Exploring The History Of Chinese-American Food | NBC News

[Music] this exhibition is called cowo making the Chinese American restaurant and we wanted to tell a compelling cultural story and when we were doing research we realized that the story of Chinese American Cuisine is one of the most extraordinary ones of hardship adaptation and Entrepreneurship and also it's one that everybody can to because no matter where you are in the US you're probably not very far from a Chinese American restaurant at the time when Chinese and American restaurants got their start anti-immigrant sentiment in the US was at a fever pitch there were a lot of insults and attacks on Chinese immigrants and we actually enacted a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act which banned immigration from China for over 60 years and the Chinese Americans who were left behind didn't have very many opportunities so they turned to opening business among which were restaurants and they needed to Market that food toward non-chinese diners Chinese food first came to the US uh with the first Chinese immigrants who came from guangong Province in southern China in the mid 19 century really uh coinciding with the California Gold Rush they started some of the earliest Chinese restaurants in America in San Francisco in particular but Chinese American food as we know it as a sort of fusion h HB Cuisine didn't really take off until the late 19th century or early 20th century every group that's come from China has left their own sort of fingerprint on the cuisine the canones brought dishes like chapsui and EGU young sanes brought dishes like kunga chicken and then you have dishes like General so chicken which came from the Hunan and so in a way it's kind of this uh Collective creation often people talk about Chinese food in the US uh like General so chicken and egg fu young and and other dishes that you might find at your local takeout restaurant as fake or not real but in fact this is a Cuisine uh that has its own story and its own history and that was created by real people um and so I think it's important to look at that story and understand it and understand the forces that shape that Cuisine um whether or not you enjoy it yourself that story is a is a very human one and a very important one for me one of the most important things for people to learn at Chow or to to appreciate is how immigrants contribute to American culinary identity and even when they're being treated very poorly and we are actually actively telling them that they don't belong that they form an incredibly important part of who we are as a country and that's for me one of the most important [Music] takeaways Hey NBC News fans thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching

Channel: NBC News

Views: 29,553

Keywords: NBC News, NBC, news, video, Breaking News, Top Stories, Chinese Food, Chinese American Food, History of Chinese Food, CHOW, Making Chinese American Cuisine, Chinese American Cuisine, Chinese Cuisine, Museum of Food an Drink, MOFAD, China, Chinese Exclusion Act, Immigrants, Immigration, Anti Immigrant Sentiment, Anti Immigrant

Id: 7ExQ-W6YjG0

Length: 3min 6sec (186 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2016