University of California Exporting the Ethnic American Chinese Cuisine HW You will be devising a topic (a foodway) of your own choosing for this essay, bas

University of California Exporting the Ethnic American Chinese Cuisine HW You will be devising a topic (a foodway) of your own choosing for this essay, based upon course materials and discussions.

You are invited to explore a foodway by employing some of the methods and critical approaches demonstrated in the textbook. Some students will be examining a specific community food access program and relating it to the issues addressed in class. Others are very interested in one of the California agrarian labor histories we’ve discussed. Some will write about policy and education relating to various health and nutrition issues.

Personal food narratives are not acceptable for this assignment, nor is the first person voice acceptable under any circumstances.

Comparisons outside an American food context may not lead to the best success unless they are very carefully explained through reference to course readings. So, if you have a global or ‘transnational’ topic in mind, think carefully about how your topic will satisfy that expectation as you develop it. Like “technology,” “American food context” could be quite broad, indeed. But you’ll need to explain that somehow to make this work well. You can!

Some topics will relate more explicitly to labor and economic issues, while others may focus more on shared practices within family and cultural groups, but recall the textbook’s approach to identity work and material/symbolic meanings, regardless of your chosen topic.

If you have specific questions about your topic development, great! There will be some in-class discussion, and there are lots of office hours for paper discussion, including some that coincide with the normal class meeting time Tuesday, the week of Thanksgiving (when you have your final Field Work day):

The final scheduled class meeting, Tuesday 12.3, will be an open essay discussion session.

Emails about paper topics and essay details cannot be responded to, and alternative meeting times are not available at this time.

Basic Requirements:

1,200 words minimum (not to exceed 1,400 words- one point lost for exceeding 1,400, and .5 for every 100 words over thereafter).

Must employ at least two outside critical sources, the textbook, and two course readings not from the textbook.

