Chop Suey : A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (7 page)

The parade entered Macau and wound its way down the Praya Grande, the main waterfront avenue, to the mansion housing the American legation. Three American warships bristling with cannons stood at anchor in the harbor. As Qiying descended from his sedan chair, an honor guard of U.S. Marines fired three salutes. The Americans stood ready to greet him, sweating copiously in their heavy wool uniforms. From this point on, things didn’t go so well. Parker and Bridgman had briefed Cushing on Chinese etiquette, but the behavior of Qiying and his aides still unnerved the Americans. Rather than shaking the Americans’ hands, the Chinese gave the traditional Chinese greeting of bowing and clasping their own hands. They then entered the legation building without removing their hats. The language barrier compounded the awkwardness. Qiying spoke Mandarin, while Parker and Bridgman only understood Cantonese,
and that poorly. Luckily, one of Qiying’s aides was fluent in Cantonese. Next Qiying embarrassed the Americans by asking all of them their ages. Then came a rustle of skirts, and an American woman appeared: Mrs. Peter Parker. A stunned silence fell over the Chinese party. In China, wives and daughters were kept at home, locked behind closed doors as Confucian ideals demanded. Qiying later told the emperor that the barbarian habit of parading their women before strange men was one of the many signs of their “stupid ignorance.” Nevertheless, when the meal was announced, Qiying bravely extended his arm for Mrs. Parker to take as they entered the dining room.

At the table, the Americans did their best to show respect for the Chinese party. The places had been set with chopsticks, and the honored guests were seated to the left rather than the right of the host. Otherwise, the meal followed the strict etiquette of a western-style banquet. The precise menu has been lost, but we can get a pretty good idea of it from other descriptions of western food served in mid-nineteenth-century China. Bread and butter were provided at all the places. After the first course, a soup, came an overcooked fish in a cream-based sauce, perhaps a curried meat on a mound of overcooked rice, side dishes of boiled potatoes and some pallid greens, and then the meal’s high point: a roast leg of meat, most likely mutton. As host, Cushing ceremoniously carved the joint with a large knife; the blood-streaked juice flowed from the meat. Dessert probably included fruit, nuts, and perhaps a large Stilton cheese just off the boat from London.

We don’t have any eyewitness accounts from the Chinese side of how they responded to this meal. In fact, most early Chinese writings about interactions with foreign traders remain politely mute about western food. In his 1855 memoir
Bits of Old China
, the American “China hand” William C. Hunter
includes a letter he says was written by a young Chinese who had been invited to dine in the American factory. To pass the idle hours in their compound, westerners occasionally liked to write satirical poems and prose burlesques, so his claim must be taken with a grain of salt. Still, there is probably a layer of authenticity behind this text:

Judge now what tastes people possess who sit at table and swallow bowls of a fluid, in their outlandish tongue called
Soo-pe
, and next devour flesh of fish, served in a manner as near as may be to resemble the living fish itself. Dishes of half-raw meat are then placed at various angles of the table; these float in gravy, while from them pieces are cut with swordlike instruments and placed before the guests. Really it was not until I beheld this sight that I became convinced of what I had often heard that the ferocious disposition of these demons arises from their indulgence in such gross food. . . . Thick pieces of meat being devoured, and the scraps thrown to a multitude of snappish dogs that are allowed to twist about amongst one’s legs or lie under the table, while keeping up an incessant growling and fighting, there followed a dish that set fire to our throats, called in a barbarous language of one by my side
Ka-Le
[curry], accompanied with rice which of itself was alone grateful to my taste. Then a green and white substance, the smell of which was overpowering. This I was informed was a compound of sour buffalo milk, baked in the sun, under whose influence it is allowed to remain until it becomes filled with insects, yet, the greener and more lively it is, with the more relish it is eaten. This is called
Che-Sze
, and is accompanied by the drinking of a muddy red fluid which foams up over the tops of the drinking cups,
soils one’s clothes, and is named
Pe-Urh
—think of that!
⁴

Actually, Manchus like Qiying were among the few imperial subjects known to have a taste for milk products, including a mild kind of cream cheese. However, an aged, blue-veined Stilton would likely have nauseated the Chinese party.

