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1:36

I was born in America and I grew

1:38

up thinking

1:40

fortune

1:44

cookies were Chinese, right? Because like we got them from

1:46

the tiniest takeout, like downstairs.

1:49

And it was only in reading Amy Tan's book, The Joy

1:51

of Life Club, where there's a chapter where like fortune

1:53

cookies are like

1:55

from America. I was like, what?

2:00

I was like 13, right? And it was like

2:02

learning that there was no Santa Claus and, you know,

2:04

Tooth Fairy, all at once. And

2:06

you're like, just kind of shook your worldview. I'm like, how

2:08

is it non-Chinese? This

2:10

is Chinese-American journalist and documentary

2:13

producer, Jennifer Aitley, talking

2:15

about one of the many Chinese-American

2:17

dishes of her childhood. To

2:20

her surprise, Jennifer was not alone in

2:22

that fortune cookie epiphany. Even

2:24

her mom, who was born on Kinman Island,

2:27

just off the Chinese coast, had assumed that

2:29

fortune cookies came from China. Different

2:31

parts of China are very diverse. So like foods

2:34

are gonna vary. So just because you don't

2:36

know a dish in Taiwan doesn't mean it's not in Beijing.

2:39

And to Jennifer's amazement, it wasn't just

2:41

fortune cookies. When she studied abroad

2:43

in college, the surprises just kept

2:45

coming. I went all across the country.

2:47

You know, I was in Chengdu, I was in Tibet, I was in Mongolia,

2:50

I was in like Guilin, like all over

2:52

the country. It was then

2:54

I was like, oh, there's no General's Chose Chicken here.

2:56

Like there are no fortune cookies. There's

2:59

no beef with broccoli. There's

3:00

no loomain. There's no roast pork

3:02

fried rice. So where exactly

3:05

had all these supposedly Chinese

3:07

dishes come from? Jennifer decided

3:10

she was gonna find out. And the quest to

3:12

answer this question would change her life.

3:15

She traveled to 42 American states and 17

3:17

countries, speaking to chefs,

3:20

restaurant owners, and sampling delicacies

3:22

of all kinds, from Szechuan

3:25

alligator in Louisiana to

3:27

date pancakes in India.

3:29

Here's a totally fun fact.

3:31

This is an Irish Chinese dish.

3:33

It's called Three in One. It

3:35

is

3:36

curry,

3:37

French-resourced, and fried rice mixed

3:39

in one dish. It is very popular there.

3:42

And

3:43

they also think the Chinese people eat this dish.

3:45

Jennifer documented her adventures in a New York

3:47

Times bestseller called The Fortune Cookie

3:50

Chronicles. And the discoveries she made

3:52

have now been archived for future generations

3:54

at the Library of Congress.

3:57

But way back in 2005, when the whole invest...

3:59

started. Jennifer wasn't thinking about

4:02

writing a book. In fact, she wasn't

4:04

thinking about Chinese food at all.

4:06

She was just minding her own business, sitting

4:08

on a New York City subway at rush hour.

4:12

I worked at the New York Times. I lived up in Harlem

4:15

and I would commute every day on the two-three

4:18

train. They

4:19

had this newspaper called A.M. York and

4:22

there was a

4:23

story in there

4:26

about a very unusual

4:30

powerball lottery situation, you know, 110

4:32

second-place winners, where they expected only like three

4:34

or four. 110 second-place

4:38

winners.

4:39

This was so unusual

4:41

that lottery officials suspected fraud.

4:43

The total payout was about 19 million,

4:47

enough to nearly wipe out the lottery reserve.

4:50

But when they launched an investigation, it

4:52

turned out that all of these players had

4:54

gotten a winning number, not from some criminal

4:56

mastermind or even the plot of a TV

4:59

show, but from a fortune cookie.

5:02

It just so resonated with me

5:04

because I'm like, who are this 110 people who played

5:06

and won? How many people are buying numbers

5:08

from fortune cookies? Because they're all the people who must have played numbers

5:10

that didn't win. And so I just

5:14

remember like being totally struck by

5:16

this and decided that I was going to figure out

5:19

who these people were. Jennifer

5:21

tracked down every winner she could find and

5:24

one after another, they all told her a

5:26

version of the same story. She

5:28

began to realize that all over the country,

5:31

Chinese food was a routine part of people's

5:33

lives. It was woven into every

5:35

community. Chinese food was

5:38

American food. All their

5:41

stories came back to a Chinese restaurant

5:43

and all their stories came back to a fortune cookie.

