Chop Suey!

 This clueless tweet caught my eye.

Filipino and Indian restaurants are only a small portion of Asian restaurants in the US even though the communities’ populations account for nearly 40 percent of Asians in the US combined (via @InquirerUSA) https://t.co/iFVB7VZLuX

— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) September 19, 2023

 

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original article here,

quick what's wrong with this article?

Uh, they seem to think that only ethnic communities eat at their own ethnic restaurants. And they leave out the history of Chinese restaurants in the USA.

because of prejudice, many jobs were closed to the Chinese. True, they worked on the rail road etc. but were often banned from other good paying jobs like mining.

From scholars.org:

The vast majority of Chinese originally came to the United States from a small cluster of counties in Southern China, whose economic fortunes became tied to opportunities in North America after the 1849 Gold Rush in California. Young men went to the United States to work, sent money back to relatives in China, and periodically made temporary trips home. But this cycle of work and visits became much harder to execute after the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. ...Owners of particular businesses could obtain “merchant status,” which enabled them to enter the United States and sponsor relatives. After a 1915 court case granted these special immigration privileges to Chinese restaurant owners, entrepreneurial people in the United States and China opened restaurants as a way to bypass restrictions in U.S. immigration law. Flows of newcomers from China were diverted into the restaurant industry.

The number of Chinese restaurants in the United States exploded during the early twentieth-century. Between 1910 and 1920 the number of Chinese restaurants in New York City nearly quadrupled, and then more than doubled again over the next ten years.

what also helped? That the restaurants sold cheap food that was popular with non Chinese people in the area.

For example: wikipedia on the history of Chop Suey:

which tells of several myths of how this food was invented:

One account claims that it was invented by Chinese American cooks working on the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century. Another tale is that it was created during Qing Dynasty premier Li Hongzhang's visit to the United States in 1896 by his chef, who tried to create a meal suitable for both Chinese and American palates. Another story is that Li wandered to a local Chinese restaurant after the hotel kitchen had closed, where the chef, embarrassed that he had nothing ready to offer, came up with the new dish using scraps of leftovers.

so essentially it was a Chinese dish that was altered to American taste

as described in the song here:

 

That is from Flower Drum Song: 

Flower Drum Song became the first major Hollywood feature film to have a majority Asian-American cast in a contemporary Asian-American story.

of course, some of these Chinese in the movie were Japanese, but hey who can tell the difference? (/sarcasm)... 

and you might recognize the woman singing the song:

She is same woman who played Bloody Mary in South Pacific, Juanita Hall: an African American woman.

full movie here: