Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
Andrew Coe
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0195331079
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China, and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States--by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time.
It's a tale that moves from curiosity to disgust and then desire. From China, Coe's story travels to the American West, where Chinese immigrants drawn by the 1848 Gold Rush struggled against racism and culinary prejudice but still established restaurants and farms and imported an array of Asian ingredients. He traces the Chinese migration to the East Coast, highlighting that crucial moment when New York "Bohemians" discovered Chinese cuisine--and for better or worse, chop suey. Along the way, Coe shows how the peasant food of an obscure part of China came to dominate Chinese-American restaurants; unravels the truth of chop suey's origins; reveals why American Jews fell in love with egg rolls and chow mein; shows how President Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened our palates to a new range of cuisine; and explains why we still can't get dishes like those served in Beijing or Shanghai. The book also explores how American tastes have been shaped by our relationship with the outside world, and how we've relentlessly changed foreign foods to adapt to them our own deep-down conservative culinary preferences.
Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is a fascinating tour of America's centuries-long appetite for Chinese food. Always illuminating, often exploding long-held culinary myths, this book opens a new window into defining what is American cuisine.
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Of the Qing Dynasty’s founder. Qiying had seen the awesome power of the British military machine up close and advised the emperor that a policy of appeasement was the only option. Realizing that the war threatened the survival of his dynasty, the emperor agreed to sue for peace. In August 1842, Qiying signed the Treaty of Nanking aboard a British battleship. The Chinese agreed to have full diplomatic relations with Britain, to cede Hong Kong to the Queen, to open four more ports to trade, and to.
Weakened under a succession of ineffectual emperors. In the Zhou court, it is estimated, 2,300 people worked in cooking and food preparation. During the latter half of Zhou rule, the troubled times known as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were eras of cultural ferment and creativity. Confucius and Laozi, the founder of Daoism, lived during these centuries, and the first great annals and compendia of ritual behavior were written. A theme in many of these writings is.
Pickles) had largely disappeared from Chinese tables and were replaced by fermented soybeans, soy paste, and soy sauce, now the ubiquitous seasoning of Chinese cuisine. Nonetheless, the descendants of the ancient fermented compounds live on in the many kinds of fermented fish sauce found across Southeast Asia. The kitchens where the ancient art of Chinese cuisine was practiced could range from the vast culinary complex that served the emperor to the corner of the peasant’s hut. By the time of.
One of the large class who believes that the Chinese are a much-maligned race of virtuous and enlightened people, he desires to see for himself that John Chinaman has been libeled . . . . The great majority indulge in this Oriental “slumming.” They come out of it with a confused impression of tortuous alleys, underground dens reeking with the odor of tobacco and opium, and faces so villainous that they haunt one’s dreams like the Malay that tyrannized over De Quincey’s opium-fed imagination.28.
Contained everything they needed to know for the upcoming trip, from a history of U.S.-Chinese relations to a description of what they would encounter on the table: “Banquet food served in the Peoples’ Republic of China is to the ‘Chinese food’ served in restaurants in the U.S. as Beef Wellington is to a cafeteria hamburger.” One might be served things like sharks’ fins, birds’ nests, sea cucumbers, snake, dog, bears’ paws, and who knows what else. “Fortunately, one’s taste buds are a more.