Posted on 08/02/2004 3:31:08 PM PDT by swilhelm73
July 31, 2004 — Zuo Kuanxun wrinkles his face in skepticism, and you can hardly blame him. A foreign visitor has appeared without warning to inform him that his great-great-great grandfather - battlefield hero and crusher of rebellions against the imperial Qing court - is renowned on restaurant menus across the sea. Gen. Zuo Zongtang, a hometown legend in his south-central province of China, was the fiercest of 19th-century warriors. Yet today, most of America associates the late military strategist with a chicken. And a tasty one at that.
Odds are you know him as General Tso, General Chao, General Zhou, even General Ching - namesake of the succulent, sweet-spicy chunks of dark-meat chicken that features in most every Chinese restaurant in America but is almost entirely unknown in China itself.
General Tso/Zuo himself, however, is well known - decidedly real and born in 1812 in this tiny valley in Hunan province. And a bit of detective work turns up the fact that, indeed, there is an obscure Hunan chicken recipe that bears his name - though no one can say quite how that happened.
"We have chickens here. We make chicken. But it's nothing special," says Zuo, sitting in the shade of his open-front house a few yards from the general's old homestead. As he speaks, a hen wanders in. "You say millions of Americans are familiar with our ancestor?"
His son, Zuo Jingyou, offers this: "It's been forgotten here. We Zuos have all heard stories about it. But did it come from him? We don't know."
Chinese food in the United States is full of such anomalies. Dishes that Americans consider takeout-joint stalwarts leave mainland Chinese scratching their heads.
Chop suey? Describe it to anyone across the land and you get blank looks. Lake Tungting shrimp? There is a Lake Tungting - or Dongting, as they spell it - here in Hunan, and it does have big shrimp, but locals say it's not a recipe per se.
Duck sauce? It's brown and made with plums - nothing like that translucent orange stuff that's apparently neither for, nor made of, duck. In the Chinese capital, the sauce is served with julienned scallions and cucumber to be placed on wrap-up pancakes over succulent Beijing duck.
Don't even ask about fortune cookies. Though some Chinese vaguely remember a grandparent putting a secret message in a holiday cake, the notion of finding an aphorism like "Yesterday's enemy is tomorrow's ally" tucked inside one's dessert is utterly alien here.
"A Confucian saying inside a cookie? I've never heard of it, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea," says Chen Huanshun, a cooking teacher at the Beijing Economic and Trade Senior Technical School. "But," he sniffs, "putting a piece of paper inside a baked good doesn't sound too sanitary."
Why the differences? The Chinese food that first made an impression on Americans came from the south, because the earliest immigrants to the United States were Cantonese, from around Guangzhou near Hong Kong. Their less spicy cuisine became the standard for a generation of chow mein houses.
Among Cantonese contributions: chow mein (fried noodles), moo goo gai pan (mushrooms and chicken slices) and the universally loved wonton (literally, "swallowing clouds").
In the 1970s and 1980s, a new wave of immigrants with roots in Hunan and Sichuan (think "Szechwan") provinces - both homes to famous cuisines noted for their fragrant, spicy flavorings - opened restaurants in U.S. cities. But in case American palates weren't ready for such intricate fare, traditional recipes were modified to fit the market.
That happened with kungpao chicken, a fiery Sichuan dish that was tamed - some would say dumbed down - for an American audience.
"Every single family in Sichuan probably knows how to make it," says Yang Jianping, a taxi driver in Chengdu, the province's capital city. Then he gets animated.
"I'll tell you right now: I've never been to America, but I know that Sichuan food there is nothing like here. You have your tastes, we have ours," Yang says. "But I would probably take a bite of American kungpao chicken and spit it out."
One dish that emerged from the pack was General Tso's chicken. Though the recipe remains quite malleable - in some American restaurants the chicken is sweet and unbreaded, in others spicy or batter-fried - it was a hit and remains on virtually every American Chinese restaurant's list of "chef's specials."
This is somewhat bewildering to folks in the place that the general called home.
"You're telling me there's a chicken dish named in his memory?" says Geng Ermao, proprietress of a popular family-style restaurant in Changsha, the provincial capital. Her face wrinkles. "You say Americans who eat Chinese food are familiar with his name? I don't know of it, and you'd think I'd know."
Head north from Changsha, drive for about an hour and you'll reach Wenjialong, a verdant valley of tucked-away farms and small houses. Here, living quiet lives, are the remaining descendants of the general, who died in 1885.
Zuo Rensi, another great-great-great grandson, opens the decaying gate of his ancestor's courtyard home and leads visitors quietly into what was once the kitchen. He speaks quietly of the dish known here as "Zuo gongji," or "Zuo's rooster."
"I don't know if he created the dish or it was made for him," Zuo says. "But we all know about it. No one knows how to make it anymore, though."
Aside from his formidable military career - including campaigns to crush the famed Taiping Rebellion and an uprising in the predominantly Muslim western region of Xinjiang - Zuo was known for his belief that China needed to modernize to survive. His method: using tried-and-true Western innovations to improve upon Chinese traditions.
This is instructive when considering the global journey of General Tso's chicken. In a recent random sampling of more than a dozen restaurants in Hunan province, only one - near Changsha's main train station - offered Zuo's rooster on the menu.
What arrived was a melancholy mix of vegetables, shallots and greasy, scrawny pieces of chicken studded with perilous slivers of bone - a far cry from the juicy, boneless poultry chunks familiar to Americans.
- "Chinese are going all over the world, and they're taking their recipes with them. It can only get better and more professional," says Chen, the cooking-school instructor.
Usually, though, the Chinese version of Chinese food is far tastier than its American imitation. Not this time. And there's not a Zuo in town who can explain why.
"All the Zuos who could leave here left. Maybe they took it with them," says Zuo Jingyou, who doubts he will ever make it to America to sample the descendant of his ancestor's eponymous meal. "I don't know the story of the dish. I really wish I did."
Love the General chicken. Watch out for the little red peppers.
Cultural ping.
Or as they call it over there, "food."
Wonder how he feels about Snakehead Wine? Has a real snake's head in the bottle. Only in China.
Dang - ya got me craving it now. Oh well- time to call for delivery!
General Tso's Chicken....big kung pao bump for my favorite......
Chinese food in China is excellent, but very greasy.
that made me hungry
General Tso's Chicken! Yummmmm.
"Excuse me, waiter? I can only detect 3 varieties of snake in my 5 Snake Soup. Can you prove to me that there are actually 5 types of snakes in here?"
Actual comment made by a (white) friend of mine to a waiter. His Chinese wife was horrified. LOL. What a jokster.
I'm eating chow mein, shrimp toast and eggroll at the moment.
let the food wars begin! the best chinese food is served in san francisco, the best pizza in new york, the best mexican food is texas...
Your are what you eat?
Trivia: Anyone remember Ghetto-opoly? Well the parents of the guy who created that game are the people who run my local chinese restaurant. Sadly, they don't put peanuts in the Kung Pao anymore. I haven't had a good Kung Pao in years.
Possibly the worst most unauthentic Chinese food is found in Germany : they make it taste like a cross between sauerbraten and sauerkraut
but snake is an animal. and if it's an animal in china then it's edible
I'm sure there is a way to distinguish domestic Chinese cuisine in China from foreign cuisine, just as one can identify distinctly American food from cuisine borrowed from other cultures.
Let's not even get started on Mezcal!
". Things get mangled in the translation."
I know what you mean. Vietnamese run the local Taco Bell and Mexicans cook at the greek place nearby.
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