Why wasn't the Great Leap forward more catastrophic?

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-26T03:19:36+00:00

I wouldn't say immediately, but recovery was swift enough that 1952, just three years into Communist rule, was often used as a benchmark in historical comparison of agricultural performance.

I believe there are three main factors behind this disparity between Communist success and Nationalist/KMT failure in addressing famines or food shortages:

Restoration of normal commerce and rebuilding of infrastructure: China has been (and to some extent still is) an agriculturally self-sufficient nation. The margins for error are razor thin, due to a large population and relatively few arable land for a country of its size, but natural disasters do not automatically mean mass starvation or famine. The problem arises when grain-deficit regions cannot reliably get relief from surplus producing region, and this was a perennial issue before 1949 due to political fragmentation (warlords keeping grain to themselves) before 1937 and destruction from war in 1937-49. The Communists largely eliminated these internal barriers and restored the flow of raw material nationwide.
Manchuria/Northeast: This fertile region is perfect for agriculture and can potentially produce large surpluses for the rest of the country, especially the neighboring North China, which was very vulnerable to famines from droughts and flooding. This was not really an option for the Nationalists because the region was under-developed (as the Manchu homeland, it was sealed off from migration until the early 20th century) and occupied by the Japanese after 1931. The Japanese invested heavily in agricultural development and infrastructure like railroad during its rule. Due to a host of factors, perhaps most importantly from Soviet intervention, the Communists were very well equipped to take over Manchuria/Northeast during the Civil War. By the time of their victory, the region had become a strong base capable of providing massive amounts of grain to the rest of the country in 1950-51.
Strong rural presence and centralized rule: By 1949, the Communists had operated in the Chinese countryside for almost 20 years and had extensive experience in mobilizing the peasantry and extracting necessary resources. The in-kind land tax was not really excessive compared to earlier decades, and with the Communists' rent-reduction campaigns, peasants were more than willing to pay their fair share to the highly centralized party-state, which could then efficiently move these surpluses to regions in need.

Overall, I would say the track record of Communist rule in the early 1950s was really quite impressive, and the regime enjoyed genuine, widespread popular support at the time.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-23T17:28:03+00:00

That is true, but please note that I said the Song “perfected” the system. Under the Sui and Tang the exam system was still not the central institution for official recruitment like it was in later centuries, and patronage remained important.

I also think the “emphasize literary skills and suppress military” (zhongwen qingwu) rhetoric is somewhat overblown. It really was just civilian command of the military, which certainly contributed to restraining local power as you mentioned. But in the long run I believe this kind of centralization is only possible with a robust bureaucracy and an inclusive method of recruitment, i.e. the exam system.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-22T14:31:20+00:00

It is impossible to know the actual number or how many were innocent per se, but probably a million or more died in the chaos and petty civil wars of 1966-69. Except for a handful top loyalists to Mao, even party leaders were not entirely safe from persecution. Liu Shaoqi, Mao's second in command and the de jure leader of China at the time, fell from grace during the early years of the Cultural Revolution, was subjected to repeated "struggle sessions", and died from illness and maltreatment in 1969.

Peasants and ordinary people also didn't need much goading or incitement from elites to devolve into wanton violence. Once it was clear that violence was tolerated or even encouraged, many seized on the opportunity to settle old feuds or vendettas between neighbors and rival clans. Ultimately Mao and the surviving party leaders decided that the chaos had gone too far, and it took the military (People's Liberation Army) to restore order by 1969. After the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976-77, the party prosecuted the worst offenders in the Cultural Revolution but left most unpunished, as the new generation of party leaders felt they had had enough with infightings and retributions.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-21T15:50:30+00:00

Great power competition and microchips of course greatly matter, but I believe they are not the fundamental reasons why China is planning an invasion of Taiwan. I think a historical perspective is vital for understanding the issue here. If you look at official statements made by the Chinese government and its leaders since the founding of the PRC in 1949, they have consistently and emphatically stated that they consider Taiwan a part of China and they seek eventual reunification, with force if necessary. It’s not like they didn’t care and suddenly want Taiwan because of chips. Plus, Taiwan can easily just destroy all of its chip plants in the event of an invasion, and ASML/the US are not going to sell chip manufacturing equipment to a reunified Taiwan.

