How Chinese is our Chinese Food?

me what it is. So it's pretty cool. It turns out that Chinese takeout cartons can double his makeshift plates like this was all over the YouTube's a few years ago. But if you pry the wires off the takeout container and then you unfold the box into like a large sheet, it collapses into a giant plate for sharing. I mean, I guess that's kind of cool, but I'm having a hard time picturing that, just seeing like noodles going everywhere.

But my fact is a little bit different. So did you know that the takeout box actually originated as an oyster pail? According to Snopes, the box was invented in eight by an American inventor, Frederick Weeks Wilcox, and was created as this leakproof way to carry around a clump of oysters. But since Chinese restaurants were some of the first to offer delivery services in the twentieth century, they just repurposed the things to carry around tiny portions of

delicious foods. And that's just one of the amazing facts we're about to share on Chinese restaurants. So let's dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Maes Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass. Wait is he Is he sliding egg rolls onto his fingers? Yeah? I think he's making egg roll hands, like you know, you just put them on your fingers. I'm wave at people.

That's impressive. Well that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Alright, Mango. So one of the things that God is asking today's big question about how Chinese is Chinese food is this great article I saw a vice and it's about the first American style Chinese restaurant that opened in Shanghai and it's called Fortune Cookie. But before we talk about that, you actually used to work at a Chinese restaurant, right, Yeah, that's right. So I waited tables at this wonderful Pan

Asian restaurant in Birmingham. I'm sure you remember, but it was when we were just starting Metal Floss and the family who owned it couldn't have been nicer, Like they used to fix all the staff this big Chinese meal at the end of every night, and I just thought it was so caring. But also it's where I learned the recipe for light soy sauce. Really, so do you

want to share that with us? Sure? Well, one night, when I just started, it was like my turn to refill all the soy sauce dispensers on the table, and you know, I found the jug of regular soy sauce to fill them off with, but I couldn't find a light soy sauce jug. So I kept looking and looking, and when I finally asked a fellow waiter for help, he just looked at me like I was an idiot.

Like he poured the container a half full of regular soyce us and then filled the rest up with water, which technically I guess is a lighter soy sauce, but I'm not sure I would have figured that out either. So in your defense, I think you're okay. But were the meals they cooked you at the end of each night different from what they served during the day, Yeah, definitely. I mean they used these more adventurous ingredients and they were a little more authentic Chinese. I guess you'd say,

m hm. But that's what's interesting, right, I mean, the first Chinese restaurants in America were launched during the gold Rush, way back in eighteen forty nine, so we've actually had almost a hundred and seventy years to diverge from the Chinese Chinese food and kind of forge our own cuisine here. I like these of we here. I'm not sure I've contributed that much to this cuisine. I don't know. You worked at that restaurant for like a year or so.

I feel like you had a real influence though. But you know, American Chinese food has been isolated from China for a pretty long time now, so you kind of expect it to be foreign to people there. But it's also kind of a funny idea to start an American Chinese restaurant in Shanghai, you know. So I was curious about this. Was it just like a novelty thing? That

they were doing. No, so the co founders Fung Lamb and Dave Rossi, they were really serious about this and they went to a lot of effort, you know, like to get the American taste. They use Skippy and their peanut sauces and Philadelphia cream cheese and things like they're crabb rang Goon. They use Motts apple sauces as sweetener, mainly because that's what a lot of American restaurants used

to use as sweeteners. That's really funny. So I know when my parents first came to the States in the early seventies, there really weren't a lot of Indian grocery stores in the US, so you'd have all these approximations, like if you couldn't find Bossmouth the rice, you just use Uncle Ben's. Or if you couldn't find these, like tortillas would work in a pinch, Like there are tons

of these little tricks that everyone sort of new. Actually, I think I remember in the grocery store not too long ago seeing Uncle Ben's both as like for Indian dishes and for Chinese dishes. If I'm not Uncle Ben's got you covered whatever you're trying to cook. But that that's very much what happened in America. I mean, you may you do with what you could, and it's how dishes like beef and broccoli started to become a staple here. But the question is why bring American Chinese food to China?

