i only wonder if that’s a typo for “expensive”
@chandavkl’s report on Chinese food trucks around USC is up at LA Weekly, and he name checks @Dommy and Food Talk Central:
http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/chinese-food-trucks-around-usc-8079018
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Wow, rates have gone down over the years! I guess due to volume! Crazy. It used to be an extra $40,000 per semester on top of standard tuition!
Most of the Chinese students use Deliver626 and pay the exorbitant delivery charges for food from the SGV if they don’t live in the SGV for examples students at UC Irvine. A friend of a friend runs this service and I heard plenty of stories of rich mainlander students paying more for the delivery charge than the food itself.
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One of my favorite dishes at Lao Tse Chuan in Glendale across from the Americana is their Tofu Series which they serve with pretty much whichever protein you’d like, but we prefer Fish or Pork. Asking our waiter, Dan, what we hadn’t tried, he said, “Well, there’s this tofu dish all the USC students order.”
I find myself craving the bubbling bowl of tofu chili mala goodness.
It’s downright delicious.
And not USC, but had an early dinner at QQ Kopitiam in Pasadena (closes at 7pm) across from Pasadena City College. Beng is Chinese Indo and his sweet wife is Singaporean. Out of the Hainan Chicken Rice (as usual, they only make a certain amount), but they have legit Nasi Goreng, Bee Hoon, Char Kway Teow, Laksa, and Rice/Noodles with Egg Gravy. Legit. There was a late deluge of PCC students while we were there. All Asian. Probably Chinese. Beng had to convince one student not to use her Chinese Visa Card because of the extra charges. Astounding number of orders of Popcorn Shrimp.
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Nice article.
But I must ask, was the student in the picture posing with the book or was that just standard operating procedure for Chinese? 
So the quality of Irvine Chinese food isn’t good enough for these students? I get that it’s not SGV, but the large Asian population of Irvine isn’t having their takeout delivered from there… are they?
Perhaps Irvine doesn’t offer the variety of regional Chinese dishes thus far.
Yes, Irvine food is largely Cantonese and Taiwanese (including Shanghai food which Taiwanese like) oriented.
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Not a posed picture. He didn’t know I was photographing the truck.
Before the recent spate of westside openings targeting UCLA students and there was nothing in the vicinity, I presume a lot of the UCLA students drove to the SGV. I’m guessing USC students continue to do so.
Mainlanders be flossin’
I wouldn’t know where to even begin figuring out what that means.
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I suppose that definition would make more sense if it were grammatically or structurally correct. Not sure how the food selection has 'great value". Sigh!!! I can remember when people just said what they meant in simple words.
Oh wow, I’m so sorry I used a word you didn’t know and then linked to its entry on Urban Dictionary since you claimed you didn’t even know where to begin looking up unfamiliar words.
Here, maybe this is simple enough for you: Get over yourself.
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Methinks you’ve got that backwards.
Wait, who says they need to eat Chinese food?
I went to UCLA, I had a Taiwanese roommate. He had his Taiwanese friends. They all ate at the dining halls or the on campus places.
I don’t see why USC would be any different. The ones living off campus not going to school probably do their own thing because they don’t know anybody.
I think the implication of the title of this thread is that the new generation mainland USC students are a bit different in the sense that they come from more affluence in general (read: Not staying in the dorms on-campus, residing rather, for example, in the downtown loft bought for them).
And also, many of them did not grow up here in the states, hence the term “Chinese stomach” (trademark @chandavkl) applies here.
Taiwan students (the ones who either came the states for school later on, or the ones who grew up American) have just different sensibilities. But this thread refers to the mainland students. And lastly, let’s not forget there is a difference between UCLA and USC.
(Go Bruins!)
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There have been Chinese foreign students in the US for decades. But in the past they were mostly from Hong Kong and Taiwan and a large number of them intended to stay in the US after graduation. Consequently, they had no qualms about integrating with the general student population. The current crop from Mainland China is different. Many intend to return to China upon graduation, and may even be required to do so by the Chinese government. And to a large part they are a segregated community on campus as this portrait of Chinese students at the University of Iowa paints.
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