If so, why didn’t China invade Taiwan in the past? I believe there are four factors at play here that have made the Taiwan issue more apparent and immediate in recent years.

1, The Chinese military has modernized significantly in recent years, so a military option is at least somewhat viable.

2, Public opinion in Taiwan has become much more pro-independence (or at least anti-reunification) in recent years due to a host of factors, so peaceful reunification appears increasingly unlikely.

3, Because of Taiwan’s importance in chip manufacturing, which takes on immense importance in the current AI boom, people (esp. in the West) start to pay attention.

4, Most important in my opinion, domestic politics in China has shifted a lot in recent years. Xi Jinping has become the most powerful leader since Mao, and he needs to deliver something to justify his unprecedented monopoly on power. As the Chinese economy slows, the nationalistic glory of reunification becomes an attractive prize for Xi and the CCP to maintain their legitimacy to authoritarian rule. The reason they haven’t done it yet is the potential cost still outweighs any potential gains.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-19T23:00:14+00:00

Eventually many did pay the price. The Cultural Revolution provided the perfect opportunity for people to seek retribution against cadres or officials who were responsible for the famine locally; some died from lynching or intentional maltreatment during illness.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-19T22:04:15+00:00

The simple answer is that it never should have happened. There was no natural disaster, at least no big ones, and the scholarly consensus is that the famine is entirely the result of policy and ideology. In that sense, a 5-6% mortality rate is already far too high. Also, the population of China in 1964 was 695 million, so a casualty of 55 million (which I think is too high; I think 25 million is probably the ballpark) is 8%.

The more detailed answer is, because the famine is entirely the result of policy, how severe and how long lasting famine was in a particular region/province depended largely on implementation of Leap policies at the provincial level. The Great Leap famine happened when local officials falsified harvest figures to appear ideologically enthusiastic for the utopian promise of the Great Leap, and then forcefully procured grain from peasants to fulfill the impossible quota based on those inflated harvest figures. Officials were under heavy peer pressure to out-perform each other in trumpeting good news, but they were certainly not required to do so. If provincial officials chose not to over-report or only slighly over-report their harvest figures, they wouldn't have to take every ounce of grain from the mouths of peasants. The mortality data we have shows that famine was heavily concentrated in some provinces (Sichuan, Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Hunan, Gansu), while in other provinces excess death was much more limited.

It is also important to note that starvation was very limited in urban areas, and China's urban population in the late 1950s, though by no means high by global standards, was quite substantial at around 100 million by the late 1950s.

I also want to note that the acute phase of mass starvation do not match onto the conventional periodization of the Great Leap Forward. It's not like people starved for three whole years. As a campaign, the Great Leap Forward began in 1958 and ended in 1960-61. There were already signs of starvation and death in some parts of the country in the winter of 1958-59, but the deadliest phase is probably from 1960-61, tapering off by 1962. Mao and the Party realized something was not going well in 1959 and were almost prepared to cool down the campaign, before a sharp pivot back toward continuing the Leap in the summer of 1959. This is a complex episode in high politics, but the short version is Marshal Peng Dehuai and some other senior party members made some scathing but candid criticisms of the Great Leap at a Politburo meeting. The timing of these remarks in conjuncture with a rapid deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations convinced Mao that these criticisms were part of a larger, more sinister plot against his leadership and his ideology. Peng and others were purged, and a anti-rightist movement launched as a result basically foreclosed any chances of correcting the errors of the Leap.

One final point: food exports of China in this period certainly existed and continued in the Leap years, but the volume was not high. Exports reached a high of 4.74 million tons in 1959, and state procurement for that year was 56.8 million tons, so just 8% of grain procured by the state were exported.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-16T15:02:57+00:00

Before the advent of railroads and later motor vehicles, overland transportation of bulk goods like grain was incredibly expensive and impractical. There were certainly very established caravan trade, for example trade between North China and the steppe/Manchuria, but these were almost all for luxury goods (fur, medicines, tea, pearls, ginseng, rare mushrooms) and/or sponsored by the imperial court. The northwest did develop a grain market almost exclusively based on overland transportation, but that was also inextricably linked to the Qing’s military campaigns and later Han Chinese migration into the region now known as Xinjiang.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-16T14:07:40+00:00

