Read Online Chop Suey : A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Andrew Coe
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their docks, warehouses, offices, and residences. Back in Guangzhou, they had railed against their confinement to the factory quarter and their isolation from the Chinese city. Now, strangely, they replicated that isolation, although on a more spacious scale, in gated communities well separated from the Chinese cities. The British, the dominant faction among the merchants, set the social tone here. There was to be no mingling with “inferior” races beyond what was necessary for trade. The westerners considered life inside the Chinese walls dirty, smelly, noisy, crowded, overwhelming, and best avoided. The only time they ventured there was when they had business with the local authorities or for the obligatory banquet with a Chinese merchant. As they strodethrough the crowded city streets, many Europeans would use their canes as clubs, beating a path through the Chinese men, women, and children so they could walk unmolested. The Chinese authorities could do nothing, because they had little authority over the foreigners in the treaty ports.
The Americans and Europeans preferred to spend time among their own kind, dividing their leisure hours between walks along the waterfront, rowboat excursions, sports like cricket and rackets, riding, drinks at the club, and elaborate meals. Here’s the menu of a typical dinner for western traders in Shanghai:
rich soup, and a glass of sherry;
then
one or two side dishes with champagne;
then
some beef, mutton, or fowls and bacon, with
more
champagne, or beer;
then
rice and curry and ham;
afterwards
game;
then
pudding, pastry, jelly, custard, or butter and a glass of port wine;
then
in many cases, oranges, figs, raisins, and walnuts . . .
with
two or three glasses of claret or some other wine. 13
All of these dishes would have been carried in by armies of Chinese servants, who were hired so cheaply that even the lowliest clerk could expect to be waited on hand and foot. Not until well after 1900 did western merchants admit to actually liking Chinese food or eating in a Chinese restaurant.
A British trader later summarized the dominant attitude of traders in China: “Commerce was the beginning, the middle, and the end of our life in China . . . if there were no trade, not a single man, except missionaries, would have come there at all.” 14 In the twentieth century, this attitude morphed into something called the “Shanghai mind,” which one observer said resembled “a comfortable but hermetically sealed and isolated glass case.” 15 Inside that case,western merchants devoted themselves to business and the observance of an elaborate and highly stratified social code, which boiled down to “us,” the westerners, versus “them,” the Chinese. For any European or American to show interest in China or Chinese life beyond trade was social and professional suicide. Unlike the original generation of merchants who lived in the Guangzhou factories, the American businessmen working in late nineteenth-century China rarely thought it worthwhile to write about their experiences.
Missionaries made up the other main group of American China hands in the decades after the Treaty of Wang Xia. Unlike the merchants, missionaries had to live in the Chinese cities, learn the local dialects, and study local customs to further their goal of saving souls. In order to inspire more Americans to come to China to continue their holy work, many of them wrote books about the country, its people, and their experiences. Perhaps the most influential of these was written by Samuel Wells Williams, the editor and printer of the
Chinese Repository
. In 1845, Williams had returned to the United States on furlough. He wished to see his father, who was terminally ill, and he hoped to raise money for his China work. Specifically, he wanted the funds to purchase a complete set of Chinese type, so he could publish Bibles, tracts, and other works in Chinese. His backers on the missionary board were dubious—they
The Americans and Europeans preferred to spend time among their own kind, dividing their leisure hours between walks along the waterfront, rowboat excursions, sports like cricket and rackets, riding, drinks at the club, and elaborate meals. Here’s the menu of a typical dinner for western traders in Shanghai:
rich soup, and a glass of sherry;
then
one or two side dishes with champagne;
then
some beef, mutton, or fowls and bacon, with
more
champagne, or beer;
then
rice and curry and ham;
afterwards
game;
then
pudding, pastry, jelly, custard, or butter and a glass of port wine;
then
in many cases, oranges, figs, raisins, and walnuts . . .
with
two or three glasses of claret or some other wine. 13
All of these dishes would have been carried in by armies of Chinese servants, who were hired so cheaply that even the lowliest clerk could expect to be waited on hand and foot. Not until well after 1900 did western merchants admit to actually liking Chinese food or eating in a Chinese restaurant.
A British trader later summarized the dominant attitude of traders in China: “Commerce was the beginning, the middle, and the end of our life in China . . . if there were no trade, not a single man, except missionaries, would have come there at all.” 14 In the twentieth century, this attitude morphed into something called the “Shanghai mind,” which one observer said resembled “a comfortable but hermetically sealed and isolated glass case.” 15 Inside that case,western merchants devoted themselves to business and the observance of an elaborate and highly stratified social code, which boiled down to “us,” the westerners, versus “them,” the Chinese. For any European or American to show interest in China or Chinese life beyond trade was social and professional suicide. Unlike the original generation of merchants who lived in the Guangzhou factories, the American businessmen working in late nineteenth-century China rarely thought it worthwhile to write about their experiences.
Missionaries made up the other main group of American China hands in the decades after the Treaty of Wang Xia. Unlike the merchants, missionaries had to live in the Chinese cities, learn the local dialects, and study local customs to further their goal of saving souls. In order to inspire more Americans to come to China to continue their holy work, many of them wrote books about the country, its people, and their experiences. Perhaps the most influential of these was written by Samuel Wells Williams, the editor and printer of the
Chinese Repository
. In 1845, Williams had returned to the United States on furlough. He wished to see his father, who was terminally ill, and he hoped to raise money for his China work. Specifically, he wanted the funds to purchase a complete set of Chinese type, so he could publish Bibles, tracts, and other works in Chinese. His backers on the missionary board were dubious—they
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