- 2 weeks ago
The interplay of the history of the Chinese in the United States, the history of Chinese food in the United States and the history explain why Los Angeles currently has the best Chinese food in America.
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00:00:03Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California's
00:00:10May Program Meeting, co-sponsored by the China Society of Southern California. So this is a
00:00:16program where we share perspective into Chinese American and Asian American history through
00:00:21different topics and areas of interest. My name is Victoria Hong, and I'm a member on the board
00:00:27of directors and will be your moderator this evening. So before we begin, I just wanted to share
00:00:33a few housekeeping items. This program is being recorded and will be available to view on CHSSE's
00:00:41YouTube channel after the event. There will be a brief Q&A session after the presentation portion
00:00:47and we invite you to bring your questions. The Q&A box is accessible on your Zoom screen, so
00:00:54throughout the program as questions arise, please submit them there and we can address them or
00:00:59direct them to our speaker at the end. And after the Q&A, this program will close out with a
00:01:05word
00:01:06about board elections from our CHSSE president, Eugene Moy. So let's begin. This evening we'll be
00:01:13diving into the topic of food. Specifically, we'll be looking at Chinese food in a program titled
00:01:19How Los Angeles Rose from Obscurity to Become the Chinese Food Capital of the United States.
00:01:26To talk more about Chinese food and its history, I want to introduce you to our speaker tonight.
00:01:31He has dined at over 8,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States to try as many as possible
00:01:37and has kept documentation of them on an Excel spreadsheet. In turn, he has also emerged as a food
00:01:45historian noting and capturing the evolution of Chinese restaurants over time. A Los Angeles native,
00:01:52a retired tax attorney. He's a writer and observer on Chinese food, its history, and the Chinese-American
00:02:00experience in America. He's also a founding member and a former member or founding member and former
00:02:06board member of CHSSE's Board of Directors. So please welcome David R. Chan.
00:02:14David R. Chan
00:02:15Okay. Thank you, Victoria. I am David R. Chan. And it's great being back here giving another
00:02:22monthly presentation to the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. Now, if you don't remember my
00:02:31last presentation, I don't mind. It was early in 1980 at the multipurpose room at the Kasselos School,
00:02:39where I gave a presentation entitled A Postcard View of Chinatown, where I spoke and displayed some
00:02:48historic Chinatown postcards. And as indicated, I'm one of the charter members, member number eight,
00:02:56former board of directors. And for several years, I represented CHSSE in many public appearances on
00:03:07historic and contemporary Chinese-American topics. I appeared on CBS Channel 2 back when the call
00:03:17letters were KNXT. I was the keynote speaker at the first Asian Pacific American
00:03:25Week Heritage Week commercial ever held in Chinatown. This was this very week back in 1979.
00:03:37And then early in the early 1980s, I dropped totally out of sight, thanks to two little kids and a
00:03:46increasingly difficult work schedule. And never to be heard from again, I thought, but due to an
00:03:53unusual series of circumstances, I'm back here. And I'm doing this presentation about the Chinese food
00:04:02and Los Angeles. Now, the second of my presentation is how Los Angeles has risen from obscurity to become
00:04:11the Chinese food capital of the United States. But how the story of how we got there involves the broader
00:04:22topics of the history of the Chinese in America, the history of Chinese food in the United States,
00:04:28the history of Los Angeles, and my own personal recollections and family background.
00:04:36We will learn that these seemingly collateral topics, in fact, form the heart of what the status of Chinese
00:04:42food is today, and why the food on balance is better here in LA than in San Francisco, New York,
00:04:50or anywhere else in the country. Now, today, Los Angeles is one of the great cities of the world.
00:04:57So to find it as being a leader in anything is not surprising. But Los Angeles also has the shortest
00:05:04history of any great world city. In that regard, it's really amazing that we've reached the point where we
00:05:16are as being the Chinese food capital of the United States. Indeed, you need to look no further than the
00:05:22historical Cantonese names for the cities in Los Angeles. Obviously, San Francisco is the big dog
00:05:31called Daifau, first city or the big city. So is Los Angeles, Yifau or second city? No, that title goes
00:05:39to
00:05:39Sacramento. Well, how about Somfau or third city? That's Stockton. And actually, as far as I know,
00:05:46there is no fourth city in the Cantonese lore. And even if there were, it would not be Los Angeles.
00:05:54And the Cantonese name for Los Angeles is merely Losang. To look at this from another angle,
00:06:02you all have heard of the Chinese massacre of 1871, where a mob of Caucasians and Mexicans rampaged
00:06:11through Chinatown, killing 19 people, 19 Chinese. Not surprisingly, that was the national news story of
00:06:20the day across the United States. But that was also the first time anybody outside California ever heard
00:06:27of Los Angeles. Obviously, news of the massacre resonated with the people back east, because
00:06:34their reaction was they thought they should send out missionaries to civilize the population.