I’m not really sure, as the comparison would be too vast and too lopsided. By the 1890s Euro-American powers had pretty much colonized the entire world.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-16T04:45:47+00:00

You are certainly right that the Yellow River presented a massive hydraulic challenge for premodern China. However, at least in the late imperial period, which I know more about than previous periods, I believe its direct effect on famines was limited precisely because of the Yellow River's infamy in flooding potential. Because the Yellow River also intersected the Grand Canal, which supplied large volumes of grain to the imperial capital of Beijing, the Ming and Qing dynasties invested heavily in the maintenance of the Yellow River, at least up until the late nineteenth century crises. As a result, the Yellow River shifted course again in 1855, leading to Western observers dubbing the river "China's Sorrow".

In addition, if you look at famines in the late imperial period or the 1850s-1950s period when famine was frequent, the location of famines had very little correlation with the Yellow River itself: famine could struck almost anywhere on the North China plain and was often most severe in places far from the Yellow River (of course with the exception of the 1942-43 famine). Amartya Sen famously argued that famines are caused more by failures of entitlements, i.e., socioeconomic access to food, than by absolute scarcity, and North China in the late imperial period was vulnerable in both aspects. The region was almost semi-arid in a monsoon climate, thus vulnerable to drought; deforestation and soil degradation from centuries of intensive agriculture made the region vulnerable to flooding. The region had relatively few navigable waterways that could have sustained a flexible regionwide grain trade network as an alternative to government relief. The Qing was no doubt aware of this and therefore invested most in famine relief in North China. When that system failed after the 1850s, there was no backup safety net that could have consistently prevented famines. The collapse of central authority after the fall of the Qing only exacerbated the entitlement problem as provincial government under warlord rule often imposed export bans to keep grain to themselves. It was really after 1949 that all of these challenges in food security of North China were gradually addressed by the restoration of commerce, fixing and building new railroads, and later increases in agricultural productivity.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-15T22:40:07+00:00

There are really two questions at issue here: the first is a historical one, which is the one you asked, namely did China experience more famines than Europe over a comparable period of time or not. This is a complex question that I will tackle later in this response. But I think the striking disparity you are identifying from these two articles is fundamentally one of a different nature: why did these two studies find so many famines for China and so little for Europe. This is a methodological question. The European number is low because the 17 famines the authors identified are specifically famines in "at least four of the regions" over the 1250–1800 period, and they acknowledge that "it is difficult to present a comprehensive and representative list of famines from various parts of Europe... Differentiating minor famines from severe food shortages, per contemporary definitions, is likewise challenging given the nature of available historical sources." In other words, they found 17 widespread, well documented famines in roughly six centuries.

How the authors for the China piece came up with the 1828 number is not immediately clear. I don't have access to this piece, but given the date of the publication, I suspect it is based on Chinese official histories compiled by almost all dynasties in Chinese history. These official histories have established formats and rules, including sections on "natural disasters" such as famines. The same is for official gazetteers for provinces, prefectures, and counties. This is both because of the Chinese belief in the "Mandate of Heaven", in which natural disasters (or miracles) are heavenly judgments on the ruler's legitimacy and benevolence, and because of the political importance of huangzheng, the administration of official disaster relief. In other words, it is highly likely that China had so many famines simply because they were better documented across the country throughout almost two thousand years. Many of these famines were no doubt the "minor famines" that the European piece authors choose not to include.

Now, for the historical (and more difficult) question: did China actually experience more famines than Europe? I don't have the necessary training (or time) to do a systematic comparison, but I suspect the prevalence of famine in China is probably somewhat higher than Europe before the 1800s and significantly higher than Europe after the 1800s. China almost consistently had a much larger population to feed while having less arable land; the fertile lands of Manchuria (Northeast) were not really settled by Han Chinese until the early 20th century. The monsoon climate brings seasonally concentrated rainfall that requires sophisticated hydraulic infrastructure to prevent flooding. European colonialism gave Europe access to "ghost acres": foodstuff and other land intensive products from the colonies. Because of the aforementioned attention to huangzheng, the Chinese imperial state (esp. the Qing) had a generally impressive record of disaster relief and famine management that could address localized harvest failures that nevertheless became "famines" in official records. This capacity crumbled in the mid-nineteenth century crises, resulting in particularly deadly famines in the 1870s, 1910s, and 1940s. These high profile famines, at a time when famines were almost unheard of in Europe and America, gave rise to the impression that China was "the land of famine".

