Speaker 1: Guess what, Mango, what's that will? I've been saving this fact.
Speaker 1: I've got a great fact about Chinese takeout containers. So
Speaker 1: you're not talking about that life hack about takeout boxes,
Speaker 1: are you? Wait? I said this was my intro. I've
Speaker 1: been saving this one, and now you're trying to derail it.
Speaker 1: And of course now I'm curious and want to know
Speaker 1: what this life heck is, all right, so so tell
Speaker 1: me what it is. So it's pretty cool. It turns
Speaker 1: out that Chinese takeout cartons can double his makeshift plates
Speaker 1: like this was all over the YouTube's a few years ago.
Speaker 1: But if you pry the wires off the takeout container
Speaker 1: and then you unfold the box into like a large sheet,
Speaker 1: it collapses into a giant plate for sharing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of cool, but I'm having a
Speaker 1: hard time picturing that, just seeing like noodles going everywhere.
Speaker 1: But my fact is a little bit different. So did
Speaker 1: you know that the takeout box actually originated as an
Speaker 1: oyster pail? According to Snopes, the box was invented in
Speaker 1: eight by an American inventor, Frederick Weeks Wilcox, and was
Speaker 1: created as this leakproof way to carry around a clump
Speaker 1: of oysters. But since Chinese restaurants were some of the
Speaker 1: first to offer delivery services in the twentieth century, they
Speaker 1: just repurposed the things to carry around tiny portions of
Speaker 1: delicious foods. And that's just one of the amazing facts
Speaker 1: we're about to share on Chinese restaurants. So let's dig in. Hey,
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Maes Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass.
Speaker 1: Wait is he Is he sliding egg rolls onto his fingers? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think he's making egg roll hands, like you know,
Speaker 1: you just put them on your fingers. I'm wave at people.
Speaker 1: That's impressive. Well that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Alright, Mango.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that God is asking today's
Speaker 1: big question about how Chinese is Chinese food is this
Speaker 1: great article I saw a vice and it's about the
Speaker 1: first American style Chinese restaurant that opened in Shanghai and
Speaker 1: it's called Fortune Cookie. But before we talk about that,
Speaker 1: you actually used to work at a Chinese restaurant, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So I waited tables at this wonderful Pan
Speaker 1: Asian restaurant in Birmingham. I'm sure you remember, but it
Speaker 1: was when we were just starting Metal Floss and the
Speaker 1: family who owned it couldn't have been nicer, Like they
Speaker 1: used to fix all the staff this big Chinese meal
Speaker 1: at the end of every night, and I just thought
Speaker 1: it was so caring. But also it's where I learned
Speaker 1: the recipe for light soy sauce. Really, so do you
Speaker 1: want to share that with us? Sure? Well, one night,
Speaker 1: when I just started, it was like my turn to
Speaker 1: refill all the soy sauce dispensers on the table, and
Speaker 1: you know, I found the jug of regular soy sauce
Speaker 1: to fill them off with, but I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: light soy sauce jug. So I kept looking and looking,
Speaker 1: and when I finally asked a fellow waiter for help,
Speaker 1: he just looked at me like I was an idiot.
Speaker 1: Like he poured the container a half full of regular
Speaker 1: soyce us and then filled the rest up with water,
Speaker 1: which technically I guess is a lighter soy sauce, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I would have figured that out either.
Speaker 1: So in your defense, I think you're okay. But were
Speaker 1: the meals they cooked you at the end of each
Speaker 1: night different from what they served during the day, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean they used these more adventurous ingredients and they
Speaker 1: were a little more authentic Chinese. I guess you'd say,
Speaker 1: m hm. But that's what's interesting, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: first Chinese restaurants in America were launched during the gold Rush,
Speaker 1: way back in eighteen forty nine, so we've actually had
Speaker 1: almost a hundred and seventy years to diverge from the
Speaker 1: Chinese Chinese food and kind of forge our own cuisine here.
Speaker 1: I like these of we here. I'm not sure I've
Speaker 1: contributed that much to this cuisine. I don't know. You
Speaker 1: worked at that restaurant for like a year or so.
Speaker 1: I feel like you had a real influence though. But
Speaker 1: you know, American Chinese food has been isolated from China
Speaker 1: for a pretty long time now, so you kind of
Speaker 1: expect it to be foreign to people there. But it's
Speaker 1: also kind of a funny idea to start an American
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant in Shanghai, you know. So I was curious
Speaker 1: about this. Was it just like a novelty thing? That
Speaker 1: they were doing. No, so the co founders Fung Lamb
Speaker 1: and Dave Rossi, they were really serious about this and
Speaker 1: they went to a lot of effort, you know, like
Speaker 1: to get the American taste. They use Skippy and their
Speaker 1: peanut sauces and Philadelphia cream cheese and things like they're
Speaker 1: crabb rang Goon. They use Motts apple sauces as sweetener,
Speaker 1: mainly because that's what a lot of American restaurants used
Speaker 1: to use as sweeteners. That's really funny. So I know
Speaker 1: when my parents first came to the States in the
Speaker 1: early seventies, there really weren't a lot of Indian grocery
Speaker 1: stores in the US, so you'd have all these approximations,
Speaker 1: like if you couldn't find Bossmouth the rice, you just
Speaker 1: use Uncle Ben's. Or if you couldn't find these, like
Speaker 1: tortillas would work in a pinch, Like there are tons
Speaker 1: of these little tricks that everyone sort of new. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think I remember in the grocery store not too
Speaker 1: long ago seeing Uncle Ben's both as like for Indian
Speaker 1: dishes and for Chinese dishes. If I'm not Uncle Ben's
Speaker 1: got you covered whatever you're trying to cook. But that
Speaker 1: that's very much what happened in America. I mean, you
Speaker 1: may you do with what you could, and it's how
Speaker 1: dishes like beef and broccoli started to become a staple here.