And the founder's answer was basically, you know, comfort food. There were these two Cornell grads who saw this enormous expat community there in Shanghai, and their rationale was kind of like, you know, look when you're having a tough time and feeling homesick and all you want to do is wallow in the taste of something familiar for a lot of people, you know, a carton of orange chicken and something fried and a cold beer would do the trick.

So they were serious about this concept, and they imported American brands. They even flew Lamb's dad over from America to get his grandfather's recipes to get all these flavors. Right. That's so funny to me, but it really feels like a hard sell. It's like, you know, taking a pizza hut and trying to open in Italy. Did locals take to it or was it just for ex pats? Well, Chinese people did start coming in. I mean, it's it's

way more appealing than it might sound. And the Instagram photos of the food and the plates and the decor, they all look pretty amazing, to be honest. But you know, the duo did have to alter the branding to the place. So what do you mean about that? Well, instead of calling it Chinese food with an American twist, they actually had to sell it as American food, something I had not really thought about, but it it kind of made sense.

But they're all these little funny stories along the way, Like they had their staff debone the chicken because that's how we like our General So's, but all the dishes in China are bone in and people like bones and their food for flavor, and so the staff truly thought these people were crazy and trying to convince cooks that stuffing cream cheese into wantons was normal abroad and you know, not some sort of abomination. That was a different struggle.

But the local seemed to really enjoy the food. Is kind of this foreign experience, and this comes from a Vice article, But apparently two petite women came in and ordered fifteen dishes, and then after they saw the first two entrees, come out just how huge these American portion sizes. Where they looked at each other and couldn't stop laughing. That's really funny. And I mean fifteen family style dishes

would be like a week's worth of food. Oh no, cadn't win our When our family orders Chinese food here, I think we get two dishes just for like four or five of us. So it's pretty crazy. But you know, people were also delighted by the Chinese food takeout Carton's. They'd actually never seen them before in real life, and so they said, oh, that's like the Big Bang theory. You know what what Sheldon eats. I mean, what's crazy is that the Big Bang theory makes sense to people

in China, but boneless chicken doesn't. Right, So I mean, I kind of want to eat of this list. I know, I was actually curious too. But unfortunately Fortune Cookie closed back in two thousand sixteen, and it had had a really good run and and supposedly it was doing fine, but the guys just got homesick and they decided to close up shop. But you know the reason I brought it up is that the restaurant gets written about in

a couple of ways. I mean, there's people who laugh at the concept and then and people who want to argue that America in Chinese food is a legitimate cuisine. Yeah. So to me, when when I think of Chinese food, it's always American Chinese food. And I actually remember when

I was really little. I was so excited the first time I went out for Chinese food and Bombay, Like normally when I was in India, we need at my relatives houses, and I guess I was tired of eating Indian food all day every day, so I was really amped to go out. But then we went and I was like, what is this? I was promised Chinese food. I mean, Indo Chinese is its own delicious thing, and uh, if you haven't tried it, it's really great. Like chili chicken is a dish that you don't get anywhere else.

Go Beventurians, this cauliflower dish, it doesn't exist in China. It's pretty incredible. But there's also one other really strange thing I remember about going to Chinese restaurants there, and it's that you can actually split your food very specifically. So if you want to share a soup with someone, you tell the waiter like one by two and they'll take your one order and split it into two bowls.

