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Date(s)： 2024/05/03
Time： 15:00~17:00
Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall
Host： Prof. Sean Hsiang-lin LEI (Research fellow and Director, IMH, AS)
Speaker：Prof. Miranda Brown （Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan）
Organizer： IMH近史所「科技與現代東亞的歷史共構」共同研究專題
Abstract: General Tso chicken: the signature dish of contemporary American Chinese food. Sold in cheap diners, strip mall buffets, and P.F. Chang’s, this dish is a staple of contemporary American life. But critics charge that this dish is bad, epitomizing everything that is wrong with American Chinese food. Greasy, sweet, and MSG-laden, General Tso's chicken is a distortion of “real” Chinese cooking, arguably more American than Chinese. In this talk, I will challenge current views of this iconic dish and other staples of Chinese American cuisine by situating this dish -- and Chinese food in America -- by changing the scholarly frame of reference -- to Taiwan, where the dish was born in the post-war kitchen of Peng Changgui. By situating this dish, and many other classics of American "Mandarin" cuisine, within a larger history of Chinese migration to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, I will argue that the current approach rests on a simple contrast between Chinese food in China and Chinese food in the American diaspora. Such an approach, more importantly, overlooks the highly mobile and labile quality of Chinese culinary traditions in the Asian diaspora -- and ignores the role that the ethnic Chinese diaspora in places like Taiwan -- played in shaping Chinese food in America.