5:46

And so it struck me, if

5:48

your benchmark for American, this

5:50

is apple pie, you should ask yourself, when

5:52

was the last time you ate Chinese food versus when was

5:54

the last time you ate apple pie? Jennifer

5:57

didn't know it yet, but that discovery on the

5:59

subway would

5:59

consume her life for the next three years.

6:02

I didn't necessarily know at the very beginning

6:05

why I was so obsessed with this topic. And it was just like,

6:07

where did General Sowichik come from? Where did the takeout containers

6:10

come from? Where are fortune cookies from? That

6:12

sort of level of obsessiveness was

6:15

all consuming. And it was only after I

6:17

actually finished the book that I realized what

6:19

had happened, which is it was my quest

6:21

to understand my own place as a

6:23

Chinese-American in the larger

6:26

world.

6:28

Everything we eat has a story to

6:30

tell.

6:32

Welcome to

6:34

If This Food Can Talk, a history show

6:37

for everyone who eats. I'm Claudia

6:39

Hanna. There are more

6:41

Chinese restaurants in the U.S. today than

6:44

there are McDonald's, Burger King's and

6:46

KFCs combined. It's

6:49

neck and neck with pizza as America's

6:50

most ordered takeout. Today,

6:53

we're exploring the origins of three

6:55

famous Chinese-American dishes,

6:57

top suey, fortune

6:59

cookies and General Sowichik. We'll

7:02

uncover the American history that shaped them

7:04

and follow Jennifer's

7:05

journey to discover how

7:06

understanding the past helped her find peace

7:09

in the present.

7:10

Plus, I'll try my hand at making a Chinese-American

7:13

dish that was my little brother's favorite as a kid,

7:16

beef

7:16

and broccoli.

7:17

All that after the break.

7:25

Hey, it's Claudia. I want to tell

7:27

you about the Queen's Podcast, where childhood

7:29

friends Katie and Nathan explore uncharted

7:32

history with a side

7:33

of spirits. Queen's Podcast

7:35

takes their listeners on a journey through the incredible

7:38

lives of women from different eras, from

7:40

lesser-known figures like Saida El Hurra

7:43

and Jean de Clisson to iconic

7:46

personalities like Marie Antoinette or

7:48

Cleopatra. Each queen is

7:50

paired with a drink recipe that will get you in

7:52

the mood to hear the fun, dramatic,

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juicy and underrepresented stories

7:57

from some seriously fascinating ladies.

8:00

Because history isn't just about dudes

8:02

on battlefields. It's also about the empowering

8:05

tales of women who left their mark.

8:07

Tune in to Queen's podcast, available

8:09

wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes

8:17

it can be hard to know whether or

8:19

not you're eating healthy. Micronutrients,

8:22

macronutrients, phytonutrients, probiotics,

8:25

prebiotics, postbiotics, it's enough

8:27

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8:32

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9:02

Ever since she was a little kid, Jennifer

9:05

has been asked the same question that I

9:07

and so many other Americans of non-European

9:09

descent have heard too many times to count.

9:12

Where are you from?

9:14

I'm like, I'm from New York. They're like, no,

9:16

no, where are you really from? And I'm like,

9:19

I was born and raised in New York and I'm, you know,

9:22

live there now. I could not be, quote, more

9:24

from anywhere on this planet. But

9:27

I understand what they're saying, right, which is like, you

9:29

look for it.

9:31

Jennifer says that just like the

9:33

phrase, where are you from? When

9:35

we go looking for the origins of supposedly

9:38

Chinese foods like fortune cookies

9:40

or General So's chicken, we

9:42

run up against a much bigger

9:44

question.

9:46

In a country full of immigrants, what

9:48

does it mean to be American? And

9:50

just what is American food anyway?

9:54

Chinese food in America is very much

9:56

a reflection of

9:59

Chinese immigration. to the states, right? So

10:01

China, the number one immigration-producing

10:03

country in the world, America

10:05

the number one immigration-accepting

10:08

country in the world, and in that intersection

10:10

are Chinese immigrants and Chinese food.

10:13

Jennifer

10:15

realized that she couldn't tell the story of

10:17

Chinese food in America until

10:19

she understood the history of the people who

10:21

created it. Second half

10:23

of the 1800s in China, especially

10:26

in southern China, super sucked. It was like,

10:28

there's war, there was famine, you know,

10:30

there were floods. It was like,

10:31

it was not a place you wanted to be. So

10:34

a bunch

10:35

of Chinese men left

10:37

and like went overseas to work

10:39

and many of them showed up in the United States.

