O Say Can You See?

Culture a la Carte: Would you like some Han Dynasty with your meal?

King Dragon menu, New York, NY, 1976.

I recently delved into the museum’s newly acquired menu collection. My focus was a sub-set of the collection: the Chinese menus, which span nearly three decades and come from all over the United States. I was curious to see what the menus could reveal about the history of Chinese food in America. As I perused the collection, I realized that Chinese restaurants don’t simply sell food—they also sell a cultural experience, à la carte.

Historically, many Americans first encountered Chinese cuisine while laboring in mines or on railroads, where Chinese immigrants often worked as cooks. By the late 19th century, increasing numbers of Americans were venturing into Chinatowns in both New York and San Francisco, in search of cheap, tasty meals. Others were drawn to Chinatown for different reasons: Bohemians saw Chinese dining as a sensual and exotic experience, and wealthier patrons sought high-end culinary adventures. Originally established to serve fellow expats, Chinese proprietors saw their business grow as more American customers frequented their establishments.

Timmy Chan menu, Houston, TX, 1971.

The increased interest in Chinatown as a tourist destination coincided with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its ensuing amendments, which suspended Chinese immigration into the United States and restricted opportunities for Chinese immigrants already settled in the country. Realizing that their livelihood depended upon bringing business into Chinatown, proprietors took extra measures to lure more customers: they cleaned up the streets, adopted an Oriental décor for their restaurants, and adjusted their dishes in accordance with the American palate. In other words, Chinatown exaggerated its authenticity to attract more customers. Dishes like egg foo young, chow mein, and chop suey may have proved immensely popular with American diners, but they were, in fact, far from authentic. Ironically, part of the appeal for Americans lay in their belief that they were consuming authentic Chinese cuisine. Chinatown was so popular, that between the years 1870 and 1920, there was a nearly 7,000 percent increase in the number of workers employed by Chinese restaurants.

Chinese New Year at Port Arthur Chinese Restaurant, Chinatown, NY, date unknown. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

In the aftermath of World War II, American policies shifted in tandem with greater tolerance for minority groups. Scholar Madeline Y. Hsu defined this as a shift from “racialization to ethnicization.” As long as Chinese immigrants were considered a “race,” they could never blend into American society, but “ethnicity” was a more fluid concept that blurred the lines. Americans from all walks of life began wanting to experience cultures different from their own.

See in this menu: "an authentic palace setting of dynastic splendor and a showcase for the Empress' interpretation of Chinese cuisine..."

Again, Chinese culture could be packaged, promoted, and sold to customers. The 1950s and 1960s saw a wave of Chinese American entrepreneurs who opened high-end restaurants, among which are two notable San Francisco establishments. Johnny Kan portrayed his eponymous restaurant, which opened its doors in 1953, as authentically Chinese and rooted in the imperial era, and emphasized its cleanliness and quality service. Eight years later, Cecilia Chiang opened The Mandarin, a restaurant elaborately decorated with Oriental artwork, including embroideries allegedly taken from the Peking palace. Again, Chinese restaurants were offering customers something far more than just food. Alongside their meals, diners received a heaping dose of history, culture, and curious claims of authenticity.

With this history in mind, I was not at all surprised to find in our collections a menu from the Empress of China, located in San Francisco. Dating from the mid-1970s, this menu exemplifies how Chinese restaurants package and serve culture, often prioritizing the exotic over the accurate. The Empress of China offered customers cuisine dating from 2674 BC, architectural inspiration from 206 BC, and an artistic impression of a 1238 AD temple shrine. Visitors could travel across space and time to enjoy an “authentic” culinary experience.

Menu describes an artist’s impression of a temple shrine from 1238, The Empress, mid-1970s.

Menu presents cuisine from 2674 BC and architectural inspiration from 206 BC.

Menu describes Manchurian Beef and Phoenix and Dragon as enjoyed by Emperor Ch’ien-lung, and Mongolian Lamb as enjoyed by Kubla Khan.

These Chinese menus in the collection mark an important step toward telling the story of Chinese immigrants in the United States. If you have a story or object that you’d like to share, please use the comments below, or e-mail us at nmahweb@si.edu with the subject “Chinese Food.”

Devora Liss is an intern at the National Museum of American History.

Dear Sir, Please send a menu. - Virginia Mericle

The museum recently received an exciting addition to its archival collections: 4,500 menus from restaurants across the United States and abroad. The menus were collected by Virginia Mericle throughout the 1960s-1990s. Virginia passed away in 2009, and her daughter, Vanessa Henderson, donated the collection last year.

