Chinese restaurant

“ To the man, out in the woods, in camp, on shipboard, at the club, who feels that the connecting link to unalloyed happiness would be a good big dish of Chop Suey. To the persons who are fond of Chinese dishes, but unable to eat them with the same relish in a Chinese Restaurant as they could at home. ”

“ It goes without saying that one seldom sees a Chinaman eating in the restaurants that are most attractive to Americans. Some serve both white and yellow and others serve but the Chinese, and a few favored white friends.
Probably the best restaurant in Chinatown is that of the Hang Far Low Company, at 723 Grant avenue. Here is served such a variety of strange dishes that one has to be a brave Bohemian, indeed, to partake without question. Ordinarily when Chinese restaurants are mentioned but two dishes are thought of—chop suey and chow main. ”

“ A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the curbstone. There went by a stalwart Chief of the Six Companies engaged in earnest confab with a yellow-robed priest from the joss house. A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together. ”

“ Nowadays when Chinese gentlemen and ladies wear European clothes, and the men have their hair short, one has to look at their faces to detect the difference between them and Europeans.
There were some Londoners lunching in the restaurant. A party of ladies in furs were enjoying the novelty of the Chinese dishes; two youngsters, whom I took to be medical students, were ordering various dishes from the carte du jour, and were cross-examining the waiter keenly as to the cooking arrangements and how the delicacies were imported from China ”

“ The wife or wives stay at home and take care of the house and children. No Chinese lady ever dines at a restaurant; in fact, no Chinese lady ever eats at the same table with her husband; he would “lose face” if he ate with a woman. Although a lady is never seen dining in public, she frequently gives dinner parties to her friends and relatives. The courtyards are then filled with the chattering chair-bearers, who, squatting on their haunches as only an Eastern servant can, drink innumerable cups of tea served by the servants of the hostess. ”

“ The streets, so narrow that in some places the sidewalks were scarcely a foot wide, were lined with restaurants, gift shops, importing houses that specialized in tea and spices, and more of the oddly stocked Oriental groceries and markets. Somewhat shaken by their fear on the Bowery, they stopped for tea and rice cookies in a large Chinese restaurant, where they sat at a small table on a balcony overhanging the main street of the district.
“I think we’d better stop looking for theaters today,” Peggy suggested. ”

“ No one in the American part of the city—or at least very few—know even of its existence. The owner will not advertise, will not hang out a sign, and seems to try to keep his business a secret. The restaurant is situated in the rear part of an old Creole house on Dumaine Street,—about the middle of the French Quarter; and one must pass through a dark alley to get in. I had heard so much of the filthiness of the Chinese, that I would have been afraid to enter it, but for the strong recommendations of a Spanish friend of mine,—now a journalist and a romantic fellow. ”

“ There were many public eating-houses in this part of the world, with Chinese painted screens to hide the customers seated behind them, and with gaily coloured pictures on the walls. The food was cooked in big cauldrons in full view of the public, and I was told that the restaurant-keepers, who are Tunganis (Chinese Moslems) usually become rich, especially in one district, where both men and women take all their meals in public. ”

“ Dining-rooms, tea-houses, and bakers' shops, are met with at every step, from the poor man who carries his kitchen or bakehouse upon his back, and beats upon a piece of bamboo to apprise the neighbourhood of his presence, and whose whole establishment is not worth a dollar, to the most extensive tavern or tea-garden crowded with hundreds of customers. For a few cash (1000 or 1200 = one dollar) a Chinese can dine in a sumptuous manner upon his rice, fish, vegetables, and tea; and I fully believe, that in no country in the world is there less real misery and want than in China. ”

“ The cook is more of a free lance, with very definite duties, including a daily trip to market. In China as a whole the tsoa-fan-ti and the mistress have a frequent meeting over his account-book, but in Peking there is a wide-spread custom euphonistically known as “boarding with the cook.” It simplifies the task of keeping him in hand, especially for a tai-tai speaking a very limited amount of Chinese, to set a fixed price for the day’s food and leave the rest to the Celestial kitchen. ”

“ The cooking in foreign houses is entirely European, the Chinese cuisine being of a very different and truly wonderful kind, although excellent in quality. Western ladies have often taken great pains to train their cooks to a high standard of proficiency, a well-served dinner in China not uncommonly far surpassing in excellence the corresponding meal at home. ”

“ The Chinese generally, unlike the Hindu, is very ready to spend on his food if he has the money. He will live on less than nothing if put to it, but given the chance he does not stint himself. At short intervals on the road were tea-houses and restaurants of the simpler sort especially planned to cater to the coolie class, but they were often not unattractive. Sometimes they were substantial buildings open to the street, and set out with tables on which were ranged dishes of vegetables and curries and cakes, while in the background was a big cauldron of rice cooking over the fire. ”

“ Chinese food is no novelty to me, for during the five years that I was quartered in the Far East—at Penang, Singapore and Hong-Kong—I was frequently one of the guests at feasts given by Chinese merchants, and learned by experience which were the dishes that one could safely eat and which were the Chinese delicacies that it was wise to drop under the table. A Chinaman, when he wishes to be very polite at table, takes up with his chop-sticks some [Pg 346] especially dainty morsel from his own plate and pops it into the mouth of his European neighbour at table. ”

“ The setting-forth of my table with clean cloth and changes of plates was of never-failing interest to the crowds that darkened the front of the eating-house, and excitement reached a climax when the coolie, whom my cook had installed as helper,—there is no Chinese too poor to lack some one to do his bidding,—served Jack his midday meal of rice in his own dish. Then men stood on tiptoe and children climbed on each other's shoulders to see a dog fed like—the Chinese equivalent of Christian. ”