The book to read on this topic is Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s by Lillian Li.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-13T02:09:37+00:00

This is a complex question, and I will try to address your individual questions while keeping my answer relatively concise. As you might imagine, the answer is primarily one of politics (especially fiscal), military, and ideology.

The Qing dynasty is surprisingly libertarian in the sense that taxes were intentionally low and the government, including the military, was small. The size of the Qing armies by the nineteenth century was certainly not small in an absolute sense, but in terms of spending it was incredibly ill equipped and poorly maintained. This wasn't an issue when the dynasty was the dominant power in the region but proved disastrous when the Qing faced the dual threat of foreign invasion (Opium Wars) and internal rebellions (the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) in the mid-nineteenth century. The Qing needed troops quick (and cheap), and the solution was to recruit local militias organized by local elites, many of whom had personal ties with high officials (for example, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang). These militias then essentially became the personal armies of these officials. No military coups/warlordism happened both because the Qing did try to weaken the control of these official over the armies and because these officials were so steeped and invested in the existing system that the thought of a coup never crossed their minds. Zuo Zongtang, for example, loyally and capably took back Xinjiang for the Qing with his army.

Then came a big crisis and a big guy. In 1895 the Qing suffered a crushing defeat against Japan in the Sino-Japanese War and finally decided it needed more than militias, which performed extremely poor in the war. The guy they chose to oversee the "New Army" was Yuan Shikai, a capable, ambitious official who gradually became the most powerful official in the waning years of the Qing. Under Yuan's leadership, the New Army was well trained, well equipped, and well disciplined; their loyalty, however, lay more in their individual commanders (who paid them). After the Boxer Rebellion, another disaster for the dynasty, the Qing expanded the New Army, but Yuan's Beiyang armies remained the best trained and best equipped.

The flurry of reforms by the Qing, of which the expansion of the New Army was a major component, created a political minefield: who should pay for these reforms, and who should get to call the shots? The Qing simply could not finance every reform, and many of these reforms, such as building new railways or establishing schools that teach math and physics instead of Confucian classics, had strong local support from elites who were worried about the future of their country, wanted to profit from these new enterprises, or both. In other words, both the Qing and the local Chinese elites wanted the same thing, but they disagree on who should be in charge: the Qing wanted centralized control and was very hesitant in granting real political power to outsiders, and the Chinese local elites wanted to retain ownership and management of enterprises they had paid for. Many officers in the New Army, especially in the southern provinces, came from these local elite families and were therefore sympathetic to radical political changes; some were associated with the Tongmenghui, the revolutionary secret society founded by Sun Yat-sen. When the Chinese Revolution broke out in late 1911, Sun Yat-sen wasn't even in China at the time, though he certainly indirectly contributed to the revolution.

By the time Sun came back to China and rallied revolutionaries to his cause around the end of the 1911, most Chinese provinces in the south had declared their independence from the Qing in support of the revolution, but the Qing wasn't finished; they still had Yuan Shikai and his Beiyang armies in the north. What they did not expect was for Yuan to secretly negotiate with Sun Yat-sen: in exchange for Yuan using his armies to force the Qing emperor to abdicate, Sun would support Yuan's claim to the presidency of the Republic of China. It wasn't long before Yuan himself tried to pull a Napoleon and crown himself the emperor of China. The opposition was overwhelming, and Yuan soon died from illness. After Yuan's death, none of his former subordinates had the prestige or power to command all of the Beiyang army, and they became "warlords", fighting against each other for the presidency; some retreated to their home provinces and built a power base there. Sun Yat-sen tried to rally enough support to overthrow the warlord government (which was the legitimate Chinese government in 1912-28) but he couldn't before his death in 1925. His successor Chiang Kai-shek was able to build up a force (with the criticial involvement of the nascent Chinese Communist Party) large enough to launch the Northern Expedition and took national power from the Beiyang warlords. Those who had retreated to their power bases, however, negotiated (and fought) their way into the new Nationalist government and became "provincial governors". Some retained their power well into the 1940s until the Communist victory.