Speaker 1: But the question is why bring American Chinese food to China?
Speaker 1: And the founder's answer was basically, you know, comfort food.
Speaker 1: There were these two Cornell grads who saw this enormous
Speaker 1: expat community there in Shanghai, and their rationale was kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, look when you're having a tough
Speaker 1: time and feeling homesick and all you want to do
Speaker 1: is wallow in the taste of something familiar for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, a carton of orange chicken
Speaker 1: and something fried and a cold beer would do the trick.
Speaker 1: So they were serious about this concept, and they imported
Speaker 1: American brands. They even flew Lamb's dad over from America
Speaker 1: to get his grandfather's recipes to get all these flavors. Right.
Speaker 1: That's so funny to me, but it really feels like
Speaker 1: a hard sell. It's like, you know, taking a pizza
Speaker 1: hut and trying to open in Italy. Did locals take
Speaker 1: to it or was it just for ex pats? Well,
Speaker 1: Chinese people did start coming in. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: way more appealing than it might sound. And the Instagram
Speaker 1: photos of the food and the plates and the decor,
Speaker 1: they all look pretty amazing, to be honest. But you know,
Speaker 1: the duo did have to alter the branding to the place.
Speaker 1: So what do you mean about that? Well, instead of
Speaker 1: calling it Chinese food with an American twist, they actually
Speaker 1: had to sell it as American food, something I had
Speaker 1: not really thought about, but it it kind of made sense.
Speaker 1: But they're all these little funny stories along the way,
Speaker 1: Like they had their staff debone the chicken because that's
Speaker 1: how we like our General So's, but all the dishes
Speaker 1: in China are bone in and people like bones and
Speaker 1: their food for flavor, and so the staff truly thought
Speaker 1: these people were crazy and trying to convince cooks that
Speaker 1: stuffing cream cheese into wantons was normal abroad and you know,
Speaker 1: not some sort of abomination. That was a different struggle.
Speaker 1: But the local seemed to really enjoy the food. Is
Speaker 1: kind of this foreign experience, and this comes from a
Speaker 1: Vice article, But apparently two petite women came in and
Speaker 1: ordered fifteen dishes, and then after they saw the first
Speaker 1: two entrees, come out just how huge these American portion sizes.
Speaker 1: Where they looked at each other and couldn't stop laughing.
Speaker 1: That's really funny. And I mean fifteen family style dishes
Speaker 1: would be like a week's worth of food. Oh no,
Speaker 1: cadn't win our When our family orders Chinese food here,
Speaker 1: I think we get two dishes just for like four
Speaker 1: or five of us. So it's pretty crazy. But you know,
Speaker 1: people were also delighted by the Chinese food takeout Carton's.
Speaker 1: They'd actually never seen them before in real life, and
Speaker 1: so they said, oh, that's like the Big Bang theory.
Speaker 1: You know what what Sheldon eats. I mean, what's crazy
Speaker 1: is that the Big Bang theory makes sense to people
Speaker 1: in China, but boneless chicken doesn't. Right, So I mean,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to eat of this list. I know,
Speaker 1: I was actually curious too. But unfortunately Fortune Cookie closed
Speaker 1: back in two thousand sixteen, and it had had a
Speaker 1: really good run and and supposedly it was doing fine,
Speaker 1: but the guys just got homesick and they decided to
Speaker 1: close up shop. But you know the reason I brought
Speaker 1: it up is that the restaurant gets written about in
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. I mean, there's people who laugh
Speaker 1: at the concept and then and people who want to
Speaker 1: argue that America in Chinese food is a legitimate cuisine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So to me, when when I think of Chinese food,
Speaker 1: it's always American Chinese food. And I actually remember when
Speaker 1: I was really little. I was so excited the first
Speaker 1: time I went out for Chinese food and Bombay, Like
Speaker 1: normally when I was in India, we need at my
Speaker 1: relatives houses, and I guess I was tired of eating
Speaker 1: Indian food all day every day, so I was really
Speaker 1: amped to go out. But then we went and I
Speaker 1: was like, what is this? I was promised Chinese food.
Speaker 1: I mean, Indo Chinese is its own delicious thing, and uh,
Speaker 1: if you haven't tried it, it's really great. Like chili
Speaker 1: chicken is a dish that you don't get anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Go Beventurians, this cauliflower dish, it doesn't exist in China.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible. But there's also one other really strange
Speaker 1: thing I remember about going to Chinese restaurants there, and
Speaker 1: it's that you can actually split your food very specifically.
Speaker 1: So if you want to share a soup with someone,
Speaker 1: you tell the waiter like one by two and they'll
Speaker 1: take your one order and split it into two bowls.
Speaker 1: Or if you want two bowls of noodles or something
Speaker 1: and want to split it three ways, you can actually
Speaker 1: say two by three, and like you can order in fractions.
Speaker 1: How crazy is that? Can you say three by four?
Speaker 1: You just keep going. It reminds me that old snl
Speaker 1: skit where that bank was bragging about, like if you
Speaker 1: give us a dollar and you want back eight dimes
Speaker 1: and four nickels, that's fine. If you want eight nickels
Speaker 1: and yeah, But Indian Chinese and American Chinese, they they
Speaker 1: actually aren't the only hybrids, right, There's a lot more.
