A TikTok user has revealed a surprising reason why there are so many Chinese buffets in rural America. She claims that there is a secret agency that places Chinese immigrants in small towns across the country to open restaurants.
@thenightingalehall, who says she is married into a Chinese-American family, posted a video on Sept. 7 explaining the history of Chinese families opening restaurants in rural America. She says that it started in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which she claims barred Chinese migration “because of racism.”
@thenightingalehall Replying to @Mrs.BettyDraper no cooking experience necessary! #chinesebuffet #americanhistory ♬ original sound – The Nightingale Hall
“So I posted about the secret agency in the United States that places Chinese immigrants in small rural towns across America to open Chinese buffets and a couple people were like, wait, I can’t tell if this is real. It is real,” she says in the video.
She goes on to say that one of the few loopholes that allowed Chinese people to migrate to the U.S. was to work in certain industries, such as restaurants. “This led to a really big boom in Chinese people opening restaurants in America so that they could bring workers back from China, which were really like friends and family, being one of the only ways you could migrate here at the time.”
The TikToker claims that this practice became ingrained in the culture of Chinese-American communities, adding, “Now there’s an agency that will help place you in a random city in America to open a Chinese buffet usually with financial incentives.”
The Daily Dot couldn’t corroborate the existence of such an agency but has reached out to the TikToker via email for further comment.
The video has garnered more than 187,000 views, with many people expressing their curiosity about the topic.
“This makes so much sense! I’ve always wondered about how and why they would come to these small towns,” one commenter wrote.
“I just learned about this this Summer! Not really a secret, just not well known, right?” a second commenter remarked.
“How do I request a buffet near me?” a third commenter jokingly added.
A Quora user asked a similar question, wondering if low prices at local Chinese buffets is the result of Chinese government intervention. One user responded tongue in cheek: “Shhhh! You have found out the secret! TheChinese Communist Party secretly funds Chinese buffets to make Americans fat. This gives China a military advantage.”
In a comment to The Daily Dot, the user said she has deleted the video. “FYI, I‘ve taken the video down as it was becoming the target of derogatory and anti-immigrant sentiment, which ultimately seemed harmful and counterproductive to the original intent of the clip,” she wrote.