00:06:42While the 1871 massacre put Los Angeles on the national map, however,
00:06:48it was a very small spot on that map, because at that time, the total population of Los Angeles was
00:06:56just 5000, not much bigger than the 4000 people in Santa Barbara or 3000 in San Bernardino. Certainly
00:07:04nothing to indicate that this would someday be the site of a world, world class city. In contrast,
00:07:12in 1870, San Francisco's population was already 150,000. And Los Angeles population was only increasing to 11,000 by
00:07:251880,
00:07:2650,000 by 1890, and 1900, it was still only 100,000, which, you know, just as an example, today,
00:07:36the population of Almaty is 100,000. Now, putting aside this historical background for now, let's turn to
00:07:51Chinese food. And I'm sure you, most of you either remember or at least had heard of 20th century, mid
00:07:5920th
00:08:00century Chinese American food, which is really the core of what still is considered to be Americanized
00:08:08Chinese food. It has been said that food was one giant joke foisted on the American public for over
00:08:18a century, because what Americans believed to be Chinese food was something that was totally
00:08:25unrecognizable to 99% of the people in China. Rather, that Chinese food was a historical accident
00:08:37tied to immigration patterns, United States immigration law, and demographic factors, which I will
00:08:46touch upon from in the rest of this presentation. Now, everybody knows that the Chinese came to America as
00:08:55part of the gold rush starting in 1849. What many people don't realize is that the Chinese fortune
00:09:04seekers did not come from all China, from all parts of China. Rather, they almost all came from one small
00:09:11region, basically several rural districts in or in and around Toisan County, in rural South China, about 60
00:09:22miles outside of the city formerly known as Canton. To show you what a teeny speck Toisan is on the
00:09:31face of
00:09:32China. Today, the population of Toisan is 1 million people. Contrast this to the current population of
00:09:39China of 1.4 billion. So even back in the gold rush days and today, almost nobody in China ever
00:09:51heard of Toisan.
00:09:53You know, I was in San Francisco, China recently, and I came across a restaurant called Beijing 49er. And I
00:10:02cringed because
00:10:03there were no Beijingers in the gold rush. And as far as I know, no Beijinger ever played football for
00:10:10the San
00:10:11Francisco 49ers. Now, there are three reasons for this narrowly concentrated migration of Chinese to the
00:10:20United States. First of all, economic and social conditions in rural South China were absolutely
00:10:29intolerable with famine and civil unrest, conditions that led people who were desperate to do something
00:10:38drastic, like go abroad to feed their families. Secondly, Canton was an international seaport.
00:10:45So the people in Toisan did have the access to go to the United States. And lastly, in fact,
00:10:51it was illegal for most residents of China to emigrate from the country. However, because Canton was so far from
00:11:00the
00:11:00country's capital in the city, formerly known as Peking, that that particular law was unenforceable.
00:11:08So for three decades, from the 1850s to the 1880s, large numbers of
00:11:16people migrated from Toisan to California in search of a better economic life, where they built the
00:11:25railroads and developed California's natural resources. It was said that in many of Toisan's
00:11:32villages, every adult male was in California. Now, because all these migrants in California were
00:11:41adult males, and they were in the workforce, their seeming presence in California was much
00:11:47greater than their actual numbers. And as their numbers grew, resentment and agitation
00:11:53in California against some group, predominantly from Irish and other European immigrants, who coined the
00:12:05catchphrase, the Chinese must go, which culminated in 1882 in the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act,
00:12:14when the United States, this law made it in effect until 1943. And under this law,
00:12:23basically became illegal for most residents of China, and in addition, Chinese residents of other
00:12:32countries to migrate to the United States. Now, the Chinese Exclusion Act did not completely
00:12:39cut off immigration from China to the United States. There were exemptions in the Exclusion Act for
00:12:47merchants, students, diplomats and clergy. In addition, Chinese born in the United States were American
00:12:55citizens, and not subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act. More importantly, the foreign-born children were also
00:13:04foreign-born children of American-born Chinese were American citizens, which is a very important fact.
00:13:19So, you did have continued immigration during the Exclusion period, but frankly, a good portion of it was illegal.
00:13:28And one source estimates that 90% of the Chinese immigrants during this time period were illegal.
00:13:36Most of these big migrants were so-called paper sons, who purchased the identity of either someone who
00:13:44was qualified to come to the United States or is more often the case, the identity of a non-existent
00:13:52person who qualified for the exemption. In any event, virtually all the migrants during the Exclusion period
00:14:02were either family or friends of the existing Chinese in the United States. The result is that for
00:14:11a century, almost the entirety of the Chinese community in the United States consisted of migrants
00:14:19from Toisan and their progeny. The importance of this fact cannot be overemphasized. Let me give you this
00:14:29reverse analogy to demonstrate. It would be as if every American resident in China came from the hills of West
00:14:38Virginia. With this background, it's easy to see where the joke lies. Chopped sui, sweet and sour pork,
00:14:49wu gu gu gai pan, egg foo young, egg drop soup were not the national dishes of China, but rather
00:14:59dishes that may have had roots in rural Toisan, but which were
00:15:05adapted to American ingredients and then also adapted to American taste when the American public started patronizing
00:15:15Chinese restaurants around the turn of the 20th century and other demographic factors, which I will get into.
