Chop Suey, USA
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE Perspectives on Culinary History
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY
Albert Sonnenfeld, Series Editor
Salt: Grain of Life, Pierre Laszlo, translated by Mary Beth Mader
Culture of the Fork, Giovanni Rebora, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld
French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion, Jean-Robert Pitte, translated by Jody Gladding
Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food, Silvano Serventi and Franoise Sabban, translated by Antony Shugar
Slow Food: The Case for Taste, Carlo Petrini, translated by William McCuaig
Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, translated by ine OHealy
British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History, Colin Spencer
A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America, James E. McWilliams
Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, Madeleine Ferrires, translated by Jody Gladding
Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, Herv This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise
Food Is Culture, Massimo Montanari, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld
Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking, Herv This, translated by Jody Gladding
Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, Frederick Douglass Opie
Gastropolis: Food and New York City, edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch
Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism, Herv This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise
Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, Andrew F. Smith
The Science of the Oven, Herv This, translated by Jody Gladding
Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy, David Gentilcore
Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb, Massimo Montanari, translated by Beth Archer Brombert
Food and Faith in Christian Culture, edited by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden
The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking, edited by Csar Vega, Job Ubbink, and Erik van der Linden
The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets, Kara Newman
Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food, Jon Krampner
Let the Meatballs Rest: And Other Stories About Food and Culture, Massimo Montanari, translated by Beth Brombert
Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages, Andrew F. Smith
Italian Identity in the Kitchen, or Food and the Nation, Massimo Montanari, translated by Beth Archer Brombert
Fashioning Appetite: Restaurants and the Making of Modern Identity, Joanne Finkelstein
The Land of the Five Flavors: A Cultural History of Chinese Cuisine, Thomas O. Hllmann, translated by Karen Margolis
The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet, Arnold van Huis, Henk van Gurp, and Marcel Dicke, translated by Franoise Takken-Kaminker and Diane Blumenfeld-Schaap
Religion, Food, and Eating in North America, edited by Benjamin E. Zeller, Marie W. Dallam, Reid L. Neilson, and Nora L. Rubel
Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Taste, Ole G. Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbk, translated by Mariela Johansen and designed by Jonas Drotner Mouritsen
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHERS SINCE 1893
NEW YORK CHICHESTER, WEST SUSSEX
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Copyright 2014 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-53816-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chen, Yong.
Chop suey, USA : the story of Chinese food in America / Yong Chen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16892-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-53816-9 (e-book)
1. Cooking, Chinese. 2. ChineseUnited StatesSocial life and customs. 3. Food habitsUnited StatesHistory. I. Title.
TX724.5.C5C54417 2014
641.5951dc23
2014012764
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .
COVER PHOTO: GEOFF SPEAR
BOOK & COVER DESIGN: CHANG JAE LEE
References to Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
To my parents, Rosalind, and Cynthia and Robert Chou
Contents
This book goes back to a kitchen encounter on August 23, 1985, when I first set foot in the New World. The sixteen-hour flight that took me from Beijing to New York was a great leap over an economic gap that had separated China and the West for more than a century. The eminent French historian Fernand Braudel called it the essential problem of the history of the modern world. Still looming large in the 1980s, it was the primary motivation for me and for millions of people from the third world to come to America.
The plane landed late at night. In the darkness that engulfed the city, I felt like a pioneer entering an unfamiliar wilderness. Yet I was not a total stranger in this new land. Like Alexis de Tocquevilles American pioneer of the early nineteenth century, I was acquainted with the past, curious of the future.
For someone like me, who had grown up under strict food rationing, such stories made tangible the idea that the United States was indeed an imperial superpower, an empire of mass consumption.
These tales rekindled Chinas American dream, harbored once by the Cantonese seeking their fortunes in the Gold Mountain, and awakened consumer desires long suppressed under Communism. It also made America the most desirable place for the young and ambitious. The Chinese who traveled across the ocean during the early years of the reform era were among the nations best educated and most fortunate, rather than its tired, its poor, and its huddled masses. But their motivation was the same as that of millions of immigrants from other parts of the world: the pursuit of the American dream, a dream signified first and foremost by Americas material abundance.
