Chinese Food: A Brief history

[Music] welcome to sichan Palace or Hunan taste or Golden Dragon or Jade C whatever the name it's a taste of the Far East in your hometown and as you're drawn in closer seduced by exotic Aromas you slide into your booth and behold sweet and sour pork fried rice and for that authentic finish a fortune cookie enjoy but don't think you've just consumed a Chinese meal the foods you just feasted on are as American as the Hot Dawn in fact a whole lot of Chinese food our favorite ethnic food is just that ours it's [Music] American the first large group of Chinese immigrants was lured to America in the 1850s by stories of the golden mountains of California it was Gold Rush fever and thousands of Chinese mostly from the southern Chinese City of Canton answered the call in San Francisco where most of the immigrants landed the Chinese clustered in one section of town soon known as Chinatown an oasis of traditional Chinese culture swirling with the inescapable smells of traditional Chinese foods most of the Chinese immigrants to America were farmers and served the peasant food of Canton a simple menu featuring stir fried meals with rice mild tea and platefuls of dim sum traditional finger food that included everything from shrimp dumplings to tripe to birds feet the first Chinese restaurant served these foods from home to Chinese customers who couldn't or didn't want a cook this is a heavily male migration and whenever you have heavly male migration you get a um a proliferation of restaurants to serve those men without women you see the same case in the Greek and the Italian migrations that you see in the Chinese migration lots of restaurants Chow Chows they were called and they offered all you could eat for a buck to Hungry Chinese laborers but then something odd happened pretty soon the non-chinese were coming in and the Chinese realized that this is a business this is a business in itself so before long the restaurant started popping up of course the owners knew they'd have to westernize their food a bit to keep the non-chinese coming but the Chinese [Music] adapted which is not to say all was Harmony the Americans were often referred to as Lan or the barbarians and what The Barbarians wanted was chapsui chapsui has its roots in Canton where the words ssui mean miscellaneous scraps and that just about sums it up chapsui is Chinese leftovers its exact Origins are clouded and mystery but it was created here in America one story has to do with a Chinese cook faced with a bunch of hungry miners again in the off hours when he doesn't have a whole lot left in the kitchen but they're hungry they've got money in their pockets he chops up whatever he's got puts it on a sauce throws it on some rice and hands it to them and a very flexible idea at that chopi was usually made from whatever vegetables Chinese Cooks could get their hands on carrots potatoes and tomatoes were just as likely to turn up in shopi as water chestnuts or Chinese cabbage the meat could be whatever the customer wanted the most essential ingredients were bean sprouts soy sauce and more soy sauce if they were going to eat Chinese Americans wanted as much of that Chinese flavor as they could get as for Chinese food the customers still came even though there were rumors that all sorts of creatures were secretly being chopped into chop sooi mice rats or your neighbors missing pet there's a lot of concern about how clean it is um and there's but there's also the sense you can safely eat in what is otherwise seen as a kind of a dangerous neighborhood and it's kind of thrilling to go to Chinatown in the Years Around 1900 as a tourist and guide books really sell it that way and I mean our Chinese restaur tour is going to turn down these these these paying customers of course they're not America was feeling good by the end of the first world war the war was won and the stock market looked to climb forever the Exotic was what the country craved now the new music was Jazz and the fashionable food was ch knes in cities across the country chinat towns lit up with neon Sleek Art Deco lunchrooms began offering dinner for one and dinner for two for many many years that's all we saw because there there was nothing else that was really known the Chinese Chef didn't speak English the Caucasian customers did not speak Chinese but they have a common ground the dinner one for one dinner for two pick one item from column A and one from column B and the top sellers egg rolls and won soup and sweet and sour pork another crude American revision of an old Cantonese [Music] recipe and the meal was always finished off with a fortune cookie it's only natural that the message in the cookie knows our future this is from China with its 3,000 years of wisdom except that the cookie didn't originate in China it's most likely from California there was a tradition in China of hiding messages and cakes it said that rebels in the 12th century got messages past the emperor's guards in what were called moon cakes but the first of the sweet folded envelopes the way we eat them now are often credited to the owner of a Chinese eery in La The Story Goes he came up with the idea in 1916 as a way to amuse his customers awaiting their orders they're entertaining they contain an element of surprise and the mixture of entertainment with food has been a very important theme in sort of the introduction of foreigners to American culinary life we like entertainment along with our food and I think the fortune cookie gives us entertainment along with something sweet I've never been here before I was so glad you could come the combination of the flavors and the Exotic found in Chinese restaurants proved irresistible oh the real Chinese dishes are over here than Chinese food became an official American diversion you know there's there's no telling what we all get but I'm willing to take a chance of you are oh that's the fun of it B here girls here's the ways how to use the chopsticks eating with sticks once sneered at as a sure sign of Chinese inferiority was now the signature skill of the sophisticated diet nothing was more fun than going to a Chinese restaurant to share a table full of steaming patterns Chinese love to eat we never ask you how are you we ask you have you eaten sik Maya have you eaten because we want to the door to be open for us to feed you some more uh food is a way of communicating love friendship and for the Chinese people the only way to eat is to put all the food in the middle and share in the 1950s the boom and food for the road made no dent in the Chinese business they'd been offering food to go for a hundred years Chinese restorators may even take the credit for inventing American takeout 19th century waiters from Chinese e iies regularly took whole meals complete with plates bowls and silverware to private homes when President Nixon opened relations with the People's Republic of China in 1972 interest in a wider range of Chinese foods Rose sharply the catanese grip on the American Market came to an end The Craze for authentic Chinese food began to spread restaurant serving food from Hunan Shanghai or n King appeared next to the chapsui houses today few people order chopi American eaters have forsaken the simple improvised meals that taught them to love Chinese food but chapsui secured a permanent place for Chinese food in America's palet in a Land of immigrants Chinese may be only one of many wildly different flavors but as one of the first exotic ethnic foods had won enough affection and acceptance that in the end it is as a is apple pie especially when you remember that apple pie is imported too we got that from England and speaking of imports when the fortune cookie finally crossed the Pacific and showed up on Asian restaurant tables in 1989 it was touted as the genuine American fortune cookie

Channel: PhilsMovies

Views: 61,053

Keywords: History, Chinese, Food, Dim, Sum, Chop, Suey, Sweet, And, Sour, Pork, Fried, Rice, Wonton, Beef, China, Town, Chopsticks

Id: BoIMHaXEYaM

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 28 2008