My father would have been thrilled to see the publication of this book. He had been nagging me for years before he passed away: “When are you going to finish your food book?” This was not because he was a foodie—to the contrary, consistent with his peasant roots and his puritanical revolutionary ideals, his food taste remained extremely spartan. He was concerned about my extracurricular activities, ranging from taking on administrative responsibilities at the university to visiting villages and corporations in China. Having gone through much turmoil in his life, he wanted me to be a pure scholar with a secure job and stable life, and cared less about my belief that to understand the world we must be in the world. When I saw him the last time, there was no more nagging. Lying in bed in the intensive-care unit at the Number Three Hospital in Wuhan, he could no longer talk or even eat. A stroke had partially paralyzed him. Feeling totally helpless as I watched my father in his last moments, I whispered gently and repeatedly to his ear: “I will finish the book.”
My mother still finds it rather amusing that her scholar son writes a book on such a mundane topic. But having raised me to appreciate food, she is more responsible for my writing this book than anyone else. She has remained a true foodie all her life in spite of the varied obstacles she faced. The China of my childhood was a land of scarcity where food was strictly rationed. The monthly meat allotment was about one pound a month per person, enough just to make a few Big Macs today. The black market and a deficit family economy were what she relied on to put some meat on the table everyday. As an official in the government of the eight-county prefecture, she had a demanding job. In what the sociologist Arlie Hochschild dubs “the second shift,” she went to the local market almost every morning at 5:30 and cooked two elaborate meals a day.1 She received pungent condemnation for her gastronomical proclivities during the radical Cultural Revolution because they ran contrary to the puritanical vision that Chairman Mao had for Chinese society. In one of his most frequently quoted lines, Mao noted: “[To conduct] the revolution is not inviting guests to dinner parties.”2 After all, the Chinese Communist Revolution led by Mao was a “hungry revolution.”3 Like foodie characters that we encounter in films, such as Chef Chu in Eat Drink Man Woman and Tita in Like Water for Chocolate, my mother also expresses feelings through cooking. Like other Chinese mothers, mine never verbalized the three common English words “I love you” together. She just kept cooking. She sometimes stated, half jokingly, to live is to serve our mouth. Not until I started researching this book did I start to appreciate the insights of her statement into our existence and human history.
I owe the completion of this book to too many people to continue my procrastination. My wife, Rosalind, who stopped nagging me about it a long time ago, is another true foodie in my life; her love of food and her encyclopedic culinary knowledge have been a tremendous source of information and inspiration. Cookbooks, an increasingly favorite bedtime reading for many people, are her primary readings. She has been a partner in life and in food since the late 1980s, when she was a graduate student in food science at Cornell University. Our typical date then consisted of a trip to a local supermarket, such as Tops on Route 13, followed by cooking in our apartment kitchen.
Our cousins Cindy and Bob have been like a dear and supportive brother and sister but have never nagged me about anything. Their generosity and knowledge have helped me understand and experience the gastronomical landscape of America, Taiwan, and mainland China to the extent that would not have been possible otherwise. They turned every excursion we took together over the years, local and international, into enjoyable and intellectually stimulating culinary adventures.
Given all the transformation of my cultural identity, no one would see me as a Jewish person—except for Howard and Renee Stave, Bruce and Sondra Stave, my dearest Jewish friends, who warmly and kindly welcomed me to America and to their family since the very moment of my landing in New York. Occasionally and gently nudging me about the book, they played an indispensible role in shaping it and my American journey. They embody the thoughtfulness, generosity, tolerance, and hospitality of Americans. Sondra also read the manuscript and offered extremely valuable comments.
I am fortunate to have gotten an inside peak into the world of food in America thanks to the generous support of many food entrepreneurs and experts, such as Sunny and Jaime Lu, Mr. J. Chao, Mr. G. Wang, Richard Wing, Chen Benchang (Ben John Chen), Will Allen, Max Jacobson, William Grimes, Gabriella Gershenson, Pascal Olhats, and July Ding. Others, especially Frank Low, Sandy Yee Man Leung, Thomas Kong, Bill Hing, and Brian Tom, shared with me valuable stories and documents about their Chinese-immigrant ancestors’ experiences in Chinese food.
I do not have sufficient space here to express my deep gratitude to the many friends, including Hao Ping, X. Y. Guo, Y. L. Du, Y. S. Ren, Long Yawei, Y. S. Li, Y. Jun, S. M. Zhou, and Sue Wang, in China for their support and for giving me opportunities to taste and appreciate the country’s diverse and fast-evolving cuisines since 1997. Mr. and Mrs. S. Y. Wang helped me visit cities and towns throughout Anhui and Fujian, affording me precious insights into these two provinces’ distinctively culinary traditions. L. Chen, a dear friend since 1979, helped to introduce to me the foodways of numerous ethnic minorities,
I cannot properly thank the individuals whom I have interviewed in America and elsewhere for this book in the past fifteen years in part because I want to keep their identities anonymous. Moreover, I do not even the know the names of many of them, including the street-food vendors in the Mexican American communities in Highland Park, California; the fishermen and -women on the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait; and the countless restaurant workers in various cities, ranging from New York and San Francisco to Amsterdam, Beijing, Sydney, and Budapest.
