|
|
Whistle Stopper - The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
|
List Price: $24.99
Our Price: $13.02
Your Save: $ 11.97 ( 48% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Twelve
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5951
EAN: 9780446580076
ISBN: 0446580074
Label: Twelve
Manufacturer: Twelve
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2008-03-03
Publisher: Twelve
Studio: Twelve
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Where was the editor?
Comment: This book was amusing and is a great source for dinnertime trivia but it suffered from the lack of a good editor. Sometimes the chapters felt more like magazine installments with information jumping back and forth or getting unnecessarily repeated. Lee's experience as a newspaper reporter keeps the writing style light and easy to read but there was sometimes a lack of historical perspective which undermined the credibility of her story. Try telling milkmen, icemen, butchers and grocers that food delivery was innovative in the 1970s.
It's a good book but, with a little more help, it could have been a great book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Whoever would have thought that Chinese food could be heartbreaking?
Comment: Before I went vegetarian four years ago, I could be found at our local Chinese restaurant's buffet, or at the Chinese fast-food equivalent at local malls. I was a fan of crab rangoon, lemon chicken, sesame chicken, crispy fried noodles, beef and broccoli, sweet and sour chicken, eggrolls, and fried rice (these days, my "splurge" at Chinese restaurants is a bowl of steamed brown rice). When I heard about Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, I had to read up on the origins of "Chinese" food as sold in America.
I wasn't a complete newcomer; I knew, for example, that fortune cookies originated in Japan, not China, and my experiences with a Chinese dormmate in Quebec showed me that traditional Chinese food was light years away from its American (and Canadian) counterparts (the giveaway was the frog legs on the Chinese buffet in Quebec). I found my Chinese friend cutting up a whole chicken in the dorm kitchen, boiling it and complaining that Americans (and Canadians by default) didn't understand "real Chinese food." Fair enough.
Lee's fascinating detective work traces the origins of classic dishes such as General Tso's Chicken (yes, there really was a General Tso, but his "chicken" is purely American) all the way to China. Hint: Chinese do not deep fry large chunks of meat and slather them in mysterious, gooey sauces loaded with MSG and corn syrup. Nor do they ornament everything with broccoli. She also discusses the origins of P.F. Chang, Panda Express, and the several American businesses that exist solely to prepare strangely soyless soy sauce and carryout containers.
She chronicles the creation of the far-flung empire of Chinese restaurants that have conquered the globe, and even searches out the "greatest Chinese restaurant in the world," traveling to Dubai, Mauritius, London, Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, Australia, Peru, Canada, the US, and Brazil in search of the perfect combination of authentic food and an authentic Chinese dining experience.
I found it curious that in light of the numerous recalls regarding toxic Chinese products, including tainted / poisonous produce, meat and medicines, that Lee fails to mention if this stigma affects imports of Chinese foodstuffs, or of Americans' opinions towards Chinese-owned establishments have changed. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles made an interesting counterpoint to A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy.
Lee's insider status (the child of Chinese immigrants, she is fluent in Mandarin and was raised on both her mother's traditional Chinese cooking as well as American Chinese) allows her unprecedented access to the mysterious world of Chinese restaurants, with their rituals of buying and selling, procurement, and recruiting, as well as to poll Chinese on their opinions of what real Chinese food consists of (and their opinions of American Chinese food such as General Tso's Chicken). Her Chinese also allows her an interview with one of China's last Jews of Kaifeng.
Another fascinating sidenote is the devotion of two chapters to kosher Chinese food, and some of the scandals that surrounded a high-profile case (the Great Kosher Duck Scandal of 1989). (My own personal view of Chinese at Christmas will forever be cemented by the classic (and non-PC) ending of A Christmas Story (Two-Disc Special Edition)).
Most heartbreaking were the stories of illegal immigration from China's Fuijan region and Fuzhou city. Families were torn apart by hazardous human smuggling at an exorbitant cost (according to Lee, the price in 2006 was upwards of $70,000 a person). Once landed in the US (assuming they evaded immigration authorities), they gravitated towards Chinese restaurant jobs that didn't require them to know English, working 12-hour days to send home money in order to send for their families, who would become trapped in the same cycle. Their children (whose English was much more advanced) would then be the "face" of the restaurant, responsible for phone orders, dealing with vendors and repairmen, and waiting tables. Older immigrants who failed to master English and who immigrated illegally are trapped in the Chinese restaurant world, with a black-and-white worldview limited to how far a city was via bus from NYC. Chinese deliverymen are routinely subjected to violent holdups, even murder (Lee devotes a chapter to a high-profile case where a Chinese deliveryman went missing in NYC).