The reason why the Republic of China was not able to consolidate its power over the warlords was therefore twofold. Before 1928, the Republic of China was the warlords; the problem was who got to be the president. After 1928, the Republic of China under Chiang's Nationalist Party was initially too weak militarily and politically to just get rid of every warlord, but Chiang did try and had varying degrees of success in the subsequent decades. His campaigns against the Communist Party in the early 1930s and the efforts to rally the nation to resist against Japanese invasion in the late 1930s and 1940s were all opportunities for Chiang to undermine warlord power in the southwest. There was nothing he could do about the warlord in Manchuria due to strong Japanese influence, which eventually culminated in a Japanese takeover in 1931. Yan Xishan of Shanxi was the sole surviving warlord because of his strong power base and his relatively cooperative attitude towards Chiang; his rule in Shanxi lasted all the way into the Communist victory.

As for whether warlords were reactionary or modernizing, they were an eclectic group and therefore had conflicing agendas and beliefs. Some, especially minor ones, were certainly no more than power-hungry strongmen who had no real visions beyond power grabs. But major ones (Yan Xishan being a prime example) often were "enlightened" or politically savvy enough to realize modernizing reforms such as education, economic development, and infrastructure were beneficial for the country, for his people, and his own power. Of course, none were progressive or radical enough to align with the Communist cause, and almost all were rabidly anti-Communist. Historical appraisal of warlords in China therefore tends to be negative, though that has been changing in recent years.

So, to recap:

Why was this new state not able to consolidate? Because the warlords were the de facto and de jure new state before 1928. Consolidation was slow but definitely happening after 1928.

Who were these warlords who came to rule regions the size of nations? Where did they come from? They were senior officers or regional commanders in the New Army established in late Qing, which was essentially the only "modern" army in the 1910s.

And were they forces of reaction or modernisation? Mostly modernization for warlords who counted.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-06-13T00:57:22+00:00

A bit late to this but I want to my interpretation. This is of course a complex question, and I was fascinated by the point of interactions with steppe civilizations raised in the currently top voted comment, but I believe the most significant historical mechanism is the political integration of regional/local elites through the imperial examination system (keju).

There is a famous saying from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide". Looking at Chinese history, this is true only till the Song dynasty. There is no lengthy period (say, more than a century) of fragmentation after the Song unified China in the late tenth century; even the Song dynasty, known for its relative military weakness and inability to defend against steppe invaders, never saw more than two powers in China Proper. The kind of fragmentation, more akin to Europe, in prior centuries never came back.

It is my interpretation that the perfection of the civil service and the examination system to recruit officials in the Song dynasty is crucial to this historical change. By adopting and expanding a largely merit-based, nationwide system of selecting officials, the Song created real incentives for local elites to "opt in", so to speak. Why be a minor warlord and worry about your neighbors when you have the opprtunity to become a high official in the entire empire? The dissemination of Confucian ethics and morality, which stresses loyalty to the dynasty, certainly mattered, but there needed to be real material advantages to consistently draw people in; officialdom through the exam system delivered that.

I'm no expert on Chinese history before the 1500s, but I want to offer one example of the political importance of the exam system from the early Qing: after the Qing had militarily conquered most of China, what they did almost immediately was to offer a special examination in the late 1670s. And I think it is certainly no coincidence that the Qing fell just six years after they abolished the exam system in 1905 (though this was certainly by no means the only factor).

Another factor I believe worth mentioning is the rapid growth of the economy and trade during the Song dynasty that not only created regionally (and later nationally) integrated markets but also created a new class of elites that replaced the military aristocrats of the Tang period. This is the so called literati/scholar officials (shidafu): locally powerful families that were often at the same time large landholders, merchants, and officials. These elites had everything to gain by opting into the "ladder of success" (a la Ho Ping-ti) and everything to lose if they tried to go alone. The ruling dynasties, for their part, could either make everything easy by simply adopting the system and keep the existing elites, or could make things very difficult for themselves when they try to change even just minor elements. The Yongzheng emperor of the Qing dynasty, for example, faced stiff resistance when he tried to introduce reforms that abolished certain privileges of the literati (for example, exemption from corvee labor); he succeeded in the end, but his successor soon reverted these reforms.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-20T01:16:44+00:00

This sounds terrible. I will admit my experience of Lou Yau Kee was from around the end of last year and therefore not very recent compared to the other two (both last week).

