Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

Praise for Sweet and Sour

John Jung has taken us down another memory lane and this time we brought along our appetite.  Sweet & Sour evoked hundreds of memories of Chinatowns, favorite soul food dishes, haunts of opulent and garish banquet halls and the more frequented and beloved hole-in-the walls.  These are the collective memories shared by families and friends.  Sweet & Sour is also an anthropological study. Chinese cooks across these United States and Canada created an everlasting love for Chinese food enjoyed by all cultures.  Find a chop suey house and generations upon generations will cite their favorites, be it chow mein, fried rice, beef brisket stew or even chicken feet.  Without a doubt this is by far Jung’s best work and with the greatest universal appeal.

Sylvia Sun Minnick, Samfow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy

John Jung again demonstrates a marvelous ability to blend archival data with fascinating first-person accounts to bring to life the family-operated Chinese eateries that are quickly disappearing from today’s society. Following solid historical groundwork, Jung uses narratives of 10 individuals who grew up in such places to take readers inside old-time chop suey houses. Their stories provide a candid telling of the personal, familial, and cultural significance of these familiar cafes. As with his earlier books on Chinese family-owned laundries and grocery stores, the author sheds a fresh and ample light on a subject even more familiar. And once again he does it so well from the inside out. Mel Brown, Chinese Heart of Texas: The San Antonio Community 1875-1975.

Sweet And Sour is a powerful historical exploration of an American institution: the family-owned Chinese restaurant. John Jung succeeds in bringing to life the exterior side of such Chinese eateries across the nation—their appearance, their location, and of course, their hybrid, Americanized menu offerings. In addition, by means of a variety of interviews and primary sources, he focuses attention as well on their little-known private side, the daily routines and harsh working conditions that made them run. Jung underlines the contributions of all family members, including children, that were necessary for success.

Greg Robinson,

A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America

Sweet and Sour covers many important aspects of the Chinese restaurant business and it is a great contribution to the study of Chinese food in America. This area really deserves more attention than it has had. 

Haiming Liu,

From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A History of Chinese Food in the United States 

I greatly admired and enjoyed  Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants.  It does an excellent job of going over the historical background on early U. S. Chinese restaurants, unearthing lots of material new to me. And  the interviews of Chinese restaurateurs opened up a whole new side to the story, of what it was like to work and live in these restaurants.

Andrew Coe, "Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States

This book, a memory-lane must-read volume, is about places and lives of the Chinese restaurant owners. It blends archival information, myriads of memories, and historical explorations about early Chinese family-owned family-operated restaurants, most in the south. Learn about their harsh working conditions, savor the interviews, put yourself in those primary source statements, and see the pictures—most never before seen. Glean contributions the many family members made. Garner the whys of their success. Get deep into the washing of dishes, wiping flatware and tabletops, even stir-frying chop suey and chow mein.  Jacqueline M. Newman, Editor, Flavor and Fortune Magazine

John Jung gives us a history that is much more personal, even though it is not all his own story. People walk past us on the street and we do not know who they are or what their life stories are. Some of those whose lives centered on Chinese restaurants are memorialized in Jung’s book. In writing this book, John Jung has rendered a great service to the faceless people behind the counter who deserve to be recognized. The numerous evocative photographs of people, restaurants, and menus included in the book provide valuable visual documentation.  Raymond Lum, Librarian, Harvard-Yenching Library

Sweet and Sour

Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

John Jung

yin-yang-bwdots,jpg Yin and Yang Press

© 2010 by John Jung

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Fourth Printing, November, 2012.

JUNG, JOHN, 1937-

Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

/ John Jung

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Chinese Restaurants – United States.  2. Restaurants – Employees.  3. Chinese Americans – United States – Social life and customs.  I. Title

ISBN  061534545X  978-0-615-34545-1

LCCN 2009940541

Credits: Front Cover Graphics, Courtesy of Karen Tam, MFA.