10:43

A lot of them were drawn to San Francisco, the Bay

10:46

Area because of the gold rush. And then from there,

10:48

a lot of them then worked in agriculture and mining

10:50

and cigar manufacturing and

10:53

railroads. And the problem

10:55

was that these were the jobs that American men wanted. And

10:57

so there was a huge anti-Chinese backlash, you

10:59

know, boycotts and protests

11:02

if you hire Chinese people. In the early

11:04

19th century, competition for unskilled labor

11:06

was high and animosity

11:08

towards immigrants rose to a fever

11:10

pitch.

11:11

Chinese people were especially vulnerable to

11:13

discrimination and violence. And

11:15

a quick heads up, there are some descriptions of

11:17

that violence in just a moment.

11:18

So please take care while listening. A

11:22

lot of discrimination against the Chinese population

11:24

was organized. And at one point, the

11:27

largest labor union in the country, the

11:29

American Federation of Labor, actually

11:31

published a manifesto against the

11:33

hiring of Chinese workers.

11:35

There was a block called Meat versus Rice,

11:37

American Manhood versus Asian

11:40

Coolieism, which shall survive. And

11:43

this idea that American men

11:44

who ate meat were much more

11:46

worthy than like Chinese people who ate rice

11:48

with sticks. As Jennifer continued

11:50

her research, it dawned on

11:53

her that she actually

11:54

knew very little about early

11:56

Chinese

11:56

American experience.

11:58

There tends to be a whitewashed of

12:01

our history and it was in

12:03

my own personal research that you realize the really

12:07

rough experience that Chinese had when they came

12:09

here. One

12:13

of the most surprising things for me was understanding

12:16

the huge violent

12:17

attacks that Chinese endured

12:19

in America. Like there was a case in Tacoma,

12:21

Washington where like 300 Chinese were

12:23

like herded into holding

12:26

pens and then they were put on a train and shipped

12:29

off, you know, back south and then in Seattle

12:31

they like literally went door-to-door in Chinatown,

12:34

grabbed people and put them on a boat. You know,

12:36

there's like the Rock Creek massacre in Wyoming

12:38

where the water

12:41

of the

12:41

river ran red for

12:43

three days because of the blood that was shed.

12:45

The

12:47

deadliest mass lynching in the history

12:49

of the United States. It was not in the south,

12:52

it was not in Mississippi or Alabama. It was with

12:54

Chinese in Los Angeles

12:56

in 1871, right near where

12:59

the modern-day

12:59

train station is. Nearly 10%

13:04

of the city's Chinese population were murdered

13:06

in the Los Angeles massacre, just a

13:08

few steps away from current-day Union

13:10

Station. 15

13:12

men were publicly hung

13:14

and three were beaten to death or shot.

13:17

One of the victims was just 15 years old.

13:22

Soon the US government passed a

13:24

groundbreaking law that changed immigration

13:26

in America

13:26

forever.

13:29

The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed

13:32

in stages between 1882 and 1902 and

13:35

it was the first time in American

13:38

history that the

13:40

concept of illegal immigration

13:43

was introduced because until then you would just like show

13:45

up.

13:46

The Exclusion Act was one of the earliest pieces

13:48

of federal legislation to restrict free immigration

13:50

to the United States and it also marked

13:52

the first time that an entire race or ethnic

13:55

group would be denied entry.

13:57

This impacted Chinese employment in three ways.

14:00

One, a lot of them left the West because

14:02

that was super violent. And two,

14:04

they became self-employed. So you become entrepreneurial

14:07

because people wouldn't hire you. And then three, they

14:10

kind of focused on two areas. One was laundry

14:12

and the other was restaurants, which is interesting,

14:14

right? Because those are both

14:17

women's work, cooking and cleaning, and

14:19

that's no longer threatening to American men.

14:25

At first,

14:25

the anti-Chinese sentiment was so pervasive

14:28

that white Americans

14:29

were highly unlikely to patronize Chinese

14:31

restaurants.

14:32

There's actually an article from The New York Times, from like I think

14:35

like 1894, where literally The New

14:37

York Times ran like, do the Chinese eat

14:39

rats? And they sent a reporter out to

14:41

investigate and, you know, came back and was like, oh, there's

14:43

no evidence of rats in these kitchens. But like,

14:45

they legit thought this was like a

14:47

possibility.

14:49

So it's such an interesting othering.

15:01

To survive,

15:02

Chinese restaurant owners needed to do the impossible.

15:05

They had to appeal to an American consumer.

