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Title details for Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle T. King - Wait list

Chop Fry Watch Learn

Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food

by Michelle T. King
Rebecca Lam
Audiobook
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In 1949, a young Chinese housewife arrived in Taiwan and transformed herself from a novice to a natural in the kitchen. She launched a career as a cookbook author and television cooking instructor. Years later, in America, flipping through her mother's copies of Fu Pei-mei's Chinese cookbooks, historian Michelle T. King discovered more than the recipes to meals of her childhood. She found, in Fu's story and in her food, a portal to another time, when a generation of middle-class, female home cooks navigated the postwar transformations taking place across the world.
In Chop Fry Watch Learn, King weaves together stories from her own family and contemporary oral history to present a remarkable argument for how understanding the story of Fu's life enables us to see Chinese food as both an inheritance of tradition and a truly modern creation. King reveals how and why, for audiences in Taiwan and around the world, Fu became the ultimate culinary touchstone: the figure against whom all other cooking authorities were measured.
And Fu's legacy continues. Informed by the voices of fans across generations, King illuminates the story of Chinese food from the inside. The result is a revelatory work, a rich banquet of past and present tastes that will resonate deeply for all of us looking for our histories in the kitchen.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 28, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9798855533996
      • File size: 244290 KB
      • Duration: 08:28:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from September 1, 2024

      King (Chinese gender and food history, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Between Birth and Death) offers a well-researched and charming biography of Chinese cook and culinary teacher Fu Pei-mei, whom the New York Times dubbed "the Julia Child of Chinese cooking" (though King points out that Fu's television career predated the American icon). Regardless of whether they are familiar with Fu, listeners will resonate with King's reference to Fu's "dialect of dumplings," which connects food, family, and history. King uses Fu's life and career as a jumping-off point into a fascinating exploration of family, nationalism, and gender roles. Fu's trajectory won her--and her fans as well--the independence they'd been seeking. She built herself from a woman who didn't know how to cook to an unstoppable force whose food and cookbooks comforted many. Rebecca Lam draws listeners in with her precise diction and engaging tone, mixing the lecture style of a favorite professor with the ease of a friend talking about their favorite subject. She sounds so connected to the subject matter that listeners might double-check that King isn't narrating the book herself. VERDICT A perfect example of how foodways are powerfully tied to all aspects of life and culture.--Matthew Galloway

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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