Speaker 1: I mean, the truth is the Chinese food, you know,
Speaker 1: probably depends on where you were at the time. So
Speaker 1: like there's French Chinese food with salt and pepper frog legs.
Speaker 1: There's like a distinct Mexican Chinese food. They have dishes
Speaker 1: like baja fish and supposedly it tastes a little like
Speaker 1: a fajita. There's Caribbean Chinese, Cuban Chinese, Peruvian Chinese. Like
Speaker 1: they're all over the place, and they're all these distinct
Speaker 1: cuisines and I kind of want to try them. All
Speaker 1: that is. That is pretty cool. But let's bring it
Speaker 1: back to America for a minute here. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I didn't realize before this episode
Speaker 1: was just how many Chinese restaurants there are in America
Speaker 1: up so I was looking at the count. Did you
Speaker 1: realize that we have over forty one thousand of them?
Speaker 1: I mean, that feels insane to me. Yeah, And just
Speaker 1: to give you a sense of scale, you could actually
Speaker 1: take all the Starbucks in America, all the McDonald's in America,
Speaker 1: then throwing all the taco bells in America, adding all
Speaker 1: the waffle houses in America named some really good food here,
Speaker 1: and you'd still be several thousand short. There's actually this
Speaker 1: great Jennifer eight Lee Ted talk where she talks about
Speaker 1: the numbers and mentions the ubiquity of Chinese restaurants in
Speaker 1: American history. And one of the things she says is
Speaker 1: that the Cuban missile crisis was resolved in a Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurant in d C. And she also said that the
Speaker 1: building where John Wilkes Booth plotted to kill Lincoln is
Speaker 1: now a Chinese restaurant, and apparently it's called Walk and Roll.
Speaker 1: I mean that has to be the best thing about
Speaker 1: the place that John Willis Spooth stayed right like that.
Speaker 1: That's now a Chinese restaurant, But I love that it's
Speaker 1: a punny restaurant title. I know you love your ponds.
Speaker 1: But actually there was this article in smith sony and
Speaker 1: about how a lot of China these restaurants have the
Speaker 1: same names. Like if a restaurant has an animal in
Speaker 1: the name, chances are it's a panda or a dragon,
Speaker 1: and they use the same descriptors like golden or lucky
Speaker 1: or the really helpful number one or whatever it. Maybe.
Speaker 1: I mean that's partially because Chinese restaurants were like early
Speaker 1: McDonald's or like Irish bars, they have the same field
Speaker 1: in general menus because it made the clientele feel at home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never thought about that, but it does make sense,
Speaker 1: and and that formula worked and new restaurants often followed
Speaker 1: that pattern. But you know, one of the reasons you
Speaker 1: see garden in the title a lot is that the
Speaker 1: Mandarin word for garden actually doubles as a word for money.
Speaker 1: So it's a little hopeful word play that that's pretty
Speaker 1: much lost on most of us that don't speak Mandarin.
Speaker 1: But Anyway, that's a little off topic. I know you
Speaker 1: researched how Chinese food restaurants got their start, so why
Speaker 1: don't we dive into that a little bit after a break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part time Genius. So one thing I
Speaker 1: can't stop thinking about is how Chinese restaurants in America
Speaker 1: predate the Civil War. I mean, I can't exactly picture
Speaker 1: Lincoln eating at a Chinese buffet, but you never know,
Speaker 1: it could have happened. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. So this
Speaker 1: is what historians have pieced together about the history of
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants. So the first Chinese came over during the
Speaker 1: Gold Rush from Taishan, which is a city in the
Speaker 1: southeast coastal province of Guangdong. The area had actually struggled
Speaker 1: through a number of rebellions and some turmoils, so the
Speaker 1: opportunities in San Francisco, especially during the Gold Rush, seemed
Speaker 1: intriguing to them. And it's kind of staggering that most
Speaker 1: Chinese in America came from this region for a very
Speaker 1: long time. First we Feast, which is a great food site.
Speaker 1: They also note that the cuisine of the area was humble,
Speaker 1: so as clariss Away, puts it basic stir fries with
Speaker 1: rice and vegetables plus whatever meat was available, and the
Speaker 1: flavor profiles veered to the sweeter end. So that basically
Speaker 1: where we got our foundation for Chinese food. That's pretty interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and the first wave of migrants certainly weren't chefs,
Speaker 1: so there's actually a little discrepancy on who they were exactly.
Speaker 1: So most of the descriptions you read will tell you
Speaker 1: about the chow chowse, which were these hole in the
Speaker 1: wall places for Chinese workers that you could actually spot
Speaker 1: by their little yellow triangular flags hanging outside them. You
Speaker 1: could get to dinner for as little as ten cents
Speaker 1: at some of them. Many of them had these one
Speaker 1: dollar all you can eat menus, and you actually see
Speaker 1: how pliable the food is, like American veggies just get
Speaker 1: subbed in for what they had back home. And I
Speaker 1: actually kind of assumed that the first migrants were here
Speaker 1: to work on mines or railroads, but it's actually a
Speaker 1: slightly different story. So there's a professor of Asian American studies,
Speaker 1: this guy Himing Lou, who points out in his book
Speaker 1: From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express that Canton restaurant, which
Speaker 1: was the first Chinese restaurant in America that we know about.
