a biased essay in three parts
By Howie Southworth
Foreword
By now, it may be a gracefully aging story, but China is still pretty big news. For the last decade or so, China has enjoyed being a silk-draped debutant with a booming economy, an explosive set of Summer Games, and more new mega-malls than you can shake a chopstick at. On a personal level, I love China and have enjoyed watching her take on a global make-over for the last 13 years. I was lucky enough to reside there for a spell in the late nineties teaching English, and I still visit her as often as I can afford. Simply put, I go to eat.
Incessantly entertaining, sometimes harrowing, and always filling, my residency in the Middle Kingdom was a food lover’s marathon. I have been on a rather fruitless culinary hunt ever since. When I first repatriated to the states, my chopsticks unsheathed, the first thing I wanted to do was venture out to find the food that I soon (starvingly) discovered was lost to me. Food ways, it seems, proved to be the hardest souvenir to pack. This started me down the ravenous road of research, writing, arguing and cooking, simply to share with my compatriots the food that should find a loving home on the American plate. Alas, Americanized Chinese food is a formidable foe with its own strong current of popularity.
What is “real” Chinese food? Why do American's not “get” it? Do we have no access? Is there a general lack of understanding? Do we even want it? Where to begin...
I must admit, there are notable Chinese cuisine jewels to be found around New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles (no surprise, as they have rather large Chinese populations), but these foodie destinations are the exception, not the rule when it comes to finding authentic Chinese food in the US. In places like this, it has become the practice of gastro-adventurers such as myself to either learn the some of the language or learn to “point and order,” off-menu. We should not have to strenuously discover these beautiful needles in a haystack, we need to change the hay.
This essay explores three areas that have had a significant impact on why we generally do not experience real China cuisine. In Part One, I examine a bit of American and Chinese history, the factors that have lead us to where we are today. In Part Two, I continue by exploring the word “authentic,” i.e., why get loaded down by General Tso’s Chicken, Beef and Broccoli, and Sweet and Sour (Fill-In-The-Blank), when China serves up widely popular foods (tomatoes, eggs, potatoes, fruits, greens, bacon, meatballs, I could go on) in hundreds of ways that we almost never see? In Part Three, I provide a rational theory: We can’t get to real Chinese cuisine given our current, very French perspective on the perfect meal. Lastly, of course, I would not be the hero of this epic if I simply ranted about the problem without providing what I believe to be the needed solution.
I may not change your mind, and I may already be preaching to the converted, but I do hope you take something new from reading the piece. If all goes well, you will jump on board this train as it leaves the station, destined to get you the food you deserve and I pine for on a daily basis. It is all for the love of magnificent Chinese food. No apologies.
Part One: On History
Some of the least known influences on American-Chinese food come directly from our collective history. We already know that Chinese laborers were brought across the Pacific to pan for gold in the late 1840’s. We also know that more Chinese laborers were hired to our shores to lay tracks for the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1880’s. We may or may not know that there was this thing called the Chinese Exclusion Act. Within these three lies the heart of the problem.
Problem Phase 1: Chinese laborers who served the west coast from the mid-to-late 1800’s were men. The home cooks in China during this time were the women. They remained in China. This left the already marginalized Chinese laborers to forage and fend for themselves. They used the local ingredients they could find and tried to mimic what the women in their lives would cook for them one very large ocean away. This, for lack of a better term, was a disaster.
Problem Phase 2: Even though you may be the one geek from your 6th grade American History class who recalls everything about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (finally repealed in 1943), you too may not realize its profound and lasting effect on food. This act began as a wage security measure for non-Chinese laborers in California, but soon spiraled way the heck out to a) prevent Chinese men from reentering the US if they chose to visit the home country; b) prevent the US-residing Chinese from moving their families to the US; and c) prevent new Chinese skilled or unskilled laborers from immigrating here.
In essence the Chinese Exclusion Act left Chinese men who were already here and cooking up an unreal storm with two choices: Go home for good, or stay and work in the non-labor arena: The service industry. Most opted for the “better life in America.” They landed jobs in a newly popularized Chinese laundry culture and in a fledgling restaurant industry, where they brought along their brand new, haphazardly adapted recipes. Many of the Chinese ex-laborers convened on big western cities like San Francisco, and were largely pushed to live in secluded areas (um, Chinatowns).
Problem Phase 3: The Chinese-staffed restaurants that sprung up served cheap dishes that bore some passing (though primarily emotional) resemblance, to Chinese family cookery. Flash forward, as this is basically the same story until after the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed. A whole new generation of Chinese immigrants came into all corners of the US this time around, and men and women were well represented. Ah, the cooks of the family are finally aboard. This should solve the problem, right? Not on your life!
