This is a transcription of “GOOD Chinese Food Revealed!“, dated April 9, 2008.

Nina: I didn’t bring you fortune cookies, but I did bring you the next best thing. They’re all butter haman-taschen. There you are! Happy Purim!

Nina: Hi, this is Nina Simonds, with Spices of Life, and today we’re in Chinatown to talk to a fascinating young woman, Jennifer Lee. We’re at one of my favorite restaurants. Jennifer is on tour, she’s written a terrific book called ‘The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.’ We want to ask Jennifer some questions. First of all, Jennifer, why are you obsessed with Chinese restaurants?

Jennifer: When I first started, I didn’t know. I just knew that I was obsessed with Chinese restaurants. To the point that I was willing to fly from Taiwan to Hong Kong for an afternoon to try General Tsao’s chicken, then fly back. And ultimately at the end, I think I was obsessed with Chinese restaurants – after visiting six continents and forty-two states – because it’s an allegory of who I am in America. It makes people think twice about what it means to be American, and the assumptions of what it means to be American. If our benchmark for ‘American’ is apple pie…

Nina: Apple pie! You talked to Stephen Colbert about apple pie!

(Clip from The Colbert Report)
Jennifer: Think of it this way, if our benchmark for American is apple pie, how often do you eat an apple pie?

Colbert: Every day, ma’am. I eat an entire apple pie before I come on this show.

Nina: Why do Jews eat Chinese food?

Jennifer: I love the Jews, because they love Chinese food, they read books, and they gather regularly at synagogues and JCC’s so you can go talk to them. So one of my chapters is called “Why is Chow Mein the Chosen Food of the Chosen People?” And I actually make the argument – sort of tongue-in-cheek – that Chinese food is the ethnic cuisine of the American Jew, that in a way, they identify with it more than the ethnic cuisine of their Eastern-European ancestors, like gefilte fish.

Nina: Are you willing to bet that?

Jennifer: Yeah. Oh yeah. I would actually even argue, that Christmas – which equals movies and Chinese food – is as much or more of a Jewish tradition than Seder on Passover.

Nina: Very good point. Being a Jew, I can totally identify with that.

Nina: You look for certain things in a good Chinese restaurant. Can you talk about that?

Jennifer: Here are a couple things. One, there’s Chinese actually on the menu. If the menu is all in English, that’s a bad sign. Two, chopsticks. If you have to ask for chopsticks, also a bad sign. And here are the chopsticks!

Nina: So it passed that!

Jennifer: But there’s no Chinese on the menu.

Nina: I know, I know we’re gonna flunk that one.

Jennifer: Lastly, charging for tea and rice – kind of wrong.

Nina: But I think you also say, you look for…

Jennifer: Chinese people! The book is dedicated to my parents, as I like to say it. If you read it, it says “To Mom and Dad who crossed an ocean so their kids could follow their dreams, and for all the other moms and dads who have done the same.” So the story of Chinese restaurant owners – it’s a lousy business generally, and they cook because they often have no choice. But as many of them told me, “we cook so that our children don’t have to.” So the idea is that the Chinese restaurant is their foothold into the American dream, and then someday their children can speak English.

Nina: Thank you Jennifer Lee! Everybody buy her book, ‘The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.”