Read Online Chop Suey : A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Andrew Coe
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himself at the antipodes, geographically speaking, but equally so with respect to manners, customs, and morals.” Everything Chinese was spectacularly strange: the costumes, music, and mourning customs; the practice of reading from top to bottom and right to left; and so on. And of course, among those customs was their manner of eating: “Food is eaten with two sticks, and it requires some skill to dexterously pick it up and convey it by their means; every thing is served cut up, in small bowls; and it is considered a compliment to hand a morsel to your neighbor with your sticks, he taking it on his own.” 11 In an era before the notion of men from Mars had popular currency, in a sense Cushing’s Chinese filled the role of our era’s space aliens—the perfect opposite of everything Americans considered right and proper.
It’s impossible to know what picture of Chinese food stuck in the minds of the American audience of 1845. Theculinary descriptions passed on by Guangzhou merchants, missionaries, and diplomats were based on firsthand experiences, but they may not have been what Americans remembered. A few months after Cushing returned, at least a dozen newspapers printed this little tale:
It is said that Caleb Cushing, on being asked to dine with Mandarin Lin, discovered on the table something of which he ate exorbitantly, thinking it to be duck. Not speaking Chinese, and wishing to know what it was, he pointed to it, after he had finished, saying to his host interrogatively, “Quack, quack, quack?” The Mandarin, with equal brevity, replied, with a shake of the head, “Bow, wow, wow.” Mr. Cushing’s feelings may be imagined. 12
Actually, this joke was at least a half century old, with the British ambassador filling the role of Cushing. That didn’t matter to the newspapers, which told their readers that this little yarn was “too good” not to repeat. If the average American knew anything about the food of China, it boiled down to the idea that the Chinese people’s preferred food was dogs.
The Treaty of Wang Xia was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate on January 16, 1845, and signed by President Tyler the next day. For diplomats, it formalized ties to the Chinese government; for merchants and missionaries, it gave them far greater access to Chinese markets and Chinese souls along the Chinese coast. It did not, however, lead to a golden age of understanding between the peoples of the two nations. After a brief era of goodwill, American diplomats soon became frustrated at what they saw as the “arrogance and conservatism” of Chinese authorities. They still were unable to trade and travel through
all
of China, and they chafed at continued implications that Western culture wasinferior to the Chinese. To them, the West’s victory in the recent Opium War confirmed not only its superior military technology but the rightness of its morality—the hand of divine providence had guided the cannon fire against the pagans. On the Chinese side, resentment also increased—over the valuable tracts of Chinese territory foreigners now controlled and the unabated traffic in opium, which was slowly poisoning the populace. The most positive thing the Chinese authorities could say about the Americans was that they weren’t the British, who were at the forefront of the opium trade and would use any excuse to demand, often at gunpoint, further trading privileges in China. Instead, the U.S. diplomats played a kind of double game: they wouldn’t pick a fight with the Chinese, but they wouldn’t hold back the British either. For American merchants and missionaries in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Qing empire’s gradual descent into chaos meant unparalleled opportunity.
The speedy opium clippers were western traders’ vessels of choice. As soon as each new treaty port opened up—first in Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningpo, and Shanghai, later in a host of smaller coastal and river cities—the traders built
It’s impossible to know what picture of Chinese food stuck in the minds of the American audience of 1845. Theculinary descriptions passed on by Guangzhou merchants, missionaries, and diplomats were based on firsthand experiences, but they may not have been what Americans remembered. A few months after Cushing returned, at least a dozen newspapers printed this little tale:
It is said that Caleb Cushing, on being asked to dine with Mandarin Lin, discovered on the table something of which he ate exorbitantly, thinking it to be duck. Not speaking Chinese, and wishing to know what it was, he pointed to it, after he had finished, saying to his host interrogatively, “Quack, quack, quack?” The Mandarin, with equal brevity, replied, with a shake of the head, “Bow, wow, wow.” Mr. Cushing’s feelings may be imagined. 12
Actually, this joke was at least a half century old, with the British ambassador filling the role of Cushing. That didn’t matter to the newspapers, which told their readers that this little yarn was “too good” not to repeat. If the average American knew anything about the food of China, it boiled down to the idea that the Chinese people’s preferred food was dogs.
The Treaty of Wang Xia was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate on January 16, 1845, and signed by President Tyler the next day. For diplomats, it formalized ties to the Chinese government; for merchants and missionaries, it gave them far greater access to Chinese markets and Chinese souls along the Chinese coast. It did not, however, lead to a golden age of understanding between the peoples of the two nations. After a brief era of goodwill, American diplomats soon became frustrated at what they saw as the “arrogance and conservatism” of Chinese authorities. They still were unable to trade and travel through
all
of China, and they chafed at continued implications that Western culture wasinferior to the Chinese. To them, the West’s victory in the recent Opium War confirmed not only its superior military technology but the rightness of its morality—the hand of divine providence had guided the cannon fire against the pagans. On the Chinese side, resentment also increased—over the valuable tracts of Chinese territory foreigners now controlled and the unabated traffic in opium, which was slowly poisoning the populace. The most positive thing the Chinese authorities could say about the Americans was that they weren’t the British, who were at the forefront of the opium trade and would use any excuse to demand, often at gunpoint, further trading privileges in China. Instead, the U.S. diplomats played a kind of double game: they wouldn’t pick a fight with the Chinese, but they wouldn’t hold back the British either. For American merchants and missionaries in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Qing empire’s gradual descent into chaos meant unparalleled opportunity.
The speedy opium clippers were western traders’ vessels of choice. As soon as each new treaty port opened up—first in Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningpo, and Shanghai, later in a host of smaller coastal and river cities—the traders built
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