Chow Chop Suey by Anne Mendelson

Author:Anne Mendelson [Mendelson, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mend15860, SOC043000, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Asian American Studies, CKB017000, COOKING / Regional & Ethnic / Chinese
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

Seven

White America Rediscovers Chinese Cuisine

The War Years

By the time Exclusion was abolished in 1943, China’s position on the geopolitical stage had radically altered. So had Western attitudes toward the Guomindang (GMD) or “Nationalist” regime that had replaced the Qing Empire. World War II marked the first moment in history at which the United States voluntarily acknowledged China as a great military and political ally vital to America’s own security. On this side of the Pacific Ocean, it also marked the first moment at which a precariously positioned Chinese-born population was outnumbered by younger birthright citizens born to Chinese parents in this country—another sign of the shift to an immigrant community at least partly comparable to European-descended immigrant groups.1

Chinese Americans had not waited for the end of Exclusion to throw themselves into the war effort. They had watched with mounting horror as Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and continued to menace China’s eastern provinces. Horror turned to militant rage when Japan launched a full-fledged invasion, with no declaration of war, in the summer and autumn of 1937. By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the great eastern cities of Shanghai and Nanjing had been in Japanese hands for more than three years, and bombing raids by Japan’s highly advanced air force had penetrated far inland. Young Chinese American men had been quick to volunteer for service in the Chinese air force; in a 1942 magazine article, Rose Hum Lee reported that thirty-three trained pilots from Portland, Oregon, had gone to fight on behalf of China before Pearl Harbor.2

With America’s entry into the war, Chinese Americans found themselves in the novel role of extravagantly cheered poster children for both Chinese and American patriotism—“Americans first,” as some boasted, but for the first time ever, free to express pride in a dual Chinese and American identity. Acceptance by white American society now seemed to be something more than a dream.

Chinese American men of military service age signed up in great numbers for the draft. For the rest of the community, the burgeoning wartime economy created an unprecedented wealth of job opportunities beyond the old racially stamped employment ghettos of laundries and restaurants. According to Rose Hum Lee,

Throughout the Chinatowns in the United States there is a labor shortage. For the first time since Chinese exclusion began, absorption of the Chinese into American industry has been significant. Whether in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, or Butte, Mont., the service in Chinese restaurants is slow. Four restaurants in New York’s Chinatown have closed their doors in the past few months. The proprietor of Li Po, an up-to-date cocktail-chop suey place located in “Chinatown-on-Broadway” in Los Angeles, said sadly: “I was just ready for another venture. But I can’t now. No men to run it.”3

In New York, she added, students who used to moonlight as waiters “have found employment in industries working on lease-lend material for China.”4

Women, too, were beneficiaries of the expanded job market. In the Bay Area, a resourceful can-do college graduate

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.