Speaker 1: It started in eighteen forty nine. It was used as
Speaker 1: a three person banquet hall. And his point is that
Speaker 1: the first wave of people from China weren't like these
Speaker 1: cheap day laborers that we might think about, but these
Speaker 1: rich dealmakers who like smelled opportunity. He calls the men
Speaker 1: of wealth and ambition, and they were like craters and
Speaker 1: grocers and merchants. You can see it in some of
Speaker 1: the guests lists. Like Lou found that there was a
Speaker 1: dinner for a state senator at Canton Restaurant and it
Speaker 1: was specifically to grease the wheels to allow Chinese to
Speaker 1: buy land. I'm actually going to quote the l a
Speaker 1: review of books here quote Canton Restaurant was both a
Speaker 1: meeting place for those emigreates hungry for a taste of
Speaker 1: home and a strategic cultural outpost where Chinese merchants and
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs could meet. It was where they could wine and
Speaker 1: dine potential American allies and business and politics. So like,
Speaker 1: whatever the case, the food was already starting to feel
Speaker 1: a little more American to make outsiders feel welcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm with you on that. I mean, I really
Speaker 1: didn't have a great understanding of what some of these
Speaker 1: earliest restaurants where, nor that they've been around for so long.
Speaker 1: And I've definitely heard more about the chow chows than
Speaker 1: any of these fancier banquet halls, for sure. But the
Speaker 1: chow shows also made like this huge impression, right They
Speaker 1: were called chow shows because they were filled with groups
Speaker 1: of hard working people, so like, this was the second
Speaker 1: wave of immigrants who had come in and weren't nearly
Speaker 1: as wealthy, and they were just there chowing down. And
Speaker 1: while there aren't any like menus or flyers from these
Speaker 1: Chinese establishments, there are ads for their competitors. So we
Speaker 1: know that competing restaurants started offering free potatoes with their
Speaker 1: meals to beat the Chinese one dollar all you can
Speaker 1: eat places, and obviously this is a strategy that did
Speaker 1: not work. Actually, uh Time magazine found an early account
Speaker 1: of a patron visiting one of the earliest Chinese restaurants
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and what's staggering about it is that
Speaker 1: it talks about the cleanliness and hospitality at the place.
Speaker 1: This is the quote the best restaurants were kept by Chinese,
Speaker 1: and that's far from the stereotype that you read about
Speaker 1: like early Chinatowns. So were they were they doing good
Speaker 1: business or what? Yeah, I mean, it seems like there's
Speaker 1: this figure from first we faced that by eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: the rice industry was worth over a million dollars a
Speaker 1: year and they were charging six dollars a sack, which
Speaker 1: was one of the most expensive items in a California
Speaker 1: grocery store. That's about the price of like tea, or
Speaker 1: gin or oil. I mean, the demand for Chinese food
Speaker 1: must have been really high around that time. Well, a
Speaker 1: million dollars in eighteen sixty five, I mean that that
Speaker 1: was a ton of sales, and it's that's pretty crazy
Speaker 1: to think about. You know. Actually I saw that the
Speaker 1: oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in america's in Butte, Montana.
Speaker 1: It's called the Pekan Noodle Parlor, and it's been around
Speaker 1: since nineteen eleven. Also, it's on the top floor of
Speaker 1: what used to be a saloon, and apparently a lot
Speaker 1: of Chinese restaurants were located on upper floors because the
Speaker 1: rent was a little bit cheaper. Yeah, it's funny, like
Speaker 1: I actually walked upstairs to dim some places in New
Speaker 1: York and wondered why they didn't just operate on the
Speaker 1: first floor. But I guess this was a trick that
Speaker 1: was used everywhere for cutting costs. I actually read that
Speaker 1: there were two fifty thousand Chinese who came to the
Speaker 1: dates before, and I want to say, I think it's
Speaker 1: like ten thousand or twenty thousand of them ended up
Speaker 1: in Montana because all the mines there. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: definitely a sizeable portion of them. But all right, so
Speaker 1: we've got all these new Chinese immigrants who are hard working,
Speaker 1: and we've got child child slowly popping up in different
Speaker 1: places to serve them. So, you know, it feels like
Speaker 1: we probably should take a few minutes just to talk
Speaker 1: about the racism that they faced and and really how
Speaker 1: that played a role in all of this evolution here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, and this is a sad history, but it's
Speaker 1: ultimately why we have so many Chinese restaurants. Basically, the
Speaker 1: Chinese suffered through what a lot of immigrant groups go through.
Speaker 1: Like they were simultaneously praised for their hard work ethic
Speaker 1: but also scapegooded for taking lower wages and for taking
Speaker 1: all the quote good jobs which were fun things like
Speaker 1: working on the railroads or working in the fields. So
Speaker 1: you see attempts to hold them back. There's actually this
Speaker 1: California mining tax that was implemented against foreigners. It pops
Speaker 1: up in the early eighteen fifties, and as this momentum builds,
Speaker 1: it turns into the Chinese Exclusion Act of two and
Speaker 1: this is a horrible act, is specifically targeted people from China,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't actually get repealed until ninete. Well, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's sad when you think about how quickly
Speaker 1: that we could turn on a group. And I found
Speaker 1: this very protectionist rant from eighteen seventy nine. It was
Speaker 1: by Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, and in it
Speaker 1: he argues that quote, you cannot work a man who
Speaker 1: must have beef and bread and would prefer beef alongside
Speaker 1: a man who can live on rice, and that it
Speaker 1: would bring down the beef and bread man to the
Speaker 1: rice standard. Basically, he was saying that the Chinese were
Speaker 1: driving down wages because they needed inferior food to work.