Top: Shangri-la Café Installation, Toronto, 2006

Bottom: Gold Mountain Restaurant Montagne d'Or Installation, Montreal, 2004

Back Cover Photographs, Courtesy of:

Top (l-r) Mike Krzeszak, Chris Jepson, Greg Schuler, Jim Belfield

Bottom (l-r) Michael Lehet, Jess Jackson, Joe Murayama, Katherine Moriarty­

Menu

Foreword

Preface

1. Varieties of Chinese Restaurants

2. Fan Deems and Noodle Shops

3. Dining Rooms And Banquet Halls

4. Chop Suey Mania

5. Some Chinese Restaurant Pioneers

6. Moving Beyond Chinatowns

7. Family Restaurant Operations

8. Insider Perspectives

West

Midwest

East

South

9. As One Era Ends, Others Begin

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

AMERICANS HAVE BEEN eating Chinese food in small towns and big cities alike for more than a century.  The longstanding absence of the reading public’s interest in Chinese food is mind-boggling.  We apparently cannot simply attribute this absence to its lack of interest in the mundane topic of food.  McDonald’s has attracted much public and scholarly attention, as is evidenced by the numerous publications about the fast food giant.  But Chinese food has been around much longer and Chinese restaurants far outnumber McDonald’s.  In fact, the 40,000 or so Chinese restaurants in the United States are more than McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC combined.  The absence of major studies of Chinese food in the public domain represents an important and interesting subject of serious sociological inquiry.  Scholars can certainly attribute this to the various forms of structural and ideological prejudice against the Chinese.  But we must point out that scholars themselves also bear some responsibility: they have not taken enough time to research and write about Chinese food.

As the first decade of the twenty-first century came to a close, the American public finally discovered its Chinese food.  The year 2008 witnessed the publication of Jennifer 8 Lee’s The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which was followed by Andrew Coe’s 2009 book, Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States.  In many ways, these two books are the first major book-length studies of Chinese food written by Americans for American audiences. Although there have been Ph.D. dissertations, Master’s theses, and scholarly articles devoted to the topic over the years, they seldom went beyond the narrow specialized academic readerships.

This is why I was so delighted when I discovered in the summer of 2009 that Professor John Jung was finishing a book on this topic.  Professor Jung, a psychologist by training, retired from California State University, Long Beach after a fulfilling career and since then

has successfully entered another field, the historical and sociological study of Chinese Americans.  While many of us write and publish because we have to, as is revealed by the old saying about academics, publish or perish, in his retirement, he has become a prolific scholar in his new field, having written several books: Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese Laundry in the Deep South, Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain, and Chopsticks in The Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers. 

Professor Jung’s latest book, Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants, tackles the long-neglected topic of Chinese food with a focus on Chinese restaurants. This well-researched, thoughtfully conceptualized monograph brings academic rigor and adds historical depth, as well as the perspectives of an insightful scholar and a second-generation Chinese American, to our understanding of the development of Chinese food in the realm of public consumption in the United States and Canada.  It promises to elevate that understanding to a higher level.

The book recognizes the importance of America’s Chinese restaurant as a socioeconomic phenomenon. Chinese entered the restaurant business, he notes, because of economic necessity.  The restaurant industry provided an important source of employment.  The book, in particular, is focused on small family-run restaurants.  Such a focus brings attention to the essence of the Chinese restaurant as an economic institution and a vehicle for immigration.  The book contains detailed stories about the vital significance of the labor of family members for the survival of the family-based restaurant.  The restaurant, in turn, facilitated the immigration of many individuals to the United States and Canada, offering them a means to start their new life in the New World.

The book perceptively covers many significant aspects of Chinese restaurants.  One is the change in how Chinese restaurateurs named their establishments, offering insights into the unspoken interaction between them and their customers.  Equally interesting are the discussions of the racially diverse clientele of the Chinese

restaurant, from which we can valuable glimpses into its importance as a site of cultural encounters.

