Chop Suey : A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (10 page)

Yuan’s recipes embody the food preferences of a cultivated scholar-gourmet. They are neither street food nor the pricey, pretentious dishes the wealthiest merchants favored but fall somewhere in between. These recipes also represent the apogee of the regional cuisine of eastern China during the late eighteenth century, particularly of the cities along the lower Yangzi River. Yuan’s cookbook has been so influential that dishes like drunken prawns (live shrimp that are flash-cooked at the table in flaming rice wine) are staples of Chinese restaurants today. That Yuan Mei, a highly educated member of China’s elite, a poet and a government official, would have thought it worth his time to write a cookbook is not surprising. (Of American statesmen, only Thomas Jefferson displayed a similar interest in cuisine.) Since nearly the dawn of Chinese culture over three millennia ago, the Chinese have considered cookery an essential art, one of the defining elements of their culture.

Although Chinese cuisine has changed greatly over the centuries and has continually been open to outside influences, it has always been composed of the same basic building blocks. Like all cuisines, it is based on the combinations of specific raw ingredients, flavorings, preparations, and manners of serving and eating dishes. It is also intimately entwined with the country’s vast and varied landscape, its climate, and many millennia of human history. In fact, you cannot explain China’s cuisine without also describing its geography and the way agriculture came to assume a particularly central role in its culture and history. In the
mid–nineteenth century, the emperor of China held sway over more of the Earth’s surface than any ruler except the queen of England and the czar of Russia. Beyond the eighteen provinces of China Proper, the Daoguang emperor also ruled over Manchuria, which was the Manchu tribal homeland to the northeast, and an enormous swath of colonial possessions. These included the vast “western Regions”: Tibet, Mongolia, and the arid steppes of Central Asia, all the way to present-day Kazakhstan and Kirghizia. (With the exception of Mongolia and parts of Xinjiang, the People’s Republic of China now encompasses nearly the same territory.) In its size and complexity, China in many ways resembled western Europe, with its provinces corresponding in size and cultural variation to Europe’s nations.

The emperor thus ruled over a wide range of landscapes and climate zones, ranging from rocky high-altitude desert to frozen steppe to tropical rain forest. Surprisingly, very little of China’s land is arable. More than a third of it consists of mountains and steep, untillable hills, and most of its northwestern quarter is an arid zone with only isolated areas fit for growing crops. These mountains and deserts form a natural barrier that for centuries protected China from outside invaders. But this terrain also forced the people very early to develop intensive agricultural practices that made the best of what land they had, mostly along its great rivers. Many of the largest waterways rise in the Tibet Plateau, which is capped by Qomologma, or Mount Everest, the “Mother Goddess of the Earth.” To the north of this region of snow-capped peaks and arid basins lie deserts and rocky steppes—the route of the Silk Road linking China with the Middle East. To the east, where the Tibet Plateau slopes down toward the Pacific Ocean, the great rivers of East and Southeast Asia begin, including the Huanghe, or Yellow River. From its source in the
mountains, the Huanghe follows a long, looping course, carrying with it enormous amounts of yellowish loess—sedimentary deposits that have been spread for millennia on the North China Plain, a sprawling area of flat lowlands. Three thousand or more years ago, this fertile area became the birthplace of Chinese civilization, and it remains one of the most humanized landscapes on Earth. The Huanghe’s legacy has not always been benevolent; periodic floods with devastating effects on the human population have earned the river the name “China’s Sorrow.”

The Tibet Plateau is also the source of China’s Yangzi, the third longest river in the world. After leaving the mountains and traveling along the southern border of Sichuan’s fertile “Red Basin,” the Yangzi enters a region of steep valleys, at the eastern end of which the Chinese government has erected the controversial Three Gorges Dam. Downstream, the river flows through a series of wide valleys and plains before finally disgorging into the China Sea. The cities and agricultural regions along this stretch are among the oldest and most important in China. Traditionally, the lower Yangzi has marked the boundary between the northern and southern halves of China Proper, with their differences of climate, agriculture, and culture. (Northerners have long looked down on the South, calling it a zone of heat, humidity, and insects.) Lying between the Yangzi and the border with Vietnam, the South is a region dominated by low mountains and hills that has much less arable land than the North. The most populous districts are located right along the hilly coastline, in pockets of flat land formed by bays or river valleys. The largest of these is the valley of the Xi (“West”) River, which begins in Guangxi Province and connects with two other river systems to form the Zhu, also known as the Pearl River. Along its banks lie the cities of Guangdong, Macau, and Hong Kong and the wide expanse of the Pearl
River Delta. For many reasons—proximity to Southeast Asia, distance from Beijing, lack of natural resources, and so on—the people of South China’s coast have always been far more oriented toward the outside world than those in other parts of the Middle Kingdom.