Speaker 1: And of course, as you could probably guess, he was
Speaker 1: an early supporter of that Chinese Exclusion Act. You were
Speaker 1: talking about. I mean, what's crazy is that that's almost
Speaker 1: like the most mild put down of what else was
Speaker 1: going on at the time. Yeah, I mean there was
Speaker 1: terrible racism. So Jennifer eight Lee talked about how they
Speaker 1: were first called dog eaters and then cat eaters and
Speaker 1: rat eaters, and you know, in her talk she actually
Speaker 1: showed this old box of rat poison that said they
Speaker 1: have to go right under the product name and this
Speaker 1: picture is of a Chinese man eating a rat. And
Speaker 1: there's really no subtlety here. I mean, the subtitle is
Speaker 1: very clearly referring to both the vermin and the immigrant.
Speaker 1: But you know, the funny thing is that good food
Speaker 1: is still good food. And there's that old phrase the
Speaker 1: way into someone's heart is through the stomach, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that's biologically true, and no, it's fact checked that,
Speaker 1: but the stomach is kind of one out in the end,
Speaker 1: and specifically, Chop Suey changed American opinions about Chinese food. Well,
Speaker 1: that was part of what was interesting in doing the
Speaker 1: research for this week is that you see, there's no
Speaker 1: dish with as much controversy as Chop Suey, and I
Speaker 1: think might now most people have heard that chop suey
Speaker 1: was a dish invented in America, and the story goes
Speaker 1: that a bunch of American workers decided to go into
Speaker 1: a chow chow and their belligerent and pushy, and it's
Speaker 1: closing time, but they're demanding to be served, and so
Speaker 1: the chef uses whatever he's got left in order to
Speaker 1: just stretch this meal. He throws it all in a
Speaker 1: walk and they go crazy for it. And when they
Speaker 1: ask what the dishes called, he just says it's chop suey,
Speaker 1: which basically means like odds and ends or leftovers. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, the joke is for decades, you've got people
Speaker 1: going into restaurants and begging for leftovers. But you know,
Speaker 1: here's what I think I find most fascinating about it
Speaker 1: is that there's some evidence that maybe this isn't true,
Speaker 1: that chop sui was actually being made for Chinese by
Speaker 1: the Chinese before white Americans got hipped to it, and
Speaker 1: that kind of changes the narrative a little bit. And
Speaker 1: what's even more interesting to me is the fact that
Speaker 1: it was actually invented about the same time as Mapu tofu.
Speaker 1: So Clariss away at first. We feast actually shows there
Speaker 1: was a lot of innovation around that same time. There
Speaker 1: was an elderly grandma and shi Hwan that made this
Speaker 1: new spicy tofu. And meanwhile, a clever cook in Shanghai
Speaker 1: created the soup dumpling. And her point is that all
Speaker 1: three of these dishes were made at basically the same time.
Speaker 1: They were quote created by Chinese chefs for Chinese people,
Speaker 1: yet only one of them is deemed a bastardized version
Speaker 1: of Chinese food. I mean that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: Just because it was made in America, does that kind
Speaker 1: of deprive it of its Chinese nous? Yeah? And you
Speaker 1: know America can't help itself on this front. It gets
Speaker 1: kind of chops. WHOI crazy, I guess. And as the
Speaker 1: Chinese Exclusion Act stops new Chinese from entering the country
Speaker 1: and Chinese workers are kind of pushed out of the
Speaker 1: labor force, they start looking for these niche industries. So
Speaker 1: Chinese laundries and restaurants become a thing, and they started
Speaker 1: migrating east. And this is all still that same Tai
Speaker 1: shoon style Chinese food. But when does it really start
Speaker 1: to take off? I mean, I've read accounts of China
Speaker 1: and being thought of as this almost exoticized and dangerous place. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, New York bohemians started taking to it. And
Speaker 1: there's this funny bit and a Food and Wine article
Speaker 1: where the author Brad Cohen, he compares these two hipsters.
Speaker 1: So let me read it to you. Says, just as
Speaker 1: hipsters were the intrepid adventures who dared to be the
Speaker 1: first to explore bitter chocolate and forged moss, a group
Speaker 1: of broke New York artists in search of something cheap
Speaker 1: and exotic discovered that they could impress their friends with
Speaker 1: the realization that, hey, there's something to this Chinese food.
Speaker 1: I like that. Well, I mean, I know. Jewish immigrants
Speaker 1: also took an early liking to the establishments, and partly
Speaker 1: it's been attributed to the fact that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of chicken and celery and carrots and even chicken soups
Speaker 1: in both cuisines. But there's also this argument of proximity,
Speaker 1: like the chinatowns were near the cheap rentals for New
Speaker 1: Eastern European immigrants, and also I think Jewish people felt
Speaker 1: welcome at these establishments. It was exotic, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: a big cross on the wall to let them know
Speaker 1: they weren't wanted. Well. Plus, there there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of mixing of dairy and meat, and so the foods
Speaker 1: considered safe trade. I read that African Americans were also
Speaker 1: early adopters. I know later Duke Ellington loved overeating at
Speaker 1: places that serve pigeon in Chinatown, and so they were
Speaker 1: slowly building this clientele. But I think what's most fascinating
Speaker 1: is how this Chinese community found loophole in the Exclusion Act,
Speaker 1: and that's what really fueled the industry. So basically, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, there was a court case that allowed special
Speaker 1: immigration privileges to entrepreneurs and to business owners, and it
Speaker 1: was open to restaurant owners. But there were these weird restrictions,
Speaker 1: like it it had to be a high grade restaurant,
Speaker 1: like that's what it was actually called, and you have
Speaker 1: to actually manage the restaurant for a full calendar year.
