[CH] Chinese Food History

Rob Solarion (solarion@1starnet.com)
Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:48:11 -0600

The Independent

 Reaktion, £19.95

 China to Chinatown: Chinese food in the West by JAG Roberts

 The sweet and sour smell of success

 By Christopher Hirst

 12 November 2002

 While not diminishing the value of this informative and readable study, the
 title is only half right. The first 50 per cent of the book is devoted to the
 Western experience of Chinese food in China.

 We start (where else?) with Marco Polo, who noted that Chinese people liked to
 eat in restaurants. Another enduring truth was stated by a Sinologist in 1736:
 "French cooks... would be surpriz'd that the Chinese can outdo them... at a
 great deal less Expense."

 This admiring view was not shared by all 18th-century visitors, though the
 suspicions voiced by Captain Alexander Hamilton were extreme: "The abominable
 Sin of Sodomy is tolerated here, so is Buggery, both with Beasts and Fowls, in
 so much that Europeans do not care to eat Duck, except what they bring up
 themselves." Victorian visitors expressed gentler doubts. A French naval
 officer was relieved that his dish of salted earth worms has been cut up "so I
 fortunately did not know what they were until I had swallowed them".

 Western views of Chinese cuisine have oscillated between delight and
 revulsion. The latter was particularly prompted by the Chinese taste for dog
 and cat. Though never a mainstay, canines were consumed to provide "winter
 warmth". Felines were eaten even more rarely, for medical purposes. On the
 plus side, the expat Richard Wilhelm described a Chinese meal as a
 "masterpiece of social communion".

 During the Cultural Revolution, a few apparatchiks lived high on the hog, but
 most people ate appallingly. Things had improved little by the 1990s, when
 Colin Thubron's dire dining around China attained a nadir with "Grainy Dog
 Meat with Chilli and Scallion".

 The tidal wave of restaurants in the West began with a trickle in California,
 catering for the Chinese immigrants servicing the gold rush. The taste for
 oriental cuisine, albeit bastardised (chop suey derives from the Mandarin
 zasui, meaning "bits and pieces"), caught on across America: by 1922, there
 were 57 Chinese restaurants in New York. The first in England was a temporary
 affair created for the 1884 Health Exhibition. The Pall Mall Budget suggested
 "the British public will not find these sea-slug pies so bad as might be
 imagined".

 It was not until the 20s that Chinese restaurants gained a foothold in London.
 One early enthusiast was Harold Acton, who retained his own Chinese chef.
 Another proponent was the boxer Freddie Mills, who owned a restaurant. The
 boom of the Sixties and Seventies was not, unfortunately, accompanied by an
 increase in standards. In his book Sour Sweet, Timothy Mo describes a
 proprietor's preference for English customers who did not share his
 countrymen's "insistence on fresh materials, authentically cooked and
 presented at a highly competitive price".

 Today, mercifully, British diners can also enjoy this magical combination at
 deservedly bustling haunts such as the Yang Sing in Manchester or Poons in
 London.

 Yet, only last year, false reports circulated that smuggled meat "for the
 Chinese catering trade might be responsible for the foot-and-mouth outbreak".
 The oscillation in suspicion and popularity towards the United Kingdom's 8,000
 Chinese restaurants seems to be as strong as ever.