"Chow Chop Suey" as the "originator" of American Chinese food, Li Hongzhang's story of bringing goods for it is widely circulated.
In August 1896, Li Hongzhang visited the United States as a minister of the first class of The Chincha, and not only was he treated with high standards of courtesy, but his every move of the "Iron Fist figure of the Qing Dynasty" was also infinitely magnified by the American media. From the beginning of the journey to the United States on board the "St. Louis" cruise ship, the accompanying American reporter recorded his diet and living, such as he always ate in his cabin, the meals were prepared by his own team of chefs, and almost every meal had shark fin, bird's nest, roast chicken and rice, which is a rare hometown taste for the 74-year-old in a strange country. Doctors advised him to eat fewer and more meals, and if necessary, only one Western meal was allowed for a day.
Attentive reporters found that when Li Hongzhang attended the reception dinner of former Secretary of State John Watson Foster, he "did not touch any other food at all" except for drinking a small amount of champagne and eating a little ice cream, which was the same as his performance when entertaining American diplomats with Chinese work experience at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. According to the New York Times, "this Chinese meal has three dishes, namely a cube of boiled chicken, a bowl of rice and a bowl of green vegetable soup", and for the first time in the history of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Chinese cuisine prepared by Chinese cooks with Chinese pots and pans can not be imitated by the American people? A reporter interviewed the staff about the dishes at the banquet, and someone told him with Chinese that it was "chop", that is, a variety of miscellaneous dishes, and the reporter understood "chop" as a Chinese dish name, transliterated as "chop suey" and published in the newspaper.
With the help of celebrity effect, "Li Hongzhang Chop" became popular in the United States and became the signature dish of local Chinese restaurants, but this "offal" is not the other "offal", and Lord Zhongtang probably did not expect that a dish he had never eaten would become the most famous Chinese dish in the United States. Before his visit to the United States, stir-fried offal existed, and in 1884, when the Chinese journalist Wong Chin Foo introduced "Chinese specialties" in the Brooklyn Hawk newspaper, he mentioned "stir-fried offal", saying that it "may be called China's national dish": "Every chef has his own set of recipes when cooking, and the main ingredients in it are pork, cured meat, chicken, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, onions and pepper. These should be the same ingredients, as for the raw materials such as duck, beef, dried radish, tempeh, sliced yam, peas and beans, it depends on the situation. ”
Wang Qingfu was one of the first Chinese to obtain American citizenship, he was born in Jimo, Shandong, at the age of 14 was adopted by a missionary couple, and later educated in the United States, the reason why he wanted to write an article on "Chinese cuisine" was because there was a small tune circulating in the streets at that time: "Narrow eyes, narrow eyes, Chinese guys, eat dead rats, sweep the light, like eating gingerbread." This realization gradually formed since Chinese joined the California gold rush, before the discovery of gold in California in 1848, there were only about 50 Chinese in the United States, and in 1852 alone, more than 20,000 Chinese poured into California, 80% of which came from Taishan County, Guangdong Province, and the arrival of the Chinese surprised americans. They also speak in extremely strange tones, high and low, left and right... They cook all kinds of meat and vegetables of mysterious origin and strange texture, and often cut them into very small pieces, or simply mash them, and then use strange sauce", especially those who "want to break the head and don't know what the internal organs and limbs, may be the stomach, may be the liver, may be the claws", which is simply unacceptable to the Americans.
Americans imposed all kinds of imaginations such as rats and lizards on outsiders, and even Mark Twain did not dare to attack the sausages that the Chinese welcomed, he tasted brandy, ate porridge with chopsticks, but "suspected that the sausage contained rat meat, and tried his best not to touch it." In order to reverse public prejudice, Wang Qingfu announced that anyone who could prove that Chinese eat rat and cat meat would be rewarded with a reward of $500, and he would relentlessly sue the rumor-mongers for defamation. After the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 (valid for 10 years, the Gilley Act in 1892 extended the validity period by another 10 years), Wang Qingfu founded the Chinese-American Times, conducted a national lecture tour, attacked the Chinese exclusion movement, and defended the rights and interests of the Chinese. Although he boldly proposed that "Chinese cooking is better than Western cooking", the question is whether "stir-fried offal" can represent Chinese cuisine? Where did it come from?
Some people say that it was born in the gold rush period, a group of unreasonable white railway (or mining) workers broke into a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco late at night to ask for food, the restaurant owner in order to avoid trouble, the kitchen leftover vegetable fragments and meat slices mixed together, "invented" a new dish, the guests felt delicious, asked the name of the dish, the boss replied "stir-fried miscellaneous", taking the meaning of "miscellaneous miscellaneous", similar to the story of "Li Hongzhang eating miscellaneous", most of them are the words of posterity, but the location is in the western United States. Think about it carefully, it is not impossible for the Chinese from Taishan to bring the local home-cooked food practice into California, the original concept of "stir-fried offal" is very extensive, it may have been a smorgasbord of animal offal mixed with vegetables at first, when Wang Qingfu introduced it, this dish has been popularized in Chinese restaurants, and after the improvement of Chinese chefs, it gradually meets the tastes and needs of Americans.