Problem Phase 4: Remember a little thing called the Chinese Communist Revolution? How about the Cultural Revolution? There were many impactful movements in between these two hallmarks of modern Chinese history, but we’ll use these as the tent stakes to anchor my argument. Not only was cultural education, worldliness, or anything traditionally Chinese to be embraced from 1949 through the Open Reform policies of 1978, it was flatly discouraged. This did not bode well for culinary training, flourish or creativity, especially when cookery is considered an art in China and the arts suffered severely.
Think about the generation that was finally willing, able, and (frankly) young enough to make a good run at the American Dream in the late 1960’s, 1970’s and early 1980’s. There were few-to-no classically trained chefs, and they were coming from a communist country with drab-by-design cafeterias and lackluster community mush halls. Folks legally or illegally able to leave China would come to make some cash in the US, many would end up working in an existing Chinese restaurant or open their own –whether or not they had a background in cooking! I personally know doctors who came over with no possibility of legally practicing medicine and picked up a wok, only to learn from the folks here how to make the once chic cosmopolitan specialty chop suey, or “za sui” in mandarin. The term literally means to assemble miscellany. Not. Even. A. Dish!
Resolution? In the modern era of China, thankfully, the landscape is slightly different for those who are able to emigrate, and on occasion we do get a few good cooks who slip through the cracks. Bear this in mind, however: Today, culinary school in China is very strict, very difficult, and very China-centric – To the point that many students are guaranteed placement in a 5-star hotel in a major city, working for a Master Chef and they pull in a modest but comparatively strong salary. There is no direct incentive to go abroad and it is still quite challenging to get approved for a passport and visa. Hence, our historical challenge.
One Last Opinion: Ok, certainly not the last, per se. Cuisine matures within a context. I get that. We do have a unique cuisine in our beloved, fast, and cheap American-Chinese, as in Japan with Japanese-Chinese, France with French-Chinese, The Philippines with Philippino-Chinese, of course this list goes on. Every once in a while, however, a happy anomaly occurs for a cuisine that begins to “authenticize” it despite the strong adaptation trajectory. My example is Julia Child. She blasted onto our TV screens in the 1960’s and popularized the French ways of cooking. She was funny, quirky, and celebrated as our first bona-fide food celebrity. She swept us away from our ancestral meat and potatoes frame of mind and onto a much more diverse (though heavily French) path that we still enjoy today.
In hopes of creating a similar happy anomaly, Chinese cuisine needs its own Julia Child. Today, any recipe can be found on the internet and any ingredient can be gotten either locally or online. The stage is therefore set for an evangelist, but where’s our Julia? I was optimistic about two particular gentlemen on the Travel Channel who have instead solidified our perspective that real Chinese cuisine is hard to reach and perchance a “bizarre food.” So, though they are great caricatures for authenticity, they are rather counterproductive. In Parts Two and Three of this piece, I talk more about these guys and I delve some more into American perspectives on the word “authentic,” as well, I explore the current eating culture that need to shift to make room for the good stuff from China. Stay tuned.
Literature note
I’ve recently read countless articles and a few tomes on Chinese cuisine in America. One notable and highly recommended book is The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee of the NY Times. It’s begins with and is loosely anchored by a retelling of Jennifer’s search for answers when over 100 Powerball players win using the same numbers obtained from the inside of a fortune cookie. She proceeds to delve pretty deeply into immigration to the states, the legal means by which Chinese aliens were marginalized, through to today’s practices of getting people (cooks) onto slow-yet-illegal boats from China. It’s an intriguing and sometimes fun lens through which to get some more fodder for thought.
P.S.
This article is all about the American potential for acceptance and just getting over an irrational fear of really great food. About a year ago I started capturing some film for a similar project called Soy Story: Putting the China back in Chinese food. One day, I’ll have the time to sew it all up into one seriously tasty documentary. For now, please enjoy photos from my journeys and some of the initial clips from Soy Story:
CLICK HERE TO SEE SOME REAL CHINESE FOOD
SOY STORY Clip #10 "Very laid back"
SOY STORY Clip #9 "I've seen temples"
SOY STORY Digable Clip #8
SOY STORY Bonus Clip #7
SOY STORY Inventive Clip #6
SOY STORY Special Holiday Clip #5
SOY STORY Steamy Clip #4
SOY STORY Opinionated Clip #3
SOY STORY forbidden clip #2
SOY STORY Tasty Clip #1
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