China to Chinatown by J. A. G.

Roberts | The Times

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article2453257.ece

China to Chinatown by J. A. G. Roberts

reviewed by FUCHSIA DUNLOP
August 21 2004 12:00AM

Peking duck and other canards

CHINA TO CHINATOWN: Chinese Food in the West BY J. A. G. ROBERTS Reaktion, 19.95; 284pp ISBN 1 861 89227 6 Buy the book The Chinese restaurant is a fixture of British towns, our supermarket shelves are lined with Chinese ready meals and stir-fry sauces, and about 65 per cent of British households now possess a wok. In 2002 Chinese food even overtook Indian as our favourite ethnic cuisine. Yet Chinese food as enjoyed by the Chinese themselves, with its stunning variety of ingredients, tastes and textures, remains as elusive as ever. Most British diners are baffled by the complexities of the Chinese restaurant menu, old stereotypes of appalling Chinese exotica deter many from ordering unfamiliar dishes, and Chinese waiters have a tendency to guide non-Chinese guests into ordering from a narrow, clichd repertoire. Its a strange state of affairs. But how did it come about? J. A. G. Robertss study of the globalisation of Chinese food offers a fascinating history of Western encounters with the Chinese diet, first in China itself, through the accounts of explorers, traders, diplomats and missionaries, and then, from the 19th century on, in Chinese restaurants abroad. Early Western travellers to China were filled with wonder and sometimes shock at what the Chinese ate. Marco Polo (whether or not he actually made it to China) wrote of markets overflowing with produce and grand restaurants, though he also noted with distaste that local people liked eating snakes and dogs. A Dominican friar writing in the 17th century said the abundance of Chinese foodstuffs exceeded that of the biblical Promised Land. Later, Westerners who reached the South China coast adopted an increasingly carping view, provoked partly by their frustration at the obstructive behaviour of local officials. Captain Alexander Hamilton went so far as to accuse the Chinese of sexual perversions involving Beasts and Fowls, in so much that Europeans do not care to eat Duck. Others moaned about food adulteration and poor hygiene, and recoiled from the cruel way in which the Chinese treated animals destined for the table. Many European visitors were revolted to see the way Chinese people used chopsticks to shovel rice into their mouths (somewhat hoggishly, said the 16th-century Spanish missionary Martin de Rada), yet seemed oblivious to the possibility that their own behaviour might give offence. One 17th-century British adventurer, Peter Mundy, was so

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China to Chinatown by J. A. G. Roberts | The Times

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daunted by the chopsticks offered with a meal in a temple that he ate with his fingers: pretty hoggish by Chinese standards, one would imagine. There was little social mixing between the Chinese and foreigners, as is too often still the case in Chinas expatriate communities. Foreigners forced to live in China for long periods avoided eating Chinese food as much as possible. Interestingly, it seems that there was no development in China of an Anglo-Chinese cuisine along the lines of AngloIndian cuisine, perhaps because so many people just found Chinese cuisine too outlandish. The few foreigners who did cast aside their prejudices and throw themselves into real encounters with Chinese life were often impressed, like the 20th-century American writers Nora Waln and Emily Hahn. What is really striking, and often hilarious, about these Western accounts is how little has changed in some respects over the centuries. For no one, it seems, from Marco Polo to someone I met at a dinner party in London last week, can avoid mentioning the notorious omnivorousness of the Chinese, and especially their taste for animals which Europeans consider to be pets. They eat all sorts of flesh, including that of dogs and other brute beasts (Marco Polo, 1298); Stags-Pizzles . . . Bears-Paws . . . nay they do not scruple eating Cats, Rats, and such like animals (Jean-Baptiste du Halde, 1736); Chinaman, Chinaman, Eat dead rats! Chew them up Like gingersnaps! (American washerwoman quoted by Edgar Snow, 1920s). Anyone would think that the Chinese practically lived on dogs, cats and rats. Fortunately, there were a few voices of reason, like the American missionary H. Wells Williams, who pointed out that such uncouth or unsavoury viands formed only an infinitesimal portion of the Chinese diet. Amidst this clamour of European voices, one is treated in these accounts to occasional glimpses of what the Chinese themselves made of their strange and sometimes boorish visitors, as when a Chinese official, faced with a grand English breakfast, eyed each dish carefully and then waved everything away without finding a single article suitable to his delicate stomach. Hints like that made me long to read a partner volume to this one, written from a Chinese viewpoint. Westerners suspicious view of Chinese food partly explains why Chinese restaurants abroad came to offer such a bowdlerised version. But Roberts also sheds light on the economic reasons. In America and Canada Chinese restaurants were first opened by immigrants who came over during the 19th-century Gold Rush. After an initially friendly reception, they faced racial prejudice and anti-Chinese legislation, which is why many ended up in the service industries. It wasnt until the early 20th century that Chinatowns lost their reputation for sleaze and violence and began to attract increasing numbers of white Americans, and that Chinese also began to open eateries in non-Chinese areas. But reproducing a narrow repertoire of Americanised Chinese dishes like chop suey and chow mein must have been the safest bet when it came to devising menus. The period after the Second World War saw dramatic advances in the globalisation of Chinese food, although most restaurants in America and Britain continued to be known for cheap, low-status food. In the late 20th century, Chinese restaurants and some Chinese dishes entered the British and American mainstream. In Britain, Roberts suggests, a growing culture of eating out and foreign travel has encouraged locals to be

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China to Chinatown by J. A. G. Roberts | The Times

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article2453257.ece

more adventurous in their diets. Despite the acceptance of Chinese food as a normal part of the modern British diet, old prejudices are always, it seems, lurking just beneath the surface. In 2001 the tabloid press leapt on ill-founded suspicions that imported Chinese meat might have caused the foot-and-mouth epidemic. And in 2002 the Chinese community was outraged by a notorious piece in the Daily Mail (entitled Chop Phooey) that was stuffed full of racist stereotypes about Chinese food. It would have been interesting to hear more about the really good Cantonese restaurants which cater mainly for a well-heeled Chinese clientele and make minimal concessions to British tastes. As a whole, however, the book is a valuable and timely account of the Wests strange love-hate relationship with Chinese food, and a stimulating read, provoking as it does so many challenging questions about how we perceive and adapt to other cultures. Fuchsia Dunlops Sichuan Cookery is published by Penguin Travellers tales
T here is great abundance of Beef, Pork all the Year about, Mutton, Goats-Flesh, Hens, Capons, Geese, Pheasants, game and wild Ducks, Pigeons, T urtle-Doves, small Birds, and all very good; there is no want of Horse-Flesh: Dogs-flesh is looked upon as a dainty. Friar Domingo Naverrete, who lived in China from 1658 until 1669 T he Chinese eat any kind of Meat; Beasts that die in Ditches, as willingly as those which died by the Butchers Hand. T hey eat Frogs, which appear loathsome to an European Eye, but are well-tasted. Tis said their Rats dont eat amiss; and that Snake-Broth is in Reputation there. T he common people are great Gluttons, and eat four T imes a Day, cramming down Rice greedily. John Lockman, writing in the late 18th century Nothing is specifically either eatable or uneatable. Y ou could begin munching a hat, or bite a mouthful out of a wall; equally you could build a hut with the food provided at lunch. Everything is everything. W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, in Journey to a War (1939)

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China to Chinatown by J. A. G. Roberts | The Times

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