China’s climate has always been both its curse, with frequent floods and droughts, and its blessing, helping to feed a vast population. Some writers have pointed out the similarities between the weather conditions of China and North America, which has an analogous latitudinal position on the globe. In truth, however, China is generally colder, hotter, wetter, and more arid than North America. Two great seasonal weather patterns cause this climate of extremes: the waves of cold, dry air that push into China from Siberia and the warm, moist air associated with the Asian monsoon coming from the south. The interplay between these two systems leads to the baking heat of China’s summers and the bitter cold of its winters. From Central Asia all the way to the Pacific, the climate of North China is generally dry. The failure of the rains to arrive has meant drought, crop failure, and starvation for millions of people. If too much rain falls, the rivers can overflow their banks and submerge wide swathes of the countryside. In 1888, two million people perished when the Huanghe flooded the North China Plain. South China is generally warmer and its rainfall heavier and more reliable. The floods that do occur are usually less destructive because they are constrained by the hilly landscape. Farmers there do have to contend with typhoons, the western Pacific Ocean’s counterpart to hurricanes, which can cause landslides, floods, and widespread crop destruction.

China’s diverse climate and geography have allowed a vast array of plant and animal life to thrive. In terms of sheer number of species, China is one of the richest geographical
regions on Earth. Since at least the era of Peking Man, five hundred thousand years ago, the human population has seen all of this natural bounty as potential foodstuffs. This is true even today, as one can see from the displays of wild water and land animals for sale in tanks and cages in Guangzhou’s sprawling marketplace. (Unfortunately, many of these species are now in danger because of the persistence of the same practices of hunting and gathering.) And the Chinese people learned very early to support themselves by domesticating plants and animals. The inhabitants of prehistoric China may have been one of the earliest groups to learn this skill. According to a 2002 joint Sino-Swedish DNA study, the first domesticated animals were dogs, which diverged genetically from wolves around 13,000
BCE
in East Asia. From China all the way to Europe, they became important to humans both as an aid to hunters and as a source of food. East Asia’s first domesticated plant was probably rice, in South China (not, as was long believed, millet in North China). Archaeological excavations at sites along the lower and middle Yangzi River have revealed that wild rice was first domesticated around 8500
BCE
. Some grains of this rice have been found amid the shards of crudely decorated ceramic urns and bowls that are among the earliest pottery found on the Eurasian landmass.

During approximately 6000–3000
BCE
, a series of regional cultures rose and flourished across China. We don’t know much about their culinary habits except that they were omnivorous, with a gradually increasing reliance on grain as a staple. In the North, particularly in the dry plains along the inland Yellow River, relatively drought-resistant millet became the principal crop, along with persimmons, peaches, other fruits, and various nuts. Chinese cabbage, an important vegetable, was eventually joined by leeks, onions, and mallow, whose mucilaginous leaves were probably used as
a thickener. The most common animals were dogs and pigs, which had been domesticated in China by 7000
BCE
. From the Yangzi River all the way through Southeast Asia, rice was clearly the dominant grain. Pigs and dogs were, again, the main domestic animals in South China; water buffaloes arrived somewhat later. Southerners also consumed large amounts of fish and shellfish and foraged for an abundant number of edible wild plants. During this era, life wasn’t completely consumed by the struggle for sustenance. At the Jiahu village site in Henan Province, archaeologists have found the earliest musical instruments, as well as pots containing the residue of an aromatic liquor made from rice and honey and flavored with fruits.

