Chinese food isn't Chinese food in Peru. Instead, the fusion cuisine chifa is staple fare for all Peruvians of any background.
And this blend of culinary characteristics transcends ingredients and preparations. It ultimately reveals how Peru's legacy of immigration has inextricably baked Chinese culture into Peruvian society, like flour into bread.
▲ Luo Xun (second from left), professor at the Tianjin University of Technology, Selena Zhou (third from left), Peru's culture, education and tourism attache in China, and Luis Carlos (fourth from left), a Peruvian student at Beijing Foreign Studies University, join China Daily reporters in a discussion about cultural ties between China and Peru in Beijing. Photo provided to China Daily
"Chifa, for us, is not Chinese food anymore. It's part of what makes us Peruvians, and it's not just about the food, you know," said Selena Zhou, Peru's culture, education and tourism attache in China.
Zhou, who joined a recent Embracing Cultures salon China Daily hosted at the Peruvian embassy in Beijing, is among the estimated 10 to 12 percent of Peruvians with direct Chinese heritage. Most are descendants of immigrants who came to Peru around the mid-1800s.
"We are really happy with that immigration," Zhou said. "It has enriched our history, our food, our way of speaking, our way of making friends and our openness to foreign cultures."
She explained that Chinese were more willing to marry locals than many immigrants during that period.
"Some countries learn to coexist with different cultures. But in the Peruvian case, we not only coexist, we mostly embrace it. So, we created a brand-new identity," Zhou said.
▲ A view of a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown in Lima, Peru, on Tuesday. Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily
"Chifa is a reflection of how the Chinese people who emigrated to Peru many years ago learned to adapt their own heritage with the ingredients they had at hand. They even shared it with the Peruvian locals. They didn't keep it to themselves like other immigrants."
The names of many of its dishes are portmanteaus of pure Spanish and words that Peruvian Spanish incorporated from Chinese, especially Cantonese. Arroz chuafa, for example, combines the Spanish word for rice — arroz — with chuafa, from the Cantonese word for fried rice.
Even the name for chifa itself came from Chinese, Zhou explained.
" (Chinese) would yell out 'chifan', (Chinese for) 'it's time to eat'," she said. "And the Peruvians around them would just hear 'chifa', and they would say, Oh, that's chifa then."
Luo Xun, a Tianjin University of Technology professor and co-director of Connected Universal Experiences Labs, who joined Zhou at the salon, said chifa offered a taste of home when he visited Peru.
"This gives you a lot of familiarity that you feel," Luo said. "That's a deep connection with Chinese culture."
He said he's particularly fond of chifa's seafood offerings.
"It gives you the feeling of being somehow remotely separated but still culturally connected because of the food and also because a lot of people there are of Chinese descent," he said. "You have a feeling of going to a familiar place that you never visited before."
▲ Customers eat in a restaurant in Lima's Chinatown on Tuesday. Photo/Agencies
Luis Carlos, a Peruvian student at Beijing Foreign Studies University who also joined the discussion at the embassy with Zhou, Luo and two cohosts from China Daily, explained that while chifa is the most conspicuous legacy of this heritage, another is Chinatown in Lima, Peru's capital.
"In the center of the city, there is a Chinatown where there are a lot of stores that sell original Chinese products. It's like they have a bit of China for showing to the Peruvians," he said.
The neighborhood also hosts dragon dances and traditional Peruvian dances around Spring Festival.
"We celebrate Chinese New Year, maybe more than Chinese people," Zhou said. "Those Chinese immigrants also maintain their connections to their heritage.
"It's really interesting because it's not that they are exclusively Chinese or that they exclusively have these Chinese customs, but they actually embrace it with Peruvian traditions, which is why we say that for us Chinese descendants, they are not Chinese, they're not Peruvians, but they are a brand-new identity."
Yet this culture extends to all citizens of any background, she explained.
"Even if you're a Peruvian who has absolutely nothing to do with Chinese (heritage), you still embrace Chinese food, you embrace Chinese Spring Festival, you love Chinese shows, you love the martial arts festivities," Zhou said.
Luo remarked that some similarities extend past cultural to geographical landscapes.
He said that Lima's tableau reminds him of the mountainous coastal city of Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province.
"What impressed me most in the first visit to Lima was the rich landscape when you look out the window of the airplane and see the mountains, and just right next to the mountains is the ocean," Luo recalled.
Carlos was likewise impressed by seeing Beijing from the airplane window when he first arrived in August.
" (Beijing) is so huge… The airport is like a city. It's massive. It's really, really big. I got lost in the airport actually," he said, laughing.