00:15:31So, and while all stripes of Chinese foods are now found in the United States,
00:15:38this old version, distorted version of Chinese food is still the version that a good portion of the American
00:15:50public has until this day. Now, at this point, I have a confession to make. As a kid growing up
00:15:58in Los
00:15:58Angeles, I ate almost no Chinese food and hated what Chinese food I did eat. So you may wonder
00:16:12what makes me qualified to give this presentation today? Well, the answer is very simple. Your program
00:16:19director made a horrible, horrible mistake by inviting me to speak here today. In fact, recently,
00:16:27when somebody I knew way back when had heard that I was speaking and writing about Chinese food, they were
00:16:34incredulous. Or to quote them, David Chan speaking about Chinese food? Well,
00:16:43given that been a lot in an hour of speaking time, it's too late to turn back now.
00:16:50Seriously though, how I developed from someone issuing Chinese food to someone here today talking to you
00:16:59about Chinese food probably best illustrates the evolution of Chinese food in the United States over
00:17:06the years. And my personal recollections and family history are a critical part of this discussion.
00:17:14My grandfather Chan came to the United States from Toisan in 1880. Shortly after 1900,
00:17:24he brought his concubine to the United States in violation of the Chinese Exclusion Act because only
00:17:32his wife would have been qualified to come into the United States. My maternal grandfather Wong came to
00:17:41the United States in 1915 as a paper son. In 1920, he brought his wife to Los Angeles.
00:17:50All of which makes me the grandson of three illegal aliens, but no surprise based on the statistics that
00:17:58I just mentioned to you. When I was born in Los Angeles, the Chinese population was 5,000,
00:18:09most of whom, almost all of whom were Toisan. In comparison, there were 30,000 Japanese in Los Angeles.
00:18:17The total population of Los Angeles was 2 million, which meant that only one in every 400 Angeleno
00:18:25was Chinese. Today, there are roughly 600,000 Chinese in Los Angeles, not very many of whom are Toisan.
00:18:36Growing up as a kid in Los Angeles, in fact, I ate almost no Chinese food and hated it. When
00:18:46my parents
00:18:46took me to Chinese banquets, I would eat soy sauce and rice and nothing else. Now, in a way, I
00:18:54had a
00:18:55partial excuse because Los Angeles was such a minor Chinese community at that time that a lot of the
00:19:03really good dishes never made it down from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I mean, you compare the
00:19:085,000 Chinese in Los Angeles to the Chinese population in San Francisco at the time, which was
00:19:1575,000. Now, if you look at the census figures at the time, it doesn't show that large a population,
00:19:24but the census count of the Chinese is understated by multiples because there are so many illegal
00:19:33Chinese in San Francisco who did not want to be counted in the census. It's a very complicated
00:19:41subject, and the only thing I'll add about that is related to the 1908 earthquake.
00:19:49And let me explain that my experiences with Chinese food as a child were not quite as odd as they
00:20:00may
00:20:00strike you. That's because when the Los Angeles Chinese community was very small and the Chinese
00:20:09Exclusion Act was still in effect that I and most of my contemporaries were American-born and Americanized.
00:20:19Virtually all of my relatives, my parents, my parents' Chinese friends, my aunts and my uncles were all
00:20:31Americanized, born in the U.S. We ate very little Chinese food at home. My mom did not have a
00:20:38walk.
00:20:42When I was a boy, we didn't even celebrate Chinese New Year. At home, we didn't speak Chinese,
00:20:49largely because my parents' primary language was English, but also because my parents did not want
00:20:56me to learn Chinese because they felt if I learned Chinese, it might affect my ability to speak perfect
00:21:04English. And they knew that any excuse could be used back then to discriminate against you if you were
00:21:11Chinese. Now, this is not to say that American-born Chinese fit in with the greater community. Indeed,
00:21:20far from it. I mentioned my parents and my aunts and my uncles being American-born, but none of them,
00:21:29and back in their day, none of them bothered going to college, even if they could afford it,
00:21:34because there were no jobs available for Chinese college graduates. My dad graduated from college at
00:21:43age 33, and all my uncles graduated from college well after starting high school and only after World War II,
00:21:54which opened up a lot of economic opportunity for minorities and women.
00:22:07And even by the time I came along, there were still so few of us that were out of these.
00:22:14Even in 1970,
00:22:16when I took my first outside job for the summer, and after working a few weeks of working days there
00:22:24together, I mentioned to one of my fellow co-workers about my Chinese background. He said,
00:22:33you're Chinese? I thought you were Mexican. Stunned. I asked him why he thought I was Mexican,
00:22:41and his reply was very telling. Here's a guy born and raised in Los Angeles, and he tells me
00:22:47I was the first Chinese person he had met in his life. Okay, so how did we get from the
00:22:56point
00:22:56where Chinese food was this boring mutation that I refused to eat, to today's Chinese food scene,
00:23:03which fully represents the wonderful varieties of Chinese food that we have today? Well, not surprisingly,
00:23:12it all goes back to the immigration laws. As I mentioned, the Chinese exclusion law was
00:23:19repealed in 1943 as a work time accommodation to our ally China. But at that time, the American
00:23:29immigration law was based on a national origins quota system, meaning a country's immigration quota was
00:23:37based on the proportion of its residents currently in the US. Well, there were hardly any Chinese in the United
00:23:46States, so China was given a whopping annual immigration quota of 105. So really, Chinese exclusion was
00:23:57repealed in 1943, but that was more symbolic than real. It was really not until 1965 and the Immigration
00:24:06Reformation Reform Act when the National Origins Quota System was replaced. And in place of that was a new system
00:24:16where every country had the same maximum quota. As a result, China now had the same annual quota as Great
00:24:26Britain.