Speaker 1: And also because immigration officers assumed that all foreigners were liars,
Speaker 1: you had to have two white character witnesses to establish
Speaker 1: your credibility. It's horrible, yeah, but the people got super clever.
Speaker 1: So because opening a restaurant was a major investment. They
Speaker 1: pulled all their money to start up as partnerships. So
Speaker 1: to meet that pesky high grade restaurant nonsense, they started
Speaker 1: calling their places Chop Suey palaces. And then they rotated
Speaker 1: jobs amongst themselves, so different people got to be the
Speaker 1: manager and bring their relatives over. They basically maxed out
Speaker 1: each restaurant to bring people over, and then when they
Speaker 1: had enough money, they launched a new restaurant in the
Speaker 1: same model, and then they do it all over again.
Speaker 1: And this is from heavily at the Scholar Strategy Network.
Speaker 1: But between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, the number of
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants in New York City alone quadrupled, and then
Speaker 1: it more than doubled again the next ten years, and
Speaker 1: by nineteen thirty New York restaurants were generating over a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty million dollars in sales. Wow, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think we can stress enough how into Chop Suey
Speaker 1: people were. But when when Buster Keaton was asked to
Speaker 1: contribute his favorite recipe to a cookbook, he actually sent
Speaker 1: in a Chop Suey recipe. Calvin Coolidge had a Chinese
Speaker 1: chef he employed on his presidential yacht to make him
Speaker 1: chop suey. There was an army recipe for it for
Speaker 1: troops abroad, and you know, by the fifties and sixties
Speaker 1: there were all sorts of ready mixed chop suey packets
Speaker 1: for the house. There was even a chop Suey board
Speaker 1: game where kids just picked up things with chopsticks. I
Speaker 1: was trying to look up old pictures of this, and
Speaker 1: the tagline was something like, you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: to be Chinese to play the chop suey game. That's
Speaker 1: so weird. You know, I don't think I've even had
Speaker 1: chop sue It's not something we ever ordered same here.
Speaker 1: I haven't either, as many times as we've eaten Chinese food.
Speaker 1: But it's funny that Chinese laundries were initially the dominant
Speaker 1: industry here until people figured out this restaurant loophole. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting how different communities gravitated to different occupations, Like
Speaker 1: you see groups find these niches and motels or nail
Speaker 1: salons or whatever industry it might be. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: So one of my friends whose Cambodian, told me that
Speaker 1: it's very common for Cambodian families in America to own
Speaker 1: doughnut shops, like for some reason, that's the model and
Speaker 1: and the niche they filled. Well, let's phrase through the
Speaker 1: rest of the history, because I do want to talk
Speaker 1: about one of America's greatest strip mall chefs. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: leave that teaser right there for you. So the other
Speaker 1: thing that made Chinese food ultrapopular was how cheap it was,
Speaker 1: right Like, it was consistently affordable, it was delivered, and
Speaker 1: because everyone was still coming in from this one region
Speaker 1: in China, it was basically one type of food with
Speaker 1: minor variations, and if a dish took off in one place,
Speaker 1: it actually got added to all the menus. By the fifties, though,
Speaker 1: of the food had kind of lost its edge and
Speaker 1: it was considered passe. But in nineteen sixty five the
Speaker 1: laws got more lenient, and this change in the legal
Speaker 1: system brought in a fresh wave of Chinese from all
Speaker 1: over China. And this is where all that food gets
Speaker 1: exciting again. Like you have China's top chefs actually fleeing
Speaker 1: communism for the States. The New York Times is praising
Speaker 1: them as like the equivalent to the finest French cooks.
Speaker 1: You have Sechuan and Hunan food arriving state side, and
Speaker 1: like chefs who made pitstops in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: So they're bringing up these like mashup of flavors and techniques.
Speaker 1: It was really exciting. But they also made dishes for
Speaker 1: the American palett They made these fried dishes and sweet
Speaker 1: and spicy dishes, you know, things that are now standard
Speaker 1: menu items. And then one man adds fuel to the fire,
Speaker 1: and that's Richard Nixon. And was this because of his
Speaker 1: China's troop. Yeah, So in nineteen seventy two, the whole
Speaker 1: world was watching as Nixon made his way to China.
Speaker 1: And it's crazy how popular it was. Like the meals
Speaker 1: were televised, The menus of the Foodie eight was printed
Speaker 1: in newspapers for Americans to read, and like suddenly everyone
Speaker 1: was all about Chinese food. They wanted to try peeking duck,
Speaker 1: and they were curious about these like novelty dishes, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to taste what authentic Chinese tasted like. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's basically where the variety of food takes off
Speaker 1: and and why we have these Chinese takeout menus with
Speaker 1: you know, like a hundred items on them, and of
Speaker 1: course the food stays cheap, which is both the reason
Speaker 1: why it's so popular but also probably what holds it
Speaker 1: back in some ways. But before we talk more about
Speaker 1: that and about one of America's greatest disappearing chefs, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, Mango, it's time to
Speaker 1: talk about Peter Chang, who, for our listeners is totally
Speaker 1: different from PF. Chang, but definitely I love this story.
