Food writer and scholar Andrew Coe’s Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States traces the first US contact with China starting in 1784. On August 23, 1784, Samuel Shaw arrived at the mouth of the Pearl River in Guangdong with the first cargo to trade with China. This encounter of China and the newly established US, the oldest civilization and the youngest nation at the time, met on the path of commerce first. Shaw and his men stayed four months in the strict area for European traders dining on European fare and closed off to the Chinese empire. Cultural differences were so immense that the Europeans who received the Americans would not deign to dine with chopsticks and drink warm rice wine, and the Chinese would not stoop to eat with hairy, red-headed men who preferred tight clothing. In short, both considered the other as uncivilized.
Coe’s historical account further explains that food was never a meeting point for the relationship between the two countries, no matter how fashionable it became in the early 1900s New York City to be seen in an exotic Chinese restaurant. US and China relationship started with trade and was followed 50 years later, 1830s, by missionary work. Eating Chinese food was a necessary, awkward road to be traversed. For the Chinese, a book depicting the world outside of East Asia dated since 400 BCE described the people of “cultureless savagery” (Coe, 18) based on their lack of complexity of diet or food preparation, such as eating raw meat or lacking rice or grain in their diet. The Chinese see the complexity of food preparation and proper cuisine as a measuring stick of a civilized culture. This difference in value placed on food is itself a cultural difference. If the missionaries went to China initially in hopes of converting the largest population of heathens to Christianity, and thereby civilizing the Chinese, then, the Chinese has brought Chinese food in their efforts to civilize the US.
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