.

Claire Wang, Marketing Director of Nong Gen Ji, a series of Honan in central China, which is famous for its hot dishes, says there is no one type of fire, a series of Hunan in central China, which is famous for its hot dishes.

She says Hunan’s fare has “a taste that has been achieved through fermented hot pepper”, unlike “Sichuan’s Numbing-Spicy or Sidling Guizhou.”

After launching more than 100 restaurants in China, Nong Gen Ji opened the first station outside in Singapore in late 2023. Since then, six others were established here, five in Malaysia, and one in Canada, and it is now looking for opportunities in Thailand, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

It is definitely evidence of the increasing appetite for pepper, especially the Chinese type – a trend that would satisfy the former China leader Mao Zaidong. He was born and raised in Hunan, he thought, “You cannot be revolutionary if you don’t eat pepper.”

For the least revolutionary between us, there is a lot on the table: steam cakes, red meat, preserved vegetables, rice, seasonal strikes, and flavoring seafood precisely.

It is completely spread compared to the “Chinese food” that many of the world used to, especially in the West-food that Chinese immigrants cook in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was often seen on non-low restaurants.

Food was simplified to fit local tastes, and thus ended in the United States with non -Chinese foodstuffs such as orange chicken and Suey pieces, UK with Zhao Min, sweet chicken balls and car.

These very basic dishes are written, largely: “The appreciation full of the diversity and development of the Chinese culture of the vascular newspaper”, in its new book, is an invitation to a banquet. Mrs. Dunlop, a British food writer, spent her career to cook in China’s kitchens and study her food.

Then there is the stereotype, called the Chinese restaurant syndrome, a partial hate legend that can make the food feel the disease due to the supposed high additional add -ons, especially the MSG flavor factor. New research indicates that MSG does not make you sick, and although old Chinese restaurants may have been using flavor shortcuts, they were hardly unique in using additives.

Now, the growing diaspora allows the Chinese restaurants loyal to its roots, knowing that they have customers calling for “suitable Chinese food”. This coincided with more adventurous tastes in the largest cities in the world.

When Thomas Tao was a student in New York in 2010, he says he rarely coincided with high -end Chinese fashion, but the Americans were very prepared to pay the Japanese Sashimi price.

He is now the vice president of the green tea chain, which includes more than 400 outlets in China offers fresh seafood and delicious soup from Zhejiang. It will open its first site in Singapore later this month.

The food exceeds, with “overwhelming” restaurants. Deners listens to Guzheng, which is Chinese, while sitting on tables in the form of boats surrounded by landscapes around the western lake, the coastal boycott icon.

“We want to help people to be more acceptable to our culture and correct the idea that the Chinese cuisine is” poor “,” says Mr. Tao.

It is not the only series to try this. Sichuan Ally, which opened its first port in New York last year, is inspired by the “Chengde’s Chengde” in the early twentieth century – Warren in the old streets where people mixed and washed.

Food tells the story of a people, and is estimated to visit somewhere, perhaps the best glimpse of it.

Can the Chinese schedule help soften the image of the country whose ambitions often collide with the livelihood of Western powers and neighbors?

In her book, Dunlop cates that one of its readers indicates that Beijing can more effectively display its soft power by “changing the controversial Confucius institutes to the first -class Chinese restaurants.”

Beijing is Fight a lot On the International Front: Trump’s tariff, claim Spy plots And a world cautious about his economic strength.

Even this explosion in Chinese restaurant chains is worried by local companies in Singapore who are wondering whether they can keep up with it.

Severe competition in China and the decline in spending forced these chains abroad. Their expansion speed is not satisfied – it brings with them a reliable supply chain, marketing acumen, and deep pockets that allow them to sacrifice profit.

They have a playing book. You are encouraged first to register for free membership that gets a discount. Meals come with a free flow of tea, dipped sauces and pickled vegetables.

winner? Unlike most Singaporean restaurants, the tissues-which are needed after a hot-free meal.

This is not the first time that China’s success exports have been launched Anxiety in his younger neighbors southeast Asia. It has already happened with a lot of Chinese imports, from clothes to tools.

But food, some believe that this deal will decompose.

“The Chinese people are proud of the culture of cooking, which also acts as a strong form of diplomacy,” says Felix Ren, director of food consulting at Singapore.

Encourage it Table tennis matches that helped melt historical tensions Between Beijing and Washington in 1971.

“Chinese cuisine may be just the new Ping Pong diplomacy,” he says.