Speaker 1: All right, So we were both obsessed with this story
Speaker 1: from two thousand and ten, and Calvin Trillan wrote a
Speaker 1: New York Or piece about this incredible chef named Chang
Speaker 1: who kept fleeing these restaurants. He'd be spotted in Virginia,
Speaker 1: then he'd flee and go to Georgia or Tennessee or
Speaker 1: wherever it may be. Yeah, I mean he'd be at
Speaker 1: one place and suddenly all these fans would fall in
Speaker 1: love with the food in the restaurant, and then he
Speaker 1: just vanished, Like he was like the runaway bride of
Speaker 1: incredible chefs. And the Internet was fanatical about him. They
Speaker 1: were so obsessed. Apparently it's even reflected in his Wikipedia page,
Speaker 1: like his bio has this section of disappearances and movements.
Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing. But people would hear a rumor
Speaker 1: that he was cooking at a place, and then they'd like,
Speaker 1: on a whim, travel cross country just to take a gamble,
Speaker 1: that he was cooking at the Strip Mall restaurant. Well,
Speaker 1: and there were all these theories, you know, that he
Speaker 1: hated the press or the adulation, and he couldn't stand
Speaker 1: being thought of as a star. Just that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he was restless and like taking him mediocre restaurant
Speaker 1: and making it insanely good and then fleeing again. But
Speaker 1: then he stopped fleeing and started putting up these Peter
Speaker 1: Chang restaurants. And in fact, there's one here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: that we definitely need to make a pilgrimage to at
Speaker 1: some point, and Pete Wells wrote this amazing review about
Speaker 1: one of them. But even between those, you don't know
Speaker 1: which ones he's cooking at on which night, so there's
Speaker 1: always this guessing game between his fans. So obviously we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little more about the quality of the food inventiveness.
Speaker 1: But you know, did Pete well say why he was
Speaker 1: moving around so much? Well, if you remember from the
Speaker 1: trilling piece. There was one less sexy theory for why
Speaker 1: he was always fleeing, and that was that he was
Speaker 1: in the US illegally, so whenever a place got pressed,
Speaker 1: he'd run. And you know, the notes on the bulletin
Speaker 1: board were like, someone should marry him, or get your
Speaker 1: daughter son to him to marry, and we need to
Speaker 1: keep him in the country somehow. But you know, it
Speaker 1: turns out that story was right. He gave this incredible
Speaker 1: interview to the Washington Post where he told some of
Speaker 1: his life story. I'm sort of rushing through it here,
Speaker 1: but you should definitely give it a read. So he
Speaker 1: was born to a poor, farming family. They were destined
Speaker 1: to stay poor, but when educational opportunities came up, he
Speaker 1: took a test to being an accountant, and instead he
Speaker 1: was assigned to be a chef. He did terribly his
Speaker 1: first year. You know, his heart wasn't in it, and
Speaker 1: he saw chefs as this low status job. But then
Speaker 1: his father gets sick and his grandmother tells him that
Speaker 1: the family is really counting on it. So he starts
Speaker 1: working insanely hard and topped his class and from there
Speaker 1: he was assigned to these luxury ships and resorts, and
Speaker 1: he picked up new styles of cooking from other ports,
Speaker 1: and then he was assigned to work in the Chinese
Speaker 1: embassy in the US, and China wanted to show him
Speaker 1: off to the world. And it was actually during that
Speaker 1: tenure that he decided to flee. And on his last day,
Speaker 1: he cooked the ambassador a warm breakfast while he was sleeping,
Speaker 1: and then he fled. So he's on the lamp because
Speaker 1: you know, there was this huge embarrassment to the Chinese government.
Speaker 1: But when the US gave him permission to be here
Speaker 1: as long as he kept working and didn't leave, he
Speaker 1: decided to jump at that opportunity and started his restaurants. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've got to tell the listeners what they're missing
Speaker 1: out on, because that New York Times review is incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, Pete Well's description is pretty ridiculous. So he
Speaker 1: talks about dry fried eggplant with float away sticks that
Speaker 1: made him think of eggplant marshmallow, and the descriptions of
Speaker 1: the scallion pancakes or of these air filled puffs that
Speaker 1: are as light as a beach ball, you know that
Speaker 1: somehow keep their shape when dipped into a warm curried broth.
Speaker 1: They're cones of flaky fish and these heavenly sweet and
Speaker 1: spicy dishes. And his strategy for readers is to go
Speaker 1: to a restaurant and order so many things that the
Speaker 1: server thinks you're insane. But the best part is that
Speaker 1: he includes another top chef strategy for what he does
Speaker 1: when you can't eat anymore. So Sean Brock told him, quote,
Speaker 1: run outside, go to the parking lot, you run around,
Speaker 1: you go to the bathroom, You splash cold water on
Speaker 1: your face until you can eat again, and when that
Speaker 1: stops working, order it all again to take home. That's
Speaker 1: pretty great, And I mean it's a complete opposite of
Speaker 1: his brutal takedown of that guy fiery restaurant that went viral. Kidding, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, but the specifics are ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Like he talked about a baked Alaska that was sort
Speaker 1: of drooping, fries that were cold and oily and uh.
Speaker 1: And one of his questions that he asked was what
Speaker 1: part of the donkey is the donkey sauce supposed to
Speaker 1: remind you? Apparently it tasted like miracle whip, which just
Speaker 1: giant chunks of garlic in it. Oh, that sounds disgusting
Speaker 1: and not surprisingly, Guy Fiery's place is closed now. But
Speaker 1: you know, we should talk about why we included Peter
Speaker 1: Chang's restaurant in here. The Chinese food worked hard to
Speaker 1: become an American staple over a hundred and sixty years.