00:24:31Now, since the United States and mainland China were not on speaking terms at the time,
00:24:37the entire Chinese quota was used by migrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
00:24:45And the effect on Chinese food in America was immediate. Chinese-speaking immigrants from Hong Kong piled into and
00:24:55rejuvenated America's Chinatowns, bringing a new, different, delicious form of Chinese food, which supplanted the old
00:25:06peasant food that I disliked.
00:25:11Los Angeles Chinatown was especially transformed by this infusion because Los Angeles's original
00:25:20Chinatown was torn down in the 1930s to make way for the Union Station. So for decades, Los Angeles did
00:25:29not
00:25:30have a true traditional Chinatown. Yes, there was a replacement new Chinatown built on Hill Street North
00:25:38Broadway, but that was not a real and complete Chinatown because there were Chinese restaurants
00:25:46and gift shops and wishing wells, but there were hardly any residential areas because
00:25:55old Chinatown's residents had to vacate before the construction of new Chinatown and they were forced to
00:26:04disperse outside of Chinatown. Old Chinatown's residents largely moved to
00:26:15an area south of downtown adjacent to the Chinese founded city market produce
00:26:22terminal and then south to the East Adams area.
00:26:33What this did and resulted in the city market area being the real unsung Chinatown of the day, but
00:26:43a Chinatown that few people in Los Angeles knew existed. Meanwhile, with new Chinatown with very few Chinese residents
00:26:55effectively became an ethnic theme park, a theme park where the cast members went home someplace else at night.
00:27:08So essentially, Chinatown was an ethnic service trap and growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I have very
00:27:19few recollections of even going to Chinatown.
00:27:25Okay, that's the Cantonese. Meanwhile, the Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese did not come into Chinatown because they spoke Mandarin.
00:27:34They ended up in other locations. One alternative, a notable location was Manhattan, where the Taiwanese chefs opened up dozens,
00:27:48if not hundreds, of Chinese restaurants offering the very first glimpse of Hunan and Sichuan-style food,
00:28:00which had never before been seen in the United States. But this was a full Sichuan and a full Hunan
00:28:12-style food, because these Taiwanese chefs themselves had
00:28:20left China to decorate previously to go to Taiwan. So that removed the food, both time and space, by one
00:28:29degree. Plus, these chefs had been cooking for the military elite of Taiwan. So their repertoire was not Hunan-style
00:28:41food, and was obviously more elevated than the cuisine as a whole.
00:28:48So because these Taiwanese chefs opened up mostly in New York, which had no residents from Sichuan or Hunan, their
00:29:00primary clientele was Native New Yorkers.
00:29:03As a result, they had to change their food to the taste of these Native New Yorkers, leading to another
00:29:12degree of separation of the food from China to the United States.
00:29:21Now, the food created a sensation as Upper Manhattan went into the frenzy over all these new dishes, new ingredients,
00:29:35and new recipes, literally garnishing major news coverage in New York.
00:29:45Meanwhile, Middle America was being swept by full Hunan and full Sichuan dishes, such as hot and sour soup, sizzling
00:29:59rice soup, General Soul's chicken, Mushu pork, Kung Pao chicken, all added now to the pantheon of Chinese American dishes.
00:30:11Now, returning to my personal history, at the same time as the immigration law changes were occurring, I was going
00:30:20to school at UCLA.
00:30:21And in my last undergraduate semester, UCLA offered the very first Asian American studies course, tellingly entitled Orientals in America.
00:30:36And I was captivated by the topic of the Chinese, of the experience of the Chinese people in the United
00:30:42States, and the fact that we Chinese Americans had our own history.
00:30:47And this is one of the triggers that led to my lifetime study of Chinese food in the United States.
00:30:53And there were a couple other factors added, leading me down to the path of this other Chinese food.
00:31:00When I entered into the workforce in 1973, I made an acquaintance of friends who were originally from Hong Kong
00:31:11and Taiwan, and who had shown a passion for Chinese food, which I was totally unfamiliar with.
00:31:21My friends had been the vanguard of the first immigrants under the new immigration law, and they showed me where
00:31:32you can get this new brand of exciting Chinese food.
00:31:37This upgraded Chinese food sparked an interest in me, since it was so much better than what I was used
00:31:46to.
00:31:46And as I started to travel around the country, I made it a point to eat at Chinese restaurants, to
00:31:54the extent possible, as part of a greater interest in seeing Chinese communities and Chinese people throughout the United States.
00:32:04Now, even as Los Angeles began to grow as a center of Chinese community and cuisine in the 1980s, Chinese
00:32:15food in San Francisco was still superior.
