long beach california history chop suey restaurant

Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain, 2007Ī social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the economic survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.

It describes our family’s isolated existence running a laundry, enduring loneliness as well as racial prejudice for over 20 years -John Jung This memoir conveys the experiences of my parents and their children, the only Chinese people living in Macon, Georgia between 19.

Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese Laundry in the Deep South, 2005.

He wrote six books that included his memoirs. Chinese American HistorianĪfter his retirement, John became a historian devoted to the Chinese American experience. In 2002, after forty years, John retired. They raised their family at Cypress, California. This publication provided a psychological perspective on the use and abuse of alcohol and other psychoactive drugs.

In 2001, he wrote Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Behavior Psychological Research Perspectives. Photo from Raymond Chong Psychology Professorįrom 1962, he taught Psychology and researched alcohol studies at California State University at Long Beach. John Jung with Lynette Gin and, Raymond Douglas Chong. Then, he got his Doctoral in Psychology from Northwestern University in 1962. John got his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from University of California at Berkeley, in 1959. In 1956, the Jung family moved to San Francisco. He saw the dawn of Civil Rights Movement to end the discrimination in 1954. The White suppressed and segregated Blacks with systemic racism. That’s what I'll be undertaking on this blog.In the Deep South, he saw the Jim Crow laws in force. As with other types of ephemera, part of their appeal lies within the notion of their improbable survival.ĭeciphering the story behind a particular menu often requires great sleuth-work. Even when kept as personal mementos, however, menus were frequently discarded by later generations for whom they had no special meaning. While most were intended for short-term use and never meant to be saved, some were finely-crafted souvenirs made by leading stationers. They are also an art form that aims to please. Menus reflect the aspirations and ideals of society.

Menus suddenly appeared in all types of venues and forms of transportation. Dining among strangers in quasi-public spaces became a new and novel kind of entertainment in which the menu played a central role, offering diners choice and anticipation for the first time. In the United States, menus came into general use in the 1840s when hotels and restaurants began to replace the old inns and taverns that served a limited choice of domestic-style meals. They aid our cultural memory by providing historical evidence, not only of what people were eating, but what else they were doing and with whom they were doing it and what they valued. Examine one and be transported back to the everyday life of the past - whether to a lavish banquet in the Gilded Age or a food-relief eatery during the Great Depression. Menus are minor, transient documents that tell us how people have eaten outside the home over time. Eleven menus from the early twentieth century show how the culinary traditions of the two cultures slowly came together.

1 Even though this inexpensive dish quickly became popular, it wasn ’t long before Chinese restaurateurs began putting a few Western-style dishes on their menus in order to appeal to the broadest possible audience. The most prominent adaptation was chop suey, comprising assorted pieces of meat or seafood, quickly stir fried with vegetables like bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery, and bound in a starch-thickened sauce. Compared to traditional native dishes, this version of Chinese food utilized fewer ingredients and expressed a narrower range of textures. However, by the 1890s, a new style had emerged that we now call Chinese-American cuisine in which traditional Cantonese dishes were modified for the dominant American palate. In the early years, these modest eateries fell into two basic categories, serving Chinese food for Chinese immigrants or typical American fare for non-Chinese patrons. Chinese restaurants first opened in the United States during the California Gold Rush.

Long beach california history chop suey restaurant