00:00 What happens when you combine Indian with Chinese food?
00:03 Answer, one of the greatest secret foods in the world.
00:06 Indo-Chinese is one of India's most popular foods, but most people outside of India haven't
00:10 heard of it.
00:11 And what's even more crazy is that most Chinese people haven't even heard of it.
00:15 These are dishes like chicken manchurian, sweet and sour soup, schezwan chutney, chili
00:19 chicken, chicken shashlik, things that we all grew up eating.
00:23 In fact as someone who was born in Hong Kong but visited their family in Mumbai every Christmas
00:27 and summer, I had no idea that chicken manchurian was not Chinese until just now actually.
00:35 It's not Chinese?
00:37 I'm Chinese and I've never heard of it.
00:39 It's not Chinese?
00:40 What?
00:41 So who invented Indo-Chinese food?
00:44 And what does it tell us about the history of these two regions?
00:47 I'm Keshia, Hong Kong-born Indian third culture kid, and this is EST Explains.
00:54 What happens when you marry Chinese technique with South Asian flavor and spice?
00:59 Indo-Chinese baby!
01:00 That's what Nelson Wang did in 1975 when he created the chicken manchurian.
01:04 He was a cook at the cricket club in Mumbai, but was born in Calcutta as a third generation
01:09 Chinese immigrant in India.
01:11 But he wasn't the first to experiment with these two cuisines.
01:14 Chinese immigration to India dates way back to the 18th century when many moved to Calcutta
01:18 as sugar mill workers.
01:19 Chinese workers filled many industries from leather to carpentry.
01:22 By the end of the second world war, Calcutta had over 26,000 Chinese immigrants.
01:27 And to cater to them, eateries specifically for Chinese workers began opening, and women
01:31 at home started selling food as a side business.
01:34 But migrants had to make do with whatever ingredients they could find in India.
01:38 When they couldn't find native Chinese greens like choy sum and gai lan and baby spinach,
01:42 they used carrots and cabbage instead.
01:44 Sichuan pepper was swapped for red chilies and crab for prawn.
01:47 Soy sauce stayed, but garlic and ginger, two staples of Indian cooking, were added.
01:52 And when the owners of restaurants realized that Indians also wanted to eat Chinese food,
01:55 the flavor was dialed up even more.
01:58 Then Chinese men increasingly married Indian women, and the union of these two cuisines
02:02 became even more tangible.
02:03 In 1925, when Calcutta's oldest Chinese restaurant Nanking opened, many Bollywood stars like
02:08 Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar would visit them often.
02:11 Today, Calcutta has its own Chinatown, called Tiretta Bazaar.
02:15 As for Indo-Chinese food in Pakistan, it followed Chinese immigrants as they entered the country
02:20 in waves, first during the partition of India in 1947, and then again in 1962 during the
02:25 Indo-Sino war, and then finally in 1971 after Bangladesh was formed.
02:30 Some of the oldest Chinese Pakistani eateries already existed though, like the ABC restaurant
02:34 that opened in the 1930s and Karachi's Sadar.
02:37 Today, Chinese restaurants dot many of Pakistan's metropolitan cities.
02:41 In Dhaka, Bangladesh, Chinese food leans more Cantonese, but the most incredible thing about
02:46 Indo-Chinese food?
02:47 It's now an export.
02:48 You can find it everywhere, all over the world, from America to the UK to Australia, and if
02:53 you're ever in Little India in New Jersey, you have to check out all the bomb Indo-Chinese
02:57 restaurants on Oak Tree Road.
02:59 It's proof that even as things get crazy in this world, food is something that is always
03:04 going to bring us together.
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03:08 (gentle music)
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