00:32:20We, Chinese in Los Angeles, frequently spoke among ourselves about the newest Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, when we would
00:32:32go up there, and what dishes we would order when we got there.
00:32:42I remember one time, one morning, one Saturday morning, my wife and I got on a plane, flew to San
00:32:48Francisco, went to the latest and greatest Chinese restaurants there, had lunch, had dinner, and flew back down after dinner,
00:33:00same day.
00:33:01But San Francisco's culinary.
00:33:04But San Francisco's culinary dominance was about to end.
00:33:06And toward the end of the 1980s, me and my friends started talking about Chinese food in Manhattan, and how
00:33:17there are all these great new Chinese restaurants in New York, when we would go to New York, and what
00:33:24we would order when we got there.
00:33:28Now, New York wasn't a place where we could fly there and back in the same day.
00:33:34But we all decided that it was a place we had to visit, my wife and I, and flew to
00:33:39New York and back on an eating trip, and so did a lot of my friends.
00:33:50Interestingly, New York stayed at the top of the heat as Chinese food in the United States was short, but
00:33:58it did meet the end of San Francisco's dominance.
00:34:03Now, any jockeying for Chinese food supremacy in the United States became irrelevant due to one major event, and this
00:34:17was the impending transfer of Hong Kong from Hong Kong to China to 1997.
00:34:24And as the date got closer, anyone in Hong Kong had the ability to leave Hong Kong did so.
00:34:33And starting in the late 1980s, the primary destination for these expatriates from Hong Kong was Vancouver, not New York,
00:34:44Los Angeles, or San Francisco, because Canada was a less restrictive entry point for these migrants.
00:34:57Suddenly, Vancouver turned into the near culinary equivalent of Hong Kong.
00:35:05And now, nobody in the US talked about going anywhere in the United States to find Chinese food.
00:35:14All eyes are on Vancouver.
00:35:18All eyes are on Vancouver.
00:35:18When could we plan our next trip to Vancouver?
00:35:20What restaurants would we try?
00:35:22What would we order?
00:35:25The differential between Vancouver and the food here was so great that when I went to Vancouver to eat Chinese
00:35:33food, I literally did not bother to eat Chinese food back home for at least a month.
00:35:41Now, fortunately, not every great Chinese chef moved to Vancouver.
00:35:48A number of them came to Los Angeles and to San Francisco raising the local bar for Cantonese food.
00:35:56And more of these migrants made their way to Los Angeles and San Francisco such that in the early 1990s,
00:36:06LA passed New York and San Francisco for Chinese food supremacy.
00:36:15But ascension of Los Angeles to the top of the heap in the US was really meaningless because that was
00:36:22like being the biggest midget in a circus because you had the gym that was Vancouver on the other side
00:36:29of the border.
00:36:31On the other hand, despite Vancouver's food being so much better, unless you live someplace like Seattle, it's not like
00:36:44you could go there regularly to eat.
00:36:47And yes, I would not eat Chinese food in Los Angeles for a month after coming back from Vancouver.
00:36:56But yeah, I started eating Chinese food again.
00:36:58Consequently, the early 1990s were the start of a new golden age of Cantonese food in Los Angeles.
00:37:11With bigger Hong Kong-style seafood and dim sum places popping up capped by the 900 seat Ocean Stars seafood
00:37:21restaurant in Maui Park that opened in 1992.
00:37:26But even as the golden age for Cantonese food would go on for a couple of decades, the seeds of
00:37:38its demise were already being planted.
00:37:41Because in 1979, the United States and China resumed diplomatic relations.
00:37:48This, in turn, resulted in the first migration of non-Cantonese residents of mainland China to the United States.
00:38:02Initially, this first migration came from Shanghai and Beijing, such that by the mid-1980s you started to see Beijing
00:38:13and Shanghai-style Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles.
00:38:17Followed by a small number of even Hunan and Sichuan-style restaurants in the 1990s.
00:38:26But it wasn't until after the turn of the 21st century that you started to see migrants from the rest
00:38:36of China coming to San Gabriel, coming to the United States and bringing all the different regional variations of food
00:38:45here.
00:38:48So that's the timeline of the evolution of Chinese food in the United States and my thoughts about where the
00:38:59best food has been.
00:38:59But given my confession earlier in my presentation, really, you know, how do you believe what I could say?
00:39:12So let me tell you really why you can believe my points that I made.
00:39:21As I mentioned, it was meeting these co-workers at work who had such a history of high-quality Chinese
00:39:32food that changed my viewpoint of Chinese food.
00:39:37But my friends landed in a Chinese food desert.
00:39:42And so as each and every new Chinese food restaurant opened up over here, it was a really big event.
00:39:50And I heavily followed them as they tried out all the new restaurants.
00:39:55And it's not like these restaurants opened every day of the week.
00:40:00So as long as you open, you ate at the restaurants as they opened, you kept track of all of
00:40:06them.
00:40:07At some point in time, I discovered I needed to keep track of where I had eaten.
