How a new wave of Chinese diaspora cookbook authors are exploring identity through recipes

Two different recipes for a dish published a century apart illustrate the importance of cookbooks in documenting the evolution of Chinese diaspora cooking. In his new cookbook Kung Food, Chinese-American chef Jon Kung highlights war su gai, or almond boneless chicken, a popular dish in Michigan, the US state where he grew up. In 1917, one of the first English-language Chinese cookbooks, The Chinese Cook Book, by Shiu Wong Chan, was published in New York. On page 35, there is a recipe for hung yuen guy ding – almond boneless chicken. But the dish bears little resemblance to the crispy battered chicken on shredded lettuce Kung writes about, known today as “ABC”. Recently, there has been a wave of cookbooks – from Betty Liu’s My Shanghai to The Woks Of Life by the Leung family behind the blog of the same name – by a new generation of Chinese diasporic food writers. Rather than merely telling the reader how to cook dishes, these writers focus on their identity. The diaspora cookbook is nothing new. During the 20th century in the United States and the UK, cookbook publications spiked during waves of Chinese immigration. The first American Chinese cookbooks appeared as early as the 1910s, after the first wave of Gold Rush immigrants led to Chinatowns and Chinese food being ingrained in the popular imagination. What is remarkable about Chan’s The Chinese Cook Book, which was written during this period, is the inclusion of comprehensive, technical Chinese recipes that most home cooks would not attempt today. These include fermented soy sauce, turtle soup and duck prepared in a traditional roasting oven. Perhaps these first compendiums were intended for Chinese immigrant housewives who had left behind the village support systems they had back home. Food and eating felt at times the only Chinese thing that I was fluent in Chinese-American cookbook author Jon Kung Another wave of cookbooks emerged after the US Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. It was around this time Buwei Yang Chao wrote How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (1945), which coined the phrases “stir fry” and “pot sticker”, and is widely considered one of the most influential English-language Chinese cookbooks. During the 1950s, Cantonese-speaking immigrants who arrived in the UK began to open popular Chinese takeaways, which led to some Chinese dishes becoming British staples. In the 1980s, Betty Crocker’s Chinese Cookbook from American food manufacturer General Mills, and figures like Eileen Yin-fei Lo and TV chefs Ken Hom and Martin Yan, made Chinese home cooking accessible to the masses in the US. So how has Chinese diasporic food writing evolved through all this? Leafing through cookbooks by the likes of Kung, Australian-Chinese chef Hetty Lui McKinnon and Kevin Pang, the former editorial director of documentary series America’s Test Kitchen, it becomes clear that the recipes are more than mere instructions. They make statements about the authors’ relationship to their Chineseness and challenge preconceived notions of what constitutes “authentic” Chinese food. “My identity is laid bare on the plate,” McKinnon says, describing her 2021 cookbook To Asia, With Love as a homecoming of sorts. The process of writing it, in which she drew on her childhood food memories, allowed her to confront her cultural confusion as a Chinese kid who only wanted to be seen as Australian. Kung also used food as a crutch. He says that, lacking language fluency, he turned to Chinese food as a cultural marker. “Food and eating felt at times the only Chinese thing that I was fluent in. Discovering that not only could it be a source of nostalgia but something that can culturally grow as I do was enlightening,” he says. Food was also a universal language for Pang. He says it was a “lingua franca my parents and I could finally speak without getting into an argument”. The Covid-19 pandemic led to a cookbook explosion as more people stuck inside took up home cooking, leading to a new generation of self-taught chefs. According to market research company Circana, cookbook sales rose by 16 per cent in the first year of the pandemic. Recognition came quickly for TikTok star George Lee – also known as Chez Jorge – whose 30-second videos regularly garner millions of views. In April, he published A-Gong’s Table: Vegan Recipes from a Taiwanese Home, based on memories of his a-gong, or grandfather. Lee’s book is just one example of a trend of writers pushing against a monolithic view of Chinese food. Cookbooks