A new plot

Yan Ruixiang was in a quandary. Originally a student of medicine, he had already changed his career plan once, deciding to make films instead. He had also made his first film in Arabic, Waad Wa Maktoub, but, he decided to come to his father’s aid.

“It was an unpalatable thought that a family project would bomb,” he said. “So I changed my career to save the restaurant and embarked on a new dream to build a chain of restaurants. Chinese cuisine became my fate.”

His new fate has served him very well. Besides owning a chain of 10 restaurants, he has also earned a reputation. “The Egyptians call me the Chinese cuisine ambassador and anyone wanting to open a Chinese restaurant comes to me for knowhow,” Yan Ruixiang said.

He succeeded where his father failed because he says he adapted his dishes to Egyptian taste. “We changed the sauces and other ingredients,” Yan Ruixiang explained his recipe for success. “Take vinegar, for example. Egyptians don’t like black vinegar, so we use apple vinegar. Tofu is another example. The locals here want it fried with vegetables, not with dry sauce like in China.”

As he began building his Chinese cuisine empire, Yan Ruixiang started bringing over Chinese chefs to Egypt and they trained the Egyptians chefs.

When Chinafrica visited the Peking branch in Cairo, the customers bared their hearts. Marlette Pablo, a 26-year-old Colombian teaching English at a British School in Sixth of October City in Egypt, said she had found that the best Chinese food adapted itself to the local taste in every country where it was introduced. “I like it everywhere,” she said. “Whatever the change, the soul remains the same and the dishes are always delicious.”

Jon Albert, a 28-year-old American pharmacist who lives in Alexandria City in northern Egypt, was tucking into his chop suey with relish. “The first time I tried Chinese food was in the United States more than 10 years ago,” Albert said. “I liked it so much that I began to eat Chinese food regularly. I would eat it at least once a month.”

Eating with Albert was his Egyptian friend Mohammed Hosam, a 27-year-old engineer. “Chinese food is distinctive and above all, healthy. My favorite dish is sweet and sour chicken,” Hosam added.

Aya Omar, a 21-year-old Egyptian studying business at the German University in Cairo, has a fetish about Kung Pao Chicken, a sweet-spicy dish from Sichuan Province famous for its hot dishes, where the chicken is accompanied by mounds of peanuts and chili pepper. “I eat it every Thursday to forget the pressures of the week since the weekend starts on Friday,” she said. “I intend to travel to China to learn Chinese cuisine at its place of origin.”