15:07

So how did the perception of Chinese people and

15:10

Chinese food in the U.S. begin to change?

15:13

As Jennifer Doug, a story began to

15:15

emerge,

15:16

and it all started with a single dish.

15:19

I like to say that chop suey is the biggest culinary

15:21

drug that one culture has played on another, because

15:24

chop suey in manner is sasoy,

15:26

which means like odds and ends. So

15:29

it's like, you know, when Americans like started going back to

15:31

China and like they're looking for chop suey, the

15:33

national dish of China. And

15:35

the Chinese are like, what are you talking about? And

15:38

so it's like, it's like Japanese people showed

15:40

up in America and they're like, I understand

15:43

you have this very popular

15:45

dish called leftovers.

15:45

You know, oh, I love

15:47

leftovers. They're so good.

15:50

Chop suey is the meal that Jennifer

15:52

calls the OG of American Chinese

15:54

food. And though you don't see it on Chinese menus

15:56

too much these days, in its heyday, it

15:59

was a culinary.

15:59

It's

16:01

so fascinating looking

16:03

at American newspapers starting in the

16:05

late 1800s where like chop suey

16:08

literally is the phenomenon that like sets the

16:10

nation on fire. There

16:12

was this girl who spent like I don't know

16:14

it's like $5,000 using like Ford's check she

16:17

was 15 like on

16:20

buying chop suey and everyone had their

16:22

favorite chop suey joint like Eisenhower's

16:24

and celebrities it was

16:26

just like the dish.

16:29

A typical American diet at around this time

16:31

included a lot of salted meat and potatoes.

16:34

Vegetables were mostly boiled and spices were

16:36

expensive so it's not hard to see

16:38

why the new flavors and textures of chop

16:40

suey were so exciting to the American

16:43

palette. But there could be another reason

16:45

for its sudden rise in popularity. There

16:48

are several origin stories about the dish and though

16:50

none of them can be proved they all seem

16:52

to revolve around one event in 1896.

16:55

The visit of a Chinese diplomat named Li Hongzang and

16:57

it was a huge deal, huge, huge deal.

17:00

Hongzang was one of the most powerful statesmen

17:02

in China and his trip to the US was

17:04

print page news.

17:06

Articles were written about everything. From

17:08

the moment his luggage left China to

17:10

the clothes he wore and the food he ate,

17:12

Jennifer says the American public was utterly

17:15

fascinated. And of all

17:17

the stories that Jennifer has heard there's

17:20

one in particular that sparked her interest.

17:22

I did my research around the time

17:25

that we managed to digitize newspaper

17:27

archives in a very large systemic way so

17:30

I could go through and look for the phrase like chop suey. And

17:32

one of the articles that showed up was

17:34

this Chinese man named Lem Sing who

17:37

claimed he was the inventor of chop

17:39

suey.

17:41

He said that the

17:43

American man had basically asked him to like create

17:46

some dish that could capitalize with the crazed

17:48

frenzy of Li Hongzang's visit

17:50

at the time. Lem Sing,

17:53

the man who claims to have invented chop

17:55

suey, tried to protect his recipe as a

17:57

new American dish. He

18:00

told his lawyer that Chop Suey was, quote, no

18:02

more Chinese than pork and beans. His

18:05

recipe had been stolen, and he was asking

18:07

the Supreme Court to stop all restaurant

18:09

keepers from serving the dish, or

18:12

pay for the privilege. He claims he made

18:14

it, and then, like, the married man took his recipe and

18:17

popularized it, and he wanted to assert his

18:19

IP rights. According

18:22

to Jennifer's research, the case never made

18:24

it to trial. But one thing's for

18:26

certain.

18:27

Whoever invented Chop Suey, they

18:29

had discovered the blueprint for

18:32

redesigning and

18:32

exporting Chinese cuisine, which

18:35

is basically the formula that's

18:37

used over and over again by Chinese

18:39

immigrants in America.

18:41

You take something which is familiar, and

18:44

you mix it with something that seems foreign,

18:46

and then you sell it to the American people. So

18:49

for Chop Suey, it's like pork,

18:52

chicken, beef, something very

18:54

familiar in terms of meat.

18:55

And then they mix

18:57

it with these

18:59

exotic vegetables, bean sprouts, and

19:01

water chestnuts, and snow peas.

19:04

But what's interesting about those,

19:06

from a Chinese palette perspective, is

19:08

they are tasteless. They have crunch, but

19:10

they are tasteless. You are not

19:12

putting bitter melon, or like, wood

19:14

ear fungus, in Chop

19:16

Suey. So it is a

19:18

complete evolution to the

19:21

American palette.