such as First Generation by Taiwanese-American Frankie Gaw, or Clarissa Wei’s Made In Taiwan, both focus on the uniqueness of Taiwanese cuisine. The increase in anti-Asian racism during the pandemic also affected diaspora cookbooks, leading authors to use defiant language in their titles. Joanna Hu and Rosheen Kaul’s 2022 cookbook Chinese-ish: Home cooking, not quite authentic, 100% delicious is an example. Another is Chinese Enough, the upcoming book from Kristina Cho in which Cantonese flavours are combined with Californian ingredients and a Midwestern sensibility. Then there is A Very Chinese Cookbook, by Pang and his son Jeffrey, which has the witty subtitle: 100 Recipes from China and Not China (But Still Really Chinese). The covers of these books make clear they are not intended for people who wish to challenge their authors on their identity or their recipes’ authenticity. The writers are candid about how they rejected their Chinese heritage as children, then in adulthood proudly embraced it on their own terms. In To Asia, With Love, McKinnon fuses traditional Chinese home cooking with twists inspired by her Australian childhood. The cookbook includes family favourites such as ketchup fried rice arancini and cacio e pepe udon, time-saving sheet pan noodles and her celebrated soy sauce brownies. Kung describes his dishes as “third culture” food that represents “something that is inclusive and full of possibilities”. In Kung Food, he points out how narrow definitions of fusion food are hypocritical; third-culture cooking is always fusion food. How to Cook and Eat in Chinese author Buwei Yang Chao touched on this issue in the reprinted 1947 edition of her cookbook, where she admits, “I had not dared to invade the field of American cookery by Sinicizing some American dishes”, before adding that her “Chinese-style roast turkey” was received surprisingly well. Central to contemporary Chinese cookbook authors’ embrace of their identity is identifying what is authentic Chinese cooking and what is not. A white person can write about Asian food but an Asian person can rarely write about other things Chinese-Australian chef Hetty Lui McKinnon, on inequality in the food-writing industry Pang admits that his family used to look down on the “gloopy, over-battered, sickly sweet stuff” that was known as American Chinese food, but says since then he has come to embrace it. Despite the evolution Chinese diaspora cooking has undergone, there are more similarities than differences between cookbook writers from different eras. Memoir elements have always been at the heart of the best diaspora cookbooks. From American author Grace Young and Eileen Yin-fei Lo – whose recipes are often prefaced with childhood memories and familial wisdom – to influential UK cookbook authors Yan Kit-so and Kenneth Lo, the art of storytelling has been key to successfully documenting and promoting Chinese cuisine in the West. What might the next iteration of diasporic Chinese cookbooks look like? Making identity the keystone of a recipe can be a double-edged sword; while publishers are more willing to commission diverse voices, these voices are often limited to sharing only their own lived experiences. “I don’t like how difficult it can be for ‘ethnic’ writers known for a specific cuisine to broaden our repertoires,” says Korean cookbook author Su Scott, the author of Rice Table (2022) and the forthcoming Pocha (2024). McKinnon says that “a white person can write about Asian food but an Asian person can rarely write about other things”, and that she would like to see “Chinese authors be given the space to write and cook whatever they want”. With international travel on the rise again following the pandemic, more diaspora chefs and writers are visiting Chinese communities around the world to enrich their own understanding of Chinese cuisine. Perhaps we can expect the spectrum of writing about food to widen, encompassing at one end technical manuals that geek out over pastry or roast meats and at the other celebrations of unusual cross-cultural exchanges. As Pang says, his story is “more universal than I thought. [As] an immigrant desperately wanting to fit into the culture […] I’ve had Mexican and Polish friends who’ve told me they could relate.” For as long as we champion diasporic identity, there will be a place on the shelf for the diaspora cookbook.

How a new wave of Chinese diaspora cookbook authors are exploring identity through recipes

From soy sauce brownies to Italian udon, a new wave of cookbooks offer tastes of the Asian diaspora while asking what it means to be Chinese