Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

History, Cooking, Food & Wine

By John Jung

Publisher : Yin and Yang Press

ABOUT John Jung

John Jung
After a 40 year career as a Professor of Psychology, I pondered a question that I had avoided many times, namely, how did I, as a second-generation Chinese American fit in a black and white society in Macon, Georgia where we were the only Chinese in the entire city from the late '20s to ea More...


Sweet and Sour examines the history of Chinese family restaurants in the U. S. and Canada. Why did many Chinese immigrants enter this business around the end of the 19th century? What conditions made it possible for Chinese to open and succeed in operating restaurants after they emigrated to North America? How did Chinese restaurants manage to attract non-Chinese customers, given that they had little or no acquaintance with the Chinese style of food preparation and many had vicious hostility toward Chinese immigrants?
The goal of "Sweet and Sour" is to understand how the small Chinese family restaurants functioned. Narratives provided by 10 Chinese who grew up in their family restaurants in all parts of the North America provide valuable insights on the role that this ethnic business had on their lives.
What is the future for this type of immigrant enterprise in the modern world of franchised and corporate owned eateries or will it soon, like the Chinese laundry, be a relic of history?

The average American knows very little about the Chinese restaurant. The average Chinese knows equally little, perhaps just a little more. Louis Chu, 1939, p. I Chinese restaurants today are one of the most popular cuisines in the U. S. and many other countries, but this was not the case until after the end of World War II. The story of how Chinese immigrants started family-run restaurants and made them successful is a fascinating one especially since most of them were started by Chinese immigrants with little or no cooking or restaurant expertise in the rural villages they came from.






Haiming Liu, Professor of Ethnic and Women's Studies, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. "The Transnational History of a Chinese Family. Immigrant Letters, Family Business, and Reverse Migration," 2006.