“ The profusion of food supplied at such a [Pg 33] dinner is certainly astonishing. The guests will take a taste here and there; but the greater part of it is sent back to the household and retainers. It is a popular mistake to believe that Chinese food is composed of unusual dishes. There are indeed birdsnest soup, shark fins, and ducks' kidneys, but the real excellence of Chinese cooking lies in the ability to prepare one thing, such as chicken, or fish, in innumerable ways, with endless varieties of crispness, consistency, and flavour. It is notable to what extent meat predominates. ”

“ Without any regard to precedence, which plays quite as important a part at a Chinese as at a western dinner-party. In China, however, the most honoured guest sits at (what may be called) the head of the table, the host at the foot. I say “what may be called,” as Chinese dining-tables are almost invariably square, and position alone determines which is the head and which the foot. They are usually made to accommodate eight persons; hence the fancy name “eight-angel table,” in allusion to the eight famous angels, or Immortals, of the Taoist religion. ”

“ The window of the drugstore just behind them was so covered with Chinese characters that no street number was visible. A sign on the adjoining building announced—in English—that tattooing was done on the premises, next door was a Chinese grocery whose windows were heaped high with strange items of food including a variety of dried fish and meat. A few steps beyond the grocery a blank wall was covered with large sheets of paper bearing freshly inked Chinese characters. Beneath them, in a cluster on the sidewalk, stood several Chinese huddled in warm coats. ”

“ Boys are active and unscrupulous, and crooked wires cost money. Balls of rice flour, fried in lard, are another favourite food of the streets, and sweetmeats of appalling stickiness and questionable preparation are always to be found in Chinese quarters. The morning crowd is always good-humoured, chaffing and laughing with a heartiness that explodes the European idea of Chinese stolidity and want of expression. ”

“ You can also have chicken, rice, and vegetables, and fruits, after the Chinese fashion. You can eat with your fingers if you like, or use knives and forks, or, if you desire to play the Chinaman, with the chop-sticks. In Chinatown the men and the women do not eat together. This is also the custom of China, and hence there is not what we look upon as an essential element of home-life—father and mother and children and guests, if there be such, gathered in a pleasant dining-room with the flow of edifying conversation and the exchange of courtesies. ”

“ The lady of China takes no part in her husband’s business or social life. Much of the business in China among the official and rich class is transacted socially, and the dinners are generally given at a tea-house or restaurant, or on the pleasure-boats kept for that purpose. Even the very finest of these entertainment-places are very shabby affairs, from a Western standpoint. They are also extremely dirty. The floors are made of unmatched boards that have never seen the scrubbing-brush, and the guests throw their fish-bones, cigarette-ends, etc., under the table. ”

“ This implies the general existence in China of a high degree of skill in the preparation of food. Poor and coarse as their food often is, insipid and even repulsive as it not infrequently seems to the foreigner, it is impossible not to recognise the fact that, in the cooking and serving of what they have, the Chinese are past-masters of the culinary art. ”

“ Many Chinamen, however, cannot stand even a small quantity of wine; and it is no uncommon thing when the feast is given at an eating-house, to hire one of the theatrical singing-boys to perform vicariously such heavy drinking as may be required by custom or exacted by forfeit. The sixteen small dishes above-mentioned remain on the table during the whole dinner and may be eaten of promiscuously between courses. ”

“ At dinner a rich man will offer his guest twenty-four or more dishes (always a multiple of 4) , four to six dishes being served at a time. Food is eaten from bowls and with chop-sticks (q.v.) and little porcelain spoons. Men dine by themselves when any guests are present; dinner parties are sometimes given by ladies to ladies. Chinese cookery is excellent; in the culinary art the Chinese are reputed to be second only to the French. ”

“ In their hands, held between their fingers, they become like a pair of pincers, with which they can pick up the smallest objects, and can eat rice-grains, beans, or peas as easily as they can separate the flakes of a fish from its skin, or remove the shell of a hard-boiled egg.
As to the ingredients of the dishes presented, we must frankly avow that by far the greater number were utterly unknown to us, for the Chinese cuisine, oddly enough, sets great store on making the materials unrecognizable, and altering their natural flavour by various recipes and culinary mysteries. ”

“ His furniture is scanty,—of the simplest kind, and constructed of the cheapest materials. In his culinary operations alone we observe an air of neatness and of cleanliness. It is here indeed that the Chinaman shines superior to all other Asiatics. Negligent of personal ornament, insensible to the advantages of comfortable lodging, he appears to entertain a just, nay, we may say, an exalted sense of the pleasures of good eating. To this end and aim are directed all his industry and ingenuity. The traveller who would judge of the comforts of the Chinese planter, must see him at his meals. ”

“ When we saw one huge slab donated by some Chinese in San Francisco, we did feel toward the intelligent, kindly people just as our cultured host and hostess put it, "Right at home with them."
The General Chamber of Commerce gave a dinner at the Asia Hotel to the businessmen of the party, while the Chinese ladies gave a twelve-course dinner on the top floor of one of their new skyscrapers. This is said to be the first time in Chinese history that the sheltered and seldom seen Chinese ladies of rank ever gave a dinner to any, traveling delegation. ”

“ The tea-gardens are in the centre of the town; we will go thither and rest. We might have dined with a hospitable townsman, where we could have been present at a theatrical entertainment, in which the Chinese delight like children. But a dinner in this country is a work of many hours; the list is very long of things that we should have to touch or eat. Chinese eat almost any thing ”