Virginia Mericle (left) collected 4,500 menus

Virginia was a life-long collector. As a star-struck sixteen year old, she would write to movie studios and request photographs of actors. Bing Crosby, John Wayne, and Dean Martin were a few of her favorite stars. She received many replies; some of the pictures were even signed by the stars themselves.

After marrying and having children, Mrs. Mericle developed agoraphobia and gradually stopped venturing outside her home. Yet she remained very connected to the outside world—through the mail. To satiate her love for celebrity gossip and Hollywood, Virginia subscribed to tabloid magazines. Vanessa recalls her mother being very knowledgeable about the world. Despite never graduating from high school, Virginia would spend time each day solving the New York Times’ crossword.

Requesting a menu.
[Note: All photos courtesy of Virginia Mericle Menu Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.]

Virginia also began sending postcards to various restaurants, requesting a copy of their menu. Many obliged, and often included a personal letter or invitation in their response. Vanessa remembers being involved in this hobby. When she was ten, her mother would send her to the post office, located half a mile away, to buy more postcards. When the mail was delivered, Virginia would show her children the return addresses: Los Angeles, New York, Honolulu, and beyond.

Personal note from The Lotus in Bethesda, Maryland

To this day, it remains a mystery how Virginia located the restaurants’ addresses. Before the Internet and without family or friends around the globe, Virginia succeeded at accumulating thousands of menus from different types of restaurants. Many of these are from the same establishment, but are dated a few years apart. Craig Orr, who acquired the objects, recognized that this collection offers a rare, first-hand glimpse into how diets, prices, and foodstyles may have changed.

Luau Hut lunch menu with note

Interestingly, Virginia seems to have taken little interest in the actual menus, and merely sorted them into American and international piles. Furthermore, the influx of menus had no impact on the family’s culinary habits. It is quite possible that Virginia simply wanted to feel connected to the outside world, and accomplished this goal through mail correspondence. Perhaps her experience with the movie studios taught her to select institutions that would readily respond to impersonal mail solicitations.

Menus from Hawaii (left) and Texas (right)

The collection is a significant addition to the museum archives, and is already being studied in anticipation of future exhibitions.

Editor’s Note: What do you collect? How might your collection be a window into American history?

Devora Liss is an intern at the National Museum of American History.

Celebrating Chinese New Year

Curator’s note: The following post is the latest from our Sweet & Sour series. Be on the lookout for the opening of our Sweet & Sour showcase at the museum this spring. We continue to receive positive inquiries about the collecting initiative and we are still actively seeking objects from or closely related to Chinese restaurants. Learn more.

Happy New Year! No, I’m not a month late. It’s Chinese New Year—also known as the Spring Festival—which is celebrated with pomp and circumstance by billions of people all over the world. The Chinese love to celebrate, and what better time of year to throw huge parties and over-consume delicious food?

Left: Dumplings. Right: Steamed fish. Photos by Flickr user Robyn Lee.

In my family—as in many other Chinese American families—Chinese New Year is comparable to Christmas, only instead of a decorated tree and tinsel, we have firecrackers and red paper decorations with wishes for prosperity and good luck written on them. Instead of turkey and stuffing, we eat fish, noodles and dumplings. Presents? Only cash in traditional red envelopes (hóng bāo). But before the festivities, we’re subjected to the ever-daunting task of cleaning the house, from top to bottom and back up again. For a week, everyone in my house dusts furniture and scrubs the floors and walls (yes, the walls). It is tradition but, more importantly, it brings good luck.

Left: hóng bāo. Right: First day of Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year is a fifteen day celebration, each day with its own traditions; it’s a marathon, not a sprint, so pacing yourself is required. No one can afford to take off work all fifteen days in a row, especially not my father, who owns a Chinese restaurant. Instead, we throw a huge party at someone’s house on the Sunday closest to the first day of Chinese New Year, and invite our extended family. Everybody brings food and we have everything from the traditional fish, noodles, and dumplings to the more American cheesecake and chicken Caesar salad. In keeping with Chinese tradition, individual family units exchange mandarin oranges and older, married folks hand out embossed red envelopes to children and single family members. Both these symbolize wishes for prosperity and good luck. Everybody eats and talks over one another, wishing each other a happy and prosperous new year.

Hand-pulled noodles. Photo by Flickr user Robyn Lee.

Why fish? Why noodles? The Chinese word for “fish” is a homophone for the word for “prosperity.” Noodles—the longer the better—symbolize a long life.

Jean Dao is an intern for the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American HIstory and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.

Pu pu platters versus birthday cakes

In my previous posts I’ve mentioned how growing up in a Chinese restaurant was a fantastic experience. Let me tell you about one peculiar cultural mash up: birthdays and pu pu platters.

