Today we’ll journey through a fascinating cookbook whose purpose was to inform, educate and break through ingrained stereotypes. How to Cook and Eat in Chinese is a cultural road map into Chinese culture through its food and culinary traditions with some humorous and personal twists and turns along the way.
A Cultural Journey
From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Kim and Leigh discuss the political and social constructs that informed the creation of, if they do say so themselves, a spectacular piece of culinary literature.
How to Cook and Eat in Chinese is so, so, so much more than a book filled with recipes for Peking duck, spring rolls, and congee. It’s a guide book about Chinese culture and tradition.
Written in Chinese by a Tokyo-educated female women’s doctor, translated by her English-speaking daughter, and edited by her Boxer-Indemnity-Scholarship educated husband, this book, as you might expect, is rife with multi-generational and cultural perspectives. And in the case of the footnotes, familial banter.
Buwei and crew brilliantly set the table to aid in understanding a culture through the lens of its food. As Mrs. Chao reminds us, “a little thinking and little willingness to experiment will go very far.” Oh, what wise words!
Episode Transcript
🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧
Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode
How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao
Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey by Anne Mendelson
Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao
Red-Cooked Meat and Table Manners: Decoding How to Cook and Eat in Chinese
Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading
How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao
Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey by Anne Mendelson
Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao
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Join us in two weeks when Kim will dish up one possibly two of the recipes from How to Cook and Eat in Chinese.
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EP 61: How to Cook and Eat in Chinese: Dishing up Culture