This week, I decided to try something different. Rather than write my routine food history blogpost, I interviewed Linh Trinh, who knows a lot more about Vietnamese food history than me. As some of you asked for phở resources, I steered the interview specifically in that direction. Linh was kind enough to supply her gorgeous pictures of phở and some excellent recipe resources. So don't forget to read her blog ! If you are a student enrolled in ASIAN 258, you can access a recording of our twenty-minute conversation on March 10, 2021 from Canvas. What follows below are the highlights of our exchange, which I have edited for concision and clarity. Miranda Brown: Thank you Linh for joining us in Food and Drink of Asia. Would you mind briefly introducing yourself to the class – and to all our unintended blog readers? Linh Trinh: Hello everyone and thank you for having me. I am a PhD student in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures [at the University of Michigan]. I research Sino-Vietnamese culinary connections. My new blog is a place where I share some exciting research, as well as introduce Vietnamese food and recipes to the English-speaking world. Miranda Brown: This week we’re getting to Vietnam belatedly. One of the main challenges of teaching Vietnamese food history is the dearth of English-language scholarship on the subject. So it’s great to hear from someone who not only knows Vietnamese food intimately, but also has the language chops to get us beyond the standard mythology. For many Americans, Vietnamese cuisine is familiar primarily through a few signature plates: bánh mì , spring/summer rolls , and phở. How do you feel about these foods dominating the popular American imagination of Vietnamese cuisine? Are there dishes that you wish got more attention from global eaters, and, if so, what would they be? Phở in Hanoi (Picture by Linh Trinh) More Phở (Picture by Linh Trinh) Linh Trinh: I think dishes like phở and spring rolls deserve global recognition, because they taste wonderful and are definitely staples in the Vietnamese diet. But if you limit yourself to those options, you're really missing out on a lot of good food. There are many other dishes that I would mention: Bún Thang , which is a chicken rice-noodle soup, and Bún Riêu , a crab-meat soup. There’s also savory crepes prepared with turmeric, which are called bánh xèo and Vietnamese beef steak, or bít tết as we call it in Vietnamese . The latter is really exciting (and totally *not* what you would think of when someone says 'steak.') Bún Thang in Hanoi (Picture by Linh Trinh) Bánh Xèo (Picture by Lou Buis, AS 258 Alumnus) Bánh Xèo in Chicago (Before Sofi) On a more controversial note: bánh mì , and phở are perhaps popular because they are "safe foods" -- they get attention because they are palatable to almost anyone. These recipe compose beef and bread, so how could you go wrong? It’s different from intestines and other foods [that Americans are wary of]. But people need to realize that Vietnam is a diverse country with a wide variety of regional cuisines. Miranda Brown: Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at how religious conversion and colonialism shaped Asian foodways. Specifically, we’ve paid a lot of attention to the Portuguese and English . Do you think that colonialism or religion is important for understanding Vietnamese food? If so, who were the actors? And what dishes show the influence of colonialism? Linh Trinh: French colonialism [from the 1880s to 1940s] wa s big. You can’t understand Vietnamese food without realizing how differently people ate before and after colonialism. Bread was heavily tested within the colonial spaces of Indochina [first with Portuguese missionaries and later French colonial settlers]. Originally, we got bánh mì from Europeans. It's now a very central Vietnamese dish. Another interesting theory is that it wasn't until the American presence in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War [1955-1975] that people began putting stuffing like meat pickles and sauces inside the bread. It used to be the case that you would take a bite from the bread and meat separately. This practice actually survives in the northern part of Vietnam. The problem with focusing solely on colonialism is that it leads to over-emphasizing the French contribution. The French are naturally famous for their cuisine. But there are other important dishes like bánh xèo , which has nothing to do with the French crepe (the process is similar; hence the comparison). This dish is also very popular in Cambodia and points to a different set of culinary influences than the French. Miranda Brown: In our reading this week, we look at how popular writer Micheal Garval talks about the origins of phở, which is now arguably the national dish of Vietnam. He has trouble settling on the origins of the recipe, however. He thinks there’s a chance that phở is a loan word from French: P ot-au-feux (beef stew) became phở in Vietnamese. He says this scenario makes sense, because the Vietnamese did not consume much beef before the French colonial period. Then he offers a second possibility: namely, that phở is a local adaptation of a Chinese rice noodle soup. He suggests that phở is just a loan word, from the Chinese word for rice vermicelli, fun 粉 [Mandarin: fen ]. Rice noodles (Jan 2021) In the past, when I lectured on this topic, I warned students away from the either/or approach. After all, many dishes [l ike Massaman curry ] have layers upon layers of diverse culinary influences. Or to use this week's new key word, layered influence ! Linh Trinh: The debate is old. Yes, the beef *is* an important tell. It's also true that the Vietnamese did not really "do" beef before the French. But there is a Vietnamese equivalent to pot-au-feux which is bò hầm khoai tây (beef stew with potatoes), and it’s nothing like phở. Also, the Vietnamese were eating rice noodles long before the nineteenth century [which rules out the possibility of a very recent Chinese origin of the soup noodle]. But this debate overlooks the broth, which is really important. It has fish sauce , an ingredient native to Vietnam. The broth also has aromatic spices like star anise, black cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and fennel seeds. The spices reflect the fact that Vietnam has a generous coastline: all the way from the border with China to the tip reaching out to Maritime Southeast Asia. [Like Thailand], Vietnam historically participated in the Indian Ocean Spice Trade . So in terms of other societies, we were influenced not only by the Chinese, French, and Portuguese , but also by folks in Southeast Asia and well beyond. What makes phở unique is the fact that it didn't emerge from a vacuum. It is better to acknowledge the deep layers of influence. Spices a la Spice Trade (Feb 2021) Miranda Brown: So you are telling us to pay more attention to the spices and the Indian Ocean trade route? This is a more exciting story that the usual tale of Chinese or French influence. Linh Trinh : I think so. The best thing about phở is *not* the beef or the noodle, but the spiced broth, which can be hard to replicate. Miranda Brown: Our audience is going to be super excited about that, because they not only want to learn the history behind a dish, but also the secret to making great phở. Let me end this interview with a silly question: what is your favorite Vietnamese dish? What else should be on the students' bucket list? Linh Trinh: Oh wow. I will probably disagree with myself and about a week. But I think it would be Bun Bo Hue . Recipe resources: I’ve asked Linh Trinh to provide us with guidance. For a bánh mì recipe, you should check out *her* blog, which will be the basis of the food lab next week! Since we discussed phở, she offers two recipe options. One is for the Instant Pot (and she recommends it), and the other is without. Linh also mentioned bánh xèo ; click here for a recipe that Thúy Anh Nguyễn , our Vietnamese language instructor in Asian Languages and Cultures, created for students last year. For a really funny video of some hiker/surfer dudes traveling to Cambodia to eat the Khmer version (ban chiao) of bánh xèo , click here and compare. Recipe Books and Cultural Background: Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Hot, Sour, Salt, Sweet: A Culinary Journal through Southeast Asia (Artisan, 2000). Charles Phan, Vietnamese Home Cooking: [A Cookbook]. Ten Speed Press, 2012. ------The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food [A Cookbook]. Ten Speed Press, 2014. Sources: Michael Garval, “ French or Phở ? in Wonders and Marvels: A Community for Curious Minds Who Love History, Its Odd Stories, and Good Reads.” Downloaded from http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2016/07/french-or-pho.html. Further reading: For Vietnam's place in the Indian Ocean Trade Route, see Kenneth R. Hall, A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), Chapter 2. For a possible culinary flow that went from Vietnam to China (as opposed to the reverse), see Chan Yuk Wah, "Banh Cuon and Cheung Fan: Searching for the Identity of the "Steamed Rice Roll," in Tan Chee Beng ed., Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond (NUS Press, Singapore, 2011), 156-71. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