Among those who have helped me to locate important sources in the United States, I owe special thanks to Gordon Chang, Sharon Block, Him Mark Lai, Vicki and Milt Feldon, Jacqueline Newman, and Harley Spiller. Hasia Diner’s extraordinary work has been a model and an inspiration. The gastronomical giant Julia Child took time from her busy schedule to answer my questions and pointed me to important cookbook collections. I am deeply grateful to Cynthia Lee, my co-curator of the Have You Eaten Yet? exhibit on the history of American Chinese restaurants.
Over the years, I have greatly benefited from the professional expertise and selfless support from archivists at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliff Institute/ Harvard, the UCLA East Asian Library, the Special Collections at UC Irvine and UC San Diego, the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland, and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. I received generous help from the staff at local historical societies in numerous places, including Marysville and Watsonville, California; Providence, Rhode Island; Virginia City, Nevada; and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. Through their diligence and ingenuity, the staff at UC Irvine’s interlibrary loan department helped me to get hold of countless difficult-to-access sources. Many other colleagues and friends, such as Chen Jianlong and Thomas G. Andrews, extended to me valuable support and opportunities. Jeffrey Pilcher, author of four important books on food and the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Food History, significantly helped me to comprehend the importance of food in history and the role of race.
I did not apply for extramural funding for this project but received support for my research trips from several units at UC Irvine: the Academic Senate, the Center for Asian Studies, and the School of Humanities. More important, UC Irvine, one of the fastest-growing institutions of higher education in postwar America, has been a productive intellectual home, where I have had the good fortune to work in sundry ways with visionary colleagues, such as Fred Wan, William J. Lillyman, and Bill Parker in various disciplines. I have learned much about food from the stories that Carol Sokolov, Tonya Becerra, and Brent Yunek shared with me. As a historian, I cannot ask for better colleagues than those at the History Department, whose collegiality and support have nourished me. Emily Rosenberg read the entire manuscript and offered extremely perceptive feedback. Steve Topik, a renowned coffee expert, constantly shared his insights on food. Anne Walthall encouraged me to write a book on food in the 1990s and continually urged me to finish it. I benefited immensely from Vicki Ruiz’s knowledge and passion about food and support, and I am grateful to her and to Ana Rosa for the opportunities they offered me. Tim Tackett helped me better understand the development of restaurants in France. Ken Pomeranz has offered many constructive suggestions about my work over the years.
I also benefited tremendously from my students. A number of them have become close friends. Among them, Allen Lin, a history and engineering double major, went on to become an executive in the IT industry and has created a successful food blog; he also offered valuable comments on the book and helped me set up a blog for it. Megan Wycoff, another former student and passionate foodie with extensive experience in the food industry before coming to UC Irvine, provided critical assistance on several food research projects after her graduation.
I am fortunate to have had ample opportunities to work and interact with reporters of U.S. national media organizations like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and National Public Radio; local media like the Orange County Register, 89.3 KPCC, and the Water front Times of St. Louis; and Chinese American newspapers like the World Journal, Sing Tao Daily, Taiwan Daily, and China Daily. I extend my special thanks to Jeffrey Selingo, Valerie Takahama, Marla Jo Fisher, Charles Perry, Emma Wang, Esther Hsiao, Michael Luo, Lonny Shavelson, Charles Proctor, Malcolm Gay, Amy Lieu, Wendy Lee, and Wang Jun.
I am grateful for the support and encouragement I received from editors at numerous presses, such as Susan Ferber at Oxford University Press, Elaine Maisner at the University of North Carolina Press, Melanie Halkias and Kendra Boileau at Rutgers University Press, Sheila Levine at the University of California Press, Traci Mueller at Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, and Ranjit D. Arab at the University of Washington Press. Mary Sutherland, my copy editor, has done an extraordinary job and turned the copy-editing process into an intellectually engaging and fruitful dialogue about history and food. The many constructive suggestions made by Irene Pavitt, my editor at Columbia University Press, significantly helped to improve the manuscript. Jennifer Crewe at Columbia University Press, in particular, patiently encouraged me for many years to finish the book. She read the entire manuscript and offered many extremely detailed and perceptive comments and suggestions. This book would not have been possible without her support and input.