Chinese food has come a long way and a new book examines how America overcame racial food prejudices and embraced Chinese food. I often get some of this food given to me on my daily rituals of street begging for liquor and can only digest this stuff after two days being free of food. The book "Chop Suey, USA" by Yong Chen makes the case that Chinese foods popularity embarked the country to realizing and embracing multiculturalism early on in the nineteenth century. The author thinks that Chinese food was inseparably linked to the expansion of the United states and need for an outlet to serve cheap quick food to mobile people. in this book Yong says that Chinese food was embraced by those on the margins of society. Few on the bottom though wanted to actually be the cook and the low occupation of serving and cooking food were a profession few would choose and the Chinese were often relegated to laundry and cooking work.
The Chinese migrant being locked out of the growing economic opportunity of the country would often reject other foods and return to their native flavors and tastes they felt was a major part of their identity. It is this identity that helped pave the way for Chinese foods rise in America as a major force on the food menu for America. This rise was the part of an immigrant story along with alluring ability to market Chinatown with a society looking for new adventures as the frontier faded away. many Americans would go through Chinatown for a nights entertaining event and the luster of Chinatown could not be matched. The author compares other immigrant groups that came to this country at the same time and failed to get their cuisine as popular (Japan, Filipinos) and in the mainstream as the Chinese were so successful. While sushi places have caught on in recent years with urban yuppies, Filipino food will remain a ethnic group only consumed and enjoyed by the folks from the archipelago islands. this is a great historical account of Chinatowns in America as well and their early growth and establishments in a country that was turning quickly urban. Mr Chen goes into the anti-Chinese hysteria and how many Chinese restaurants were driven out along with the Chinese in rural areas around America and how the influx of these migrant/refugees in cities also lead to so many Chinese restaurants and Chinatown being developed at the turn of the twentieth century. Mr Chen's work also looks into white attitudes to these food places that were popping up and their reactions that were sometimes positive and sometimes hostile in reaction. reading this book got me hungry for one of these Chinese Kitchens and some of their beef noodle dishes. Now if only some one will just give me a meal tonight.
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