This last week, my students from Food Crisis class did a final food preparation lab. This lab explored vegetarian and vegan alternatives to the meat-centered diet that we have been discussing all term, and we made two Chinese recipes: a Shanghainese vegan recipe made with braised gluten and a simple battered tofu recipe . Late Thursday night, however, I discovered that the Chinese market was out of dried gluten. Rather than admit defeat, I hopped onto the Chinese internet and found a recipe for making the dried gluten sponges from scratch. After experimenting with a few recipes, I have found one that I like. (The one that I drew the most inspiration was this one, from Xiachufang ). Ingredients: Vital wheat gluten (I use Anthony's): 200 grams Pastry flour: 50 grams plus 2 teaspoons Yeast: 1.5 teaspoon Sugar: 1/2 teaspoon Water: 330-350 mL, lukewarm about 110-115 degrees F Oil for brushing Equipment: Food scale (preferred) A mixer (optional) A big pot or steamer Saran wrap Process: Activate the yeast by adding it to a big mixing bowl with the sugar and 2 teaspoons of the pastry flour. Add the warm water, stir and let sit for ten minutes. Check to see that the yeast has "blossomed" (you'll know if you see a foam top). If it doesn't, start over again, or check the expiration date on your yeast package. Mix the gluten and remaining pastry flour together, then add to the yeast water solution. Stir with chopsticks or mixer attachment until it becomes a spongy mass. Brush a pot with oil, then add the spongy mass and cover (with saran wrap or an airtight cover). Let it rest in a warm place until it triples in size, between 1.5-2 hours. Prepare steamer. I usually put the gluten in a well-oiled bread pan, which I place into a big pot and add water. Steam for 35 minutes on medium. Do not open the lid; after the steaming is complete, allow the gluten to sit covered for 10 more minutes before uncovering. This prevents the gluten from collapsing. Remove gluten from pot or steamer and allow to cool completely. Use a knife to remove the gluten from the bread pan. If you are not using the gluten immediately, you can refrigerate for a day or two, or freeze it. For recipes that use gluten, check out this one from Yi reservation or from the Woks of Life . Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

A few weeks ago, a ghost from lockdown resurfaced as I was scrolling through Instagram. No, it wasn’t empty grocery shelves. Or the sight of people carrying away the last rolls of toilet paper, or even unhappy children logged onto school-issued iPads. Rather, it was an old story, and a persistent one at that: Churros come from China. Some well-intentioned vlogger had repeated this piece of mythology for the umpteenth time. The Portuguese in the sixteenth century had visited China and noticed people making youtiao , breakfast fritters. Impressed, they brought it back on their ships. An Iberian and Mexican classic was born, or so the story goes. I confess that I had to suppress the desire to reach out to him and send him a link to an old blog that I’d written—a blog intended to deflate the dreams of people who wanted to imagine fanciful connections. You may be wondering why I had written a blog on such a subject, or why I had a blog at all. My blog— chinesefoodhistory.org —had sprung to life during the pandemic. It was not intended to be a public blog per se. Rather, it was a desperate effort on the part of a professor teaching a large course on Asian foodways to students across the world during lockdown. I had decided to convert all of my eighty-minute lectures into blogs rather than subject several hundred already unhappy students to another dreadful Zoom lecture. The idea of writing a blog had been both a foolish and fateful decision. Foolish because I had underestimated the scope of the task. Fateful because that decision took my writing, and me, far out of the ivory tower. Overnight, I was talking to food lovers, journalists, and people around the world about food history. Together, we thought through far-flung culinary connections. Looking back, I miss that sense of community, even if I am happy that my daughter, now ten, is back in school and no longer taking out her pent-up energy by applying crayon and paint to our walls. From those conversations, the seed of a book— Dumpling Therapy , my forthcoming book with St. Martin’s Press—was born. *** Back to the churros. During lockdown, I’d written a long, scolding post about their supposed Chinese origins, lecturing harried journalists about shoddy research and Eurocentrism. My harangue fell on deaf ears. A few journalists called me to get the story right. But the myth persists. Why? Because I learned something crucial: you can’t kill a catchy story with critique alone. You need a better story. And there is a better story—one I forgot to tell in my indignation. One that was sitting right on my desk in a fourteenth-century recipe collection. Muslim Julabiya Recorded in a 14th-century Chinese almanac, Shilin guangji [Forest of Affairs, ca 1330] : Use mung bean starch and wheat flour to make a paste, then fry it in boiling oil until soft and cooked. Alternatively, omit the bean starch and use only flour mixed with honey or maltose syrup. Mix with cold water to form a paste. Now, this isn’t a perfect match for the modern churros. Churros require an extra step—the hot-water or cooked dough method (like choux pastry for éclairs). You cook the dough on the stovetop first, then pipe it into hot oil. But it’s a close relative in a far-flung pastry family called julabiya (Persian) or zulabiya (Arabic). In India, it’s jalebi. The pattern repeats: something piped through small holes into hot oil, then soaked in syrup. The medieval Chinese version resembles its Indian counterpart most closely. But it’s still related to churros. How do I know? Because the basic recipe—with the same name, to boot—appears in a Moorish Spanish cookbook, where it goes by zulabiya. Thanks to Charles Perry, we now have a translation of an anonymous thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook and can see this clearly: Preparation of Zulâbiyya Knead fine flour and add water little by little until the dough is slack. Let it be lighter than the dough for musahhada. Leave it in a pot near the fire until it rises. You will know it is done when you tap on the side of the pot with your finger. If you hear a thick, dense sound, it has risen. Then put a frying-pan on the fire with plenty of oil, and when the oil boils, take this runny batter and put it in a vessel with a pierced bottom… I suspect that this recipe represents a technological midpoint within the broader julabiya family. Here, the cook allows the batter to ferment gently in warmth, rather than relying on the hot-water, steam-driven method used for modern churros. At some point, the recipe matured into the hot-dough method—with its steaming and blasts of heat that gelatinize the starches. When exactly that happened is unclear, but today that innovation survives today as “zlabia banane” or “zlabia el banane” (banana zulabiya) in Algeria and Morocco. It’s a Ramadan favorite. My attempt to create a banana zlabia In Spain? It got a new name: churros . Here’s what this pastry tour taught me: The people claiming churros came from China weren’t entirely wrong—trade did broaden palates, and far-flung culinary connections are real. They just had the source wrong and the direction backward. And they drastically underestimated how deep those connections ran. Centuries before Portuguese ships reached China, Muslim traders traveled from al-Andalus and the Mediterranean to Alexandria and onward to Quanzhou in southern, coastal China—carrying their favorite fritters with them. Ming Dynasty Chinese Porcelain--and Reminder of China's Connections to the Muslim World In the early modern period, julabiya was enjoyed simultaneously across the globe: China, India, the Middle East, North Africa, and Moorish Spain. Granada in December 2014. A reminder of Spain's Muslim past. Photo by author. Those fritters found favor with fourteenth-century Chinese palates. Whether a version still survives somewhere in China, I don’t yet know—that would require another mad food history hunt. But I wouldn’t be surprised. So, no, the churros didn’t come from China. If anyone ever calls me, I’ll tell them that the truth is far more interesting. The cousin of the churros was once popular in China. It was called julabiya. That’s one food with legs. Like what you are reading? Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

In 2006, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao shared his dream. It was a future in which every Chinese person would have a pint of milk each day. Wen’s proposal met with skepticism from some quarters. Quartz , for instance, declared the plan crazy. Ninety percent of all Chinese, the author wrote, are “lactose malabsorbers.” It thus follows that they should avoid milk or risk turning China into the land of a billion farts. Cheese tea in a Beijing train station Recent studies, however, suggest that Premier Wen may actually be on to something. Most people in China can probably safely drink milk. To be fair, Quartz is right about one thing. Most Chinese are lactose malabsorbers. But the journalist should have asked: What is lactose malabsorption, and how is it different from lactose intolerant? In layman’s terms, a lactose mal-absorber is someone who has flunked a hydrogen breath test. The test measures not how well you digest actual milk, but whether your small intestine can absorb an enormous amount of lactose, the complex sugars in milk. To assess this, people in a study will typically fast overnight. The next morning, they gulp down 50 milliliters of a lactose solution. Then someone measures the hydrogen in their breath at regular intervals over several hours. If there is a lot of hydrogen in your breath, this means that you don’t produce enough lactase to break down the milk sugars. The undigested sugars sit in your colon, attracting carbohydrate-greedy bacteria. Once bacteria devour sugars, they give off hydrogen. Like the S.A.T., the hydrogen breath test can only tell you so much. It doesn’t predict how well someone handles a normal amount of milk in the real world. The average American currently drinks 200 ml of milk a day, or less than a cup. The lactose solution in a typical breath test, however, supplies the amount of lactose in four cups of milk. Think of the last time you had a quart of milk on an empty stomach – and in the space of ten minutes. Now remember the S.A.T. vocabulary section. How often do you use ‘somnambulist’? Plenty of people pass the hydrogen breath test with flying colors, but have t ummy troubles after drinking milk. The reverse is also true. According to the National Institute of Health , most mal-absorbers can tolerate a cup of milk each day without symptoms. A more recent study of Chinese adds grist to the mill. The researchers were careful to distinguish between lactose malabsorption and actual symptoms of lactose intolerance, such as diarrhea, cramping, and flatulence. They also experimented with giving their subjects different amounts of lactose. They found that 97% of healthy Chinese tolerated 10 grams of lactose (a cup of milk has about 12 grams). Seventy-eight percent had no issues with 20 grams. When they gave 40 grams to the subjects, though, the picture changed. Sixty-eight percent experienced symptoms. Researchers have also discovered that people tolerate milk better than lactose solutions. In fact, Quartz cited a study of school children in Mainland China, which showed exactly this. After swallowing the lactose solution, many youngsters had cramps and flatulence. A few got the runs. When the children received the same dose of lactose as powdered milk, however, the symptoms decreased sharply. A team of researchers working in Hong Kong noticed the same thing in 1992. They suggested ditching the lactose solutions. There is admittedly a lot we don’t know about lactose intolerance in China. Maybe one day we will know how many people in China can’t drink milk. Until then, Chinese will just have to trust their guts.

Vegetarianism was fashionable in the Song dynasty (960-1279). Many members of the ruling elite were devout Buddhists. They visited monasteries and hung out with monks, debating the finer points of scripture. Some refused to eat meat and eggs, equating such foods with murder. A few die-hards even swore off beer and wine. The strict diet presented a dilemma. Some devout Buddhists believed that animal products and alcohol were essential to good health. They complained that a plant-based diet left them sick and malnourished. Still others craved flesh and found themselves relapsing. Some of them occasionally ate animals that had died of natural causes. Cooks rose to the challenge of making a cruelty-free diet both appealing and satisfying. They stewed bamboo shoots and deep-fried peonies. Some of them experimented with preparing food with ghee, sesame oil, and yogurt. These rich garnishes injected much-needed richness into meals. Cooks also devised ingenious tricks for turning gluten into “turtles.” The efforts paid off. Foodies could not get enough of vegetarian food. Before long, restaurants sold meat-free snacks “ just like in monasteries .” Book sellers also catered to the demand for such foods. In response, they included vegetarian recipes in popular almanacs. The recipe below is from a fourteenth-century collection. Crunchy, complex, and creamy, the Buddhist bun is unlike anything I have eaten in Asia. If you are in the mood for ethical eating, this is a good place to start. A Buddhist bun -- yogurt sauce is poured through the holes Filling Recipe I have streamlined the recipe in the interest of time, selecting only the ingredients that give the steamed buns their distinctive taste. The bun is virtually a mean in itself Gluten, ½ cup Fresh cheese, 2/3 cup (you can use crumbled paneer, strained ricotta, queso fresco , or mascarpone). For a Chinese recipe, click here. Mushrooms, 1/3 cup Wood ears, 1/3 cup Bamboo shoots, 1/3 cup (omit if brined or canned) Dried persimmon, 1 fruit Lotus root, 1/3 cup Chinese yam, de-skinned (or substitute jicama or water chestnuts), 1/3 cup Walnuts, 1/3 cup (de-skinned) Spinach (1/3 cup) Chinese celery, 1/3 cup (optional; do not substitute regular celery) Chinese sweet wheat sauce, ¼ to 1/3 cup Honey, 1 Tablespoon Sesame oil 1. Follow this recipe to make the dough for the bun. 2. While the dough rises, prepare the filling. If using dried gluten and wood ears, you will need to soak these ahead of time. 3. Strain any excess liquid from the ingredients. Mince and mix in a bowl. 4. Add the seasoning, adjusting the amount of honey and sauce according to taste. Drizzle in a little sesame oil. 5. Fill the buns. Be sure to roll the dough out thick. The final product should be a sturdy, fluffy bun like char siu bao. Also leave an opening at the top of the bun. 6. While the buns steam, prepare the yogurt sauce. Mix yogurt with a little mild rice vinegar, diluted in water. Adjust sourness to taste. 7. When the buns are ready, drizzle the yogurt sauce into the holes of the buns.