Peru's ambassador to China is advocating for direct flights between the two countries to facilitate trade and tourism. Currently, a couple of thousand Chinese make the two-day trip each month, Zhou said.
"Since the pandemic came to an end, we are slowly seeing the numbers rising of Chinese people interested in going to Peru nowadays. Most of our visas are for trade. A lot of Chinese companies send their people overseas to see the South American market," she said.
"However, we're very happy that when we talk with most of them, they say, 'Oh, we went for business to Peru for a month'. (We ask) 'How was your experience?' The first thing that they mention is they love the Peruvian food, they love Peruvian landscapes, they love the Peruvian ambience, and then they tell us about their business."
▲ People pose for a selfie in Lima's Chinatown in Peru on Tuesday. Photo/Agencies
Virtual visits
Luo is working on projects to enable Chinese to visit Peru without having to physically travel across the ocean, through virtual reality and metaverse technology.
"I felt that there are so many stories to be told for the Chinese public to know more about the magic land of Peru," Luo said.
He pointed to his encounters with vicuna during his visits as an example.
"We all know the animal llama, but I got to know about the fabric from the vicuna."
The species resembles the llama but produces even more valuable wool.
"So, what I thought is, basically, with the development of digital technology — myself as a researcher of virtual reality and also the metaverse — we are going to use digital technology to build virtual museums and show in a highly realistic and interactive way the spectacular things in Peru and, more generally, Latin America.
"Then, we can enable more people to enjoy the culture and the local products, and interact with the people in a digital world without actually having to catch a late flight."
One project involves developing an immersive virtual museum to showcase the biodiversity of Peru's coastline.
"You get the seabirds, you get the fish, and you get the sea animals. That's really great, but very few people know about that," Luo said.
"At the same time, you can just 'teleport' yourself to historical sites like Machu Picchu. So, that gives you a kind of magical feeling."
▲ Visitors view Peruvian pottery at an exhibition entitled Inca — Andean Civilization in Peruat the Jinsha Site Museum in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Jan 9. Photo by Zhang Liang/China News Service
Surprising similarities
These digitized displays are still a few years away. But in the past few years, physical exhibitions about ancient Peru in museums in China have proved popular, Zhou said.
These include a show about the Incas a few years ago, and one earlier this year that brought over 160 original pre-Incan artifacts from 14 leading Peruvian museums for display in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Next, the embassy hopes to bring ancient gold items from coastal Peru from the pre-Columbian period, she said.
She pointed out similarities between the two civilizations that predate contact by centuries, such as those shared by the Shu Kingdom in today's Sichuan and the Inca.
"Peru and China are very geographically distant. However, there are many (ancient) things that we have in common, from the textiles, the boneware, the ceramics, the techniques, the colors, the graphics."
Carlos said he was surprised to discover the resemblances between the traditional attire of ethnic groups in the Andes and southwestern China.
"It's really similar. It's like, wow, they are really far, far away from each other, but there are so many similarities in their clothes," he said.
Luo, who's from Sichuan, believes these similarities inspire fervent interest among Chinese museumgoers.
"If you look at the elements of the sun and the elements of the birds and the elements of making precious gold … they share so much in common and also share some values that are very similar to each other," he said.
"The sun is probably universal. But I wouldn't say the bird is universal."
Zhou said: "In (Sichuan's) Jinsha, they have this golden bird. The Incas used to worship the condor, which is a bird of prey, and they used to think that the condor was a representation of freedom and ascension to the sun."
She also mentioned sophisticated water-management systems as another similarity that predates contact.
"The Incas were master engineers when it came to aqueducts, and it's the same with the China's Dujiangyan (ancient dams in Sichuan)," she said.
"It's exactly about how you used to control the flow of the river to prevent floods and guarantee that there would always be an irrigation system for agriculture."
New connections
Yet beyond parallels that predate contact and the immigration rush two centuries ago, China and Peru are now forging new connections amid globalization.
A growing number of Peruvians are learning Chinese to do business with the country, Zhou said.
Carlos, who is studying international business at BFSU and hopes to also complete his master's in China, said his mother encouraged him to learn the language.
He said he was "confused" at first, especially since Chinese is much more distant from Spanish than English.
"I really enjoy learning Chinese, especially writing Chinese, because it's really artistic. I really like the meaning of my (Chinese) name, Luo Yunshan," which means "cloud and mountain".
Zhou said authorities are working to expand opportunities to study Chinese in Peru, including outside of Lima.
"We're working on opening more centers for studying Chinese because we wish for our people to learn more about Chinese culture," she said.
"Through mutual understanding, we can build a society that's prosperous for everybody."
Reporter: Erik Nilsson