Due last week of classes, not finals week. You may use the scheduled class time December 5 to complete the essay (instead of attending class, though we may run an open essay discussion session per student interest) in order to help accommodate timely completion, and you will have until 11:59pm on that date to submit. Essays will lose 10% per day thereafter, with no credit possible after Thursday, December 12. Annotation 1
Babic, A. A. (2018). Importing and exporting the ethnic: Thoughts on American Chinese
Cuisine, globalization, and the dinner plate. In Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining
Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States (pp. 35-42). University of
Arkansas Press.
In this article, the author introduced that, Chinese food is a huge portion of American’s
daily life nowadays. Many people may think it’s a relatively new trend in mainstream
culture. However, Chinese food has existed way longer than people are imagining. The
first Chinese immigrants happened to settle in San Francisco in 1847, they brought
Chinese culture to North America, and that’s the first time Chinese food came to the
United States. Traditional Chinese food use all of the animal, including liver, heart, and
stomach. The public was shocked at this first, and later, in order to ingratiate the majority
of people, restaurants outside the Chinatown have modified the cuisines to a palatable
selection for locals one their menus. There are twice as many Chinese restaurants as
McDonald’s in America. This huge abundance of the two typical restaurants in America
suggests the importance of Chinese food hold in the American culinary culture. In the
United States, despite Chinese, Jewish culture is also highly bonded with Chinese food.
They would celebrate their Christmas with Chinese food. Most of the time, Chinese
restaurants are family-owned, and with this ethnic endeavor, these Chinese immigrants
can achieve their American dream. However, even though they can make success money
out of running the restaurants, they still can not make it to the middle class cause their
status stayed at “immigrants/foreigners”. Chinese food has a typical character that remains
cheap but labor-intensive. This character reflects the current situation in China right
now. Labor is cheap. As it stays a relatively low cost in America, the Chinese food chain
has grown continuously in the United States. This growth directly reflects the expansion
of the global Chinese market.
Annotation 2
Liu, T.T. (2018). General Tso’s Chicken, Panda Express, and the Identity Politics of
Chinese Food and Restaurants in America. In Chop Suey and Shushi from Sea to Shining
Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States (pp 43-51). University of
Arkansas Press.
In this article, Liu (2018) notes even though food plays a significant role in the China’s
charm offensive, it often goes unnoticed. The article explores the creation of the famous
dish; General Tso’s chicken and Panda Express in America, as the identity issue of being
Chinese is taken into consideration. The article introduce that the General Tso’s chicken
is known to be the dish that aided in the promotion of the Hunan Chinese cuisine that
had been introduced earlier in America by Chinese immigrants such as Wang and Keh.
Thus, the General Tso’s Chicken can be said to be initially created from a formal dinner
made for Radford and became famous in America because of Kissinger whose appetite for
the Chinese cuisine and the General Tso’s was covered in the Washington Post and New
York Times. For the Panda Express, there existed a dilemma whether it is Chinese or
Chinese American. Even though the first Panda Express was established first in the
United States, the roots of the restaurant are clearly in China. The identity of Panda
Express is belong to Andrew Cheng, but not as a new invented dish on its menu that can
be attributed to a particular cultural identity. This make the Panda Express to be termed
as a Chinese American because it was established by both Americans and Chinese. Panda
Express is defined as Chinese-American because of the combination of the dish with soft
drinks or Chinese tea on the menu. Nevertheless, Lui (2018) notes that, even though
Panda Express and Tso’s Chicken are success in U.S., they still are being considered as
Chinese food.
University of Arkansas Press
Chapter Title: Importing and Exporting the Ethnic: Thoughts on American Chinese
Cuisine, Globalization, and the Dinner Plate
Chapter Author(s): ANNESSA ANN BABIC
Book Title: Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea
Book Subtitle: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States
Book Editor(s): BRUCE MAKOTO ARNOLD, TANFER EMIN TUNÇ, RAYMOND DOUGLAS
CHONG
Published by: University of Arkansas Press. (2018)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1142g8.7
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CHAPTER 2
Importing and Exporting
the Ethnic
Thoughts on American Chinese
Cuisine, Globalization, and
the Dinner Plate
ANNESSA ANN BABIC
Takeaway, or takeout as Americans dub it, serves as a national
standby. Americans have crafted fast food into a national product,
and they have packaged, frozen, rehydrated, and exported this quick
and ready-made creation. Yet, the lure of these high-fat, excessively
salt-laden foods goes beyond the popular American drive-through
and freezer section at the local grocery. American fast food has woven
its way into the global food market, and standby chains like Burger
King, McDonald’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken abound in numerous
tourist locales. They can also be found in emerging tourist centers like
Ecuador; there is a KFC in Quito.1 In short, the quick, greasy, eat-onthe-go food common to Americans is now familiar around the globe.
The rise of American fast food is not a shocking surprise. Ease,
comfort, and even idealist notions of modernity play at the fast food
table. Standardized chain food allows American tourists to capture a
“taste of home” in the Philippines, or elsewhere, while a local can also
“taste America.” Fast fare also serves as a cultural ambassador, permitting consumers to travel vicariously from the dining table while never
leaving home. Ironically, Chinese food has emerged as a “familiar yet
exotic” all-American meal. However, the complexities on the plate