You don’t need to see it, because you can guess the plot. Ramen Girl (2008) is a cross between Karate Kid (1984), Tampopo (1985), Lost in Translation (2003), and your standard rom com. The story goes as follows. American girl (the late Brittany Murphy ) meets boy and trails him to Japan. Boy dumps girl. Girl drowns her sorrows in a bowl of ramen. Then she finds herself. She apprentices with a tough Japanese ramen chef, discovers the beauty of traditional Japanese culture, gets a career, and wins a boyfriend upgrade. A gorgeous native man becomes the trailing spouse. Tokyo Ramen with Butter (Source: E. Brightwell) More Tokyo Ramen (E. Brightwell) Prof Brightwell with Ramen (Brightwell) Critics predictably pounced on the Hollywood flop. The script writing was the least of its problems, however. Viewers objected to the way the director represented Japanese culture. Let’s face it, the poster with Brittany Murphy in a short red kimono (bathrobe?) is cringe worthy. But as a historian and career glutton, the crappy cultural politics were not the only thing I noticed. I was stuck on the noodles and the question: How did ramen come to exemplify traditional Japanese culture? On the face of things, this isn't a hard question to answer. Food writers often refer to ramen as the national dish of Japan. Like sushi (the other contender), the soup noodle is a common feature in Japanese life. Experts estimate there are 10,000 ramen shops in Tokyo alone. The fad is not just a Japanese phenomenon. The artsy form of the instant noodle has also taken the US by storm. If you’ve been to Slurping Turtle , you’re aware of how pricey it can be, too. Don’t complain. It’s worse on the East Coast. Slurping a bowl of the stuff in Hell’s Kitchen or the Lower East Side will set you back twenty bucks. ***** Like most national dishes, ramen has a convoluted history. It began its career as something else. As with pad Thai or lumpia , ramen was once a Chinese dish. In the eighteenth century, Japanese called it Shina soba (Chinese soba). After the Second World War, the noodles went instead by Chuka soba (Chinese soba). If you haven’t already guessed, Shina was -- and remains -- a slur. The slur, though, tells us loads. It reveals that ramen had its roots in China and that it owes a lot to some ugly politics. Here, I am not talking about bathrobes, but rather large-scale violence and imperialism. The Chinese progenitor to ramen is a pork broth noodle. The Chinese still regularly serve noodles in soup, and in the south, pork remains a staple of the diet. The Chinese word for meat, in fact, is synonymous with pork. The wheat noodles , needless to say, have a long history in the Middle Kingdom. So how did a fairly common Chinese noodle find its way to Japan and become the national dish? For an answer, we have to go back a couple of centuries, to the southern prefecture of Nagasaki. Nagasaki should ring a bell. Catholic missionaries and Portuguese traders introduced Iberian foodways and New World ingredients to Japanese consumers first in Nagasaki. Remember castella, confeito, tempura, and kabocha? As we learned before, the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) took a hard line on Catholic missionaries. In hindsight, this proved to be a wise decision. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Iberians had a distinct taste for conquest. Think Goa, Macau, and Manila . The Spanish and Portuguese also made a habit of bringing the Inquisition with them. But the Portuguese were not the last foreigners to set foot in Nagasaki. The Dutch were there, too. So were the Chinese. Chinese merchants flocked to Nagasaki in the seventeenth century. By 1688, one fifth of the city’s population was Chinese. Out of the 194 ships that docked in the harbor that year, 117 were from the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese, however, were not free to mix and mingle with the natives. The shogunate strongly preferred that they live apart from the Japanese, in Chinatown. There, Chinese sojourners abided by their own customs. Governments, however, can only do so much. As we know, good food has trouble staying put. Curious Japanese men wandered into the Nagasaki Chinatown and watched the merchants feast, copying down their menus. They were struck by the Chinese manner of consuming food. Family style offered a contrast to the Japanese way of serving each person a separate portion. Japanese observers also noticed that the Chinese ate a decent amount of meat – especially mutton and pork. At some point, a few of them tried the pork soup noodles and began making a version of “Chinese soba.” For details, read Kushner! Nagasaki Ramen (E. Brightwell) “Chinese soba” was something of a late bloomer. It did not immediately appeal to the Japanese mainstream. It was too fatty and meat-laden. The cultural matrix had to first change. For this, of course, war and occupation played a decisive role. Two events in particular had a hand in changing ramen’s fortunes. The first was the Meiji restoration (1868-1912). This was in the wake of Commodore Perry’s forced opening of Japan to the West in 1853 (a series of unequal treaties followed in the decade to come). The young guns who toppled the Tokugawa shogunate and took command wanted to understand Western imperialists better. So they went on tours of the world. One of the things that struck them was how tall the British and Germans were. They wondered if height -- and Western dietary habits -- was the secret of European dominance. This was also the heyday of Social Darwinism . Our reformers thus kept notes of what these Westerners consumed. The copious bread, milk, and meat caught their attention. Was this the secret to keeping Japan safe? In an effort to improve the “fitness” of the nation, the Meiji modernizers pushed high-protein foods. One of them, Fukuzawa Yukich i (1835-1901) wrote a political treatise in 1870. You can guess the thesis from the title, “We Must Eat Meat!” The campaign to push wheat, meat, and milk was a flop. It worked up to a point with conscripts in the army -- but the general public remained unconvinced. Still, the movement paved the way for greater acceptance of ramen, which had two of these elements . What is more, “Chinese soba” could be adjusted to fit local tastes. Soup noodles were not as alien to the Japanese mouth as bread or beef roast. Plus, noodles had a long history in Japan: there was soba, or buckwheat noodles, and chewy udon. Not surprisingly, cooks began to adapt “Chinese soba” to Japanese tastes. They added fermented miso paste to give the stock an extra umami kick. What a classic example of local adaptation ! Udon on a Mountain top (E. Brightwell) More Udon (E. Brightwell) The second push, however, came later. The U.S. occupation (1946-1952) altered the Japanese cultural matrix (more details forthcoming in the next blog). If you haven’t noticed, there are close connections between cuisine and violence. Instant ramen eaters around the world have the Yanks in part to thank – or to blame. Again, my discussion borrows from Kushner. During the Cold War, the Americans offered “assistance” to the Japanese in the form of wheat shipments. They tried teaching Japanese women how to bake bread in the hopes that the Japanese would ditch the rice. That predictably went nowhere. But what to do about the surplus wheat? Fortunately, Andō Momofuku (1912-2008) had other ideas. ***** First, some background: Despite his Japanese-sounding name, Andō was not from Japan. He was an ethnic Chinese born in Japanese-controlled Taiwan. His original name was Wu Baifu. At some point, he spent time in prison for tax evasion and struggled with getting