Or if you want two bowls of noodles or something and want to split it three ways, you can actually say two by three, and like you can order in fractions. How crazy is that? Can you say three by four? You just keep going. It reminds me that old snl skit where that bank was bragging about, like if you give us a dollar and you want back eight dimes

and four nickels, that's fine. If you want eight nickels and yeah, But Indian Chinese and American Chinese, they they actually aren't the only hybrids, right, There's a lot more. I mean, the truth is the Chinese food, you know, probably depends on where you were at the time. So like there's French Chinese food with salt and pepper frog legs. There's like a distinct Mexican Chinese food. They have dishes like baja fish and supposedly it tastes a little like

a fajita. There's Caribbean Chinese, Cuban Chinese, Peruvian Chinese. Like they're all over the place, and they're all these distinct cuisines and I kind of want to try them. All that is. That is pretty cool. But let's bring it back to America for a minute here. And you know, one of the things I didn't realize before this episode was just how many Chinese restaurants there are in America up so I was looking at the count. Did you realize that we have over forty one thousand of them?

I mean, that feels insane to me. Yeah, And just to give you a sense of scale, you could actually take all the Starbucks in America, all the McDonald's in America, then throwing all the taco bells in America, adding all the waffle houses in America named some really good food here, and you'd still be several thousand short. There's actually this great Jennifer eight Lee Ted talk where she talks about the numbers and mentions the ubiquity of Chinese restaurants in

American history. And one of the things she says is that the Cuban missile crisis was resolved in a Chinese restaurant in d C. And she also said that the building where John Wilkes Booth plotted to kill Lincoln is now a Chinese restaurant, and apparently it's called Walk and Roll. I mean that has to be the best thing about the place that John Willis Spooth stayed right like that. That's now a Chinese restaurant, But I love that it's a punny restaurant title. I know you love your ponds.

But actually there was this article in smith sony and about how a lot of China these restaurants have the same names. Like if a restaurant has an animal in the name, chances are it's a panda or a dragon, and they use the same descriptors like golden or lucky or the really helpful number one or whatever it. Maybe. I mean that's partially because Chinese restaurants were like early McDonald's or like Irish bars, they have the same field

in general menus because it made the clientele feel at home. Yeah, I never thought about that, but it does make sense, and and that formula worked and new restaurants often followed that pattern. But you know, one of the reasons you see garden in the title a lot is that the Mandarin word for garden actually doubles as a word for money. So it's a little hopeful word play that that's pretty much lost on most of us that don't speak Mandarin.

But Anyway, that's a little off topic. I know you researched how Chinese food restaurants got their start, so why don't we dive into that a little bit after a break. Welcome back to part time Genius. So one thing I can't stop thinking about is how Chinese restaurants in America predate the Civil War. I mean, I can't exactly picture Lincoln eating at a Chinese buffet, but you never know,

it could have happened. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. So this is what historians have pieced together about the history of Chinese restaurants. So the first Chinese came over during the Gold Rush from Taishan, which is a city in the southeast coastal province of Guangdong. The area had actually struggled through a number of rebellions and some turmoils, so the opportunities in San Francisco, especially during the Gold Rush, seemed

intriguing to them. And it's kind of staggering that most Chinese in America came from this region for a very long time. First we Feast, which is a great food site. They also note that the cuisine of the area was humble, so as clariss Away, puts it basic stir fries with rice and vegetables plus whatever meat was available, and the flavor profiles veered to the sweeter end. So that basically

where we got our foundation for Chinese food. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, And and the first wave of migrants certainly weren't chefs, so there's actually a little discrepancy on who they were exactly. So most of the descriptions you read will tell you about the chow chowse, which were these hole in the wall places for Chinese workers that you could actually spot by their little yellow triangular flags hanging outside them. You could get to dinner for as little as ten cents

at some of them. Many of them had these one dollar all you can eat menus, and you actually see how pliable the food is, like American veggies just get subbed in for what they had back home. And I actually kind of assumed that the first migrants were here to work on mines or railroads, but it's actually a

slightly different story. So there's a professor of Asian American studies, this guy Himing Lou, who points out in his book From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express that Canton restaurant, which was the first Chinese restaurant in America that we know about. It started in eighteen forty nine. It was used as a three person banquet hall. And his point is that the first wave of people from China weren't like these cheap day laborers that we might think about, but these

