Unit 09 Chinese Food 2 Chinese Food in America

I. Text 1

Chinese Food

T. McArthur

1       “Few things in life are as positive as food, or are taken as intimately and completely by the individual. One can listen to music, but the sound may enter in one ear and go out through the other; one may listen to a lecture or conversation, and day-dream about many other things; one may attend to matters of business, and one’s heart or interest may be altogether elsewhere…. In the matter of food and eating,however, one can hardly remain completely indifferent to what one is doing for long. How can one remain entirely indifferent to something which is going to enter one’s body and become part of oneself?How can one remain indifferent to something which will determine one’s physical strength and ultimately one’s spiritual and moral fibre andwell-being?”

— Kenneth Lo

2        This is an easy question for a Chinese to ask, but a Western might find it difficult to answer. Many people in the West are gourmets and others are gluttons, but scattered among them also is a large number of people who are apparently pretty indifferent to what goes into their stomachs, and so do not regard food as having any ultimate moral effect on them.How, they might ask, could eating a hamburger or drinking Coca Cola contribute anything to making you a saint or a sinner? For them, food is quite simply a fuel.

3        Kenneth Lo, however, expresses a point of view that is profoundly different and typically Chinese, deriving from thousands of years of tradition. The London restaurateur Fu Tong, for example, quotes no less an authority than Confucius (the ancient sage known in Chinese as K’ung-Fu-Tzu) with regard to the primal importance of food. Food, said the sage, is the first happiness. Fu Tong adds: “Food to my countrymen is one of theecstasies of life, to be thought about in advance; to besmothered with loving care throughout its preparation; and to have timelavished on it in the final pleasure of eating.”

4        Lo observes that when Westerners go to a restaurant they ask for a good table, which means a good position from which to see and be seen. They are usually there to be entertained socially -- and also, incidentally, to eat. When the Chinese go to a restaurant, however, they ask for a small room with plain walls where they cannot be seen except by the members of their own party, where jackets can come off and they can proceed with the serious business which brought them there.The Chinese intentions are both honourable and whole-hearted: to eat with a capital E. 

5        Despite such a marked difference in attitudes towards what one consumes, there is no doubt that people in the West have come to regard the cuisine of China as something special. In fact, one can assert with some justice that Chinese food is, nowadays, the only truly international food. It is ubiquitous. Restaurants bedecked with dragons and delicate landscape----serving such exotica asDim Sin Gai (sweet and sour chicken),Shao Shing soup,Chiao-Tzu andkuo-Tioh (northern style), andGing Ai Kwar (steamed aubergines) — have sprung up everywhere from Hong Kong to Honolulu to Hoboken to Huddersfield.

6        How did this come about? Certainly, a kind of Chinese food was exported to North America when many thousands of Chinese went there in the 19th century to work on such things as the U.S. railways.They settled on or near the west coast, where the famous —or infamous_— “chop suey joints” grew up, with their rather inferior brand of Chinese cooking. The standard of the restaurants improved steadily in the United States, but Lo considers that the crucial factor in spreading this kind of food throughout the Western world was population pressure in the British colony of Hong Kong, especially after 1950, which sent families out all over the world to seek their fortunes in the opening of restaurants. He adds, however, that this could not have happened if the world had not been interested in what the Hong Kong Chinese had to cook and sell. He detects an increase in sensuality in the Western world; “Colour, texture, movement, food, drink, and rock music — all these have become much more part and parcel of the average person’s life than they have ever been.It is this increased sensuality and the desire for great freedom fromage-bound habits in the West, combined with the inherent sensual concept of Chinese food, always quick to satisfy thetaste buds, that is at the root of the sudden andphenomenal spread of Chinese food throughout the length and breadth of the Western World.”

7        There is no doubt that the traditional high-quality Chinese meal is a serious matter, fastidiously prepared and fastidiously enjoyed. Indeed, the bringing together and initial cutting up and organising of the materials is, according to Helen Burke, about 90% of the actual preparation, the cooking itself being only about 10%. This 10% is not, however, a simple matter. There are many possibilities to choose from; Kenneth Lo, for example, lists forty methods available for the heating of food, from chu or the art of boiling to such others asts’ang, a kind of stir-frying and braising,t’a, deep frying in batter, andwei, burying food in hot solids such as charcoal, heated stones, sand, salt and lime.

8        The preparation is detailed, and the enjoyment must therefore match it. Thus, a proper Chinese meal can last four hours and proceed almost like a religious ceremony. It is a shared experience for the participants, not a lonely chore, with its procession of planned and carefully contrived dishes, some elements designed to blend, others to contrast. Meat and fish, solids and soups, sweet and sour sauces, crisp and smooth textures, fresh and dried vegetables — all these and more challenge the palate with their appropriate charms.