Speaker 1: You know. Part of that was that it was cheap,
Speaker 1: and part of it was that it adapted to American
Speaker 1: taste buds. You know, the sweet and sour became extra sweet,
Speaker 1: and everything got fried instead of steamed, and took on
Speaker 1: these regional flavors of Philadelphia, egg roll, used cream cheese
Speaker 1: because it felt a little more American, right, which made
Speaker 1: it four to Chinese people in China and also made
Speaker 1: us undervalue it as an art like Thai food, Vietnamese food, sushi.
Speaker 1: It's all pricier, and for a while it made Chinese
Speaker 1: food passe. But that's no longer the case really. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got Peter Chang and Mission Chinese and all these
Speaker 1: wonderful chefs who've trained at places like per Se and
Speaker 1: you know, gone to incredible culinary institutes, and and they're
Speaker 1: pushing Chinese food and American Chinese food to these new heights.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of funny. I read this quote that
Speaker 1: in the earliest days of Canton restaurant, people who wanted
Speaker 1: to succeed were Chinese but had to think American. And
Speaker 1: now you've got a whole crop of chefs who are American,
Speaker 1: they're born and they're raised here, but they think Chinese
Speaker 1: in order to push the cuisine for it. But you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the case, the food can still feel like home. Well,
Speaker 1: I really love that sentiment. But I'm hoping you saved
Speaker 1: a little room for a fact off before we sign off.
Speaker 1: You know, I did mango yea so heard the food
Speaker 1: timeline dot org dim sum actually means to dot the heart.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's an idiom that means to hit the spot.
Speaker 1: If you want to know how much we crave Chinese food,
Speaker 1: Mondays at the American McMurdo based in Antarctica, that's Chinese
Speaker 1: food night. I'm guessing all the fortune cookies that have
Speaker 1: stay warm messages in them. But speaking of that, Jennifer
Speaker 1: eight Lee actually told his great anecdote about the Powerball
Speaker 1: in two thousand five. I mean, you can guess where
Speaker 1: this is going, but apparently a hundred ten people won
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand dollar prizes that night,
Speaker 1: Like it was beyond anything that any statistician would have predicted.
Speaker 1: And at first people thought it was like the numbers
Speaker 1: on Lost or they thought it was like some religious
Speaker 1: numbers that people had in common. But it turned out
Speaker 1: a hundred and five people had played their numbers from
Speaker 1: their fortune cookies. That teaches you never to ignore those things.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, did you know that Panda Express doesn't
Speaker 1: allow franchising, So there were sixteen hundred outlets out there
Speaker 1: and they're all owned by the same family, except for
Speaker 1: the ones that are on college campuses. Also, two more
Speaker 1: crazy things. The couple who started it are obsessed with analytics,
Speaker 1: so they used early computers to figure out what customers
Speaker 1: loved and that helped them rEFInd their business model. And
Speaker 1: also they're huge self improvement fans. The company actually offers
Speaker 1: these discounts on courses to Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey
Speaker 1: books all to their employees. That's pretty crazy. So here's
Speaker 1: one about the lazy Susan, which is ubiquitous at all
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants. I don't know about you, but like I
Speaker 1: love them as a kid because I could always like
Speaker 1: quietly spin the appetizers to be in front of me,
Speaker 1: or when I was older, the kids would spin a
Speaker 1: whole fish and make dares based on whoever the fish
Speaker 1: pointed at. But the way people tell it, the lazy
Speaker 1: susan has this decidedly non Chinese origin. It was used
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds as almost a way to
Speaker 1: downsize on your domestic serving staff. But you know, it
Speaker 1: actually might have evolved in parallel in China as well.
Speaker 1: So the Smithsonian reports that nineteen while speaking at a
Speaker 1: conference in Canton, Dr wou Lente was trying to come
Speaker 1: up with ways to reduce the spread of disease through
Speaker 1: shared dishes, and he came up with this recommendation that
Speaker 1: putting special serving chopsticks and special serving spoons in the
Speaker 1: dishes and then using a revolving trade to circulate the
Speaker 1: dishes across the table was a better way to keep
Speaker 1: people healthier. And the tray he described was basically a
Speaker 1: blazie susan. Oh wow, that's pretty interesting. Alright, Mango, I
Speaker 1: can't let us close this episode without talking about you
Speaker 1: know what I'm going to mention here. It's general. So
Speaker 1: I have no idea how we've gotten this far without
Speaker 1: going to deeper end of this. But you know the
Speaker 1: dishes named after General So who was this ruthless and
Speaker 1: successful general at smashing down rebellions? But he wasn't a
Speaker 1: great student and as a young man he failed his
Speaker 1: court exams three times in a row before returning home
Speaker 1: as a disgrace. So it's just a good remindered everyone
Speaker 1: out there that you don't need to be a good
Speaker 1: student to have an in portant chicken dish named after you.
Speaker 1: Those are definitely words to live by. So I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to see this trivia challenge to you.
Speaker 1: I feel like I was gonna win it with that one.
Speaker 1: So so thank you very much and thank you guys
Speaker 1: for listening. We'd love to hear any facts that we
Speaker 1: might have forgotten in this episode. Feel free to email
Speaker 1: us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: or call us on seven fact Hotline. That's one eight
Speaker 1: four four pt Genius. You can also hit us up
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so much for listening, Thanks
Speaker 1: again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
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