It was May 1945 when what would become one of America’s most common home-cooking techniques first entered the English vocabulary. In her cookbook, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, 55-year-old Chinese immigrant Chao Yang Buwei described a process common in China, wherein cooks would cut meat and vegetables into small pieces and then tumble (翻) them rapidly together over heat. “The Chinese term for the technique, ch’ao, cannot be accurately translated into English,” Chao decided, “We shall call it ‘stir-fry’ for short.” The term has since taken on a life of its own. Nowadays, stir-frying isn’t just a method — “stir-fry” has become its own category of recipe.
Chao came to cooking unexpectedly. She moved to America with her husband in 1921 after her husband, the famed linguist Chao Yuenren, was offered a job at Harvard. Bored at home and only able to speak a little English, she turned to cooking dishes that reminded her of China. She eventually agreed when a friend earnestly persuaded her to write a cookbook, which was then translated by Chao’s daughter and polished up by her linguist husband.
Her cookbook succeeded, going into multiple printings by 1945. English-language Chinese cookbooks had been published as far back as 1911 in America, but Chao’s was the first that refused to Westernize Chinese cooking. “I’ll show you how to cook crab dishes with real crabs,” Chao told readers in a passage where she forbade them from-using sea crabs in place of the freshwater variety. Using the former, she reasoned, would result in “a caricature (夸张的描述) of the Chinese dish.” During Chao’s era, it might have been easier for foreign cooks in America to please the American taste with substitutions. She wore her Chinese heritage with pride. She didn’t follow suit.
Chao pioneered a new cooking method in America. Unwilling to compromise, she was a true visionary. Sadly, her death in 1981 didn’t make headlines despite her contributions to American food culture. Shortly thereafter even her name ended up falling through pop culture’s cracks.
【小题1】What can be learned about “chao”?| A．It is a recognized cooking method now. |
| B．It was accurately translated into “stir-fry” by Chao. |
| C．It means tumbling many big pieces of ingredients overheat. |
| D．It was a common term already used in American cooking before 1945. |
| A．She happened to take an interest in cooking. |
| B．She didn’t know any American way of cooking. |
| C．She was bored to stay at home only to learn English. |
| D．She missed her homeland and her country’s cuisine. |
| A．It was the first to be faithful to real Chinese cooking and recipes. |
| B．It was the most successful cookbook published on Chinese cooking. |
| C．It was the first to emphasize the use of freshwater crabs over sea crabs. |
| D．It tried to please the American tastes as other similar cookbooks. |
| A．Academic and unfailingly helpful. | B．Pioneering and culturally proud. |
| C．Recognized and linguistically talented. | D．Adaptable and technically achieved. |