rich dealmakers who like smelled opportunity. He calls the men of wealth and ambition, and they were like craters and grocers and merchants. You can see it in some of the guests lists. Like Lou found that there was a dinner for a state senator at Canton Restaurant and it was specifically to grease the wheels to allow Chinese to

buy land. I'm actually going to quote the l a review of books here quote Canton Restaurant was both a meeting place for those emigreates hungry for a taste of home and a strategic cultural outpost where Chinese merchants and entrepreneurs could meet. It was where they could wine and dine potential American allies and business and politics. So like, whatever the case, the food was already starting to feel a little more American to make outsiders feel welcome. Yeah,

and I'm with you on that. I mean, I really didn't have a great understanding of what some of these earliest restaurants where, nor that they've been around for so long. And I've definitely heard more about the chow chows than

any of these fancier banquet halls, for sure. But the chow shows also made like this huge impression, right They were called chow shows because they were filled with groups of hard working people, so like, this was the second wave of immigrants who had come in and weren't nearly as wealthy, and they were just there chowing down. And while there aren't any like menus or flyers from these

Chinese establishments, there are ads for their competitors. So we know that competing restaurants started offering free potatoes with their meals to beat the Chinese one dollar all you can eat places, and obviously this is a strategy that did not work. Actually, uh Time magazine found an early account of a patron visiting one of the earliest Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, and what's staggering about it is that it talks about the cleanliness and hospitality at the place.

This is the quote the best restaurants were kept by Chinese, and that's far from the stereotype that you read about like early Chinatowns. So were they were they doing good business or what? Yeah, I mean, it seems like there's this figure from first we faced that by eighteen sixty five, the rice industry was worth over a million dollars a year and they were charging six dollars a sack, which was one of the most expensive items in a California grocery store. That's about the price of like tea, or

gin or oil. I mean, the demand for Chinese food must have been really high around that time. Well, a million dollars in eighteen sixty five, I mean that that was a ton of sales, and it's that's pretty crazy to think about. You know. Actually I saw that the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in america's in Butte, Montana. It's called the Pekan Noodle Parlor, and it's been around

since nineteen eleven. Also, it's on the top floor of what used to be a saloon, and apparently a lot of Chinese restaurants were located on upper floors because the rent was a little bit cheaper. Yeah, it's funny, like I actually walked upstairs to dim some places in New York and wondered why they didn't just operate on the first floor. But I guess this was a trick that

was used everywhere for cutting costs. I actually read that there were two fifty thousand Chinese who came to the dates before, and I want to say, I think it's like ten thousand or twenty thousand of them ended up in Montana because all the mines there. Yeah, it was definitely a sizeable portion of them. But all right, so we've got all these new Chinese immigrants who are hard working, and we've got child child slowly popping up in different

places to serve them. So, you know, it feels like we probably should take a few minutes just to talk about the racism that they faced and and really how that played a role in all of this evolution here. Yeah, that's right, and this is a sad history, but it's ultimately why we have so many Chinese restaurants. Basically, the Chinese suffered through what a lot of immigrant groups go through.

Like they were simultaneously praised for their hard work ethic but also scapegooded for taking lower wages and for taking all the quote good jobs which were fun things like working on the railroads or working in the fields. So you see attempts to hold them back. There's actually this

California mining tax that was implemented against foreigners. It pops up in the early eighteen fifties, and as this momentum builds, it turns into the Chinese Exclusion Act of two and this is a horrible act, is specifically targeted people from China, and it doesn't actually get repealed until ninete. Well, it's you know, it's sad when you think about how quickly that we could turn on a group. And I found

this very protectionist rant from eighteen seventy nine. It was by Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, and in it he argues that quote, you cannot work a man who must have beef and bread and would prefer beef alongside a man who can live on rice, and that it would bring down the beef and bread man to the rice standard. Basically, he was saying that the Chinese were driving down wages because they needed inferior food to work. And of course, as you could probably guess, he was