19:25

Chinese restaurant owners had cracked the code.

19:28

They figured out what consumers would eat, and

19:30

began to repackage Chinese food to

19:33

suit American tastes. One

19:35

dish at a time.

19:37

After the break, the Virgin Cookie.

19:47

I'm sure you've heard the old adage that

19:49

you should learn something new every day.

19:52

It's good advice, but with so much to do,

19:54

are you making time to learn and stay curious

19:57

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19:58

Well, with everything everywhere, dear.

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Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

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or wherever you get your podcasts.

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22:05

Thanks to chop suey, by the turn of the

22:06

20th century, Americans had fallen

22:09

so deeply in love with their own idea

22:11

of Chinese food that a small

22:13

detail like

22:14

whether or not it was authentically Chinese

22:17

just didn't seem to matter.

22:19

And for Chinese immigrants, attracting

22:21

American customers was a matter of survival.

22:25

American owners were constantly tweaking

22:27

their menus to appeal to the American palate, and

22:30

there was one outstanding problem. Diners

22:33

in the US wanted something sweet at the end of their

22:35

meal, a little treat to round out

22:37

the evening. But Jennifer says that's

22:39

not really part of Chinese culinary tradition.

22:43

The solution? Fortune 50s.

22:45

They're there because Americans want dessert. So

22:48

Chinese people don't have dessert. I mean, now they do because it's

22:50

from the West, but like historically, not really.

22:52

But you need a dessert

22:54

for most of Western culture.

22:56

This dessert issue is something

22:58

that Chinese restaurants around the world

23:00

have solved in various ways, depending

23:03

on the taste preference of their customers.

23:05

When Jamaica, it's cheesecake. And

23:08

in Italy, it's fried gelato. I

23:10

remember telling my downstairs roommate

23:12

in 2006, Alessandra, fried gelato is not Chinese. She's

23:18

like, it isn't? But they serve it

23:20

in all the Chinese restaurants in Italy. I'm

23:22

like, no.

23:24

Jennifer even remembers bringing some fortune

23:26

cookies back to China as an experiment.

23:29

They look at it and they're like, oh, it's interesting. And then

23:31

they would pop it in their mouth because it's

23:33

a cookie. And then they would bite. And

23:35

then they're like, hey, there's

23:37

a piece of paper in here. Americans

23:39

are so strange. Why are they putting pieces of paper in their

23:41

cookies?

23:44

So if Americans think fortune cookies are

23:46

Chinese and Chinese

23:48

people

23:48

think fortune cookies are American,

23:50

where are they actually from? Well,

23:53

this is where things really get interesting,

23:55

because in order to tell the true story

23:58

of the Chinese fortune cookie, We

24:00

have to take a detour to Japan.

24:03

According to Jennifer, it is now pretty well understood

24:06

that fortune cookies are a Japanese invention.

24:09

Those early versions looked a little different. They

24:11

were like bigger and browner, like miso

24:14

and sesame flavors, so not vanilla

24:17

and not yellow. The fortunes weren't

24:19

inside Pac-Man's body. They

24:21

were like in Pac-Man's mouth, if that makes sense. But

24:24

like genetic resemblance, unmistakable.

24:27

There's documentation that traces their

24:29

arrival in the U.S. to a Japanese

24:31

man named Makoto Hagiwara

24:33

at around 1914. He

24:36

was the owner of the Japanese Tea Garden

24:38

in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. It's

24:41

still there, actually. If you want to go to the Japanese Tea Garden,

24:43

it's very cute. And

24:45

they have a Japanese tea house, and you can buy cookies,

24:48

and you can buy tea.

24:50

But what Jennifer wanted to know was, how

24:53

did fortune cookies become so associated

24:55

with Chinese food that even

24:58

her own mother had been fooled into thinking

25:00

they were from her home country?

25:02

They were definitely being served in Chinese

25:04

restaurants in the United States in the 1920s. In

25:07

part, it's interesting, because Chinese

25:09

restaurants were often run by Japanese

25:12

people, because Americans were not eating sushi.

25:15

And so you see all kinds of Asians adapting

25:17

themselves to whatever Asian meal

25:19

is the most popular.

25:22

Just like Chinese immigrants had repackaged

25:24

Chinese food to appeal to American consumers,

25:27

some Japanese immigrants were now having

25:29

to package their business and the fortune

25:32

cookie as Chinese, because

25:34

that was the Asian food that American consumers

25:37

were interested in.

25:38

But that still didn't explain the scale

25:40

of the fortune cookie rebrand.

