Browsing Archive: March, 2010

Post World War II Changes

Posted by John Jung on Friday, March 12, 2010,
Many significant social changes occurred following WW II.  Better acceptance of Chinese, reflected by the repeal of the 1882 Chinese exclusion act, opened avenues to professional careers for young educated Chinese who no longer were relegated to taking over their family cafes.  The pioneering Cantonese restaurants were losing their novelty and some jaded non-Chinese diners sought new tastes which they found by the 1960s in northern China cuisines such as Hunan, Szechewan, Peking, and Shanghai...
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Chinese restaurants spring up everywhere in the 1920s

Posted by John Jung on Friday, March 12, 2010, In : Chinese restaurants 
As the hostility and violence toward Chinese on the west coast escalated during the later part of the 19th century, more Chinese moved toward the middle of the country toward safety.  For a while, many of them opened laundry businesses but by the 1920s, they found it more attractive to start family-run restaurants.  Although they were run by Chinese, most of these restaurants beyond Chinese communities served mostly American dishes and only a few Chinese-like dishes such as chop suey, egg foo...
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How Distasteful Chinese food became attractive to Non-Chinese

Posted by John Jung on Friday, March 12, 2010,
The earliest Chinese were peasant stock, and their food, considered disgusting by whites, did not make their restaurants or 'fan deem' attractive to non-Chinese.  Much ridicule was heaped upon the Chinese and their food preferences which were quite foreign to non-Chinese.  It was not until whites became fascinated by news of a dish called "chop suey" that suddenly Chinese restaurants became popular, especially among well-to-do whites who regarded it daring to go 'slumming' and eat in Chinatow...
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What Led to this Book

Posted by John Jung on Friday, March 12, 2010, In : Chinese restaurants 
     For someone who never ate in a Chinese restaurant until he was 15, mainly because he grew up in the 1940s in a place where not a single Chinese restaurant existed for over a 100 miles, it is odd that I would find myself writing about this ubiquitous and widely popular 'institution' for eating all across the world.
    Had it not been for the fact that a retired Chinese restaurateur in attendance at a talk I was giving about Mississippi Delta Chinese grocery store families approached me af...

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About Me


John Jung After retiring from a 40-year career as a psychology professor, I published 4 books about Chinese immigrants that detail the history of their laundries, grocery stores, and family restaurants in the U. S. and Canada.

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