The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (41 page)

Interviews with Sal y Osaki, Douglas Dawkins, and Sue Okamura were conducted in San Francisco in March 2006.

Chapter 4: The Biggest Culinary Joke Played by
One Culture on Another

The fol owing academic works were

instrumental in my understanding of chop suey and the early perception of Chinese food in America:

“Chop Suey: From Chinese Food to Chinese American Food” by Renqiu Yu,
Chinese America:
History and Perspectives
(1987): 87–99 (the journal is difficult to find, and as far as I am aware, there is no digital copy available); “I’l Take Chop Suey: Restaurants as Agents of Culinary and Cultural Change” by Samantha Barbas,
Journal of Popular
Culture
36, no. 4 (2003): 669–87; “Eating the Exotic: The Growing Acceptability of Chinese Cuisine in San Francisco, 1848–1915” by Lisa Hsia, published in
Clio’s Scroll,
the undergraduate history journal at the University of California, Berkeley, vol. 5, no. 1 (Fal 2003): 5–30; and Harvey Levenstein’s
Paradox of
Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern
America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

For an early perspective on Chinese food, the digitization of early newspaper archives through ProQuest and other services proved extremely useful, both in finding early citations of phrases like “chop suey” (in various spel ings) and “Chinese restaurant,”

as wel as seeing the jump in frequency of those phrases that took place after 1896.

Other works that were more specifical y helpful included
Alas, What Brought Thee Hither?

The Chinese in New York, 1800–1950
by Arthur Bonner (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), which is an excel ent distil ation of early media coverage of the Chinese in New York;
Pigtails
and Gold Dust: A Panorama of Chinese Life in Early
California
by Alexander McLeod (Caldwel , Idaho: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1947); “Chinese Food and Restaurants” by Alice Harrison in the old out-of-print magazine
Overland Monthly,
June 1917, pages 527–32; “Cathay on the Coast” by Idwal Jones in the
American Mercury,
August 1926, pages 453–60.

Information about particular anecdotes fol ows: The health inspector’s search for rats on page 50 comes from “Mott Street Chinamen Angry: They Deny That They Eat Rats; Chung King Threatens a Slander Suit” in the
New York Times,
August 1, 1883, page 8. The information about Taishan’s disasters on page 51 comes from Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu in
Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000) on page 25, where she cites “Chinese Emigration, the Sunning Railway and the Development of Toisan” by Lucie Cheng, and Liu Yuzun, with Zheng Dehua, in
Amerasia
9, no. 1 (1982): 52–74, page 62. The reporter quoted about the standard “Chinese bil of fare” is from “Restaurant Life in San Francisco,”

Overland Monthly
(November 1868). The description about beans comes from “Chinese Food and Restaurants” by Alice Harrison in
Overland Monthly
, June 1917, pages 527–32. The writer describing Chinatown after the earthquake on page 53 is D. E.

Kessler in “An Evening in Chinatown” in
Overland
Monthly,
May 1907, pages 445–49.

Mark Twain’s account on 54 comes from
Roughing It,
which has been published in many versions. In the 1972 University of California version, his description of Chinese food starts on page 353.

The story about the judge, defendant, and chopsticks on page 54 comes from “Good Fortune Since the Gold Rush, Chinese Food Has Added Spice to American Life” by Bryan R. Johnson, published in the
Chicago Tribune,
February 17, 1988, and reprinted from American Heritage Inc.

The anti-Chinese document on page 55 is
Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion: Meat Versus
Rice, American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism

—Which Shall Survive
by Samuel Gompers and Herman Gutstadt in affiliation with the American Federation of Labor (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1902).

The document was submitted to the U.S. Senate as Document No. 137.

Statistics on restaurant workers between 1870 and 1920 and restaurants between 1900 and 1920 on page 57 are taken from Ronald Takaki’s superb
Strangers from a Different Shore
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1989; revised 1998), page 247.

The statistics on New York City restaurants in 1885 is taken from
Alas! What Brought Thee
in 1885 is taken from
Alas! What Brought Thee
Hither? The Chinese in New York, 1800–1950
by Arthur Bonner (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; 1997), page 71; the 1903 statistics are from page 105.