25:42

Exactly when, Jennifer wondered, had

25:44

the Chinese origin myth become so pervasive?

25:48

One day, deep in the newspaper archives,

25:50

she stumbled onto a clue.

25:52

A story so tiny, it would

25:54

have been easy to miss.

25:56

Towards the end of World War II, there

25:58

was a series of articles with

25:59

all of the food that was no longer

26:02

being rationed by the US government.

26:04

In one of these articles, there was a mention

26:06

of Chinese fortune tea cakes.

26:09

And I was just like, oh wow,

26:11

like that tells you a lot. So

26:13

one,

26:13

they were considered Chinese by the end of World War II. They

26:16

were called fortune tea cakes. So now fortune cookies, but fortune

26:18

tea cakes. And three, they were popular

26:20

enough

26:21

that they could be regulated by the US government.

26:24

There it was, in black and white. By

26:26

the end of World War II, even the Roosevelt

26:29

administration had wrongly assumed that

26:31

fortune cookies were Chinese. And

26:35

once she saw it, the answer was so

26:37

obvious, she couldn't believe it had taken

26:39

her this long to figure out.

26:41

When the Japanese attacked

26:44

Pearl Harbor, our West Coast

26:46

became a potential combat zone.

26:49

In the winter of 1942, President

26:51

Roosevelt signed an executive order

26:54

which forcibly removed every person

26:56

of Japanese descent from the West Coast

26:58

of America and moved them to prison

27:00

camps scattered across the

27:02

country.

27:04

Two-thirds of them were American citizens. They're

27:07

bakeries. They lost their businesses. They lost their homes.

27:10

I mean, it's really still, I think, one of the most

27:12

embarrassing things in American

27:14

history. And then

27:16

kind of all the pieces snapped together.

27:19

Almost overnight, Japanese

27:22

businesses from Washington State to

27:24

California were wiped off the map,

27:27

including the bakeries that were supplying

27:29

fortune

27:29

cookies to Chinese restaurants. And

27:32

at the same time, there

27:33

was a huge rise in popularity

27:36

of Chinese food during World War II. One,

27:38

like the Chinese were allies, unlike the

27:40

Japanese. And then

27:42

two, Chinese food was very

27:45

efficient in using meat. So from

27:47

a rationing standpoint, it made a little bit

27:49

of meat go a long way. And then like,

27:52

you know, three, like these American

27:54

men were being sent to the Pacific and they were coming back. They were, you

27:56

know, being introduced to

27:59

all these other

27:59

culinary groups.

30:00

including one of the most popular Chinese

30:03

American dishes of the last 40 years.

30:06

In

30:07

America, General So is like Colonel

30:09

Sanders. He's known for chicken and not war. But in China,

30:12

this guy is actually known for war and not chicken.

30:14

General So's chicken began showing up in New

30:16

York City in the early 1970s. And

30:19

since then, this sweet and savory

30:21

recipe has captivated American diners

30:23

in every corner of the country.

30:26

It's so popular that I promise you General So's

30:28

name is spoken by Americans more

30:30

than any other Chinese figure. More

30:32

so than Mao Zedong, more so than Confucius.

30:36

He represents the everyman, Chinese

30:39

grandpa figure. And so you can see

30:41

not just General So's chicken, but just General So's tofu, General

30:43

So's dumplings, I think General So's pizza,

30:46

General So's burrito. He has mastered

30:48

the brand extension, this man. Jennifer

30:51

says that the real life General So is also

30:53

famous in China, but

30:54

for entirely different reasons.

30:57

In a strange twist of fate, the namesake

31:00

of America's

31:00

favorite Chinese food played a central

31:02

role in a war that displaced millions of

31:04

Chinese people in the 19th century,

31:07

many of whom fled to America in that first

31:09

wave of immigration way back at

31:12

the beginning of our story. Yes,

31:14

he's a real guy. Chinese name is Zhou

31:16

Zhong-Heng. He was a Qing dynasty

31:18

military hero who played an important role in

31:20

suppressing the Taiping rebellion, which

31:23

was the civil war started by

31:25

this Chinese man who thought he was the

31:27

son of God. 20 million people died in

31:30

that civil war, still by far the deadly

31:32

civil war in global history. So

31:34

how had this monumental figure in Chinese

31:37

history become so intertwined with

31:39

deep fried chicken and broccoli?

31:41

And did anyone in China actually eat the dish?

31:45

To find out, Jennifer traveled

31:47

almost 8,000 miles to General So's birthplace,

31:51

a small village a few miles north of

31:53

Changsha in Hunan Province.