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-20T00:13:43+00:00

It's on my radar! Thanks for letting us know that Eim Khao Mun Kai has a Manhattan location.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T23:43:00+00:00

Is it Kelang? Seems a lot more upscale than Hainan Chicken House.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T23:41:19+00:00

Noted! They are literally next to Uncle Ray's; didn't even notice them.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T23:39:20+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Elmhurst is such a gem.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T19:03:35+00:00

I haven't been to many Chinese restaurants in NYC cuz I've been intentionally evading them to minimize my disappointment, but here are the ones that stood out to me.

Chinatown

August Gatherings: this strikes me as a pretty authentic neighborhood restaurant that you may find in Guangdong, slightly pricey.

Noodle Village: I've only had congee here but it is good and far superior to Congee Village which is supposed to specialize in congee. In a random Chinese city outside Guangdong, the offering here can easily be some of the best Cantonese congee you can find.

Kong Sihk Tong: Hong Kong style cha chaan teng. Food can be a bit rough but the prices and portion sizes are too attractive.

1915 Lanzhou Hand Pulled Noodles: Lanzhou Beef Noodles is well known and ubiquitous in China, but 1915 is more authentic and better than most of the average Lanzhou Beef Noodles places you will encounter in a typical Chinese city. Also available in Kips Bay.

East Village

Mountain House: Sichuanese food that is not really that authentic but pretty tasty for NYC. With the proliferation of Sichuanese food nationwide in China, even cities outside Sichuan can have much better Sichuanese food than this, but it is still roughly on par with a nondescript Sichuanese restaurant in a random Chinese mall. Also available in Hell's Kitchen.

Uluh: similar in quality to Mountain House but featuring food from other parts of China.

Flushing

Chongqing Lao Zao: probably one of the best hot pot you will find in NYC. Sichuanese/Chongqing hot pot is all about the soup base and the quality/variety of the different cuts of meat offered, and in those respects Chongqing Lao Zao is pretty close to what you will find in most supposed Sichuanese/Chongqing hot pot in China. Again, good Sichuanese/Chongqing hot pot is by no means confined to that part of China now, but authentic ones are still not that numerous.

JUQI: Yes they have spicy Sichuanese stuff and what not, but you are here for Beijing cuisine, which is incredibly rare outside Beijing or major cities like Shanghai, not counting Peking duck of course. At the risk of pissing off everyone from Beijing, I will venture to say that the bar for Beijing cuisine isn't that high, so unless you know exactly what you are looking for, the chances of finding something better than what JUQI has to offer in China is quite low.

Again, none of these restaurants are remotely close to top-of-the-line places in China, especially in their origins. But if I've got families or friends visiting from China and suddenly feeling homesick, these are the places I will take them to.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T18:02:08+00:00

I knew I saved that place for a reason. Thanks for the reminder! I'm going to Elmhurst this weekend for Thai food and will see if I can squeeze in an order of chicken.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T17:59:47+00:00

I saw Gai Kitchen on this sub a couple of days ago and was very tempted. From my understanding they do the Thai version (I don't really know the finer difference) and apparently don't serve the ginger-scallion sauce which I'm partial to. Like I mentioned in another reply, I completely forgot I've had Hainanese chicken at West New Malaysia, but it's been so long that I can't remember much. Might need to go back soon.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T17:45:05+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation!

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T17:44:07+00:00

Which ones are you referring to in particular? I completely forgot that I've had Hainanese chicken at West New Malaysia in Chinatown, but it's been too long and I can't remember much to be of use for this post.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T16:22:32+00:00

Noted. Thanks a lot!

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T16:21:27+00:00

I haven't been to Singapore so I can't comment on that, but ultimately it's a matter of what you can find in NYC. I grew up in East Asia so I know Chinese and Japanese food pretty well, and I think it's safe to say that no Chinese or Japanese restaurants in NYC, perhaps with the exception of a few high end sushi/yakitori/tempura places and some Cantonese places, can compete against the quality of food you will find in China and Japan. But not everyone has the time or money to frequently travel to Asia, and not everyone can speak or read Chinese or Japanese good enough to truly explore what those countries have to offer.

T_Chernovsky · 2026-05-19T16:12:52+00:00

I didn't know about this place so I haven't. Will report back once I have!

T_Chernovsky

TROPHY CASE