The Sweet, Bitter, and Complex History of Chinese Food in America

When my father was in middle school in China in the 1960s, the students sometimes ate dry wheat buns representing the diets of the peasants and working class. The campaign was meant to help students “taste the bitterness, appreciate the sweetness”—to illustrate the poverty of 1940s China in contrast to the abundance of Chairman Mao’s regime.

My father grew up during a time of scarcity; as we sat around the dinner table in Philadelphia decades later, he often shared stores about his experiences. While some of them centered on hardship, many also revealed a sense of hybridity or resourcefulness, like my grandmother’s love of peanut butter with rice porridge. Sometimes I imagined that the mantou we ate for breakfast, steamed bread made out of wheat flour, was meant to teach us a similar lesson about the past.