31:55

At the end of a dirt road surrounded

31:58

by rice paddies, she found

31:59

General So's ancestral home

32:02

and two members of his family, five

32:04

generations removed.

32:05

And they were like not surprised that I had shown up. They

32:08

were like, well, he's world famous. And I was like,

32:10

did not have the heart to tell them why he's

32:12

famous, he might say it.

32:14

She traveled all over South Central

32:17

China, showing pictures of General So's

32:19

chicken to people in markets, restaurants,

32:22

and passers-by on the street. But

32:24

the answer was always

32:25

the same.

32:26

No one recognized General So's chicken. She

32:30

shouldn't have been surprised. The meat

32:32

she had with a boneless chicken didn't look anything

32:35

like most of the food she tasted on her travels.

32:38

Americans don't like to be reminded

32:40

that their food ever walked or crawled or

32:42

flew or swam. So, you know, there's

32:44

no ears and there's no claws.

32:47

There's no chicken feet, there's no

32:49

cow's tongue, there's no duck's blood.

32:50

It basically is

32:53

immaculately conceived in styrofoam trays

32:56

that like show up at Whole

32:58

Foods.

32:58

And that's very different,

33:01

you know, after you eat in China,

33:03

like you keep all the bones and like, you

33:06

know, the little fishy thing in

33:08

a little pile

33:09

next to your plate.

33:12

Finally, back in Changsha,

33:15

she met a restaurant manager who recognized

33:17

the name of the dish. And what's more,

33:20

he knew the identity of the chef who

33:22

had created it. Her search was

33:25

over, or so she thought.

33:28

I went to eat the original General

33:30

So's chicken in Taiwan from

33:32

the chef before he died. And it

33:34

is not sweet, it's not fried, but it is chicken. It

33:37

was like soy sauce and ginger and

33:39

like red peppers. No broccoli to be seen, no

33:42

broccoli to be seen at all. Sitting with 80-year-old

33:44

culinary legend, Chef Pung, Jennifer

33:47

opened her laptop.

33:49

She showed him photographs of American chicken

33:51

tossed with heads of crispy broccoli and slathered

33:54

in sweet and sour sauce.

33:55

She actually said like, this is not right. And

33:58

that's no good. And then,

33:59

And then he's at the end, he stands

34:02

up and goes, mou ming qi mia, which in Chinese is like

34:05

nonsense. Chef

34:07

Pung was the originator of General

34:09

So's chicken. But as it turned

34:11

out, he hadn't done it alone.

34:15

He was mostly retired when Jennifer found

34:17

him in Taiwan. But back in the early

34:19

1970s, he had been part of

34:21

the new wave of immigrants that arrived

34:23

in America after the Immigration

34:25

Reform Act. These were

34:28

some of the greatest culinary minds

34:30

of their generation.

34:31

So General So's sort of emerges out of this culinary

34:34

innovation period in the late 60s,

34:36

early 70s in

34:37

New York City. You have a generation

34:39

of chefs who are highly trained, originally

34:42

in China, fled to Taiwan when

34:44

the communists took over, and then came

34:47

to the United States and introduced

34:50

fine

34:50

dining around the concepts of Sichuan

34:52

and Hunan cuisine. When Pung moved

34:54

to New York City, he opened an upscale

34:56

restaurant that attracted famous regulars

34:58

and rave reviews.

35:00

It was there on the east

35:02

side of 44th Street that Chef

35:04

Pung

35:04

introduced the original General

35:06

So's recipe

35:07

to America. He had

35:09

named it to honor a hero of his home

35:11

province.

35:13

Then, as far as Jennifer can tell,

35:15

it was another Chinese chef in Manhattan

35:17

named T.T. Wang who took Pung's

35:19

original dish and made it sweeter and

35:22

crunchier to appeal to a broader

35:24

American palate.

35:26

Between them, these two Chinese innovators

35:28

created the culinary sensation that took

35:31

the US by storm. Jennifer

35:33

says that within 10 years, General So's

35:35

chicken had become a national phenomenon.

35:38

It's sweet. It's fried. It's chicken. These are all

35:40

things Americans love. And it sort

35:42

of had this long march across

35:45

the country, cutting large

35:47

swaths and conquering

35:50

state by state. Jennifer

35:52

searched for the origin of General So's

35:54

chicken, led her all the way around the world.

35:57

She traveled from Peru to Japan. knocked

36:00

on doors and pounded the pavement in China.