his career off the ground (things were tough in post-war Asia). Andō, though, had two things going for him. The first was his wife. He married a Japanese woman, acquired Japanese citizenship, and changed his last name to hers. The second was his knowledge of food. As someone who grew up in Taiwan, Andō was familiar with how pork noodles were prepared. He also knew, for example, that ramen was very time-consuming to make. So he came up with a method of mass producing -- and preserving -- ramen: quickly deep-frying it. He learned you could soften a brick of fried ramen without sacrificing the noodle’s springiness by immersing it in hot liquid for a few minutes. This trick was inspired by tempura . Tempura loses its crunchy texture when it swims in ponzu sauce. (Yes, there is a Portuguese layer to ramen, too). Andō’s corporation, Nissin, was born from this insight. ***** Is it right for Japanese people to claim ramen as the national dish? Here, I'll give you my opinion -- 'yes.' Ramen is now a part of everyday Japanese life. It has become a vehicle for Japanese chefs to express themselves. It is a dish that is currently an object of Japanese cultural pride. So, of course, it is Japanese. Much the way that dumpling is Chinese, Armenian, Korean, and Turkish, and pizza is quintessentially American. But like many 'national' dishes, ramen was not the brainchild of any single culture or people. It was a group lift. Its incomparable texture and flavor brought together the efforts of people spread across space and time: from the Portuguese missionaries to the Chinese missionaries to the Japanese imperialists to the American occupiers. And Andō: an ethnic Chinese man with Japanese citizenship and a criminal record! Each of them contributed something to that dish. So the next time you have a bowl of the stuff (instant or otherwise), take a minute and remember all of the people who brought you this umami bomb. You’ll find that it’s a decent-sized list. Experiences with ramen you would like to share? See you on YellowDig? Recipe resources: Ramen is very time consuming to make! Most of my friends who like Japanese food usually wait until they can go to a good noodle shop. However, if you plan to be at home, this can be a good way of passing the time and improving your cooking skills. As usual, I recommend JustOneCookbook, which has a miso ramen recipe (one of my favorites). Source: Barak Kushner, Slurp! a Social and Culinary History of Ramen - Japan's Favorite Noodle Soup (2012) Further reading: George Solt, The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze (Berkeley, 2014). Eric Rath, Japan's Cuisines: Food, Place, and Identity (Reaktion Books, 2016).

If you’re like me, you're probably not going out much these days. So let’s fantasize about the places we might travel if we were suddenly free to move about. Imagine that money’s no object. Say we are flying out business class, to a densely-populated Japanese city for a meal. What would you have? Many of you would go for sushi (that’s a different blog, and we can return to Tokyo next week). Others would scarf down a nice piece of steak. Some kobe beef 神戸ビーフ? Or perhaps yakiniku 焼肉? Guess what this is? If you decided to take the plunge and go for the beef, you would not have to worry about your gourmand credentials. (Your green reputation, however, might suffer.) Japanese beef is renowned and many Japanese dishes are made with it. Think of the stews ( sukiyaki , gyûnabe ). Let’s face it: wagyu cuts are pricey. They are sometimes served in fusion restaurants with chimichurri sauce. If you are in a more adventurous mood, you might taste the Japanese beef tartare , served up with a raw egg. After all, there’s no danger of food poisoning in fantasy land. The tour is a teaser. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m telling you that the Japanese eat a fair amount of beef these days. Of course, Team America has them beat. But if we think per capita , then the Americans trail Uruguay, Argentina, and Hong Kong (yes, Hong Kong ). While Japan doesn’t make it to the top ten, kobe beef and yakiniku are nonetheless remarkable foods. They’re not only tasty, but also recent additions to Japanese cuisine. Japan’s meat consumption, in fact, has risen sharply since the early twentieth century. In 1955, the average person consumed about 3 kilograms of meat. Do the math: a kilo is 2.2 pounds. In 2017, that figure was 54.7 kilos. If we scrutinize the numbers , it’s clear that beef makes up under 20 percent of the total. The rest is poultry and pork. So how, then, did the Japanese become carnivores? The question is worth asking. As we saw in a previous lecture, the cultural matrix discouraged meat consumption. Japanese versions of carne de vinha d'alhos faded from the diets soon after the Portuguese went running . People in the homeland of wagyu steaks once avoided beef assiduously. There are, of course, the usual suspects in our story: the Meiji reformers (1868-1912) and the American occupiers (1946-1952). This food puzzle, though, requires introducing a new set of actors. Ethnic Koreans, stranded in post-war Japan, had a starring role in this tale of dietary transformation. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s back up for a moment, to the late nineteenth century. As you read on earlier, the Meiji reformers were hell bent on getting Japan on the fast track to modernization. This meant changing a lot about Japanese society and embracing novel ways of doing things – and, of course, getting people to consume new foods. Meat -- and particularly pork -- was among them. Sometimes, the pork turned up in the ramen (“Chinese soba”). But other times, it surfaced in Japanese interpretations of German dishes. Take tonkatsu , or pork cutlets breaded in panko. Yes, it’s often served on a bed of rice and consumed with chopsticks. But it’s a dead ringer for its ancestor: Schnitzel. Gourmet version of pork cutlets at Mabel Gray Tonkatsu also has a cousin. Heard of hambāgu ハンバーグ? It’s a loan word from the German, not the American (I mean English). Hambāgu comprises pork, beef, and panko. Don’t confuse it with pure beef hamburger ( hambaga ). The bun-sandwiched patty came later, with th e Yankees . Hambāgu , in contrast, is older. You can serve it with rice, miso soup, and chopsticks. Some cookbooks classify hambāgu as washoku (Japanese-styled cuisine) rather than yōshoku 洋食 (foods of recent Western origin). To be sure, Western foods made their way to Japan in the late nineteenth century. But the Meiji Japanese adoption of Western foods was limited. It fell more on the piecemeal side of the scale. Yes, you got a version of the Waldorf salad and some Schnitzel at the turn of the twentieth century. But the seismic shift in diet took place later. Post-war scarcity led to a more wholesale change in the cultural matrix . This change not only involved the introduction of new foods and ingredients, but also challenged long standing values . It prompted an overhaul of the social contexts of eating. To appreciate the magnitude of the change, we must remember who made up the Japanese empire. By 1895, the Japanese were as modern as their Western counterparts. By modern, I mean that they had acquired a talent for conquest and colonialism, as well as industrial production. The year 1895 marked the end of the First Sino-Japanese War. It was an upset victory for the Japanese navy. No one in the West expected them to win a fight with the Chinese (this is how Japan took over Taiwan ). For this feat, Japan not only received an upgrade in its global status, but Western imperialists also welcomed Japan to their ranks. Japan annexed Korea (officially) in 1910. Ethnic Koreans now found themselves Japanese imperial subjects. Conscripted into the Japanese army, they moved around the enlarging empire. Many went to Japan in the early twentieth century, as forced laborers. By 1930, there were almost 300,000 Koreans in Japan. By 1940, there were a million. Another million came in the next five years, brought to offset the labor shortages. Not all of these people, of course, departed Japan at the end of the war. There were 600,000 Koreans who remained in Japan in 1946. I encountered their descendants as a study-abroad student in Hokkaido (summer 1998). The colonial experience naturally left its mark on Korean cuisine. Take gimbap or kimbap . It’s a local version of futomaki (sushi rolls). Korean beef also shaped Japanese foodways. Today, the Korean love of the meat is world famous. It, too, has a back story, being a legacy of an earlier conquest. The Mongol overlords not only brought dumplings ( mandu ) to the Koreans, but also BBQ. The Koreans did not turn the Japanese into beef (or kimchi ) lovers overnight, however. Before 1940, Korean food was virtually unknown to the Japanese population. Korean restaurants in Japan were few and far between; social prejudice, moreover, was rampant. As you might expect, the Japanese looked down upon the Koreans. Food scarcity, however, changed some of this. The Second World War caused food shortages in Japan. This was no accident. In an attempt to starve the Japanese into submission, the U.S. created supply blockades. The food shortages left the Japanese desperate. To get around rationing, ordinary people turned to the black market – and food stalls run by ethnic Koreans. Hunger also got Japanese civilians to try out foods that they once regarded as unclean. Offals, also known as variety meats, acquired their place in Japanese cuisine. Today, you can eat horumon yaki ホルモン焼き, offal sashimi, and sweet soy liver . These, too, are Korean culinary legacies of the 40s. A variety meat (Manchurian styled food, 2018) As conditions eased in the 1950s, the Japanese moved beyond innards. They began appreciating other foods their ancestors had scorned. This included beef, which until the 1960s, was cheaper than chicken or pork. A recovering Japan took advantage of the bargains – in Korean shops. There, they also encountered bulgogi and galbi. Today, it goes by the name yakiniku . A Japanese classic was born. Bulgogi: Before and After (April 2018) Source: Katarzyna Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity A Bulgogi Recipe by Hunjin Jung (edited by Miranda Brown) This is the recipe that Hunjin Jung, a lecturer in Korean language, taught my students how to make in the winter terms of 2017 and 2018. Beef and Vegetable Mixture Beef, 600 g or 21 ounces (sliced 3 cm wide, 5 cm long, and 0.5 cm thick) Onions, 70 g [about 2.5 oz] Scallions, 100 g [3.5 oz] Carrots, 100 g [3.5 oz] Mushrooms, 50 g [1.25] Seasoning Soy Sauce, 9 T Sugar, 4 T Minced garlic, 1 T Sesame oil, 1 T Pepper powder, ½ t Water, 8 T Pear juice, 5 T Refined rice wine, 3 T (optional) Methods 1. Drain the blood from the beef and slice. 2. Add the seasonings. 3. Slice onions 0.5 cm thin. 4. Slice scallions and carrots 0.5 cm, slantwise. 5. Slice the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces. 6. Marinate beef and vegetables in the fridge for about an hour. 7. Cook beef mixture in the pan for 5 minutes on high. Turn down the flame and cook another 5 minutes on medium.

おはよう！Professor Brown has invited me to step in and take you to Japan for a quick tutorial on the food associated with the Japanese holiday of Setsubun 節分 (literally the seasonal divide, but as a holiday, the change from winter to spring). Below, I’ll give you a brief background and then walk you through how to make your own ehōmaki 恵方巻 (lucky direction roll), a traditional dish for Setsubun that is supposed to have originated in Osaka in roughly the 19th century. Now, as some of you probably already know, Setsubun is celebrated the day before the beginning of spring, usually 2/3, but this year—for the first time in 124 years!—it fell on 2/2. The holiday’s most iconic activity is mamemaki 豆撒き(bean tossing): throwing roasted soybeans at demons as you drive them from your house while yelling, “ Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! ” (Demons out, good luck in!) You’re also supposed to eat as many beans as you are old, but we’ll skip that part, because in my case, that comes to more roasted soybeans than I feel like consuming. But these beans are a serious business! When I last lived in Japan a few years ago, I went to Shimogamo Shrine for Setsubun, and I was woefully unprepared for the many grannies who had come with bags to try to get the lucky beans tossed at us! (They did check to make sure that I had gotten some beans, too, once the melee was over…) Setsubun is more than just bean-throwing fun, however. The rites are linked to tsuina 追儺 (demon expulsion), a ritual purificatory practice that was carried out at the Japanese court but began in China, supposedly having arrived in Japan during the time of Emperor Monmu (683-707, r. 697-707). As old as these rites are, however, as I mentioned above, the “lucky roll” we’re making here is a much more recent invention. And despite its Kansai origins, the ehōmaki is now widely available throughout Japan as a Setsubun treat. When I’m outside of Japan, it’s the one thing I feel that I absolutely have to eat to mark the beginning of spring! So now, let me show you how you, too, can make your own lucky roll to get spring started right. The “lucky roll” should have seven ingredients, symbolizing the seven gods of good luck. According to https://www.thespruceeats.com/good-fortune-sushi-rolls-2031612 , these ingredients include, “ [f]or example, simmered shiitake mushrooms and kanpyo (dried gourd), cucumber, rolled omelet ( tamagoyaki ), eels, sakura denbu (sweet fish powder), and seasoned koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu) are used.” For all kinds of reasons (see: Midwest, pandemic, love of avocado), I prefer this version ( http://www.cuisinivity.com/recipe/archive/entrees/large_sushi_roll.php ), which is also simple enough to make with minimal props. The only thing you really need is a sushi mat. (And no, I don't usually wear a mask in my kitchen, but it's plum season! Below, a "tasteful" setsubun figurine with plums...) The recipe is pretty straightforward, so I’ll just focus on providing practical tips here. First, you can easily make the sushi rice (which is the first thing you should get started cooking) in a regular bowl. But if you’re going for fancy (or cheap fancy, in my case), you can use a hangiri. If you go this latter route, you’ll need to season it before you use it the first time. This means soaking it overnight with ¼ c. rice vinegar and water. Click on https://www.allaboutsushiguide.com/hangiri.html for more instructions. You’ll also want to fill it with water—which you’ll dump before putting in the rice—while your rice cooks. 