Recipes: The Cooking of China was originally released as part of Time Life’s Foods Of The World series, where they created several cookbooks centered around a specific cultures’ food. These cookbooks were used to help introduce the American audience to foods from other places in the world, while still making the recipes simple to follow and limiting the exotic ingredients that would be hard to find during the 1960s to 1980s. By examining this cookbook as a historical text, we can find out more regarding the emergence and acceptance of Chinese cuisine during this time frame.

Chinese immigration in the United States of America can be roughly divided into three periods, the first being 1849 to 1882 which was largely sparked by the California Gold Rush but ended with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 ([1]). The second period is from 1882 to 1965, where immigration was exclusively available to diplomats, merchants and students ([2]). The third and most relevant time period for the context of this cookbook is from 1965 to the present ([3]).

At the beginning of the 19^th century, most Chinese restaurants were considered to be the locale of “rat-eaters”, and in general the American audience stayed far away from these locations. During the early 1920s, the main public sentiment was to “exclude and expel the Chinese from American soil on the grounds of their ‘nonassimilability’” ([1]). However, after the Second World War the Americans began to become more receptive of Chinese cuisine, although not without some difficulties. At this time, the Chinese as well as “ethnicity in general was made and made fun of” by the American peoples ([2]).

1943 marked the first time China was allowed to have people emigrate to the United States, being given an annual quota of 105 legal immigrants ([3]). These immigrants largely came from the Guangdong Province of China, mostly from rural areas. With them they brought the first tastes of American Chinese foods such as chop suey, chow mein, and won ton soup. They spoke a Chinese dialect known as Taishanese, which has since become one of the most spoken languages in Chinatowns in the United States and Canada.

The 1960s and 1970s brought about the first real change of views and a more authentic taste of Chinese cuisine to the Americas, since in 1965 the liberalization of American immigration policy was signed and sparked immigration from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China ([4]). The interest in Asian cuisine was further incited by President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972, which marked the first time an American President had visited China since 1949 ([5]). This is also the timeframe that this cookbook was released in, with the first copy of it coming out in 1968. With the growing popularity of Chinese cuisine, and a more authentic version of it compared to the early 19^th century, this cookbook was the perfect edition to start introducing Chinese dishes to home cooking.