Check out the beads in the back

Of course my parents wanted me to celebrate my birthday with friends and family, and the festivities involved all the trappings: gifts, games, and food—oh, the food! I don’t think any of my friends were ever really ready for what they experienced. My parents showered all the guests with wave after wave of tasty goodies, culminating in the ever popular pu pu platter.

Pu Pu platter. Image courtesy Ned Raggett.

For those of you who don’t know what a pu pu platter is, it’s a partitioned wooden platter filled with various classic Chinese food appetizers. You get spare ribs, egg rolls, golden fingers, teriyaki strips, crab rangoon—the list can go on for quite a while. But the real draw was the center of the platter, which held a cast iron brazier that had its own fire! You can see why a bunch of 10-year-olds might go gaga over the meal. Who can resist “cooking” their food over an open fire? (Although we quickly found out that the chemically fueled fires really didn’t leave a good taste.) And then, when all was said and done, my parents would bring out the birthday cake. I can still remember the refrain to this day, “There’s cake too!!" and thinking, "Oh man, I don’t think I can make it.”

Playing with giant umbrellas for the tiki drinks!

Pu pu platters gained popularity during the Polynesian-style food craze of the 1950s and can be found on most Chinese menus today. I was surprised when I met people who didn’t know what the dish was, or didn’t get the same experience with birthday pu pu platters I did when I was a kid. But this illustrates one of the fun things about Chinese food in America: regional delicacies. Whether completely new inventions or alterations of previous recipes, dishes pop up all over the country and become local favorites. Have you ever tried a Chow Mein Sandwich while in Rhode Island, or the St. Paul Sandwich, from St. Louis? What about a fun night with Scorpion Bowls?

St. Paul sandwich. Image courtesy Oldtasty.

While we continue the preparations for our new exhibit on Chinese food in America, tell us: what are your favorite regional delicacies? Were you surprised that your favorite dish was unknown outside your hometown? Did you discover a rare dish while traveling across country? Let us know in the comments section below.

 

 

Cedric Yeh is Deputy Chair and Associate Curator in the Division of Armed Forces History at the National Museum of American History.

 

"Who Will Chop Your Suey When I'm Gone?"

Can you believe that chop suey was once the most famous Chinese dish in America? The dish’s popularity helped fuel the growth of Chinese restaurants throughout the U.S. during the early 20th century. But its heyday has long since past. Today you hardly ever see it on the menu let alone in popular songs.

As super research specialist Noriko Sanefuji continues her collecting adventures, this month we sought all things Chop Suey and our research led us to Hawai`i. Why Hawai`i? It has one of the largest and oldest Chinese communities in America. Most of the Chinese immigrants in Hawai`i arrived in the mid-to-late 19th century; many came as contract laborers to work on sugar plantations. After their contracts expired many Chinese immigrants opened businesses in an area which later became Honolulu’s Chinatown.

One of the local Chinese restaurants Noriko visited, which has been in existence for over half a century, is Tasty Chop Suey. She met with Mrs. Liu, the current owner, who took over the business in 1985.

 
Left: Mrs. Liu and Noriko Sanefuji. Right: Mrs. Liu with plates donated to the museum.

Miraculously, she had kept a few samples of the original dishware with restaurant logos, and she generously donated them to the museum along with a current menu.

Tasty was opened in 1956 by the Wong family. Mr. Wong served in the U.S. Army as a cook during World War II. After the war, he worked at several Chinese restaurants as a cook before opening Tasty. During the 1960’s, due to a freeway being built, they had to move to the current location. Fortunately, they kept the original neon sign and logo. Noriko also talked to Dennis Wong, the original owner’s son. Dennis had saved not only the original menu of Tasty but also chopsticks and a few other items with Tasty Chop Suey’s logo on them. The best part of Noriko’s trip might have been discovering Tasty’s original slogan, “Hungry for God’s word–Go to church! Hungry for Chinese food–Come to Tasty Chop Suey!” Now that is something you can sink your teeth into.

The exhibition team considers itself lucky to be collecting such wonderful objects from across the country. We have had success in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Hawai`i. Now we are setting our sights on one of the most important cities for Chinese food in America, San Francisco.

Would you like to be a part of our search? If you know of an object that can represent the Chinese restaurant story, especially if it’s from San Francisco or about chop suey, please let us know. You can use the comments below or email us with the subject “Chop Suey.” Flyers with more information in Traditional and Simplified Chinese are also attached below.

Download Simplified Chinese Flyer

Download Traditional Chinese Flyer

Cedric Yeh is Deputy Chair and Associate Curator in the Division of Armed Forces History and Noriko Sanefuji is a research specialist in the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History.