2 cups of uncooked rice will make a little more than the 450 grams the recipe calls for. Next, prep the vinegar mixture for "sushi rice" while the rice is cooking so that it’s cool by the time your rice is ready. (I use regular Japanese rice, and it works fine.) Then, I suggest making the shiitake and the spinach. Dried shiitake work fine—they need to be soaked for about 5 minutes in hot water before you slice and braise them. If you think two looks too stingy, don’t be fooled. I thought that, too, and so I made 1 more (I couldn’t have 4 shiitake, after all, since that would be bad luck), and I ended up with too many shiitake. The spinach should be put into boiling water for just about as long as it took me to take this picture. While your spinach and shiitake cool, tackle the omelet. This always stresses me out, but it’s actually not that hard. I do recommend cooking longer on low heat and just letting it cook through rather than attempting to flip it. At least that’s what I do. I’m mentally scarred from when I tried to flip noodles in a wok in Thailand, and half of them ended up on the floor. But if you have better hand-eye coordination, have at it. By this time, your rice is probably ready, so transfer it to your dish of choice and start sprinkling the vinegar and mixing gently. (Remember to keep a bit of vinegar aside for the carrots.) When you’re done “flicking” your rice, just cover it and set it aside. I do not recommend setting it aside for too, long, though! Professor Brown called me in the middle of my roll making, and the rice for the second roll was definitely less well behaved by the time we were done chatting… instead, you should probably set it aside just long enough to slice up the rest of your ingredients. At last! The rolling. The big thing is to not overload your roll. My nori actually has lines on it, which made rice distribution easy. You don’t want to cover the entire piece, because the nori needs to stick together at the end. I then add ingredients more or less as my recipe does in order to ensure reasonable distribution. Then you roll it up! You’ll need to roll up the closest edge of your mat while you roll so that you don’t end up with sushi mat inside your dinner. Squeeze your roll gently as you go. And voilà! Since it’s an ehōmaki , don’t cut it! That would sever your good fortune. Instead, you should eat it facing in the year’s lucky direction (south by southeast for 2021) and in silence. My trusty assistant, 織田イワシ (ODA Iwashi), carefully monitored this from her perch (on my table!) in precisely the lucky direction. Happy Spring! PS You can also use this recipe for regular futomaki , as I did below with my leftovers. Be sure you have a sharp knife if you go this route, because sawing at a sushi roll…is not pretty. I suggest you slice the roll in half first and then into smaller pieces. Enjoy!

お久しぶり 。When Professor Brown heard that I was going to make sakura mochi (Sakura Rice Cakes) for Girls’ Day on March 3, she asked me if I’d be up for giving you all an entry on this traditional Japanese spring treat. Mochi, of course, have already made it into the US mainstream in some form, but today I’ll walk you through a couple of options that are more old school than, say, Trader Joe’s mochi ice cream. Mochi, as you already probably know, have a long history in Japan. Historian Eric Rath cites an example of mochi as early as the eighth century (!) and points out their ongoing ritual significance to this day. [1] In fact, on May 1, 2019, ceremonial mochi were made at Ōsaka Tenmangū—one of Japan’s major shrines—and distributed to people who had come to commemorate Emperor Akihito’s abdication and the beginning of a new reign period. These were mochi in no-frills form: steamed and beaten glutinous rice rolled into cakes and dusted with kinako (roasted soybean flour). Although the rice must have been hulled first, what you can see below is that it was steamed prior to being pounded with enormous wooden mallets. You can also see that the receptacle for the rice pounding is hung with a shimenawa to ensure its purity. There were numerous opportunities to pound the dough, since we had a lot of mochi to make. Once the steamed pounded rice was deemed ready, it was quickly transported to a table, where we tore off pieces and rolled them into serving-sized portions. We had to work quickly, because the mochi get hard just sitting around. These mochi were then, as mentioned, dusted with kinako and handed out to shrine visitors to be eaten on the spot. (Photo by Carmen Tamas) The two types I’ll take you through today, however, are both newer versions that have sweet red bean paste, anko , in the middle: ichigo daifuku (Strawberry Good Luck) cakes and the aforementioned sakura mochi. Although the combination of anko and rice cakes is not itself new—Rath says it may go back as far as the seventh century—the very sweet aspect to anko is: Rath credits it to the arrival of sugar brought from China by the Portuguese. [2] If you haven’t decided which mochi you want, you can start with the bean paste, since both versions require it. It’s easy to find online, but if you want to make your own, it’s a little time-consuming, but simple. I used this recipe . I appreciate that the author has both a more traditional version and an easier version. As someone who has eaten a fair amount of anko -based sweets (albeit mostly from convenience stores), I thought this easy version was just fine. A couple of practical notes—the recipe splits into 2 paths like a choose-your-own-adventure about halfway through. You need to follow the first steps, 1-8, and then choose “koshian,” which means ignoring the “Tsuban” steps and scrolling down to the “Koshian” option. If you’re going the home-made route, you should be making your anko the day before you plan to make your mochi. Back to the beginning. The recipe works as is. I didn’t have an otoshibuta , but my beans were fairly sedentary on low-medium heat. This didn’t seem to be an issue. I also found that my beans were definitely not ready after an hour. Even after an hour and 30 minutes I still wasn’t sure. So I simmered them for 10 more minutes while de-icing the patio. Perfect. Now, down to the Koshian option. I recommend keeping all of your liquid after straining the beans. I needed way more than the 1-2 Tbsp. the recipe calls for, probably more like 4-5 (at least). If your beans are too dry for your blender or food processor to handle, add some of the bean water you kept. Regular water also works fine. Add a little at a time until your blender can handle it. If your beans are a really thick paste despite your water (as mine were), simply add a little more water when you put everything back in the pot. After all, you need liquid to dissolve the sugar and salt. It should look like a really thick soup. If you inadvertently go a little overboard with the water, don’t worry. You only need to cook your anko longer. It will turn out fine. I ended up stirring over low heat for about 30 minutes until I could draw a line that didn’t immediately fill back in. Once I hit that magic thickness, I put it in the cookie sheet and let it cool. In the future, I might cook it a bit longer, since this was still pretty soft (but shapeable) even after cooling. At this point, after your paste has cooled, you need to make up your mind. Strawberry mochi will require 6 balls of anko at 25 grams each. Sakura mochi will require 6 balls at 20 grams each. The rest can be frozen in an airtight container for two months or so. PLAN A: 🍓 Strawberry The origins of this variation are unclear. As you’ll see, the recipe site dates the dish to the 1980s. However, Eric Rath mentions a strawberry-filled mochi already in 1733. [3] In any case, whenever they first appeared on the scene, ichigo daifuku are delicious. For today’s posting, I used this recipe . It mostly works as is, but I have some pointers for those of us who don’t have microwaves… I made the anko balls the night before. The day of, I started with the strawberries. The recipe author is not kidding around when she recommends smaller. These were the smallest Kroger strawberries, and they were borderline too big. As you can see, my assistant was distressed (needlessly) about my ability to work with such enormous strawberries. If you’re