Sinophile Consumption: Chinese Restaurants and Consumer Culture in Turn-of-the-Century American Cities

ABSTRACT

The “chop suey craze,” the moment at the turn of the twentieth century when Chinese restaurants enjoyed unprecedented mainstream popularity in the United States, has received much attention in the literature on the American history of Chinese food. Much of this scholarship has attributed the craze primarily to the advent in the late nineteenth century of chop suey, and to the 1896 visit of Li Hongzhang to New York, while other works have emphasized new consumption imperatives stemming from the shift to a culture of empire at the turn of the century. This article seeks to intervene in this literature by shifting analytical focus away from these explanations and instead argue that the chop suey craze formed part of a larger resurgence in periodic American enthusiasm for China and Chinese cultural products, which I term Sinophilia, engendered by the emergence of an American empire in the Pacific in the 1890s.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese restaurant history
• Sinophilia
• consumption
• culture
• chop suey

Notes

1. For examples of such arguments, see Jung, Sweet and Sour, 52; Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, 57–61; Barbas, “‘I’ll Take Chop Suey,’” 674–75; Liu, “Chop Suey as Imagined Authentic Chinese Food;” Lee, “A Life Cooking for Others,” 60; Freedman, Ten Restaurants That Changed America, 211–19; Hollmann, The Land of the Five Flavors, 154; and Mendelson, Chow Chop Suey, 93.

2. For works emphasizing the underlying importance of Orientalism and the pursuit of exotic novelties to consumer culture in this period, see Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, 38–39; Rosenblatt, “Orientalism in American Popular Culture,” 51–63; Yoshihara, Embracing the East; and Edwards, Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures. For arguments emphasizing the emergence of a culture of empire in the United States and the appeal of ethnic restaurants to middle-class consumers pursuing feelings of cultural superiority and cosmopolitan sophistication, see Lobel, Urban Appetites, 8–9; Hoganson, Consumers’ Imperium, 10–11; Haley, Turning the Tables; Erby, Restaurant Republic, 83–105; Rydell, All the World’s a Fair; and Kasson, Amusing the Million.

3. There are inherent difficulties that come with the use of this type of source, including factual errors and discrepancies, unreliable sources, political or gendered biases, or other faults that result in a distortion of fact. To minimize the impact of these inherent shortcomings on my own research, I have to the best of my ability avoided relying on newspaper sources for precise factual evidence, and instead have analyzed them for the historical discourses, perspectives, and popular views of Chinese restaurants and culture they articulate, reflect, and reinforce.

4. This is not to say that Americans have historically only viewed China and Chinese culture in a positive light. Indeed, Sinophobia has also been a persistent and pervasive strand of racist thought in American history. For a thorough analysis of the origins and pervasiveness of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, see Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant.

5. Fairbank, The United States and China, 319–20; and Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds, 71.

6. Coe, Chop Suey, 165.

7. Chen, Chop Suey, U.S.A., 42.

8. Fairbank, The United States and China, 311–18; and Iriye, Across the Pacific, 5–6.

9. Pomfret, The Beautiful Country, 4.

10. Iriye, Across the Pacific, 6–7.

11. Haddad, America’s First Adventure in China, 4.

12. For detailed explorations of the numerous aspirations and optimistic dreams Americans, especially merchants, missionaries, and politicians, have held for China in particular, see Haddad, America’s First Adventure in China; Pomfret, The Beautiful Country; Iriye, Across the Pacific, 13–20; Fairbank, The United States and China, 308–12; Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship, 41; and Haddad, The Romance of China, xiii–xix. Though such optimism and aspirations were also extended to other countries in East Asia, Americans placed their greatest hopes in, and held the greatest affection for, China specifically.

13. Many of these virtual encounters amounted to inherently biased constructions of China, re-created by those who had traveled in Asia to educate or simply entertain interested American audiences. See Haddad, The Romance of China, xv.

14. Guoqi, Chinese and Americans, 80–81.

15. Ko Kun-hua Collection: no author, no date, newspaper clippings, quoted in Xu, Chinese and Americans, 125–30.

16. Wood, Sketches of China, viii–xi.

17. Pomfret, The Beautiful Country, 62–65.

18. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds, 71; Fairbank, The United States and China, 316–20.

19. Frank, Objectifying China, Imagining America, 166–92.

20. Haddad, America’s First Adventure in China, 58; and Haddad, The Romance of China, 22–55.

21. Pomfret, The Beautiful Country, 4, 63; and Coe, Chop Suey, 240.

22. For more on this, see Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant.

23. Ibid.

24. For more on the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact on race and American immigration, citizenship, and identity, and on the lived experience of Chinese immigrants in the United States, see Ngai, Impossible Subjects; Lee, At America’s Gates; Gyory, Closing the Gate; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home; and Chan, Entry Denied.

25. Pfælzer, Driven Out.

26. United States Census Office, Compendium of the Eleventh Census; and Tchen, New York before Chinatown, 225.

27. Wang, Surviving the City, 66; and Chen, Chop Suey, U.S.A., 80–91.

28. “Miscellaneous Items.”

