A Hispanic cultural center in Los Angeles recently hosted an event to dive into an exciting journey of discovering the earliest traces of Chinese culture that shaped and transformed Mexican cuisine now found across Southern California and much of the United States.

Los Angeles is a melting pot for Latin American heritage. Latinos make up nearly half of the population in the city.
The event explores some of the earliest Chinese influences in the region which started much earlier than the first wave of immigration from the Chinese mainland in the 18th century.
It is a history that has long been forgotten, said culinary historian Maite Gomez-Rejon. So they organized this event in order to keep those cultural roots alive.
"It's quite complex and quite extraordinary. It's when they first arrived in the 16th century from the Philippines, and just their contributions in everything," said Gomez-Rejon, founder of ArtBites which explores art and food through lectures and cooking classes in museums.
Gomez-Rejon is an educator, writer, and cook who gives lectures about the connections between art and culinary history.
"All citrus is originally native to China. It made its way. It had already made its way to Europe pre-conquest. But this is something that's from China that transformed Mexican cuisine," she said.
It is not just Chinese goods that made their way into Mexico's cuisine, but also certain customs and traditions.
"If I go to you to buy a pound of green beans and you give me the pound of green beans and then you add the little extra, this is called the 'pilon'. And this is something that's very, very Mexican. But it was actually something that is not very Mexican but it's a Chinese contribution to this Mexican sort of life and language, the concept of the 'El Pilon'," she said.
Gomez-Rejon mixes her lectures with cooking that allows participants to learn about not just the source of ingredients but also some of the cooking techniques that came as a result of fusion between different cultures.
"I would like them to walk away with a better understanding, of the influence of the Chinese in Mexico. And just, I always love to highlight just these forgotten histories," she said.
Southern California has long been influenced by its southern neighbor Mexico. And its state of "Baja California," which translates to "Lower California" carries centuries of Chinese influence still present in today's dishes.