9        In a Chinese meal that has not been altered to conform to Western ideas of eating, everything is presented as a kind of buffet, the guest eating a little of this, a little of that. Individual portions as such are not provided. A properly planned dinner will include at least one fowl, one fish and one meat dish, and their presentation with appropriate vegetables is not just a matter to taste but also a question of harmonious colours. The eye must be pleased as well as the palate; if not, then a certain essentially Chinese element is missing, an element that links this cuisine with that most typical and yet elusive concept Tao. Emily Hahn, an American who has lived and worked in China, has a great appreciation both of Chinese cooking and the “way” that leads to morality and harmony. She insists that “there is moral excellence in good cooking”, and adds that to the Chinese, traditionally, all life, all action, all knowledge are one. They may be chopped up and given parts with labels, such as “Cooking”, “Health”, “Character” and the like, but none is in reality separate from the other. The smooth harmonies and piquant contrasts in Chinese food are more than just the products of recipes and personal enterprise. They are an expression of basic assumptions about life itself.

1. Dictation 

In the Chinese culture, / the whole process of preparing food / from raw ingredients to morsels ready for the mouth / is highly distinctive when compared with other food traditions. / At the base of this process/ is the division betweenfan, grains and other starch foods, / andts’ai, vegetable and meat dishes. / To prepare a balanced meal , / it must have an appropriate amount of both fan and ts’ai, /  and ingredients are readied along both tracks. / Grains are cooked whole or as flour, / making up the fan half of the meal in various forms. / Vegetables and meats are cut up and mixed/ in various ways into individual dishes / to constitute the ts'ai half. / Even in meals in which fan and ts’ai are joined together, / such as in wonton, / they are in fact put together but not mixed up, / and each still retains its due proportion and own distinction. /

II. Text 2

Chinese Food in America

Corinna Lothar

1    Jennifer 8. Lee (8 really is her middle name; when pronounced in Chinese the number denotes prosperity) is a special kind of journalist. She writes with a delicious sense of humor and irony, following her story over hill and dale, ocean and mountain, from town to village. With wit and style, she delights with tales about Chinese food in America, and its sometimes hilarious origins.

2    The “Fortune Cookie Chronicles,” subtitled “Adventures in the World of Chinese Food,” begins with intrigue. Was it fraud or happenstance that made it possible for the numbers drawn in a Powerball lottery to disclose so many winners? The answer lies within the fortune cookies.

3    In her quest to find the origin, among other dishes, of Chinese fortune cookies (they’re Japanese, in fact), Miss. Lee traveled thousands of miles throughout the United States, China, and Europe. She ate at dozens, if not hundreds, of Chinese restaurants, interviewed chefs, met businessmen and restaurant owners and made friends with villagers.

4    Miss Lee discovered that most of those small packets of soy sauce given away with take-out orders are manufactured by a company called Kari-Out, and unlike the product of Asian soy sauce companies, Kari-Out’s packets don’t contain soy, but a mysterious substance unknown in China. “It’s like the difference between vanilla and vanilla extract made from vanilla beans, or real mayonnaise versus the mysterious coagulated substance called Miracle Whip.” General Tso’s chicken is virtually unknown in China but there was a real 19th-century general named Tso in Hunan Province who was involved “in the bloodiest civil war in human history” but his “long march across China” did not explain how “his long march across America came to pass.” Here in America “General Tso, like Colonel Sanders, is known for chicken, not war. In China, he is known for war, not chicken.”

5    Miss Lee adds social and cultural history to the culinary story of Chinese-American cuisine, seasoning them well with personal anecdotes. Whether she is describing how one woman started the concept of take-out food by slipping menus under apartment doors in Manhattan when business in her restaurant began to fail, or discussing the treatment of Chinese workers, or telling of the travails of one young Chinese family from New York who buy a restaurant in Hiawassee, Ga., Miss Lee has a reporter’s ear for nuance and eye for detail and a novelist’s empathy for the characters who populate her story. Everything is documented with notes and a bibliography. She has an unexpectedly exciting story to tell and the reader learns not only about what is served in Chinese restaurants and why, but also about the people who have made Chinese food ubiquitous in America and throughout the world.

6    Jennifer Lee is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, a Harvard graduate and a reporter for the New York Times. She grew up eating her mother’s authentic dishes in New York, but relishing the American-style Chinese food she discovered in Manhattan restaurants. A fluent Mandarin speaker, she was able to converse with people all over China in her quest for authenticity.

7    During the 19th century, “waves of Chinese continued to wash up on the shores” of the United States. For example, in the 1870s, one third of the population of what is now Idaho was Chinese, but the Chinese were not popular, and as Miss Lee points out, “[t]he embers of culinary xenophobia smoldered.” In the effort of white workers to stop the influx of the Chinese, “they littered the coast from Los Angeles to Tacoma, Washington, with the dead bodies of Chinese men.” The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 “restricted Chinese immigration and prevented Chinese arrivals from becoming naturalized citizens. It would be the only law in American history to exclude a group by race or ethnicity.” Having been driven from agriculture, mining and manufacturing, the Chinese turned to laundry and restaurant work. “Cleaning and cooking were both women’s work. They were not threatening to white laborers,” says Miss Lee. The Chinese continued to arrive, many illegally brought over at great cost to the family left behind, and transported by “snakeheads,” as the smugglers were called.

