by Coe, Andrew
Diners still need to watch one crucial marker to see how a restaurant will evolve: the ratio of Chinese to non-Chinese diners. Whichever group dominates the seats will inevitably have the most influence on what is served, and how. The restaurant owner has to survive. If you don’t see any immigrants or their descendants at the tables, then you know that American tastes will rule the meal—for spicy but not too spicy food, for steamed vegetables and brown rice, for sushi and Pad Thai noodles. (It’s all Asian, isn’t it?) Like their ancestors fifty and a hundred years ago, most Americans still expect Chinese food to be cheap, filling, familiar, and bland.
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1.3 © Private Collection/Roy Miles Fine Paintings/The Bridgeman Art Library
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5.4 Chinese-American Museum of Chicago
6.1 Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers/Library of Congress
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6.3 From the Harley Spiller Collection
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NOTES
Chapter 1
1. Samuel Shaw and Josiah Quincy, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (Boston: Wm. Crosby and H. Nichols, 1847), 111–2.
2. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 155.
3. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 167–8.
4. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 168.
5. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 338.
6. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 180–1.
7. Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to His Son (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1786), 52.
8. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 182.
9. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 179.
10. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 179.
11. William Hickey, Memoirs of William Hickey, 4 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1921), 1:224.
12. Shaw and Quincy, Journals, 199–200.
13. Li Chi: Book of Rites, trans. James Legge, 2 vols. (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1967), 1:229.
14. Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History of China, 4 vols. (London: J. Watts, 1751), 2:201.
15. The Chinese Traveller (London: E. and C. Dilly, 1772), 204.
16. Chinese Traveller, 118.
17. Chinese Traveller, 37–8.
18. Du Halde, General History, 201.
19. “Walks about the City of Canton,” Chinese Repository, May 1835, 43.
20. Lawrence Waters Jenkins, Bryant Parrott Tilden of Salem, at a Chinese Dinner Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), 18–21.
21. Eliza J. Gillett Bridgman, The Pioneer of American Missions in China (New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1864), 43.
22. Bridgman, Pioneer, 97.
23. Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat (New York: Harper, 1837), 151.
24. Frederick Wells Williams, The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams (New York: Putnam, 1889), 64.
25. Williams, Life and Letters, 69.
26. “Diet of the Chinese,” Chinese Repository, February 1835, 465.
Chapter 2
1. Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee, 1860), 341.
2. Quincy, Memoir, 340.
3. Claude M. Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing, 2 vols. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965) 1:414.
4. William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (London: K. Paul, Trench, 1885), 38–9.
5. “Mr. F. Webster’s Lecture on China,” American Penny Magazine, November 15, 1845, 645–6.
6. “Mr. Fletcher Webster’s Lectures,” Niles’ National Register, November 15, 1845, 170–1.
7. Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven, Conn.: Far Eastern, 1953), 160.
8. Swisher, China’s Management, 174.
9. John R. Peters, Jr., Miscellaneous Remarks upon the Government, History, Religions, Literature, Agriculture, Arts, Trades, Manners, and Customs of the Chinese (Boston: John F. Trow, 1846), 162.
10. “China,” Wisconsin Herald, December 11, 1845, 1.
11. “Miscellaneous,” Niles’ National Register, November 1, 1845, 9–10.
12. “Too Good,” Sandusky (OH) Clarion, May 24, 1845, 2.
13. Mayers, William F., N. B. Dennys, and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (London: Trübner, 1867), 397.
14. Charles M. Dyce, Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in the Model Settlement Shanghai (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), 95.
15. Arthur Ransome, The Chinese Puzzle (London: Allen and Unwin, 1927), 29.
16. Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley, 1849), I:xv.
17. Williams, Middle Kingdom, 1:3.
18. Williams, Middle Kingdom, 2:47–8.
19. Williams, Middle Kingdom, 2:50.
20. Frederick Wells Williams, Life and Letters (New York: Putnam, 1889), 172.
21. William Dean, The China Mission (New York: Sheldon, 1859), 271.
22. Dean, China Mission, 7–8.
23. Charles Taylor, Five Years in China (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1860), 133–4.
Chapter 3
1. Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956), 191.
2. Waley, Yuan Mei, 53.
3. Waley, Yuan Mei, 52.
4. Waley, Yuan Mei, 196.
5. Herbert A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (New York: F. Ungar, 1967), 410.
6. Giles, History, 411.
7. Giles, History, 412.
8. Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 49.
9. Li Chi: Book of Rites, trans. James Legge, 2 vols. (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1967), 1:369.
10. David, R. Knechtges, “A Literary Feast: Food in Early Chinese Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106, no. 1 (January–March 1986): 53.
11. Fung Yu-Lan and Derek Bodde, ed., A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 289.
12. Birrell, Chinese Mythology, 57.
13. Dominique Hoizey and Marie-Joseph Hoizey, A History of Chinese Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 28–9.
14. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, trans. Ilza Veith (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1972), 206.
15. Knechtges, “Literary Feast,” 49.
16. H. T. Huang, Fermentations and Food Science, vol. 6, pt. 5 of Science and Civilization in China, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Presss, 2000), 68.
17. Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban, Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 273–4.
18. Jonathan Spence, “Ch’ing,” in Food in Chinese Culture, ed. K. C. Chang (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), 277.
19. John Minford and Joseph Lau, Classical Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 223.
20. Buwei Y. Chao, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (New York: John Day, 1945), 35.
21. Michael Freeman, “Sung,” in Chang, Food in Chinese Culture, 161.
22. John Henry Gray, China: A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People (London: Macmillan, 1878), 64.
23. Gray, China, 72.
Chapter 4
1. Samuel Bowles, Our New West (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford, 1869), 410.
2. Bowles, New West, 411.
3. “From California,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1865, 3.
4. Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi (Hartford, Conn.: American, 1867), 440.
5. Bowles, New West, 412–3.
6. “Restaurant Life in San Francisco,” Overland Monthly, November 1868, 471.
7. Bayard Taylor, Eldorado (New York: Putnam: 1850), 116–7.
8. John Frost, History of the State of California (Auburn, N.Y.: Derby and Miller, 1851), 100–101.
9. William Kelly, An Excursion to California (London: Chapman and Hall, 1851), 244.
10. William Shaw, Golden Dreams and Waking Realities (London: Smith, Elder, 1851), 42.
11. Notes on California and the Placers (New York: H. Long, 1850), 100.
12. “The Chinese,” Weekly Alta California, June 18, 1853, 4.
13. Frank Soulé, The Annals of San Francisco (San Francisco: Appleton, 1855), 378.
14. “Chinese Dinner and Bill of Fare,” Charleston (SC) Mercury, September 30, 1853, 2 (from the San Francisco Whig, August 16, 1853).
15. Albert H. Smyth, Bayard Taylor (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1896), 70.
16. Bayard Taylor, A Visit to India, China, and Japan, in the Year 1853 (New York: Putnam, 1855), 285.
17. Taylor, Visit, 353–4.
18. Frederick Whymper, Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska (London: J. Murray, 1868), 280.
19. J. D. Borthwick, Three Years in California (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1857), 75.
20. Albert S. Evans, la California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1873), 320.
21. “How Our Chinamen Are Employed,” Overland Monthly, March 1896, 236.
22. Auburn Stars and Stripes, 1866 (in Bancroft Scraps, Vol 6), p. 28.
23. “A Dinner with the Chinese,” Hutchings’ California Magazine, May 1857, 513.
24. Noah Brooks, “Restaurant Life in San Francisco,” Overland Monthly, November 1868, 472.
25. Hubert Howe Bancroft, “Mongolianism in America,” in The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. 38, Essays and Miscellany (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1890), 331.
26. Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1877), 71–2.
27. George H. Fitch, “A Night in Chinatown,” Cosmopolitan, February 1887, 349.
28. Josephine Clifford, “Chinatown,” Potter’s American Monthly, May 1880, 353.
29. New York Journal of Commerce, December 14, 1869, clipping, in “Chinese clippings,” vols. 6–9 of Bancroft Scraps, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
30. Clifford, “Chinatown,” 354.
31. Ira M. Condit, The Chinaman as We See Him (Chicago: F. H. Revell, 1900), 43.
32. Ralph Keeler, “John Chinaman Picturesquely Considered,” Western Monthly, May 1870, 348.
33. J. W. Ames, “A Day in Chinatown,” Lippincott’s, October 1875, 497–8.
34. “The Old East in the New West,” Overland Monthly, October 1868, 365.
35. Benjamin F. Taylor, Between the Gates (Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1878), 109–10.
36. Will Brooks, “A Fragment of China,” Californian, July 1882, 7–8.
37. Brooks, “Fragment,” 8.
38. “The Chinese in California,” New York Evangelist, October 21, 1869, 2.
39. “My China Boy,” Harper’s Bazaar, December 1, 1877, 763.
40. “A California Housekeeper on Chinese Servants,” Harper’s Bazaar, May 8, 1880, 290.
41. Ira M. Condit, English and Chinese Reader with a Dictionary (New York: American Tract Society, 1882), 41.
42. William Speer, An Humble Plea (San Francisco: Office of the Oriental, 1856), 24.
43. Herman Francis Reinhart, The Golden Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), 104.
44. Mark Twain, Roughing It (New York: Harper, 1913), 110.
45. Charles Nordhoff, California: for Health, Pleasure, and Residence (New York: Harper, 1873), 190.
46. “California Culinary Experiences,” Overland Monthly, June 1869, 558.
Chapter 5
1. Edwin H. Trafton, “A Chinese Dinner in New York,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, February 1884, 183.
2. Trafton, “Chinese Dinner,” 183.
3. “Chinese in New-York,” New York Times, December 26, 1873, 3.
4. “With the Opium Smokers,” New York Times, March 22, 1880, 2.
5. “The Rush at Castle Garden,” New York Times, May 15, 1880, 4.
6. “Mott-Street Chinamen Angry,” New York Times, August 1, 1883, 8.
7. “Mott-Street Chinamen Angry.”