Through the extensive and fruitful use of a wide range of sources – archival, oral, and visual, Professor Jung vividly reconstructs the development of the American Chinese restaurant.  Those interested in further reading or research will benefit from the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography and footnotes.  Another important and innovative feature of the book is the inclusion of first-hand accounts by insiders of their own and family experiences in the Chinese restaurant industry.  These are coherently connected to the rest of the narrative of the book.  They can also be read separately as family histories.

Through this book, I hope, consumers at the ubiquitous Chinese restaurants can also gain a deeper appreciation of historical forces and human experiences that have shaped the food they now enjoy.

Yong Chen

Professor of History

University of California, Irvine

Preface

ALTHOUGH THE TITLE, Sweet and Sour, suggests a popular style of Chinese restaurant fare, the focus of this book is not on Chinese food, but on the difficult lives of the Chinese immigrants and their families that made their livelihoods operating countless small restaurants during most of the past century often in small remote places all over the U. S. and Canada. These restaurants, which provided the primary, if not the only, experience with Chinese food for most non-Chinese people were a major source of self-employment for earlier generations of Chinese immigrants and their families from villages in the southern China province of Guangdong.  Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants is a study of their experience in this livelihood and its impact on Chinese family relations and interactions. As with my other books on the early Chinese immigrant experience, a primary goal is to help preserve a record of the hard lives of Chinese families that operated small businesses such as laundries, grocery stores, and restaurants and to further an understanding and overdue recognition of their contributions to their communities.

Sweet and Sour serves as an apt metaphor for the often, contradictory experiences of Chinese restaurant families. The long hours of never ending work each day made for harsh lives, which were soured by the hostile reception they often faced as foreigners in a racially prejudiced society.  Yet, they persevered, and through painstaking labor enabled their children to have a better education that afforded them better options in life.  Sweet was the reward for enduring the sour aspects of their work.  As one Chinese from a family restaurant noted, "the title... captures exactly how life was.  The sweet was how the profits from operating the restaurant added to our quality of life... The sour was how we were treated by some of the customers, and all the crap we had to take, not to mention the hard work into the late hours!"[1]

On a personal note, it was not until I was 15 that I first ate in a Chinese restaurant when my parents moved our family to San Francisco from Macon, Georgia, which at that time had not a single Chinese restaurant. One index of how much social change has occurred is that Macon now has over 20 Chinese restaurants. Although I have since dined in many Chinese restaurants, I never thought about their origins and operations. Writing Sweet and Sour has given me a deep appreciation and admiration of those who toiled in this vital economic and cultural enterprise.

I thank many that shared personal experiences, especially those that wrote narratives about their family restaurant lives for Sweet and Sour, listed in order of appearance in Chapter 8: Flo Oy Wong, Quong Wong family members, Dora Leung, Joe Chan, Bill Tong, Darren Lee, Karen Tam, Gilroy Chow, Raymond Wong, and P. C. Wu.  Their perceptions and accounts provide a vivid behind the scenes view of restaurant operations. Without their contributions, Sweet and Sour would be a lifeless recital of historical data rather than an enlightening glimpse into the difficult lives of Chinese families that ran these restaurants. Their moving disclosures tell how their families managed their businesses and how they overcame many obstacles. Their narratives honor their roots and show that these experiences taught them valuable lessons that led to significant benefits for them.

Sylvia Sun Minnick, Mel Brown, Greg Robinson, and Yong Chen, experts on matters historical, generously gave valuable time to provide suggestions, criticism, and encouragement. Long-time friends Rod Wong and Ron Gallimore offered helpful feedback on early drafts. I thank Phyllis, my wife, for enduring the mood swings that many authors, myself included, undergo during the task of writing as well as for numerous discussions that help clarify my thinking about many aspects of the book. Special thanks go to Bill Lee for first whetting my appetite to undertake this important research topic.

JJ   

Jan.  2010  Cypress, CA.

