[PDF] Chop Suey eBook

Author : Yong Chen
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 10,34 MB
Release : 2014-11-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0231538162

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American diners began to flock to Chinese restaurants more than a century ago, making Chinese food the first mass-consumed cuisine in the United States. By 1980, it had become the country's most popular ethnic cuisine. Chop Suey, USA offers the first comprehensive interpretation of the rise of Chinese food, revealing the forces that made it ubiquitous in the American gastronomic landscape and turned the country into an empire of consumption. Engineered by a politically disenfranchised, numerically small, and economically exploited group, Chinese food's tour de America is an epic story of global cultural encounter. It reflects not only changes in taste but also a growing appetite for a more leisurely lifestyle. Americans fell in love with Chinese food not because of its gastronomic excellence but because of its affordability and convenience, which is why they preferred the quick and simple dishes of China while shunning its haute cuisine. Epitomized by chop suey, American Chinese food was a forerunner of McDonald's, democratizing the once-exclusive dining-out experience for such groups as marginalized Anglos, African Americans, and Jews. The rise of Chinese food is also a classic American story of immigrant entrepreneurship and perseverance. Barred from many occupations, Chinese Americans successfully turned Chinese food from a despised cuisine into a dominant force in the restaurant market, creating a critical lifeline for their community. Chinese American restaurant workers developed the concept of the open kitchen and popularized the practice of home delivery. They streamlined certain Chinese dishes, such as chop suey and egg foo young, turning them into nationally recognized brand names.

Author : Andrew Coe
Publisher :
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 12,31 MB
Release : 2009-07-16
Category : Cooking
ISBN : 0195331079

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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, the United States is home to more Chinese restaurants than any other ethnic cuisine. In this authoritative new history, author Andrew Coe traces the fascinating story of America's centuries-long encounter with Chinese food. ChopSuey tells how we went from believing that Chinese meals contained dogs and rats to making regular pilgrimages to the neighborhood chop suey parlor. From China, the book follows the story to the American West, where both Chinese and their food struggled against racism, and then to New York and that crucial moment when Chinese cuisine first crossed over to the larger population. Along this journey, 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 origin; illuminates why American Jews fell in love with egg rolls and chow mein; and shows how Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened our palates to a new world of cuisine; and explains why we still can't get dishes like restaurants serve in China. The book also shows how larger historical forces shape our tastes--the belief in Manifest Destiny, the American assertion of military might in the Pacific, and the country's post-WWII rise to superpower status. Written for both popular and academic audiences, Chop Suey reveals this story through prose that brings to life the characters, settings and meals that helped form this crucial component of American food culture.

Author : Ann Hui
Publisher : Douglas & McIntyre
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,30 MB
Release : 2019-02-02
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781771622226

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The surprising history and vibrant present of small-town Chinese restaurants from Victoria, BC, to Fogo Island, NL

Author : Anne Mendelson
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 27,74 MB
Release : 2016-11-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0231541295

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Chinese food first became popular in America under the shadow of violence against Chinese aliens, a despised racial minority ineligible for United States citizenship. The founding of late-nineteenth-century "chop suey" restaurants that pitched an altered version of Cantonese cuisine to white patrons despite a virulently anti-Chinese climate is one of several pivotal events in Anne Mendelson's thoughtful history of American Chinese food. Chow Chop Suey uses cooking to trace different stages of the Chinese community's footing in the larger white society. Mendelson begins with the arrival of men from the poorest district of Canton Province during the Gold Rush. She describes the formation of American Chinatowns and examines the curious racial dynamic underlying the purposeful invention of hybridized Chinese American food, historically prepared by Cantonese-descended cooks for whites incapable of grasping Chinese culinary principles. Mendelson then follows the eventual abolition of anti-Chinese immigration laws and the many demographic changes that transformed the face of Chinese cooking in America during and after the Cold War. Mendelson concludes with the post-1965 arrival of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and many regions of mainland China. As she shows, they have immeasurably enriched Chinese cooking in America but tend to form comparatively self-sufficient enclaves in which they, unlike their predecessors, are not dependent on cooking for a white clientele.

Author : Suzy Kline
Publisher : Putnam Juvenile
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 13,46 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780698117815

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Eleven-year-old Orville enters a cooking contest, which he has high hopes of winning with his recipe for chop suey burgers.

Author : Deb Brammer
Publisher : Journeyforth
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 38,72 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780890847510

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Sixth-grader Amy and her family move to Taiwan to do missionary work, but even at her school for English-speaking students Amy finds the adjustment difficult.

Author : Bruce Makoto Arnold
Publisher : University of Arkansas Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 27,81 MB
Release : 2018-06-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1682260607

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The essays in Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea fill gaps in the existing food studies by revealing and contextualizing the hidden, local histories of Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the United States. The writer of these essays show how the taste and presentation of Chinese and Japanese dishes have evolved in sweat and hardship over generations of immigrants who became restaurant owners, chefs, and laborers in the small towns and large cities of America. These vivid, detailed, and sometimes emotional portrayals reveal the survival strategies deployed in Asian restaurant kitchens over the past 150 years and the impact these restaurants have had on the culture, politics, and foodways of the United States. Some of these authors are family members of restaurant owners or chefs, writing with a passion and richness that can only come from personal investment, while others are academic writers who have painstakingly mined decades of archival data to reconstruct the past. Still others offer a fresh look at the amazing continuity and domination of the “evil Chinaman” stereotype in the “foreign” world of American Chinatown restaurants. The essays include insights from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, economics, phenomenology, journalism, food studies, and film and literary criticism. Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea not only complements the existing scholarship and exposes the work that still needs to be done in this field, but also underscores the unique and innovative approaches that can be taken in the field of American food studies.

Author : Kwoklyn Wan
Publisher : Hardie Grant Publishing
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 33,32 MB
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : Cooking
ISBN : 1787133680

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Chinese is the UK's favourite takeout food, and it's beloved all over the world – as with much Indian food, it's the nostalgic, comforting creations for western palates that really get people salivating. Now you can make your favourite Chinese restaurant classics at home with Kwoklyn Wan's fabulous Chinese Takeaway Cookbook. Kwoklyn is a third-generation Chinese chef: BBC (British-Born Chinese). He’s also the brother of TV celebrity Gok Wan and both boys grew up working in their family's Cantonese Restaurant in Leicester in the 1970s. He has spent years perfecting recipes for Chinese dishes that taste like the ones from your local takeaway kitchen or restaurant. The book features 70 classic dishes, everything from sweet and sour chicken to char siu, prawn toast to chop suey, egg-fried rice to crispy seaweed – and most of them can be on the table in 20 minutes or less. Cook up a storm at home with Kwoklyn's fabulous take on food from the takeaway.

Author : Jennifer B. Lee
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 39,81 MB
Release : 2008-03-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0446511706

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If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

Author : Andrew Coe
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 32,88 MB
Release : 2009-07-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0199758514

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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.