00:40:14So I developed my spreadsheet of Chinese restaurants that I had eaten at, which, as Victoria mentioned, numbers over 8
00:40:28,600.
00:40:29And it includes virtually every Chinese restaurant that has operated in the San Gabriel Valley over the last 50 years.
00:40:39And that's the time when the first authentic Chinese restaurant opened up in Monterey Park.
00:40:48And more fortunately, I had a job which enabled me to travel to visit every Chinese community in the country
00:41:01where I could taste all the food and I was able to compare the food in the various regions.
00:41:11So with that background, you know, I'm blessed with the ability of eating at a large number of Chinese restaurants
00:41:19and I'm able to compare all the restaurants.
00:41:23So let's look at why the Chinese food in L.A. is the best in the country.
00:41:32Strangely, a major factor is the decline of Cantonese food.
00:41:42For 150 years food, Cantonese food was synonymous with Chinese food in the United States.
00:41:52But all of a sudden, it became a second page, page two story, except that in right before the pandemic,
00:42:04the Los Angeles Times ran this story about how the iconic 900 seat Ocean Star restaurant in Monterey Park had
00:42:18gone out of business.
00:42:21That space was vacant for over a year.
00:42:26That space was vacant for over a year.
00:42:26During the pandemic, another large seafood palace named King Wah fell victim of the pandemic.
00:42:37It was vacant for a year when it was finally reopened as a Sichuanan nightclub.
00:42:45And then we had the pioneering upscale banquet hall that opened originally opened up in Monterey Park as Harbor Village,
00:42:56and that shut down and turned the entire three story mall into a giant white elephant.
00:43:03And then this year, we had five star free seafood in San Gabriel shutting, well, moving and merging with the
00:43:16banquet facility at the San Gabriel Hilton across the street.
00:43:24So right there, you have 2000 Chinese banquet seats taken out of circulation.
00:43:37The decline of Cantonese food is more starkly demonstrated by another statistic.
00:43:42In examining new Chinese restaurant openings in the San Gabriel Valley over the last decade, fewer than 10% are
00:43:51Cantonese.
00:43:51Not to say Cantonese food is only 10% of the total market because there are a lot of big
00:43:59Cantonese restaurants that don't turn over, but still clearly in today's Chinese communities all across America, non-Cantonese food is
00:44:14king.
00:44:15And in that regard, the breadth and depth of Cantonese regional cuisines is unmatched.
00:44:23Perhaps more, most importantly, mainland Chinese chains are pouring into Los Angeles, often setting up their first American branches here
00:44:34because this is a place to be.
00:44:36A decade ago, often setting up the first American branch here was the thing to do because this was the
00:44:47place to be.
00:44:50Now, the fact that a new Chinese restaurant is based in Sichuan or based somewhere else in mainland China is
00:44:59irrelevant because it's just no longer news.
00:45:03Another factor is how Los Angeles Chinese pioneers Chengdu taste and Sichuan impression in a decade turned Sichuan style Chinese
00:45:15food on its head by introducing modern Chinese Sichuan food to the United States and immediately gaining national attention.
00:45:24Essentially, they rewrote Sichuan style restaurant menus throughout the country, which had been established before the legalization of Sichuan peppercorns
00:45:39in the United States over 15 years ago.
00:45:44In addition, and maybe more, most important are the demographic factors.
00:45:52While Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York each have over 600,000 residents, only Los Angeles has the San
00:46:01Gabriel Valley.
00:46:02As described by Los Angeles Times food writer Lucas Juan Peterson in his video on Chinese food in the San
00:46:13Gabriel in which I made an appearance, the San Gabriel Valley is essentially a 200 square mile Chinatown chock full
00:46:21of every Chinese food available.
00:46:26Now, how the Chinese community established and grew in San Gabriel Valley is very interesting, but very little known and
00:46:35surprising.
00:46:37In the first half of the 20th century, Los Angeles was one of the most racially segregated cities in America
00:46:44when it came to housing patterns.
00:46:45Not to say Los Angeles was the most racist city.
00:46:50Not at all.
00:46:51Rather, it reflected a peculiar set of local circumstances.
00:46:56Los Angeles exploded in size in the early 20th century from 100,000 residents in 1900 to nearly 1.3
00:47:04million by 1930.
00:47:09Naturally, this meant the construction of a massive amount of housing in a short period of time.
00:47:16The dark side of this housing boom was that it happens to coincide with the rise of something called the
00:47:22racial restrictive covenant that swept across large American cities across the south,
00:47:31the largest American cities outside the south, including Los Angeles.
00:47:35And basically, most newly constructed houses in these cities now contained a deed restriction, which said the house could not
00:47:44be, could only be occupied by members of the Caucasian race.
00:47:48And if a non-Caucasian were to occupy the house other than as a domestic help, ownership of the property
00:47:57would revert to the original developer.
00:48:02Consequently, if you were Chinese, Japanese, Mexican or African American in Los Angeles, you were restricted to neighborhoods which were
00:48:12developed basically before 1915, which was a very small part of the housing stock in Los Angeles.
00:48:23Consequently, Chinese were mostly found on the east and south part of Los Angeles.
