I thought Chop Suey was Japanese but am no expert. In college I worked for a Chinese couple. They had come to the states and opened up their restaurant but had spend most of their adult lives in China. Had initially been in San Francisco, don't know how they ended up in Texas. It was a great experience. The menu (I was a waiter) had all the usual dishes that Americans eat at Chinese places. Mrs. Tung told me that your average Chinese person doesn't eat those dishes on a regular basis and that Chow Mein was an American creation, not Chinese. She and Mr. Tung and the children did not eat it. After work every night she would cook up something different. Not once was it something that I had seen or heard or ; and haven't to this day seen any of it again. She would prepare a main dish and place it in the middle of the table. The four of them would eat small portions of it with their rice. They held the little bowls and the chopsticks in their hands and ate bowl after bowl of white rice. I thought to myself that I were Chinese I would starve to death. Mrs. Tung was very odd, to me. Worked very hard. Small, with a round and totally Chinese featured face upon which she had a pair of black eyeglasses. Like the kind they wore in the fifties and sixties and even early seventies. I had some in junior high. Ugh. She smoked constantly and would have me bring her ice coffees throughout the shift. When she yelled at me, she would yell "gaosequan". I would enter the kitchen and there she would be, holding up her spoon, with the cigarette dangling from her mouth, yelling. I am sure the spelling for that is wrong but that is what she called me. She told me that in China the stick that stirs the shit is called that. Not very flattering, is it? I think of her affectionately now and I will always be her gaosequan. But darn, could that woman cook. In the summer with the tourist trade, because of the proximity of Palo Duro Canyon, it was always crowded. During the school year, we hardly had any customers, while the steakhouse down the road was packed everynight. It was disheartening for her. She put to bed, for me, most of the ideas I had about Chinese people.
mack
