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Looking at family-run Chinese restaurants, their place in U.S. history, with John Jung

I’m easing back into blogging while my family and I are visiting my parents in California.

One nice note that my mom told me about was John Jung’s new book, Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants.

Jung, a retired professor, wrote and published the book, which looks at the families that ran these establishments, the themes that emerged from them and why the independent restaurants surfaced in the United States.

From his preface:

Although the title, Sweet and Sour, suggests a popular style of Chinese restaurant fare, the focus on this book is not on Chinese food, but on the difficult lives of the Chinese immigrants and their families that made their livelihoods operating countless small restaurants during most of the past century often in small remote places all over the U.S. and Canada. These restaurants, which provided the primary, if not the only, experience with Chinese food for most non-Chinese people were a major source of self-employment for earlier generations of Chinese immigrants and their families from villages in the southern China province of Guangdong.

Jung also explains in the book that the title gives a nod to that combination of hard and rewarding times for the families and restaurant staff who had to make the food, serve it, clean up and, at times, deal with the poor treatment from some customers.

He writes:

Sweet and Sour serves as an apt metaphor for the often, contradictory experiences of Chinese restaurant families. The long hours of never ending work each day made for harsh lives, which was soured by the hostile reception they often faced as foreigners in a racially prejudiced society. Yet, they persevered, and through painstaking labor enabled their children to have a better education that afforded them better options in life.

I’m glad Jung, who I chatted with by email before about his previous work, has pursued this work.

Why?

These stories need to be told, especially as the United States sees newer immigrants from China arrive.

It’s easy to focus on contemporary immigration issues, and especially on newer residents in Silicon Valley or the Seattle area who have high technology jobs.

Of course, that’s good.

But in this rush to focus on that slice of Chinese immigration to the United States, it’s easy to overlook – and actually ignore – what other Chinese have experienced in the United States.

We should remember, and learn from, history.

Central themes – which can be handed from generation to generation – emerge. And colorful, often humorous stories do, too.

We see what ideas immigrants keep from their home countries and what they change, often to survive, after they arrive.

I should note, too, that Jung asked my mom, Flo Oy Wong, to contribute a chapter about the family restaurant named Ai Joong Wah, and my aunt, Nellie Wong, to submit work, as well. My aunt wrote two poems for the book.

My mom writes:

Our jobs? We served countless bowls of soup from the steam table to waiting customers. We wrapped won tons, our fingers deftly folding the soft won (ton) pay around bits of pork, green onions, water chestnuts, into a shape resembling a tiny hill. We set out pans of cold iceberg lettuce to make salads, made jello for dessert, stacked loaves of doughy Kilpatrick bread in the blue and white checkered bags on top of the refrigerator. After each of us had learned to type we all took turns typing and printing the daily menu. At the end of each day one of us would wash the coffee urn. We poured hot water into the urn and brushed away the old coffee grinds inside of the tubes….Our entire lives for 18 years centered on Ai Joong Wah, which was our anchor, our center, our womb.

I should say, too, that my mom taught my sister and I how to wrap won ton when we were kids.

So, of course, since my mom and aunt contributed to this book, you really do need to go buy a bunch of them!

I’m just joking. Buy it if you like. Or keep an eye out in the library for it. Or keep an eye out if Jung is in your city to talk about his work.

Jung includes photographs of Chinese restaurants in his book – including images from the dining areas to those great, old neon signs that told people passing by of the Chinese and American food inside.

It’s hard to believe but these signs – as well as Chinatown photos – have become a genre in and of themselves – partially because as families leave the restaurant business, their signs are slowly coming down.

Jung also notes how family-run Chinese restaurants shaped the perception of some when they saw ethnic Chinese:

Chinese were so strongly associated with these livelihoods that they became stereotypical images of all Chinese to the general public even after many Chinese entered other occupations and professions.

But I am glad, as I think others are, that there is sweetness to this slice of U.S. history.

Jung has a good point about how these restaurants also popped up in areas outside of large U.S. cities.

Once, I drove from the U.S. West Coast to the East Coast for a travel writing assignment. I stopped in small cities in the Midwest for lunch. I would find a small Chinese restaurant and talk to the staff about how they arrived at what they were doing.

Speaking of other Chinese immigration stories, my uncle, Bill Wong, just interviewed Joan Chen, the actress and director, for the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. She was in the movie, The Last Emperor. He says it shows another slice of the history of people moving from one place to another to pursue new opportunities.

And I’ve linked to my story about Yick Fung Co. in Seattle’s Chinatown before. It was family run and is now part of The Wing Luke Asian Museum.

But if you’re inclined to read about a Chinese family that operated what was a hub of a meeting place for Chinese in Seattle, have a look. It’s one of my favorite stories that I wrote about as a journalist in Seattle.

One reason why I like the store so much is that, in my opinion, it was a genuine place.

And you can’t beat that.