an early supporter of that Chinese Exclusion Act. You were talking about. I mean, what's crazy is that that's almost like the most mild put down of what else was going on at the time. Yeah, I mean there was terrible racism. So Jennifer eight Lee talked about how they were first called dog eaters and then cat eaters and rat eaters, and you know, in her talk she actually showed this old box of rat poison that said they have to go right under the product name and this

picture is of a Chinese man eating a rat. And there's really no subtlety here. I mean, the subtitle is very clearly referring to both the vermin and the immigrant. But you know, the funny thing is that good food is still good food. And there's that old phrase the way into someone's heart is through the stomach, Like I'm not sure that's biologically true, and no, it's fact checked that, but the stomach is kind of one out in the end,

and specifically, Chop Suey changed American opinions about Chinese food. Well, that was part of what was interesting in doing the research for this week is that you see, there's no dish with as much controversy as Chop Suey, and I think might now most people have heard that chop suey was a dish invented in America, and the story goes that a bunch of American workers decided to go into a chow chow and their belligerent and pushy, and it's closing time, but they're demanding to be served, and so

the chef uses whatever he's got left in order to just stretch this meal. He throws it all in a walk and they go crazy for it. And when they ask what the dishes called, he just says it's chop suey, which basically means like odds and ends or leftovers. And so, you know, the joke is for decades, you've got people

going into restaurants and begging for leftovers. But you know, here's what I think I find most fascinating about it is that there's some evidence that maybe this isn't true, that chop sui was actually being made for Chinese by the Chinese before white Americans got hipped to it, and that kind of changes the narrative a little bit. And what's even more interesting to me is the fact that it was actually invented about the same time as Mapu tofu.

So Clariss away at first. We feast actually shows there was a lot of innovation around that same time. There was an elderly grandma and shi Hwan that made this new spicy tofu. And meanwhile, a clever cook in Shanghai created the soup dumpling. And her point is that all three of these dishes were made at basically the same time. They were quote created by Chinese chefs for Chinese people, yet only one of them is deemed a bastardized version of Chinese food. I mean that's a really good point.

Just because it was made in America, does that kind of deprive it of its Chinese nous? Yeah? And you know America can't help itself on this front. It gets kind of chops. WHOI crazy, I guess. And as the Chinese Exclusion Act stops new Chinese from entering the country and Chinese workers are kind of pushed out of the labor force, they start looking for these niche industries. So Chinese laundries and restaurants become a thing, and they started migrating east. And this is all still that same Tai

shoon style Chinese food. But when does it really start to take off? I mean, I've read accounts of China and being thought of as this almost exoticized and dangerous place. Well, you know, New York bohemians started taking to it. And there's this funny bit and a Food and Wine article where the author Brad Cohen, he compares these two hipsters.

So let me read it to you. Says, just as hipsters were the intrepid adventures who dared to be the first to explore bitter chocolate and forged moss, a group of broke New York artists in search of something cheap and exotic discovered that they could impress their friends with the realization that, hey, there's something to this Chinese food.

I like that. Well, I mean, I know. Jewish immigrants also took an early liking to the establishments, and partly it's been attributed to the fact that there's a lot of chicken and celery and carrots and even chicken soups in both cuisines. But there's also this argument of proximity, like the chinatowns were near the cheap rentals for New Eastern European immigrants, and also I think Jewish people felt

welcome at these establishments. It was exotic, but there wasn't a big cross on the wall to let them know they weren't wanted. Well. Plus, there there isn't a lot of mixing of dairy and meat, and so the foods considered safe trade. I read that African Americans were also early adopters. I know later Duke Ellington loved overeating at places that serve pigeon in Chinatown, and so they were

slowly building this clientele. But I think what's most fascinating is how this Chinese community found loophole in the Exclusion Act, and that's what really fueled the industry. So basically, in nineteen fifteen, there was a court case that allowed special immigration privileges to entrepreneurs and to business owners, and it

was open to restaurant owners. But there were these weird restrictions, like it it had to be a high grade restaurant, like that's what it was actually called, and you have to actually manage the restaurant for a full calendar year. And also because immigration officers assumed that all foreigners were liars, you had to have two white character witnesses to establish your credibility. It's horrible, yeah, but the people got super clever.

