Sarah Hutchins | April 3, 2009
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| Photo by Alex Farris |
| New York Times reporter and book author Jennifer 8. Lee talked about reporting for her book Thursday at the Ernie Pyle Auditorium. |
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Lee said she hoped her book, published last year, would help readers learn to reassess what it means to be American. Part memoir and part reporting, the book project took her around the globe seeking the story of a cuisine. Her talk was co-sponsored by the School of Journalism and the Asian Cultural Center.
While Lee, 33, admitted her longtime obsession with Chinese food, Americans’ passion for Chinese cuisine extends into almost every part of American culture. In fact, she said, there are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than McDonalds, KFC and Burger King combined.
And that’s only the beginning. Lee described the pervasiveness of the cuisine and its restaurants. Chinese food is popular is space and Antarctica. The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved in a Chinese restaurant, and the house where John Wilkes Booth plotted the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is now a Chinese eatery.
Aside from being a fan, Lee also is a journalist who was intrigued by a good story. When she heard over and over again that many Powerball winners chose their winning lottery numbers based on fortune cookie numbers, she knew she had to pursue the story.
“I thought, I am going to find out where all these cookies came from because the story of those fortune cookies told backwards is the story of Chinese restaurants told forward,” she said.
Lee went from state to state tracking down Powerball lottery winners and listening to their stories.
“At one point, all of their stories converged at a Chinese restaurant and all of the stories converged at a fortune cookie,” Lee said. “So it struck me, if our benchmark for America is apple pie, you should ask yourself how often do you eat apple pie verses how often you eat Chinese?”
She found that Chinese food has a complex and comical history in America. At first Westerners used the Chinese diet (rice, and false rumors of rat) to differentiate between ethnicities. However, the popularization of chop suey changed the way Americans viewed Chinese cuisine.
“If you wanted to be cosmopolitan and sophisticated and worldly or you wanted to impress a chick, you would take her out for a night of chop suey,” Lee said.
As would any reporter, Lee traveled to the source, China, to explore her ideas. She found that most American Chinese food is unrecognizable in China. Chop suey is essentially the Chinese equivalent of leftovers and, in Lee’s opinion, the “biggest cultural joke one culture has played on another.” The American version of General Tso’s chicken was unrecognizable to the those living in the famed general’s hometown.
Even fortune cookies, those little desserts that had inspired lottery numbers, have their roots in Japan. Now, the cookies are more Americanized. Lee said fortunes based on quotes from movie characters, such as Star Wars’ Yoda, have replaced philosophers such as Confucius. Today, fortune cookies are decorated for every holiday and come in every imaginable flavor. But the few cookies in China, Lee explained, are so unfamiliar they come with eating instructions.
Senior Desma Jones, who had read Lee’s book prior to the lecture, enjoyed hearing about the history behind the fortune cookie.
“Her book was wonderful,” she said. “Listening to her was almost like reading her book. It sounded just like her.”
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| Photo by Alex Farris |
| Author and reporter Jennifer 8. Lee took a photo of her audience during her talk. She discussed how she followed the trail of the evolution of Chinese food around the world. |
“We chose her because of her interesting work and message,” Castillo-Cullather said. “She’s also someone whom we think students would enjoy meeting. We think students will find her inspiring especially how her curiosity about Chinese food led her to write a book and a discovery about her heritage and culture.”
Not all of Lee’s time is spent tracking down the origins of food. At the Times, she has written about poverty, the environment, crime, politics and technology. But she also has written about cultural topics, such as what straight men talk about when they can’t talk about sports (the Man Date) or trends in baby names.