36:03

And finally, after years of

36:05

painstaking research,

36:07

the trail had led her back to two restaurants

36:09

in the same city she grew up in.

36:15

These things that we think of as like distinct and exotic

36:18

and foreign are actually indigenous

36:20

to the United States, they are American. And

36:23

so for me, I came to peace, understand

36:25

that like, oh, I'm American, like this is just

36:27

American, I am American. I am something

36:29

foreign and broad and distinct. And

36:32

there is a place

36:33

for me.

36:35

I think there's still a lot of people that

36:38

struggle to understand like, are

36:40

we Chinese? Are we American?

36:42

We're neither. Ugh, you know,

36:44

but this is our own place. New York General

36:46

shows chicken lives in that place with us.

36:49

A few years ago, an article of the New York

36:52

Times showed that Chinese restaurants across

36:54

the country are beginning to close

36:55

their doors. Rising

36:57

rents and delivery apps might be playing

36:59

a part.

37:00

But Jennifer says that there's another reason for

37:02

the decline.

37:03

I observed that the Chinese cooks or their children

37:05

didn't have to. And indeed, you can

37:08

see now that as

37:10

this generation of Chinese restaurant

37:13

owners is retiring, sometimes

37:15

their children aren't taking over because they

37:17

have like professional jobs.

37:19

Like maybe they became an accountant or they became an architect.

37:22

I met someone whose son worked on

37:25

Capitol Hill. And it was

37:27

sort of the staging point

37:30

so that they could carve out a living

37:32

in the United States and then give their kids

37:35

a great opportunity to pursue

37:38

happiness.

37:45

I am not a Chinese-American chef, but

37:48

I am nostalgic.

37:49

Growing up, my family and I would get Chinese

37:52

food as a treat.

37:53

My little brother always ordered beef and

37:55

broccoli.

37:57

I found a version of the dish called

37:58

Broccoli Beef by Cleo.

37:59

TV host, Chef Martin Yan,

38:02

in his cookbook, Martin Yan's Chinatown

38:04

Cooking. The recipe calls

38:07

for Chinese broccoli, but I opted for its

38:09

thicker cousin, American broccoli, and

38:11

I cut the stalks in half.

38:13

There were a couple of things that I didn't have on

38:15

hand, like Chinese rice wine and

38:17

oyster sauce, but I found them pretty

38:20

easily at an Asian market. You can also

38:22

find them online.

38:23

Get the full recipe at ifthisfoodcouldtalk.com.

38:29

In

38:29

our next episode, we're taking

38:31

you back to

38:32

Prohibition-era Los Angeles to

38:34

uncover how an unorthodox partnership

38:37

with the Catholic Church saved

38:39

the American wine industry.

38:41

If you knew a priest and you were friends,

38:44

he could make a case of wine fly in your direction

38:46

for consideration, good donation.

38:50

From

38:50

my kitchen to yours, Tisnamidig

38:52

friends, bless your hands, take

38:54

care. Thanks

38:56

for listening to If This Food Could Talk with

38:59

me, Claudia Hanna. If

39:01

you wanna support us, you can follow If This

39:03

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39:05

listening app. And while you're there, please

39:08

leave

39:08

us a review. It really helps. You

39:10

can also get

39:11

updates on bonus content by following

39:13

me and American Public Television

39:15

on Instagram, X, formerly

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known as Twitter, and Facebook. You

39:20

can find more information on all of our guests

39:22

this season on each episode's show notes.

39:25

Production by Carriette Harmon, Reva

39:28

Goldberg, Tanner Robbins, Jacob

39:30

Lewis, Claudia Hanna, Nate

39:32

Tobey, John Barth, and the team

39:35

at Great Feeling Studios. Editing

39:38

by Yasmeen

39:38

Khan. Sound design

39:41

by Carriette Harmon

39:42

and Jason Sheasley. Associate

39:44

producer, Kate Hayes. If

39:47

This Food Could Talk is based on an original

39:49

concept by Claudia Hanna. Executive

39:51

producers for APT Podcast Studios

39:54

are Jim Dunford, Cynthia Fenneman, and

39:56

Sean Halford. Legal by Cody

39:59

Brown. Special thanks to the

40:01

Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU.

40:04

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You can learn more

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at aptonline.org. Hi

40:18

there,

40:21

I'm Melissa Hall with the perfect

40:23

podcast recommendation,

40:25

Gravy. Hosted by the Southern

40:28

Foodways Alliance and distributed by APT

40:30

Podcast Studios, Gravy is

40:32

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40:35

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40:37

through the foods we eat. Together

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