So because opening a restaurant was a major investment. They pulled all their money to start up as partnerships. So to meet that pesky high grade restaurant nonsense, they started calling their places Chop Suey palaces. And then they rotated jobs amongst themselves, so different people got to be the

manager and bring their relatives over. They basically maxed out each restaurant to bring people over, and then when they had enough money, they launched a new restaurant in the same model, and then they do it all over again. And this is from heavily at the Scholar Strategy Network.

But between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, the number of Chinese restaurants in New York City alone quadrupled, and then it more than doubled again the next ten years, and by nineteen thirty New York restaurants were generating over a hundred fifty million dollars in sales. Wow, I mean, I don't think we can stress enough how into Chop Suey people were. But when when Buster Keaton was asked to contribute his favorite recipe to a cookbook, he actually sent

in a Chop Suey recipe. Calvin Coolidge had a Chinese chef he employed on his presidential yacht to make him chop suey. There was an army recipe for it for troops abroad, and you know, by the fifties and sixties there were all sorts of ready mixed chop suey packets for the house. There was even a chop Suey board game where kids just picked up things with chopsticks. I was trying to look up old pictures of this, and the tagline was something like, you know, you don't have

to be Chinese to play the chop suey game. That's so weird. You know, I don't think I've even had chop sue It's not something we ever ordered same here. I haven't either, as many times as we've eaten Chinese food. But it's funny that Chinese laundries were initially the dominant industry here until people figured out this restaurant loophole. But it's interesting how different communities gravitated to different occupations, Like you see groups find these niches and motels or nail

salons or whatever industry it might be. Yeah, I know. So one of my friends whose Cambodian, told me that it's very common for Cambodian families in America to own doughnut shops, like for some reason, that's the model and and the niche they filled. Well, let's phrase through the rest of the history, because I do want to talk about one of America's greatest strip mall chefs. I'm gonna

leave that teaser right there for you. So the other thing that made Chinese food ultrapopular was how cheap it was, right Like, it was consistently affordable, it was delivered, and because everyone was still coming in from this one region in China, it was basically one type of food with minor variations, and if a dish took off in one place, it actually got added to all the menus. By the fifties, though, of the food had kind of lost its edge and

it was considered passe. But in nineteen sixty five the laws got more lenient, and this change in the legal system brought in a fresh wave of Chinese from all over China. And this is where all that food gets exciting again. Like you have China's top chefs actually fleeing communism for the States. The New York Times is praising them as like the equivalent to the finest French cooks. You have Sechuan and Hunan food arriving state side, and like chefs who made pitstops in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

So they're bringing up these like mashup of flavors and techniques. It was really exciting. But they also made dishes for the American palett They made these fried dishes and sweet and spicy dishes, you know, things that are now standard menu items. And then one man adds fuel to the fire, and that's Richard Nixon. And was this because of his China's troop. Yeah, So in nineteen seventy two, the whole world was watching as Nixon made his way to China.

And it's crazy how popular it was. Like the meals were televised, The menus of the Foodie eight was printed in newspapers for Americans to read, and like suddenly everyone was all about Chinese food. They wanted to try peeking duck, and they were curious about these like novelty dishes, and

they wanted to taste what authentic Chinese tasted like. Well, and that's basically where the variety of food takes off and and why we have these Chinese takeout menus with you know, like a hundred items on them, and of course the food stays cheap, which is both the reason why it's so popular but also probably what holds it back in some ways. But before we talk more about that and about one of America's greatest disappearing chefs, let's

take a quick break. All right, Mango, it's time to talk about Peter Chang, who, for our listeners is totally different from PF. Chang, but definitely I love this story. All right, So we were both obsessed with this story from two thousand and ten, and Calvin Trillan wrote a New York Or piece about this incredible chef named Chang who kept fleeing these restaurants. He'd be spotted in Virginia, then he'd flee and go to Georgia or Tennessee or

wherever it may be. Yeah, I mean he'd be at one place and suddenly all these fans would fall in love with the food in the restaurant, and then he just vanished, Like he was like the runaway bride of incredible chefs. And the Internet was fanatical about him. They were so obsessed. Apparently it's even reflected in his Wikipedia page, like his bio has this section of disappearances and movements.

