Americans can eat Chinese, but Chinese can't eat Americans?

Question

No offence!! Please take it just for knowledge. I heard one of my friends saying **Americans can eat Chinese but Chinese can't eat Americans**. He said so for fun, and everybody was just laughing. But I want to know how the English language comes into the picture. One thing, I guess, is that there is a game of plurals. Where Chinese in singular and plural has same letters, but not American? P.S Of course, it was about Chinese food.

Answer 1

We can only say Chinese in that sense because Chinese, in this case, also means Chinese take out food. You could conceivably also say Americans eat Italian but Italians don’t eat Americans - although the joke is funnier with Chinese I think.