1. Varieties of Chinese Restaurants

CHINESE RESTAURANTS are one of the most popular ethnic businesses today, found in virtually every city and town across North America, as well as in many other parts of the world including South Africa, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe.[2] Chinese restaurant, somehow suggests that they comprise a homogenous group, much like the thousands of outlets for a fast food franchise. However, nothing could be further from the truth as Chinese eating establishments come in a variety of forms, ranging from opulent, luxurious restaurants with many professionally trained chefs that can serve exquisite banquet dishes to hundreds of patrons in large dining halls embellished with elaborate Chinese art decorations to small hole-in-the-wall cafes in facilities with only a handful of Formica top tables and poorly decorated interiors run by single families with little or no initial restaurant experience. While some offer full waiter service, many resemble fast food places or self-service cafeterias.  Take-out only and catering services also exist.  More recently, there has been an increase in all you can eat for one price buffets.

Although there are certainly some common features among Chinese restaurants, the extent to which they vary can be considerable as the following description of two restaurants clearly reveals. The Imperial Palace, prominently located in the Chinatown of a large city, is a recently refurbished 400 seat-dining venue with expensive Chinese art decorating the entrance and dining room walls. The dining room tables are decked out with linen tablecloths and napkins and attractive tableware with a Chinese motif. The bi-lingual waiters are neatly attired, and polite, if not downright fawning, in their attentiveness to patrons. A separate spacious dining room on the second floor allows for weddings, birthday parties, and other special occasions. 

Attractive to the many tourists seeking a gourmet Chinese meal, the Imperial Palace offers an extensive menu of American-Chinese dishes that appeal to the western palate including their specialties that are reverently described as their Signature dishes, and command higher prices. Another menu, written in Chinese, boasts an extensive selection of Chinese dishes that appeals to its large Chinese patronage, but they are not offered on the English menu. A fully stocked bar adjoins the foyer where diners may have cocktails while waiting for a table and a large selection of wines and beers are available on the dinner menu as well.

The capital investment necessary for such a large facility is substantial, and far beyond the resources of a single family. The size of the staff needed by way of managers, cashiers, hostesses, chefs, kitchen assistants, waiters, dishwashers, and cleanup personnel is considerable. A syndicate or partnership with dozens of investors is typically needed to raise the necessary capital.

In contrast, Canton Gardens, the hole-in-the-wall café, occupies a small strip mall storefront in a blighted part of a mid-sized town that has a very small Chinese population.  At the present time, a young Chinese immigrant family owns and operates the business but at least two other Chinese were prior owners before they retired. The father, a quiet and serious man with limited English speaking ability, stays in the kitchen most of the time where he does the cooking. He rarely enters the dining area where his outgoing wife, with a better command of English, performs the duties of hostess, waitress, and cashier.  A young adolescent girl, probably their daughter or a close relative, helps after school and on weekends.  Two younger children, a boy and a girl, are also present after school. They take menus and glasses of water to customers; otherwise, they sit in a corner booth where they quietly do their school homework or watch TV.

After the dinner hour rush subsides, the family members find time to sit down to eat their own meals, though in staggered shifts, at a table in a corner of the kitchen where they can keep an eye on the dining room.  Then, sometimes with the help of a hired hand, the dishes are washed, the dining room is tidied up, and a menu for the next day is made by 10 p.m., more or less. The restaurant then closes for the evening. Fortunately, the family residence is located in a flat above the restaurant so it does not take long after cleaning the dining area and kitchen each evening for the family to reach their living quarters.  This convenient proximity also saves valuable time because early the next morning the food preparations must be started well in advance of the arrival of customers. 

Canton Gardens has a steady mostly white, and a few black, customers that enjoy American-Chinese fare such as egg rolls, chop suey, orange chicken, sweet and sour pork, and fried rice. Only a handful of their customers order dishes unfamiliar to them with ingredients such as tofu, salted fish, shark fins, sea cucumber, bitter melon, bok choy, or chicken feet.