All in all, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles was a fascinating read that lovingly traces the origins and evolution of Chinese food on an American (and international) scale, including the human costs involved in starting and running Chinese restaurants.
Customer Rating:
Summary: There will soon be a fun and enlightening read in your future.
Comment: I love this book. The book brings an appreciation for the struggles of immigrants and how they have greatly enriched the U.S. through their expereince and culture. What is "authentic" to cooking in China may not be "authentic" to a Chinese person cooking in the U.S. and both are valid.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Comment: What a great book! The author gives all kinds of insight into the America's Chinese restaurant industry, and she does it in a fun, easy-to-read style. Bravo!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Uniqueness of American Chinese Food Explored in Detail by a Globetrotting Journalist
Comment: Many of us take full advantage of the ubiquity of Chinese take out menus in order to provide a convenient alternative to our own home cooking. In the past several decades, it's evolved into a common ritual that has sparked the expansive research acumen of Jennifer 8. Lee, a 32-year-old New York Times reporter for the Metro section, evident in the potpourri of essays she presents in her book. Her focus is on American Chinese food, which is a distinct variation from authentic Chinese cuisine. Lee recognizes that so-called Chinese food represents a unique blend of culture and history that is not at all reflected in China today. It is more accurately described as food originated by restaurateurs of Chinese descent who started modifying dishes native to their homeland over a century ago to accommodate American tastes and adapt to local ingredients.
Interestingly, an oddly serendipitous event triggered Lee's book. In 2005, the multi-state Powerball lottery was nearly made bankrupt by the chance selection of numbers that appeared in a number of pre-printed fortune cookies with the accompanying message - "All the preparation you've done will finally be paying off". Over one hundred winners were announced throughout the nation with the same set of numbers, a true indication of the breadth of acceptance for American Chinese food. Lee frames her volume with this story by coming back at the end to explore the purely Western origins of what is being passed off as Confucian wisdom on those familiar slips of paper. In between is the meticulous level of research Lee conducted through her extensive global and stateside travels. She covers such recognizable phenomena as the chemically altered packets of soy sauce that have little if any connection to soy and the advent of the classic white take-out cartons.
American Chinese dishes such as chop suey and General Tso's chicken are explored. In one of her more entertaining anecdotes, she travels back to the general's birthplace to show pictures of his namesake dish and records reactions of disbelief and outright disgust. When in doubt, Lee comes back to the fortune cookie, billions of which are produced annually with the escalating pressure of producing new philosophical phrases in each one. As a journalist, the author is capable of making some intriguing observations. For example, whereas fast food chains have centralized operations, Chinese restaurants are dependent on an open-source system of "global localization" in which mutual success is built upon a constant exchange of workers willing to move to various locales throughout the country. Lee's fluency in Mandarin Chinese has also allowed her to uncover highly personal stories from those inside the business detailing the near-slave conditions of some operations and the sad story of a Chinese couple who set up a restaurant in rural Georgia only to lose their children to the state in the process.
Along the way, she also explains how centuries of Chinese emigration have infiltrated the most far-flung pockets of the world from Dubai to Jamaica to Mauritius. I just wish Lee was able to present the wealth of material in a more holistic fashion rather than relying on the tenuous cord provided by the omnipresent fortune cookies. Her scattershot approach seems to trivialize the subject, especially when she travels to a variety of exotic destinations to find the world's best Chinese restaurant. Judging from her candidates in San Francisco such as the upscale Shanghai 1930 and Tommy Toy's, I think her search feels rather cursory. Regardless, it's fascinating to consider the culture within a culture that the American Chinese restaurant business represents and how ingrained it has become within our larger society. Lee cleverly asserts if the benchmark for Americanness is apple pie, then one should take a closer look at how often one eats apple pie versus Chinese food. That's a valid point.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