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extend far beyond the choice of brown or white rice. As journalist
Jennifer 8. Lee has remarked, “Our benchmark for Americanness is
apple pie. But ask yourself: How often do you eat apple pie? How
often do you eat Chinese?”2 Such questions capture the essence of
this discussion at its core. Its availability, pervasiveness, accessibility, and class-crossing undercurrents not only reflect the mobile and
fast-paced life of Americans, but also inadvertently bring a sense of
community, as pretty standard Chinese takeout fare can be procured
from coast to coast. The pluralism of American society intersects with
the classic melting-pot analogy to bring a continuous fusion of tastes,
cultures, and expectations onto the dinner plate.3
In the United States, Chinese takeout restaurants account for more
than 43,000 food venues, with 84 percent of Americans reporting they
eat ethnic food at least once a month (dining out or takeaway).4 Since
the birth of P.F. Chang’s, Panda Express, and Manchu Wok, the nature
of American Chinese fast food has changed. Previously, Americans
found Chinese restaurants lurking around corners in suburban strip
malls, in the middle of historically white, small Midwestern towns,
and in an array of urban locations. However, Chinese food has a long
history in the American diet. The first Chinese immigrants settled
in San Francisco in 1847, mainly to build the transcontinental railroad, and the rapid influx shortly thereafter established their presence
in the social landscape. Californians, in particular, saw their foods
influenced by this ethnic group. As Chinese communities grew and
Americans relied upon them for labor and food services, their cuisine became more diverse. Traditional Chinese food used all of the
animal, and Americans were shocked to discover what gave their noodles and rice such rich and distinctive flavor. These restaurants, especially those outside the largest and most vibrant urban Chinatowns—
San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia,
Honolulu, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.—altered
their menus to create a palatable selection for locals. They also selfdescribed as Chinese American, versus labeling themselves Chinese
as did restaurants in Chinatowns. Gradually, the American landscape
became dotted with chop suey houses, with dishes rich in cornstarch,
thick batters, and sweetened sauces that differed greatly from traditional Chinese cuisine. Wonton soup, egg rolls, barbecued spareribs,
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IMPORTING AND EXPORTING THE ETHNIC
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sweet-and-sour pork, and beef with lobster sauce were specifically
created for, and targeted to, American consumers.5
The rise of chain restaurants post–World War II created a conformist culinary culture. Just as Disney World rose to fame in the
postwar era, providing ready-made and guaranteed fun-filled family
vacations, as this essay will argue, American Chinese chain restaurants gave patrons a safe ethnic experience. They could consume
Chinese cuisine without the fear of not liking it. Most importantly,
national chains made it “user approved.” Moreover, packaging the
chain and shipping it abroad enabled non-Americans to interact and
engage with American products, voyeuristically consuming modernity and so-called Americanism in much the same way Americans
imaginatively travel with their own Chinese dinners. The packaging
of Chinese food by (trans)national American chains became a form
of modern cultural imperialism, a geopolitical consumer-based force
that Americans did not invent, but made their own.6
Americanizing Chinese Cuisine
Foodways authors, like Andrew Coe, serve up the gastronomic reader
a light and entertaining overview of Chinese food, and examine how
the cuisine is largely a commercial and cultural hybrid. Hidden within
the cuisine’s history are moments of political comedy, such as when
national security advisor Henry Kissinger, on a state diplomatic
mission to China in 1971, failed spectacularly at using chopsticks.
However, such moments also reveal the politics of food, and Chinese
food in particular, both within the United States and beyond its borders. As Coe conveys,
The status of Chinese food in the American culinary scene has
always been linked, albeit often loosely, to the state of international relations between the two countries. In 1989, the brutal
squashing of the Tiananmen Square protest shattered the illusion
of China evolving into an American style democracy. Cultural
exchanges ground to a halt; tourist cancelled their China trips;
and the US government instituted economic sanctions against
the communist government. At the same time, the American
culinary world’s attention was directed elsewhere, particularly
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37
toward the Japanese and New American restaurants that dominated the white-tablecloth end of the market.7
Yet, despite such politicized moments, a worldwide, politically
resistant acceptance of ethnic foods has become a part of global cultural dynamics. In the United States, Chinese eateries began to boom
in 1848 in Sacramento Valley, California, as the quest for gold drove
scores of settlers there. By 1851, more than 25,000 Chinese had moved
to California, not entirely in search of gold but in the quest for a stable
and prosperous life. San Francisco’s Chinatown, with its inexpensive
restaurants aimed at miners, served as a strong cultural and economic current that encouraged the formation of other Chinatowns.
However, even with their positive social contributions, the Chinese
still remained stereotyped as dirty, shifty, rat-eating undesirables.8
Nevertheless, by World War II, Chinese cuisine had triumphed over
such discourse, prompting the St. Louis Dispatch in 1940 to call it
“among the best in the world.”9
Yong Chen provides another provocative look at this story by
intertwining memories of China and his own immigrant encounters
with America and its eateries. He remarks that by 1980, Chinese food
served as the nation’s most popular ethnic cuisine, and traces the roots
of contemporary American Chinese restaurant chains to the social
and economic networks established by Chinese immigrants working
