Jennifer 8 Lee, a Chinese-American journalist, has written a book, the "Fortune Cookie Chronicles" for the Western audience.
On March 25, 2008, last month, at Silicon Valley, Ms. Lee, a Chinese-American reporter from the New York Times, on a road show plugging her book, was at Google Headquarters, and delivered a talk about the history of Chinese food in America to the googlers. This blingual Harvard-educated Chinese-American young "foodie" devoted three years researching Chinese food in China and traced its spread in America.
She discovered some interesting facts about the genesis of Chinese food in America and also its spread in the overseas Diasporic communities of ethnic Chinese enclaves including America's Chinatowns. El Barrio Chino. Le Quartier Chinois. Dong Yan Fou. Hua Fou.
Apart from the food, Ms. Lee provided a glimpse about how American racism directed against Chinese immigrants in America shaped the poignant history of 150 years of the Diasporic settlement of America by the ethnic Chinese, through food and Chinese restaurants.
In the stridency of Anti-Chinese immigration, triggered by economic rivalry after the frenzy of California Gold Rush, which resulted in the most heinous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, this fascinating narrative through food and restaurants underscored and reflect racist sentiments with the vortex in California after the Gold Rush.
Ms. Lee researched and picked up an untold facet of Chinese bashing in a pamphlet, from American labor unionists hectoring for the promulgation of Chinese exclusion laws to stem the influx of Chinese immigrants into California in the 186os and 1870s, culminating in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in America, entitled, "Some Reasons for Chinese (Immigrant) Exclusion:
MEAT vs. RICE
AMERICAN MANHOOD vs. ASIAN COOLIEISM
Doesn't it strike some of you that today, we are getting with the China Demonization some of the same hues and cries which harks back into this early period of the Chinese immigration history into America, especially California ? Chinaman Bashing "deja vu"?
It is this "us" against "them" bigotry based on ignorance, and clashes in values and culture.
That aside, if you are interested to learn about the origins of "fortune cookies," or of the dish, "General Tso Chicken," or the facts about the ubiquitousness and pervasiveness of Chinese food in America, from big cities to small towns in the heartland, you should listen to Ms. Lee in the following YouTube tape.
By the way, Ms. Lee's middle name is really an "8," a chinese numeric signifying "fortune."
Click on below the YouTube tape of her talk before Google.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGZ6IwSDyyo