An abbreviated description of the meal was later given by Fletcher Webster, the American mission’s secretary and the son of Daniel Webster. The Chinese “showed little inclination to eat, but a decided taste for the barbarian liquors, champagne and cherry bounce.” The last was a mixture of cherry juice, whiskey, and sugar, a popular western drink that Parker knew was liked by Chinese merchants in Guangzhou. The Chinese party’s heavy imbibing did not reflect any sort of alcoholism; they were simply showing their good breeding by practicing typical Chinese banquet etiquette. After repeated toasts around the table, some of Qiying’s aides were quite drunk. Even though the Chinese hardly tasted the food, they still showed regard for their hosts by feeding the Americans with their own chopsticks. Cushing and the others tried to hide their disgust at eating from utensils that had touched Chinese mouths. “They are not particularly nice in their eating,” said Webster, “and their teeth are by no means pearls.” The Americans retaliated by stuffing food back into their guests’ mouths.

Finally, the meal ended, and the diners moved out to the cool of the veranda. Here Qiying and his aides further discomfited the Americans by examining every piece of their clothing, from their sword belts down to their sweat-stained shirts. “Fortunately,” said Webster, “our good genius, Dr. Parker, told us this was the very acme of politeness, and to be imitated without delay.” So the Americans began to scrutinize the Chinese dress ornaments, from the peacock
feathers on their caps down to the agate rings at the end of their thumbs. After two hours, it was time for the Chinese to retire: “The procession re-formed, gongs beat and pipes squealed, the executioners yelled, the little ponies were pulled between their riders’ legs, and we were left to reflect upon Chinese men and manners.”
⁵

The awkwardness of this encounter did not impede the negotiations that followed over the next two weeks. Both sides wanted a treaty too much. By July 3, 1844, the final copies of the agreement were ready for signing. The ceremony took place in a windowless room at the back of the Wang Xia Temple. The Chinese were cool and comfortable in their summer silk robes. Dressed in their usual tight wool uniforms, the Americans nearly passed out from the hot, airless atmosphere. After Cushing fixed his seals to the papers, the Chinese brought out the great seal of the emperor himself to mark the document with imperial approval. To celebrate, Qiying invited the Americans to enjoy a “repast of fruits and tea.” This turned out to be the most elaborate Chinese meal any American had tasted up to that day—a “Manchu-Chinese” banquet. To China’s gourmets, this was the cutting-edge cuisine of the time, a blend of Manchu and Chinese regional dishes emulating the food served at the imperial court in Beijing. Even Parker and Bridgman probably never realized what an honor they were being given.

The meal took place in a larger room of the temple where a rectangular table with 20 places had been set. Platters filled with bananas, mangoes, oranges, figs, and other fruit already covered the table. On entering, Qiying insisted that the Americans remove their wool coats. Here was another Chinese custom: that one’s guests be comfortable and relaxed during banquets. Of course, this went against the Americans’ standards of proper dinner etiquette and only made them more uncomfortable. After the diners nibbled on
the fruit, the meal proper began with a “pudding” Qiying himself had supposedly invented just for the occasion. Webster remarked that it was “excellent and spoke volumes for the gastronomic talents of the high Commissioner.” Then the servants began to bring in the dishes one after the other: meats, pastries, soups, stews, and so on until a hundred silver vessels “filled the table from one end to the other.”

The high points were sea cucumbers, roofs of hogs’ mouths, and birds’ nests. It is unclear whether the last were in a soup or some other kind of dish. Webster called them “by no means disagreeable, being somewhat between vermicelli and tapioca, stringy like the one, transparent like the other, and quite tasteless.” The other dishes were deemed “no great addition to our festive boards.” All of this was washed down with copious toasts of a potent hot rice wine called “samchou.” Once again, the Chinese honored their guests by feeding them with their own chopsticks. All the Americans could do was “gape, simper, and swallow!”

A few hours into the feast, there was a pause in the service, after which the food changed from Chinese to Manchu. Six cooks entered the room, each bearing a large piece of roast meat—pig, ham, “turkey,” and so on—on a silver platter. These weren’t the singed and bloody roasts that came out of western kitchens but edible works of art resembling polished Chinese lacquerware. The cooks placed the roasts on special chopping blocks and carved off thin slices of well-cooked meat that were distributed to the guests. These were the only dishes during the banquet that resembled any kind of American food. Finally, after four hours of eating and drinking, came the last course, a large bowl of “very nice” soup. Qiying “took it up with both hands, drank out of it, and then passed it to the Minister; and then it went the round of the whole table.” To the Americans, it seemed as if they had just eaten a western meal in reverse, beginning with
fruit and ending with soup. As they returned to Macau, they felt no happy glow. Instead, they exclaimed, like Macbeth, that they had “supped full of horrors.”
⁶