in the restaurant business. As the Chinese carved out lives, communities, and homes on the American landscape, they came to represent “America’s first truly national network of public dining, Chinese
restaurants played a vital role in expanding the meaning of abundance
and democracy,” and the connection between nation-building, imper­
ialism, and food.10
The spread of Chinese food was inseparably connected to the
geographic and socioeconomic expansion of the United States. This
connection is best captured by the notion of “empire food,” which was
created in the process of empire building for the pleasures of its citizens. Consumption was indeed a significant goal and consequence of
empire building, and recognizing Chinese food as empire food helps
us appreciate its basic characteristics: ubiquitous but cheap.11
Perhaps the true litmus test for Chinese food as a marker of Ameri­
can cultural imperialism is a comparison to McDonald’s. McDonald’s
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has long stood as an icon of cheap (and unhealthy) fast food and the
problems of the American service industry. However, Chinese restaurants fail this litmus test, mainly because there are far more complicated social, cultural, ethnic, racial, and geopolitical forces at play with
this particular cuisine.12
Chinese restaurants, as journalist Jennifer 8. Lee remarks, are
comparable to apple pie. There are twice as many Chinese restaurants as there are McDonald’s locations, and the sheer abundance of
them suggests the importance they hold on the American culinary
landscape. Her story, encompassing forty-two states and three years
of ethnographic research, reveals that the driving force and longevity
behind this ethnic cuisine lies in its chefs, particularly its cooks’ abilities to integrate local ingredients into dishes, making them feel exotic
yet familiar, all at once.13
Chinese food, unlike McDonald’s and other ethnic foods, has
endeared itself to Americans at home and abroad like no other cuisine. A cheap, urban dinner for metropolitan dwellers and a staple of
the suburbs, Chinese cuisine has transcended class, race, and culture.
It is particularly popular among American Jews, who often celebrate
Christmas Day with Chinese and a movie. Even though the Chinese
diet is rather free and flexible, and the Jewish diet is bound with
restrictions like eschewing pork and shellfish and not mixing meat
and dairy, the affinity between these two ethnic groups speaks to the
transnationality and adaptivity of Chinese food, which is precisely
what has made it a global favorite. Perhaps the shared experiences of
the two cultures might have also contributed to this bond. The Jews
largely fled Europe because of religious and ethnic persecution, and
the Chinese became the target of American racism beginning in 1882
with the first Chinese Exclusion Act.14 On the surface, this shared
history of racism could be one reason for Jewish sympathy. But, with
respect to the stomach, any person who has ever had the faintest ache
of hunger can attest that emotion is only half of the equation. Taste
and accessibility really make the case for culinary desire.
Even though pork and shellfish are used in Chinese dishes, Jewish
consumers, especially those who do not follow kosher dietary rules,
flock to the satisfying cuisine. Within the Jewish community, it has
come to be known as “safe treyf,” a mixture of the safe and forbidden,
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39
because ingredients like pork are cut up so finely that customers can
“safely” overlook their inclusion.15 Dining on Chinese food has also
served a communal purpose as it has become a de facto Jewish tradition on Christmas and a go-to “all-American” family meal. Yet, the
beauty of American cuisine is that its constant (re)cycling allows it to
fuse elements that are seemingly unconnected. Moreover, interaction
with food on a personal, familial, and national level reinforces connections between memory and identity. Chinese food has certainly
filled this function in the United States.
The chain restaurant, another American creation, was probably
destined for marriage with Chinese food, a national favorite.16 The
first chains—brimming with “American fare” such as ribs, chops, and
steak and potatoes—were designed to feed travelers efficiently, while
keeping trains on schedule. They were based on an intricate system
of organization, but not the fast food and ready-to-eat items of the
modern era. Rather, these chains represented the standardization of
home food cooked for the masses. However, these restaurants, with
their finely-tuned assembly-line kitchens whose style was reminiscent
of Taylorism in factories, laid the groundwork of today’s fast-foodchain culture.
In the 1980s, only 10 percent of American restaurants were ethnic.
By 1997, this number had risen to 33 percent. These ethnic kitchens
brought in an annual revenue of $29.5 billion, and by 2005 the income
from ethnic restaurants reached $48.75 billion. Throughout, Chinese
restaurants have long remained the core of American ethnic eateries. With more than 43,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States
alone, it is no surprise that they serve as an international envoy of the
American culinary experience. To put the 43,000 in perspective, this
staggering number exceeds McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King
restaurants combined. Moreover, the Chinese eatery typically remains
family owned.17 Ironically, through an ethnic endeavor, the Chinese
have achieved the American dream. The tragedy here is that even
though Chinese American families have become economically successful, many have still not obtained middle-class status, remaining
the “foreigner within.” Studies consistently show that Chinese restaurants actually bring in low profits because consumers expect good
food at cheap prices. Thus, even the busiest Chinese restaurant in the
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neighborhood might only see revenues that barely keep the owners
afloat.18
According to the 2010 census, individuals identifying as Chinese
only accounted for 1 percent of the United States population. Yet, the
Chinese have blended foods that have become a permanent part of
most American diets. Chinese food, which itself is an adaptation,
has been further adapted acco…
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