29. “With the Opium-Smokers”; “Training Sparrows to Fight”; and “Among the Anarchists.”

30. “A Chinese Restaurant”; and “Celestial Smokers.”

31. Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, 64–65.

32. Chen, Chop Suey, U.S.A., 144.

33. “Li Comes in State.”

34. “Chinatown Aglow with Lanterns.”

35. “Li Hung Chang Here”; “Visits West Point”; and “The Great Chinaman.”

36. “What Shall Chicago Do for Li Hung Chang?”.

37. “The Talk of New York”; and “Chinese Cooking.”

38. “Dens of Chinatown Explored By a Woman.”

39. “Li in Brooklyn”; Coe, Chop Suey, 163; and Chen, Chop Suey, U.S.A., 145.

40. As late as 1908, it was believed by some that the sudden popularity of chop suey at the turn of the century was due directly to Li’s enthusiastic embrace of the dish during his New York City visit; Chen, Chop Suey, U.S.A., 145; and “Onward March of Chop Suey.”

41. “Heard About Town.”

42. Trow’s New York City Directory.

43. “Philadelphia Is Getting the Chinese Restaurant Craze.”

44. Boyd’s Philadelphia City Business Directory.

45. “Chinese Restaurants Increasing in Popularity.”

46. “Chop Suey Fad Grows.”

47. Lakeside Annual Directory, 1899–1905.

48. To be sure, Chinese restaurants were not the only eateries to gain newfound popularity in this period, as ethnic restaurants and foodstuffs took on particular significance for the American middle class. Scholars have put forward a variety of explanations for ethnic restaurants’ newfound popularity at the turn of the century. While Cindy Lobel and Kristin L. Hoganson identify the middle class’s consumption of foreign cuisine in ethnic restaurants or at home as an act of “imperial buy-in,” confirming their own cultural superiority over imperialism’s conquered subjects, Andrew Haley explains the middle class embrace of culinary adventurism as an act of resistance against the hegemonic influence of the aristocratic elite and its culinary xenophobia. See Lobel, Urban Appetites, 8–9; Hoganson, Consumers’ Imperium, 10–11; and Haley, Turning the Tables, 2–3, 97.

49. “Chop Suey at the Victoria”; The Inter Ocean; “Much Like the French Ball”; “A Chop Suey Ball”; and “Queries and Answers.”

50. “Chop Suey at the Victoria”; for more on the concept of playing at race, see Deloria, Playing Indian.

51. “Chop Suey and Chow Mein”; and “How to Make Chop Suey.”

52. “Epicurean Chinamen”; “Chop Suey and Chow Mein”; “China’s National Dish”; and “How to Make Chop Suey.”

53. “Philadelphia Is Getting the Chinese Restaurant Craze.”

54. Beginning in the 1910s, Americans became increasingly aware of the fact that chop suey had held no special significance for the Chinese nation. Newspaper articles repeatedly appeared in numerous American publications from the 1910s through the 1930s “revealing” that chop suey was in fact invented by Chinese Americans.

55. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 14.

56. “Women Here and There”; and “Made a Raid in Chinatown.”

57. Scholars have put forward several different explanations for the particular appeal of chop suey to American diners. Anne Mendelson argues that chop suey was a “culinary idiom,” a version of Cantonese cuisine deliberately constructed to tailor to the American palate. Andrew Coe, meanwhile, postulates that chop suey’s “indecipherability” to Western diners rendered it subconsciously satisfying, in the same way, that “savory primal stew” had satisfied European peasants and laborers for centuries. See Mendelson, Chow Chop Suey; and Coe, Chop Suey, 176.

58. “Great Changes in the Chinese Quarter.”

59. Ibid.

60. “Chinese Lose Trade”; and “New York Chinese Now Breathe Easier.”

61. “Chinatown Full of Visitors”; for more on Chinese restaurants as sites of courtship and sexual experimentation, see Lee, “Chop Suey for Two.”

62. Iriye, Across the Pacific, 77; Cohen, America’s Response to China, 48; and Pomfret, The Beautiful Country, 107.

63. Pomfret, The Beautiful Country, 107.

64. “Welcome to Earl Li.”

65. Noyes, “Problems in the Orient.”

66. Barrett, “The Philippines,” 707.

67. “Foreign Affairs.”

68. Pomfret, The Beautiful Country, 113–15.

69. “Visitors Welcome in Chinatown.”

70. Barbas, “I’ll Take Chop Suey,” 674.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Support to Promote Advancement of Research and Creativity (SPARC) Graduate Research Grant from the University of South Carolina, a Balch Fellowship from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and a Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship from the University of South Carolina.

Notes on contributors

Samuel C. King

Samuel C. King is a PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of South Carolina, where his research explores the historical relationship between Chinese restaurants and Chinese American immigration and integration, as well as the shifting perception of China and Chinese culture in the United States. His research interrogates linkages between American imperialism, Orientalist discourse, and consumption, as well as the relationship between restaurant spaces and the sociopolitical status of Chinese American immigrants.