The dining area is comfortable but nothing fancy and the furnishings are showing signs of age.  There was little effort made to try to disguise the fact that this facility previously housed an American coffee shop.  In fact, in one part of the dining room there are some incongruous decorations that reflect a western ranch theme. The new owners tried to create a Chinese-y feeling by placing a statue of Buddha near the entrance, which is bordered with a pair of ceramic foo dog statues. Chinese calligraphy adorns the dining room walls, and some Chinese lanterns hang from the ceiling. Behind the cash register is a wall calendar advertising a Chinese grocery supplier graced by a photograph of an attractive, smiling young Chinese woman wearing a tight fitting, silk embroidered Chinese style dress or cheongsam.

The restrooms are small and could use some redecorating.  They are functional, but they are marginally maintained, as the short-handed staff is too busy to clean it except at the end of each day. Despite the physical limitations of the premises, Canton Gardens manages to survive by offering fresh tasty food in plentiful portions.  The food is prepared quickly, the service is sincere, and the prices are low, largely because labor costs are at a minimum by the unsalaried help from all family members.

Actually, neither the Imperial Palace nor the Canton Gardens just described really exist. The descriptions are only composites of imaginary or fictional Chinese restaurants, one depicting an elegant Chinatown dining venue with authentic Chinese cuisine prepared by highly trained chefs and the other representative of the mom and pop run restaurant located in a suburban or small town setting featuring Americanized Cantonese dishes. They reflect two extremes of the variety of Chinese restaurants, both of which have had significant impact on the successful acceptance of Chinese food in North America. These descriptions are provided to emphasize the wide variety that exists among Chinese restaurants.

Some Important Questions

In many respects, it is quite surprising that Chinese food and restaurants eventually came to be so well accepted and regarded by the general public.  When one examines the history of Chinese in North America, it is clear that they were not welcomed immigrants. The Chinese, with their strange customs, attire, and language evoked a mixture of intolerant ridicule and curiosity. Their exotic food ingredients such as shark fins, seaweed, lotus roots, and bird nests led Westerners to disparage Chinese cuisine, which was so different from the plain foods traditionally preferred by middle class non-Chinese.  Furthermore, popular stereotypes of Chinese eating rats and dogs added to their contempt for Chinese foods.

This growth and prevalence of Chinese restaurants is also somewhat surprising since, except for cities in metropolitan areas with large Chinese populations, most of the patrons are not Chinese. Times change, and today virtually everyone has heard of Chinese restaurants even those few that have never eaten in one. Chinese restaurants acquired a new image for serving low-priced delicious meals that were also nutritious and healthy.

Why Did So Many Chinese Open Restaurants?

One question for historical investigation is why Chinese immigrants entered the restaurant business?  The rapid growth in the number of Chinese restaurants is surprising because the great majority of the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century, and well into the 20th century were young men who came from rural farming regions of Guangdong province in southeastern China. These men worked in the fields all day and it was their wives and mothers who did the cooking at home. Restaurants did not even exist in many small villages. What conditions led these immigrant men, most of whom were not cooks in China to start operating restaurants in North America as well as in many other countries?  Success was not likely given their lack of training and experience in managing restaurants. How many were able to earn a living from running a restaurant and what were the keys for their success?

The Chinese restaurant, like the Chinese laundry before it, assumed a dominant role on the economic, sociological, and psychological lives of early generations of Chinese in North America.  To a large extent, these occupational choices were indirect consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 that prohibited the further entry of Chinese laborers and their families to the United States.  In Canada, a different barrier in the form of a Head Tax was imposed on Chinese in 1885.¹ Ironically, had such severe restrictions on immigration not been imposed, and Chinese had been able to bring their wives and families to North America, there may well have been less growth of Chinese restaurants because the wives of the immigrants would have cooked the family meals at home.

During the economic depression from the late 19th century into the first decade of the 20th century, the Chinese