In signing the Treaty of Wang Xia, Qiying believed he had achieved his goal of appeasing the barbarian power. It was now unlikely that the Americans would force their way into China as the British had. He also had successfully beaten back all of Cushing’s demands—the most important being his insistence on traveling to Beijing for an audience before the Heavenly Throne. Qiying wrote to his emperor: “The envoy was rewarded with a banquet to show our bounty and confidence, and was greatly pleased. He is presently residing at Macau, entirely peaceable, thus providing some solace to the Imperial Breast.”
⁷

It remained doubtful, however, that the Americans would ever join the ranks of the civilized, like the tribute-bearing kings of Korea and Siam. For instance, Qiying saw no sign that the Americans had advanced in appreciation of Chinese cuisine. The foreigners had attended magnificent banquets where they had been served the most delicate and costly dishes. They had smiled in appreciation of the bird’s nest soup or roast Manchu pig. But then, after all they had been exposed to, the Americans always went back to their stinking, half-raw food! Qiying found their meals so crude that he felt he had to apologize to his emperor for sharing them:

At . . . Macau on several occasions Your slave gave dinners for the barbarians and anywhere from ten-odd to twenty or thirty of their chiefs and leaders came. When he, on infrequent occasions, met them in a barbarian house or on a barbarian ship they also formed a circle and sat in attendance and outdid themselves to present food and drink. He could not but eat and drink with them in order to bind their hearts.
⁸

Cushing was also proud of his achievement. He had proved his detractors in the local American colony wrong. The terms of the treaty allowed American merchants to do business in the same five coastal cities as British merchants but arguably on better terms. Americans could now own property in China, proof that their rights were fully recognized. Cushing had built a solid foundation for American relations with China, and without a huge fleet of battleships and ten thousand troops. The United States now had a political presence in East Asia, and the door had been opened for a flood of merchants and missionaries looking to convert China to the economic and spiritual glories of western civilization.

Cushing’s return to the United States stimulated a modest China craze among the American public. Thousands of visitors flocked to the “Chinese Museum,” an exhibition of China trade artifacts that opened in Boston’s Marlboro Chapel. (Eight years earlier, a Mr. Dunn had opened a similar but smaller museum of things Chinese in Philadelphia.) The building’s doorway was decorated to look like the ornate entrance to a Chinese temple; characters above the door purported to say “Extensive View of the Central Flowery Nation.” For a mere 25 cents, visitors saw hundreds of paintings and other objects from China, including dozens of lanterns hanging from the roof and a full-size “Tanka boat.” Their tour of the display cases began with figures depicting the emperor and his court and then continued through exhibits devoted to religion, the Lantern Festival, women, farming, printing, and even opium smoking, with a real live “John Chinaman” lying in a stupor on a Chinese bed. At the very end, they finally came to a small collection of Chinese foodstuffs, including dried noodles, birds’ nests, and sea cucumbers. The museum catalogue asserted that “a Chinese dinner would be nothing without stews made of birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, deers’ sinews, bircho-de-mer [
sic
], or
sea slugs, and many other such dishes, used and appreciated only by the Chinese, and all of which to the uneducated and barbarous taste of a native of the western world, possess a similarly insipid or repulsive flavor.”
⁹

Both Cushing and Fletcher Webster took advantage of this enthusiasm by embarking on lecture tours of the major East Coast cities. Webster, the more entertaining of the two, told of the diplomats’ many adventures, including the “horrors” of their Chinese banquets. He may have realized he went too far in these descriptions, because one reporter in the lecture hall wrote: “Mr. Webster went on to say that he did not mean to ridicule the customs of the Chinese, but that on seeing them for the first time, they of course would strike any one as singular.”
¹⁰
In his drier and more didactic lectures, Cushing particularly dwelled on the oddness of Chinese customs: “To an American or European, cast for the first time into the midst of Chinese society, everything seems contrary to his own established usages. Not only does he find himself at the antipodes, geographically speaking, but equally so with respect to manners, customs, and morals.” Everything Chinese was spectacularly strange: the costumes, music, and mourning customs; the practice of reading from top to bottom and right to left; and so on. And of course, among those customs was their manner of eating: “Food is eaten with two sticks, and it requires some skill to dexterously pick it up and convey it by their means; every thing is served cut up, in small bowls; and it is considered a compliment to hand a morsel to your neighbor with your sticks, he taking it on his own.”
¹¹
In an era before the notion of men from Mars had popular currency, in a sense Cushing’s Chinese filled the role of our era’s space aliens—the perfect opposite of everything Americans considered right and proper.