The employment statistics on page 57 come f r o m
The Chinese in America
by Reverend O.

Gibson (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1877).

The fact that New York City had gone chop suey mad on page 57 is from a “Heard About Town”

column in the
New York Times,
published on January 29, 1900, page 7.

Information on the Chicago City Council investigation on chop suey comes from “Investigates High Costs of Chop Suey, Chicago Council Gril s Bewildered

Orientals”

in

the
Boston Globe,

November 18, 1920.

The story about the fifteen-year-old Chicago girl stealing $3,400 from her parents for chop suey is from “Tel s of Chop Suey Orgy” in the
New York
Times,
May 2, 1923, page 21.

The anecdote about Luchow’s new spel ing on page 58 comes from “Umlaut Spel s Difference in Chow on 14th Street” in the
New York Times
, September 6, 1952, page 14.

Li Hongzhang’s visit on page 60 comes from “The Viceroy Their Guest: Ex-ministers to China Entertain Li Hung Chang,”
New York Times,
August 30, 1896. The statement of chop suey first becoming popularized in New York City found on page 64 is based on work done by John Kuo Wei Chen, a Chinese American historian who has examined menus, historical photographs, and newspaper accounts from that era.

Chapter 5: The Long March of General Tso
This chapter was largely inspired by Ted Anthony of the Associated Press and his piece

“Chinese Takeout Menu Legends: General Tso—

warrior, innovator…chicken?,” which was transmitted July 24, 2004. Ted’s advice and guidance concerning Sichuan and Shanghai food was immeasurably critical for this chapter.

The account of the great Chinese chefs in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s is reconstructed from interviews and news articles of the era.

Michael Tong was original y interviewed about General Tso’s chicken in December 2004. Bob Lape, formerly of ABC News, was interviewed in August 2005. My trips to Hunan and Taipei took place in October 2006.

Chapter 6: The Bean Sprout People Are in the
Same Boat We Are

The interview with Greg Louie of Lotus was conducted in November 2004, before Lotus closed.

The anecdote about Edward Louie’s account of how to market fortune cookies as exotic was drawn from

“Ah So! Sales Boom for Fortune Cookies: Messages Go Modern” by Michael Winger,
Wall Street Journal,
August 12, 1966, page A1.

Chapter 7: Why Chow Mein Is the Chosen Food
of the Chosen People—or, The Kosher Duck
Scandal of 1989

This account of the kosher duck scandal is based on interviews with Michael Mayer conducted in March 2006, as wel as several third-party news accounts, especial y Alicia Mundy’s piece “The Case of the Smoking Duck: Moshe Dragon Chinese Kosher Restaurant Investigation,”
Regardie’s
10, no.

8 (April 1990): 86; the article ran at a very entertaining 8,218 words.

These other pieces also supplemented the
Regardie’s
piece: “The Strange Case of Moshe Dragon Restaurant” by Judith Colp,
Washington
Times,
March 15, 1990, page E1; “In Kosher Conflict, the Duck Stops Here; Rabbinical Council Under Fire for Handling of Chinese Restaurant” by Eugene L.

Meyer,
Washington Post,
June 20, 1990, page C1; and “Is Everything Kosher with Moshe Dragon’s Duck?” by Ruth Sinai, Associated Press, July 4, 1990.

My chapter also draws on contemporaneous coverage by
Washington Jewish Week,
available in bound volumes at the
Washington Jewish Week
offices in Silver Spring, Maryland. In chronological order, these included: “Chinese Kosher Clash at Moshe Dragon: Food Fraud or Frame-up?” by Judith Colp, September 14, 1989, page 3; “Moshe Dragon Mashgiach Fired” by Judith Colp, September 28, 1989, page 2; “Moshe Dragon Inquiry Nears End” by Jon Greene, November 18, 1989, page 3; “Moshe Dragon Exonerated of Kosher Wrongdoing” by Jon Greene, December 8, 1989, page 3; “New Charges Rock Moshe Dragon” by Jon Greene, April 5, 1990, page 27; “Rabbis Face New Questions Over Kosher Pancake Flap” by Jon Greene, April 12, 1990, page 11; “Conservative Rabbis Split on Moshe Dragon” by Jon Greene, April 12, 1990, page 11; “Maryland Attorney General’s Office Reviewing Moshe Dragon Charges” by Jon Greene, April 19, 1990; “Moshe Dragon,” letter to the editor submitted by Lazer Fuerst of Rockvil e, Maryland, May 17, 1990; “Unorthodox Practices: Washington’s Kosher Food System Is Flawed, Critics Charge, and It May Be on the Brink of a Movement Toward Reform” by Jon Greene, May 31, 1990, page 5; “Washington Board of Rabbis Voices Support of Moshe Dragon” by Jon Greene, June 14, 1990, page 7; and “The Saga Continues: Why Moshe Dragon’s Last Mashgiach Quit” by Jon Greene, June 21, 1990, page 5.