It's kind of amazing. But people would hear a rumor that he was cooking at a place, and then they'd like, on a whim, travel cross country just to take a gamble, that he was cooking at the Strip Mall restaurant. Well, and there were all these theories, you know, that he hated the press or the adulation, and he couldn't stand being thought of as a star. Just that you know, maybe he was restless and like taking him mediocre restaurant

and making it insanely good and then fleeing again. But then he stopped fleeing and started putting up these Peter Chang restaurants. And in fact, there's one here in Atlanta that we definitely need to make a pilgrimage to at some point, and Pete Wells wrote this amazing review about one of them. But even between those, you don't know which ones he's cooking at on which night, so there's

always this guessing game between his fans. So obviously we'll talk a little more about the quality of the food inventiveness. But you know, did Pete well say why he was moving around so much? Well, if you remember from the trilling piece. There was one less sexy theory for why he was always fleeing, and that was that he was in the US illegally, so whenever a place got pressed,

he'd run. And you know, the notes on the bulletin board were like, someone should marry him, or get your daughter son to him to marry, and we need to keep him in the country somehow. But you know, it turns out that story was right. He gave this incredible interview to the Washington Post where he told some of his life story. I'm sort of rushing through it here, but you should definitely give it a read. So he

was born to a poor, farming family. They were destined to stay poor, but when educational opportunities came up, he took a test to being an accountant, and instead he was assigned to be a chef. He did terribly his first year. You know, his heart wasn't in it, and he saw chefs as this low status job. But then his father gets sick and his grandmother tells him that

the family is really counting on it. So he starts working insanely hard and topped his class and from there he was assigned to these luxury ships and resorts, and he picked up new styles of cooking from other ports, and then he was assigned to work in the Chinese embassy in the US, and China wanted to show him off to the world. And it was actually during that tenure that he decided to flee. And on his last day, he cooked the ambassador a warm breakfast while he was sleeping,

and then he fled. So he's on the lamp because you know, there was this huge embarrassment to the Chinese government. But when the US gave him permission to be here as long as he kept working and didn't leave, he decided to jump at that opportunity and started his restaurants. Okay, so you've got to tell the listeners what they're missing out on, because that New York Times review is incredible. Yeah,

I mean, Pete Well's description is pretty ridiculous. So he talks about dry fried eggplant with float away sticks that made him think of eggplant marshmallow, and the descriptions of the scallion pancakes or of these air filled puffs that are as light as a beach ball, you know that somehow keep their shape when dipped into a warm curried broth. They're cones of flaky fish and these heavenly sweet and

spicy dishes. And his strategy for readers is to go to a restaurant and order so many things that the server thinks you're insane. But the best part is that he includes another top chef strategy for what he does when you can't eat anymore. So Sean Brock told him, quote, run outside, go to the parking lot, you run around, you go to the bathroom, You splash cold water on your face until you can eat again, and when that

stops working, order it all again to take home. That's pretty great, And I mean it's a complete opposite of his brutal takedown of that guy fiery restaurant that went viral. Kidding, yeah, I don't know if you remember, but the specifics are ridiculous. Like he talked about a baked Alaska that was sort of drooping, fries that were cold and oily and uh. And one of his questions that he asked was what part of the donkey is the donkey sauce supposed to

remind you? Apparently it tasted like miracle whip, which just giant chunks of garlic in it. Oh, that sounds disgusting and not surprisingly, Guy Fiery's place is closed now. But you know, we should talk about why we included Peter Chang's restaurant in here. The Chinese food worked hard to become an American staple over a hundred and sixty years. You know. Part of that was that it was cheap, and part of it was that it adapted to American