00:48:29Consequently, the racial restrictive covenant was nullified by the US Supreme Court in 1948, but racial discrimination continued past that
00:48:57point.
00:48:59Consequently, and be a part of a best demonstrated by a personal experience.
00:49:06In the early 1960s, I was in high school, and my parents had moved us to Crenshaw in the neighborhood
00:49:15of Los Angeles, where the which had been integrated after the 1948 Supreme Court decision.
00:49:26Consequently, so but now we wanted to move a couple miles away to a bigger house.
00:49:32So our real estate broker took us to a house two miles away, and he showed it to us.
00:49:38And after we saw the house, and after we saw the house, the broker took us aside and said, don't
00:49:45bother to make an offer on this house.
00:49:49All the neighbors on this block have made a pact not to sell to a non white and this is
00:49:55the background, which the San Gabriel Valley Chinatown was born, because the Japanese Americans were under the same housing restrictions.
00:50:08And there was a large Japanese American community just on the other side of the Monterey Park City line.
00:50:17So while the late 1950s, this neighborhood was condemned for the construction of the Pomona Freeway.
00:50:30So at the same time, these Japanese were looking for a new place to live, new housing developments were being
00:50:41constructed in Monterey Park.
00:50:42But Monterey Park was a white zone community and instead was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity in a
00:50:52sundown town three decades previously.
00:50:56Nevertheless, some of these Japanese inquired as to whether they could buy homes in the new tract.
00:51:02There were no existing neighbors in the tract to stop them, being the case with existing neighborhoods, and the builders
00:51:11are happy to sell their houses to buyers of all colors.
00:51:14So many Japanese bought new houses there.
00:51:18Shortly thereafter, in the early 1960s, another new tract appeared near a part of East LA, where there are a
00:51:25lot of Chinese Americans, El Sereno area.
00:51:33And same thing, Chinese asked if they could buy houses.
00:51:36Yes, they did.
00:51:37And by 1970, there were a couple thousand Chinese Americans, largely professionals, living in the hills of Monterey Park.
00:51:49At this time, this collided with the establishment of this Chinese community collided with a new immigration, and a young
00:52:01Taiwanese immigrant came to Monterey Park.
00:52:05He saw the suburban, nice suburban neighborhood with a couple thousand Chinese American residents, and he had a vision.
00:52:17And he went and marketed Monterey Park to buyers in China, buyers in Taiwan, and in Hong Kong, as the
00:52:30Hong Kong Beverly Hills.
00:52:32And it worked.
00:52:33And thanks to him, first Monterey Park, and then adjacent communities, moving San Gabriel, Arcadia, all the way out to
00:52:46Rhode Island Heights, ended up forming this great Chinese community.
00:52:56And the other large demographic point to point out is the existence of what's called the 6th to 6th generation.
00:53:09This is a generation of young Chinese American millennials and Gen X foodies who are looking for this, their next
00:53:21great meal.
00:53:23There's really, there's nothing in the other cities, nothing like this in New York and San Francisco.
00:53:34And just the fact that you have all these Chinese foodies really ups the ante and raises the quality of
00:53:44the Chinese food in this community.
00:53:47There's a lot more to be said, but I see I'm running out of time.
00:53:51So just thanks for the opportunity to give this presentation.
00:54:00Thank you so much, David.
00:54:03And I'm still sitting in awe with your 8,600 plus count number of restaurants.
00:54:10So I have some questions and I'm sure others do too after hearing everything you've just shared.
00:54:16And so let's transition to our Q&A portion.
00:54:19If you haven't already, feel free to type in your questions in the Q&A box on your Zoom screen
00:54:24and we'll try to answer them while we have David here on our program.
00:54:28And so on the topic of L.A. Chinatown, a question came in and it says, do you remember HK
00:54:37Low restaurant in L.A. Chinatown?
00:54:39Their father, the late Bill Hong, was the manager and Cantonese cuisine was served there.
00:54:46Right.
00:54:47Although it probably goes down in history.
00:54:52History is being more and more around known for punk rock.
00:54:55But yes.
00:54:56Yes.
00:54:58Yes.
00:54:59Yes.
00:55:00That's that was the scene of many, many, many community banquets in the 1960s.
00:55:10And then you had also mentioned your fortune of getting to travel for work and dining at restaurants all around.
00:55:18And we had a question come in.
00:55:19Did you eat in any Chinese restaurants in Rock Springs, Wyoming?
00:55:24Their family owned the new Grand Cafe there.
00:55:28Yes, I did, because I'm aware of the historic significance of Rock Springs.
00:55:37So when I was in, let's see, where was I?
00:55:43I was in Salt Lake City one year.
00:55:46And I took a side trip to Rock Springs.
00:55:49But it was it's on my list.
00:55:53It's a Chinese buffet.
00:55:56I don't remember the name, but yes, I have eaten Chinese food in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
00:56:03All right.
00:56:04So I've got a question.
00:56:05So this is tied more to the Chinese Historical Society.
00:56:09So back when the society began way in 1975.
00:56:15What moved you, David, to join the Historical Society and the board of directors?
00:56:22Well, well, as indicated, you know, I had been a studied the topic of Asian American studies at UCLA.
