When worlds of taste collide and form a whole new cusine

Here is an interesting article from PRI--Public Radio International about unlikely blends of cuisine--Peruvian  Chinese and Peruvian Japanese. The resulting new cuisines even have new names! chifa is the Peruvian and Chinese blend and nikkei is the Peruvian Japanese mix. This would have surprised me a lot more had I not taken US Ethnic History class and read the chapter about Chinese and Japanese immigration. The article says that Chinese started immigrating to Peru in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Food writer Steve  Dolinsky comments, "The Chinese came here to work the plantations, build railroads, tap rubber trees, and they stayed, and they created their own cuisine based on what was available locally."

Japanese immigrants who came to Peru to work in the 1890s created nikkei. "Many of those immigrants stayed, married Peruvians, and longed for the tastes of home."
Mitsuhara Tsumura, owner of a top 10 ranked restaurant in Latin America said to Dolinsky, "Peru is like a sponge, instead of rejecting other cultures, we have made them ours." It is amazing how cultures influence each other. It is almost impossible to be unchanged by contact with other cultures. Even our taste buds change!

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-05/immigration-fuels-hot-asian-fusion-food-scene-lima