Chinese Restaurant People

I'm fascinated by the people who work in Chinese restaurants. They seem like an interesting group of people and I know very little about them.

Most of them seem to speak Chinese as their primary language. Am I to assume that they are recent immigrants to America? Or is it possible they live such separate lives from the rest of mainstream culture that they are 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants who have passed on their language (without picking up English)?

I haven't noticed any kind of significant immigration from China, but it almost seems like there is an organized effort at work here. They fan out and set up these restaurants in the most unlikely of places--even the most remove, white bread, small town in the Midwest.

You can tell from the food that there is something coordinated about it. There is an amazing amount of diversity in Chinese cooking. It has a fifth of the world's population and a big chunk of its space. Yet, you can pretty much know what to expect when you walk into a Chinese restaurant. Do you really think one billion Chinese people sit down to General Tso's chicken every night with gooey sauce? I would guess not. Yet, all these restaurants seem to prepare things in very similar ways. There must be classes or some kind of info sessions they go to in order to learn how to prepare Americanized Chinese food.

I wonder what it is like growing up in a Chinese restaurant. I often see people kids playing in the back or sitting at a table doing homework.

Do the people who work there eat the food they make? Or do they make the really good, true ethnic Chinese foods for themselves? Do they remember how to make those dishes?

Do they work long hours and live upstairs? How many of them are really Chinese and not some other ethnicity? Or are they mostly from the same region in China? Do you have to be Asian to make this food, or can anybody do it?

Maybe there are "Immigrate to America and Open a Restaurant" programs in China itself.