The role of Chinese food in American Jewish culture drew its inspiration from two academic papers. The first is Hanna Mil er’s “Identity Takeout: How American Jews Made Chinese Food Their Ethnic Cuisine,”
Journal of Popular Culture
39, no. 3

(2006): 430–65. The second is the oft-cited granddaddy on Jews and Chinese food: “New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern” by Gaye Tuchman and Harry G.

Levine,
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
22, no. 3 (October 1993): 382–407. It is available online at

http://soc.qc.cuny.edu/Staff/levine/NYJews-and-Chinese.htm.

The anecdote about the protest sign reading

“Down with chop suey! Long live gefilte fish!” on page 97 is from
Getting Comfortable in New York: The
American Jewish Home, 1880–1950
by Susan Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit (New York: Jewish Museum, 1990), page 215; I found it quoted in Mil er.

I made visits to Chai Peking in January 2006 and Soy Vay in March 2005. I visited Kaifeng, China, in October 2006.

In addition, I had many conversations with Jewish friends around the country to build up my understanding of the role of Chinese food in their families’ lives.

Chapter 8: The
Golden Venture:
Restaurant
Workers to Go

Interviews

with

Michael

Chen

were

conducted in Dublin, Ohio, in June 2006. The visits to Houyu and Shengmei in Fujian were conducted in October 2006. The visit to Bangkok was conducted in December 2006. The visit to the Dominican Republic and the interview with “Naum” was conducted in May 2006.

Information on the Fujianese immigration routes was drawn from numerous academic sources, including the book
Global Human Smuggling:
Comparative Perspectives,
edited by David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001). Among the essays that proved extremely useful in the book are “From Fujian to New York: Understanding the New Chinese Immigration”

by Zai Liang and Wenzhen Ye, and Peter Kwong’s

“The Impact of Chinese Human Smuggling on the American Labor Market.” Additional y, I drew insights from
Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration
to the United States
by Ko-Lin Chin (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999). Interviews with Zai Liang, Peter Kwong, and Ko-Lin Chin on their academic research were invaluable.

Much of the account of Sister Ping is drawn from court transcripts of the Sister Ping trial, case no.

94-CR-953-MBM in the Southern District of New York. The bulk of the trial took place in May and June 2005, and Weng Yu Hui and Guo Liang Qi, who were both convicted for their firsthand involvement in the
Golden Venture,
testified in return for leniency. In addition, many of the law enforcement agents involved in the case—from the FBI, INS, Coast Guard, and Hong Kong police—also testified. Since the case was on appeal as of 2007, the transcripts remained available at the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street. I would like to thank Patrick Radden Keefe for alerting me to their availability.

Material drawn from the court transcripts includes: the scene where Sister Ping and Weng Yu Hui meet the morning of the crash, as told by Weng; the specifics of the business dealings between Guo Liang Qi, also known as Ah Kay, and Sister Ping in a September 1991 smuggling transaction, as told by Guo; Sister Ping’s line (“That’s what happened in the past. We’re talking business now,” court transcript, page 404), as told by Guo; the fact that the captain of t h e
Najd II
decided to stop in Mombasa, Kenya, because he decided his share of the smuggling profit was too smal , as told by Weng; the decision to crash the
Golden Venture
into Breezy Point, as recounted by Weng; the arrest of Sister Ping in the Hong Kong airport (as told by law enforcement agents).