What—no chop suey?
THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES:
Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
By Jennifer 8. Lee
307 pp. Twelve: Hachette Book Group USA $24.99
Reviewed by Gary Presley
Jennifer 8. Lee works as a New York Times reporter, and a good reporter becomes intrigued when things don’t add up—things like an extraordinary number of winners in one Powerball lottery.
That’s the foundation for what became Chronicles. Subconscious motivation on her part? After all, her middle name is “8,” and “8” connotes prosperity in Chinese.
Whatever the motive, Jennifer Lee had me ready to dive into the whole banquet after I read her Prologue to The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. There Lee relates how she discovered those common winning numbers came from little slips of paper inside fortune cookies from Chinese restaurants.
But wait. It gets better. Fortune cookies aren’t actually Chinese. Fortune cookies probably were invented by a Japanese-American about one hundred years ago, and the crispy sweets are actually an adaptation of a food item from a tiny bakery near a Japanese shrine, a confection meant to be left as an offering. Japanese-Americans here in the US were the chief bakers of fortune cookies until World War II, when most of the Japanese population was shuffled off to internment camps. Now one of the biggest fortune cookie companies is owned by a Jewish family, but the little sugar treats enclosing good news remain a staple in Chinese dining.
And here’s another left turn: Jewish people, it seems, are especially fond of Chinese food. Which is why the story of The Great Kosher Duck Scandal takes up a chapter in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.
Even though I was intrigued with the lottery story and eager to follow the Chronicles, I must admit to being dumbfounded by Lee’s first sentence in Chapter One. “There are some forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States—more than the number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined.”
Good grief, I thought, Amazing! I found a pad of sticky notes and began marking pages as I read Chronicles, writing down every odd fact or pithy observation. By the time I finished, my copy of the book sprouted yellow paper feathers by the dozens. I actually finished Chronicles in three quick sessions, eagerly following Lee’s adventures in Chinese cuisine and marveling how the power and resilience of Chinese culture has been the foundation for the success of its people around the globe.
While some of the story is exotic and seemingly improbable—Chinese pay tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into the US and the actual writings of Confucius are not that useful in the fortune cookie business—other parts of what she unearths and relates will leave a reader saying, “Of course.”
For example, Chinese men were imported as cheap labor after the Civil War. Ambitious and industrious—and significantly different in physique and skin color, dress and culture—the Chinese faced discrimination, some of it so severe as to end in violence and lynchings. Often the one enterprise left to them was “women’s work:” cooking and cleaning.
And so you have Chinese restaurants and Chinese laundries.
Then there’s the “chop suey” saga. Lee suggests it was a dish concocted here in the US by put-upon Chinese cooks in the face “of labor strife, culinary xenophobia, and celebrity tie-ins ... ” Since Americans once believed it the national dish of China— chop suey means odds and ends in the Cantonese dialect—Lee calls it “The Biggest Culinary Played Joke By One Culture On Another.” You’ll find the punch line in Chapter Four.
Chronicles is not entirely light-hearted. Lee delves into Chinese immigration, both legal and illegal, and she follows one hard-working immigrant family deep into Georgia after they’ve sacrificed years of hard-earned savings to buy a small-town restaurant. There cultural differences clash, and the family’s children are sucked into the nearly inescapable whirlpool of the social services bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, Chronicles is a wonderful book: literate, compassionate, sophisticated—an intelligent look at the Chinese people in the US, their culture, and their cuisine—without being dry and academic.
Lee covers why Chinese-American cuisine is a specifically its own type of food and preparation, perceived outside the US as a thing entirely different from true Chinese cuisine; how home delivery of Chinese food—the idea of one restaurant owner in New York city—changed the way Americans eat; and how Chinese restaurant culture is analogous to open source computer code.
She explains, “American food lore is filled with figures like Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Asa Griggs Chandler of Coca-Cola: strong personalities with a vision who established powerful culinary brands. Chinese food in America has no such dominant figures, yet it is no less a powerful presence in Americana.”
As the book concludes, Lee sets out to discover the best Chinese restaurant in the world—it’s Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine outside Vancouver, British Columbia, in case you’re traveling in that direction—but she soon comes to the conclusion her interest, her research, and her travels have allowed her to discover more about herself, her family, and her culture.
Chronicles is a banquet for the curious, one to which you’ll want to invite a literate friend. Oh, there are disappointments. It didn’t bother me that fortune cookies aren’t really Chinese, but, like me, I bet you won’t be happy to know the brown liquid in those little restaurant plastic packets labeled soy sauce isn’t really soy sauce.
But Lee is a generous writer. For example, she tells her readers the best of food is to be found in “Chinese restaurants for Chinese people.” How can such establishments be located? Here are Lee’s notes:
The minimum criteria:—Chopsticks at the table
Minus points for:
—Menus with Chinese writing
—Waiters who understand and speak Chinese—Chinese zodiac place mats
—Chop suey listed anywhere on the menu
—Charging for rice or tea
My disappointment? I found myself bemused that a reporter of Jennifer 8. Lee’s ability carried out four years of dedicated research and traveled around the globe, and yet she wrote nothing about cashew chicken, Springfield style.
The late David Leong immigrated to the US in 1940 and ultimately set up shop at Leong’s Tea House in Springfield, Missouri. Selling Asian food to Missourians was a tough row to hoe until he noticed that Ozarkers never said “No” to fried chicken. Leong layered chunks fried chicken covered with Chinese oyster sauce, a handful of cashews, and chopped green onions over rice, and hit the jackpot.
Cashew chicken, Springfield style, ain’t no chop suey, of course, but it’s part of that great, productive amalgamation of Chinese and American culture. You won’t find it in a colorful La Choy package at the neighborhood market, but it is perfect embodiment of what Lee set out to understand about the Chinese in America.
Follow The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee style, and you’ll understand what I mean.
Gary Presley is an associate editor of The Internet Review of Books. You can find out more about him and his writing here.
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