Quoting diaries, newspapers, and magazines, Chen documents these supporters’ arguments. Chen argues that it was the intervention of clergy and other sympathetic observers promoting Chinese usefulness as service providers that won them a temporary reprieve. The earliest Chinese immigrants worked in mining and construction though they were soon muscled out of those industries and threatened with outright expulsion.
This empire stewardship role, Chen admits, took some time to develop. Still, Chen insists, the ubiquity of Chinese food and its low cost were important in bringing restaurant meals, a luxury consumption good in the early twentieth century, to the masses (p. Nor has it become American the way tea has become British. As Chen readily acknowledges, Chinese food is not a single ingredient but a food system. Is Chinese food “empire food”? It is not a classic “empire food” like chocolate, sugar, coffee, pineapple, and tea, foods that became ”important and popular commodities in mass consumption (in the empire nation) . (and were) often produced by those who were not citizens of the empire” (p. To achieve and maintain its domination, Chen asserts, America relied on low-pay service workers to supply a cornucopia of consumption delights that seduced outsiders into voluntary allegiance. Home to a “people of plenty,” America conquered with the promise of a better life (p. Unlike Rome, which “conquered its world with Roman legions,” or Britain, whose Royal Navy ruled the seas, the United States achieved domination through its mass consumer culture (p. Is the United States an empire? Yes, Chen argues, just not a traditional one.
#CHOP SUEY CHINESE FOOD MAC#
Instead, Chen suggests, the key to understanding Chinese food’s widespread popularity but fundamental lack of respect is that it is an “empire food,” an inexpensive, ubiquitous food available to the American public through the agency of an America “empire.” “Chop suey,” he writes, “was the Big Mac of the pre-McDonald’s era” (p. A Chinese restaurant may have offered American diners the vicarious joy of travel to China, but if they viewed China as a filthy, impoverished, rat-infested country, such “joy” would have been one most would happily forego. If Chinese food is always and everywhere judged superior, why is American fast food so popular in China? He is unsympathetic to the “Cultural Transnationalization” explanation as well (p. Why did the United States support so many Chinese restaurants? Chop Suey, USA is Chen’s answer.Ĭhen quickly dismisses the “The Best in the World” hypothesis (p. And he found them! They were everywhere! His culinary cravings inspired a question.
Wherever he traveled, he sought out Chinese restaurants. It did not take long for Chen’s “Chinese stomach” to protest. He had barely stepped off the plane when historian Yong Chen’s American host thrust a sandwich and cup of milk into his hands and said: “You are a Yankee now please eat some American food” (p.
Published on H-Environment (February, 2015) New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America.Īrts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History Series.
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