8    In New York, a network was established with buses taking newly arrived workers to restaurants throughout the country. The “Chinese bus” running between Washington and New York, popular with everyone looking for an inexpensive ride, was designed originally for transporting Chinese looking for restaurant jobs.

9    “The driving force behind Chinese cooking is the desire to adapt and incorporate indigenous ingredients and utilize Chinese cooking techniques. … Chinese cooking is not a set of dishes. It is a philosophy that serves local tastes and ingredients,” explains Tommy Wong, one of five brothers who own a restaurant outside New Orleans where Szechuan alligator and soy-vinegar crawfish are served. Chinese food is eaten all over the world — even in Antarctica, “where Monday is usually Chinese-food night at McMurdo Station.” But chefs and restauranteurs have adapted Chinese cuisine to the local tastes. Miss Lee, looking for the world’s best restaurant, points out that only in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco can authentic food be found in Chinese restaurants catering to Chinese people.

10   Apart from the history behind certain dishes and the evolution of Chinese restaurants in the United States, the book is sprinkled with delightful anecdotes, such as the story of the Chinese deliveryman — a dangerous occupation in New York — who disappeared after delivering an order. He wasn’t murdered as everyone feared, but stuck in a malfunctioning elevator for several days, unfortunately after he had delivered his order, leaving him without nourishment and making the hapless young man to whom he had delivered the food the prime suspect for murder. There’s scandal, too, when a shortage of kosher ducks from Long Island resulted in non-kosher ducks being sold as substitutes.

11   In Kaifeng, China, where Chinese Jews appeared about 1,000 years ago, Miss Lee visited an old Jewish woman. She asked the woman why Jews in America are so fond of Chinese food. “With a glint in her eye, she slapped the wooden table. She knew. Her Buddhist koanlike response was profound in its simplicity: ‘Because Chinese food tastes good.’”

12   Like the sweet, crunchy fortune cookie itself, the author’s passion has cracked open the story of Chinese food in this country and of the people who have made it possible for all of us to enjoy it.

Notes

1. About the author:Fortune Cookie Chronicles, subtitledAdventures in the World of Chinese Food,by Jennifer 8. Lee, a New York Times reporter for the Metro section.

2. Jennifer 8. Lee (Paragraph 1) Jennifer 8. Lee was born in New York City and graduated from Hunter College High School and Harvard College. She interned atThe Washington Post,The Wall Street Journal,The Boston Globe,Newsday andThe New York Times while working on her applied mathematics and economics degree and writing for The Harvard Crimson. She joined theTimes in 2001, one and a half years after graduating from Harvard. Lee was not given a middle name at birth and chose her own middle name later. She chose "8" as a teenager because of the prevalence of her first name. It was in her teen years that she also began a life-long obsession with food. For many Chinese, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and good luck. Lee wrote a book about the history of Chinese food in the USA and around the world, titledThe Fortune Cookie Chronicles, documenting the process on her blog. Warner Books editor Jonathan Karp struck a deal with Lee to write a book about "how Chinese food is more all-American than apple pie."

3. Powerball lottery (Paragraph 2) Powerball is an American lottery game sold through U.S. lotteries as a shared jackpot pool game. It is coordinated by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), a non-profit association formed by an agreement with member lotteries. Powerball is drawn Wednesdays and Saturdays.

4. General Tso's chicken (Paragraph 4) General Tso may refer to Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠, 1812-1885), a Qing Dynasty general from Hunan.. General Tso's chicken is a sweet and spicy deep-fried chicken dish that is popularly served in American and Canadian Chinese restaurants where it is erroneously considered Hunan cuisine. The origins of the dish are unclear. The dish was previously largely unknown in China. Thus, General Tso's Chicken is most likely an American invention in the history of American-Chinese food.

5. Colonel Sanders (Paragraph 4) Colonel Harland Sanders, (1890-1980), was an American entrepreneur who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). His image is omnipresent in the chain's advertising and packaging, and his name is sometimes used as a synonym for the KFC product or restaurant itself.

6. “waves of Chinese continued to wash up on the shores” (Paragraph 7) Chinese immigrants arrived in the US in large numbers beginning with the mid-19th century worked as laborers, particularly on the transcontinental railroad, such as the Central Pacific Railroad, and the mining industry, and suffered racial discrimination for a long time.

7. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Paragraph 7) The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law passed on May 6, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. Those revisions allowed the U.S. to suspend immigration, and Congress subsequently acted quickly to implement the suspension of Chinese immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years.

8. Szechuan (Paragraph 9) This is the Romanization of四川using the Wade-Giles system rather than the Pinyin system, which renders it Sichuan.

9. kosher ducks (Paragraph 10) The word “kosher” means proper or fit for Jews. This is because it relates to the kosher dietary law. They are safe to consume and sometimes used as ingredients to produce additional food items. Previously, most kosher foods were made in the family kitchen or in a store or small factory in the community. At that time, it was simple to know if the product was kosher or not. Sometimes, even rabbis used to supervise the purity of the product.