Scholars date the birth of a recognizably “Chinese” culture to the centuries between 3000 and 1554
BCE
and to the area stretching from the Pearl River Delta in the South to the Great Wall in the North. This was the era of the legendary Xia Dynasty, when villages grew into large towns, with hundreds of houses and clear evidence of stratified social life (particularly elite tombs filled with offerings and decorated with murals) and regular trade between communities. Most of these population centers have been found in North China from Shandong to the west (archaeological work has lagged in South China). Some of this region’s rulers may have been the original models for the legendary god-kings of early Chinese history. These included Sui Ren, who first tamed fire; Fu Xi, who taught people to hunt and fish; and Po Yi, who domesticated the first birds and beasts. According to a story from the third century, Shen Nong, the Farmer God, taught his people the rudiments of agriculture:

In ancient times the people ate plants and drank from rivers, and they picked fruit from trees and ate the flesh of crickets. At that time there was much suffering due
to illness and injury from poisoning. So the Farmer God taught the people for the first time how to sow the five grains and about the quality of soil. . . . He tasted the flavor of every single plant and determined which rivers and springs were sweet or brackish and he let the people know how to avoid certain things. At that time he himself suffered from poisoning seventy times in one day.
⁸

Even at this early stage, it was clear that cooking was considered one of the most important arts. The most famous of the mythological kings, Huang Di, the “Yellow Emperor,” was credited with teaching dozens of essential skills, from leadership to medicine to cooking, including steaming grain and boiling grain to produce gruel or congee, called
zhou
or
mi fan
in Mandarin or
jook
in Cantonese. In fact, mastery of the art of cooking was considered one of the dividing lines between barbarism and civilization. The Book of Rites, attributed to Confucius (551–479
BCE
), discusses this crucial difference:

Formerly the ancient kings had no houses. In winter they lived in caves which they had excavated, and in summer in nests which they had framed. They knew not yet the transforming power of fire, but ate the fruits of plants and trees, and the flesh of birds and beasts, drinking their blood, and swallowing (also) the hair and feathers. . . . The later sages then arose, and men (learned) to take advantage of the benefits of fire. They moulded metals and fashioned clay, so as to rear towers with structures on them, and houses with windows and doors. They toasted, grilled, boiled, and roasted.
⁹

In 1554
BCE
, a ruler named King T’ang overthrew the Xia Dynasty and founded the Shang Dynasty, which lasted over five hundred years. The Shang were masters of bronze
casting; the most impressive artifacts from that era are hundreds of elaborate bronze vessels that were used as receptacles for food—mainly cooked millet and stews—and various kinds of liquor. As the Shang rulers were considered earthly representatives of the celestials, these comestibles were used both as ritual offerings and as food for the aristocratic courts. Later court annals even record the history of Yi Yin, a Shang Dynasty cook who rose to become a regional governor under King T’ang. Yi Yin is most famous for his discourse on the culinary arts in which he says that the cook’s principle role is to overcome the offensive odor of raw meats. This is done by properly blending the five flavors—salty, bitter, sour, hot, and sweet—and using fire and water:

The transformations in the cauldron are so utterly marvelous and of such subtle delicacy, the mouth cannot put them into words, and the mind cannot comprehend them. They are like the subtlety of archery and charioteering, the transformations of the
yin
and the
yang
, and the cycle of the four seasons. Thus, the food is cooked for a long time but is not ruined, well-done but not over-done, sweet but not sugary, sour but not bitter, salty but not briny, hot but not biting, bland but not insipid, fat but not lardy.
¹⁰

The raw materials that go into Yi Yin’s massive bronze cooking vessels were far more diverse than such Shang staples as millet, pork, and dog meat. He lists all the delicacies found both within the realm of Shang and outside its borders, including orangutan lips and yak tails, and such fantastic foods as phoenix eggs and the six-legged vermilion turtle with pearls on its feet. The moral of his discourse is that the art of cooking is similar to the art of governing. In fact, the bronze cauldron, or
ting
, is the main symbol of state power. If King T’ang applies the different powers of a ruler as a chef blends
flavors, and he follows the way of Heaven, he will then enjoy all those rare and wondrous foods. This list of food shows that the Chinese from the earliest era had a fascination for the broadest range of possible foods—everything edible that could be grown, traded for, or gathered from the wild.