00:56:38And I enjoyed it so much that even after, you know, I took that class and I was going to
00:56:47law school, I spent most of my time reading about Chinese American topics rather than doing legal stuff.
00:56:56And it was just an extension of that.
00:56:58It was just a natural extension of what I was interested in.
00:57:05Another question regarding your spreadsheets.
00:57:08Do you rate the restaurants after eating there like on a numeric scale of some sort?
00:57:14Love to know what your spreadsheet tracks aside from the name and the location of the restaurant.
00:57:21It's basically just the name, location, year, and numerical, you know, cardinal order or, you know, this is number 8615
00:57:33or whatever.
00:57:36I mean, is there any way for either us to arrange for people to contact me offline?
00:57:43I could, they can ask questions, I could send them copies of the schedule.
00:57:49I think we can arrange for that.
00:57:52Well, we can touch base, David, after this, and we can find a way to have folks funnel in additional
00:58:00questions your way.
00:58:02We've got time for one last question here.
00:58:05So I see one that says, do you think these quote unquote six to six foodies are a largely positive
00:58:13thing for the Chinese community?
00:58:14Or do you think, do you think that these Chinese neighborhoods face the risk of gentrification?
00:58:28Well, I don't think there's any downside to six to six foodies, because that's the next generation of Chinese Americans,
00:58:38and they're connecting with their heritage.
00:58:40They're supporting the community.
00:58:45They're supporting the community.
00:58:46If, if, if any, as far as six to six area is concerned, if there's any gentrification, they're moving into
00:58:53parts of the San Gabriel Valley, which were not Chinese before.
00:58:58So it's expanding.
00:59:00So, yeah, I think it's all positive.
00:59:03Well, David, thank you so much for joining us this evening.
00:59:08Thank you for having me.
00:59:09You've spoken with so many historical facts and information to highlight for us the history of Chinese food in Los
00:59:15Angeles and in America, and just the connection to you and your family's experience.
00:59:20And over time, Los Angeles has certainly emerged as the epicenter of a Chinese cuisine in this country, not just
00:59:28in the sheer number of restaurants, but also in its diversity and reinvention.
00:59:33And what's even more nuanced is that the food and dishes don't just tell a story about the food, as
00:59:39you've shown us, but rather they're also stories of culture, of immigration, of community, identity and memory in a new
00:59:47space.
00:59:47So thank you so much again.
00:59:51All right.
00:59:52So I will now introduce our CHSSC President Eugene Moy to share a bit about our upcoming board elections.
00:59:59Eugene.
01:00:02Great.
01:00:03Hi.
01:00:03Is my audio coming through?
01:00:06Yes.
01:00:06Hello.
01:00:07Yeah.
01:00:07Great.
01:00:09But also, thank you, David, by the way.
01:00:11I've known you for many years and knew that you had quite a list, but now you've pushed past the
01:00:218,000 mark.
01:00:22What exactly?
01:00:23How many do you have, actually, right now?
01:00:268630-something.
01:00:298630.
01:00:30Okay.
01:00:30So that's a lot of food.
01:00:33But if I may, I'll ask one question.
01:00:37Do you like chop suey?
01:00:42Not at all.
01:00:47Well, actually, you know, so please bear with me, everyone.
01:00:53I happen to like chop suey because I'm the kind of guy who, at home, will throw a lot of
01:00:59things into the pot and mix it.
01:01:01And sometimes I come up with some interesting jambalayas.
01:01:05So this is what you do with chop suey.
01:01:08At least I do, anyway, with the sprouts.
01:01:11But one thing I'm going to announce our upcoming Yosemite trip for everyone.
01:01:19But one of the stops on the way to Yosemite is in Fresno, which formerly had a Chinatown.
01:01:28And there's an old cafe there right now that, at least in the recent past, I didn't go last year,
01:01:37but in the recent past, this cafe on either F or G Street in Fresno, Chinatown, sold chop suey omelets.
01:01:48And to me, I thought it was great.
01:01:53You know, so maybe I'm sure, David, maybe in your journeys, you've encountered places like that, that are kind of
01:02:02hybrid kinds of locations.
01:02:06You know, there are, I think, some Vietnamese brothers who run the place now, but to me, anyway, the chop
01:02:14suey omelets sure tasted good.
01:02:16Well, there's a chow mein sandwich.
01:02:20Right, right.
01:02:21And apparently, before that, there was a chop suey sandwich.
01:02:26Yeah.
01:02:27So if you like the flavor, well, you know, so food is all about flavor, right?
01:02:31And you, you know, whether it's the Chengdu, or the hot peppercorns, the numbing peppercorns, or the seasoning, the salt,
01:02:43or seafood aromas, you know, I think that's what we go for.
01:02:49By the way, thank you all to everyone attending today.
01:02:52I see, I think there were, at one point, there were 49 folks on the, on the, on the agenda
01:02:59here, on the attendee list.
01:03:02And many of you are longtime friends.
01:03:05And I, I love seeing all your names.
01:03:08I wish I could see you personally at some point soon.
01:03:16Perfect great.
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