taste buds. You know, the sweet and sour became extra sweet, and everything got fried instead of steamed, and took on these regional flavors of Philadelphia, egg roll, used cream cheese because it felt a little more American, right, which made it four to Chinese people in China and also made us undervalue it as an art like Thai food, Vietnamese food, sushi. It's all pricier, and for a while it made Chinese

food passe. But that's no longer the case really. I mean, we've got Peter Chang and Mission Chinese and all these wonderful chefs who've trained at places like per Se and you know, gone to incredible culinary institutes, and and they're pushing Chinese food and American Chinese food to these new heights. It's actually kind of funny. I read this quote that in the earliest days of Canton restaurant, people who wanted

to succeed were Chinese but had to think American. And now you've got a whole crop of chefs who are American, they're born and they're raised here, but they think Chinese in order to push the cuisine for it. But you know, whatever the case, the food can still feel like home. Well, I really love that sentiment. But I'm hoping you saved a little room for a fact off before we sign off. You know, I did mango yea so heard the food timeline dot org dim sum actually means to dot the heart.

Apparently it's an idiom that means to hit the spot. If you want to know how much we crave Chinese food, Mondays at the American McMurdo based in Antarctica, that's Chinese food night. I'm guessing all the fortune cookies that have stay warm messages in them. But speaking of that, Jennifer eight Lee actually told his great anecdote about the Powerball

in two thousand five. I mean, you can guess where this is going, but apparently a hundred ten people won a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand dollar prizes that night, Like it was beyond anything that any statistician would have predicted. And at first people thought it was like the numbers on Lost or they thought it was like some religious numbers that people had in common. But it turned out a hundred and five people had played their numbers from

their fortune cookies. That teaches you never to ignore those things. All right, Well, did you know that Panda Express doesn't allow franchising, So there were sixteen hundred outlets out there and they're all owned by the same family, except for the ones that are on college campuses. Also, two more crazy things. The couple who started it are obsessed with analytics, so they used early computers to figure out what customers loved and that helped them rEFInd their business model. And

also they're huge self improvement fans. The company actually offers these discounts on courses to Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey books all to their employees. That's pretty crazy. So here's one about the lazy Susan, which is ubiquitous at all Chinese restaurants. I don't know about you, but like I love them as a kid because I could always like quietly spin the appetizers to be in front of me, or when I was older, the kids would spin a whole fish and make dares based on whoever the fish

pointed at. But the way people tell it, the lazy susan has this decidedly non Chinese origin. It was used in the early nineteen hundreds as almost a way to downsize on your domestic serving staff. But you know, it actually might have evolved in parallel in China as well.

So the Smithsonian reports that nineteen while speaking at a conference in Canton, Dr wou Lente was trying to come up with ways to reduce the spread of disease through shared dishes, and he came up with this recommendation that putting special serving chopsticks and special serving spoons in the dishes and then using a revolving trade to circulate the dishes across the table was a better way to keep people healthier. And the tray he described was basically a

blazie susan. Oh wow, that's pretty interesting. Alright, Mango, I can't let us close this episode without talking about you know what I'm going to mention here. It's general. So I have no idea how we've gotten this far without going to deeper end of this. But you know the dishes named after General So who was this ruthless and successful general at smashing down rebellions? But he wasn't a great student and as a young man he failed his court exams three times in a row before returning home

as a disgrace. So it's just a good remindered everyone out there that you don't need to be a good student to have an in portant chicken dish named after you. Those are definitely words to live by. So I think I'm gonna have to see this trivia challenge to you. I feel like I was gonna win it with that one. So so thank you very much and thank you guys for listening. We'd love to hear any facts that we

might have forgotten in this episode. Feel free to email us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or call us on seven fact Hotline. That's one eight four four pt Genius. You can also hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin

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