steaming the rice, be warned: 10-12 minutes is not enough. I ended up steaming for 25 minutes total, mixing the dough every few minutes. If, like I, you’re not sure what “translucent” mochi dough looks like, it should basically look wet and shiny. I tried to get a picture that reflected that a little better. When it’s done, you can just dump it onto a corn flour-dusted surface and get to work. NOTE: if your mochi dough is sticky despite said corn flour, that means it isn’t ready. Just put it back in the steamer for longer. No harm done. The mochi assembly is pretty much as the recipe describes. I tried to stretch my dough as thin as possible to accommodate my gigantic berries. Unlike pie dough, you can be thinner at the edges, since it’s all going to get bunched together at the bottom. Being careful not to tear the dough, gently wrap it around the berry, pinch together the bottom, and you’re done! Perfect for spring or summer. PLAN B: 🌸 Sakura Once again, the origins of this variation are murky. However, several people—including the author of today’s recipe—list a special kind of flour, Dōmyōji-flour, as key to the Kansai-style version of the dish. According to the temple Dōmyōji’s website , this flour is made from the type of rice offered daily by the aunt of the ninth-century courtier and scholar of Chinese learning, Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), after he was exiled to what is now modern-day Kyushu. Believed to have healing powers, demand for the rice grew, and the process for making this flour was born. Michizane himself died in exile and was later deified as Tenjin in order to placate his wrathful spirit. One of the major shrines to Tenjin, in fact, is the shrine where we made mochi for the imperial abdication noted above! For Sakura mochi, I used this recipe . The night before, I rolled my bean balls, rinsed my rice 5-6 times, and put it aside to soak in a place where my assistant couldn’t get to it. As for the rest, you can pretty much follow the recipe as is, but I do have a few additional pointers/clarifications. 1) The day of mochi making, I first put the pickled flowers (available online) in room-temperature water and left them to soak for 30 min. They were still pretty salty even then, so a slightly longer soak would probably not do any harm. Let them dry on a paper towel when done. 2) Then I drained the rice and gave it several (10?) “pulses” in the food processor on the “chop” setting. The rice should be broken, but not a fine powder. Since we are making Kansai-style, the finished cake will be recognizable as made of rice grains. The rice on the left has been "chopped" but not yet steamed. 3) When that’s done, transfer it to a thin towel and steam it for 30 min. While the rice is steaming, make the pink juice and sugar syrup. My pink juice is courtesy of food coloring. As you can see, a little goes a very very long way. 4) When you make the mochi, wet your counter before you put the saran wrap (aka “cling film”) on it. That will make it stay in place. Then put your rice in the center. I recommend flattening it with a plastic paddle—lightly wet the paddle each time between mochi, and it will keep the rice from sticking to it. Transfer your bean paste to the center of your flattened rice circle (I used chopsticks to minimize handling) and gently wrap up the entire thing, twisting the saran wrap together. Pickled cherry leaves are impossible to come by during the pandemic, so we’ll skip that (delicious) step. Instead, you can probably just deposit the mochi on a plate at this point, since they are easier to handle when cool, but I found cupcake wrappers worked well. Then place a flower on top and you’re done! Although these are traditional for Girls’ Day, they are also yummy for blossom viewing parties in the spring. Given how cold out it still is, you’ve got plenty of time to perfect your mochi-making skills before the cherries bloom. Enjoy! ⚠️ All three of the above recipes were first-time attempts for me, so don't be intimidated. In my experience, knowing how things are supposed to look is at least half the battle. Good luck! [1] Eric Rath, “The Magic of Japanese Rice Cakes,” in Routledge History of Food , Carol Helstosky, ed., 3-18 (New York: Routledge Press, 2015), 3. [2] Ibid., 9-10. [3] Ibid., 10.

Guess who made these? About a year ago, I awoke to find the famous dumpling map whirling around on the interwebs. That map, lifted (!#@) from Rachel Laudan’s classic work on food history, Cuisine and Empire , had gone viral the year before. It showed the journeys of the humble dumpling, as it moved out of Asia, crawling through frozen Siberia, before plopping down in balmy Eastern Europe. The map also displayed the dumpling traipsing through the Silk Road, as it trekked across Central Asia and the Middle East. Its final destination? Naturally, the gorgeous beaches of the Mediterranean. Then Carl found it. Probably second- or third-hand (as usual, without attribution). If you don’t know Carl Zha , you should. He is a Cal Tech grad and famous Internet personality, with 58K Twitter followers. By day, he surfs the blue waves of Bali, and by night, he runs a show about Chinese history, politics, and trivia. He is also an avid reader of this blog and a friend of yours truly. What can I say? A man with discerning taste. Carl also has an opinion about the origins of the dumpling. When he discovered Laudan’s map, he leapt on the chance to finish an argument with the Armenians . “Let’s settle this once for all,” he declared via Twitter. “ Mongol conquest spread dumplings from China to the rest of the world .” Carl’s post got attention. “Impressive scholarship,” wrote one. Others, though, were less happy. One woman responded, “ Noodles, macaroni etc. also, so let’s settle this forever: everything came from China when the rest of the world were just a bunch of underdeveloped #####. Am I right ?” The exchange took me aback. I’m used to people reacting strongly to Carl’s posts. He thumbs his nose at American supremacy and has a quirky sense of humor. In true Carl style, he appended a video of monkeys throwing steamed buns . The dumpling vehemence, however, did surprise me. I mean there’s plenty to fight about. War, abortion, taxes. Even kimchi . But dumplings? I shook my head as I read the irate post. “Time for a social media detox,” I thought to myself. “That person needs a trip to the spa. So what if the Chinese invented the dumpling? Anyway, is it productive to fight about origins?” ----- Before answering these questions, I must issue the following disclaimers. The first is that I don’t condone violence, even over food history. The second is that I respectfully disagree with Carl. I don’t think the Chinese invented the dumpling. The search for origins, however, can be productive, even if it makes your head spin. Actually I would say the head spinning is therapeutic. Why? Well, you let go. You let go of those myths of purity. Let go of the idea that originality is the same thing as excellence. Great cooking traditions, in fact, are as much derivative, as they are sui generis. For me, a person proud of her Chinese heritage, the history of the dumpling has forced this reckoning. China may be a dumpling lover’s heaven, but it is not its original homeland. In this, the dumpling finds good company with another fine culinary product, the hotdog. The hotdog is a quintessentially American food with (shudder) European roots. To see this, we must go back in time and better acquaint ourselves with Turkic peoples. By Turkic, I am not just thinking of folks in Turkey. Instead, I am talking about people who call themselves Turks and who live in a wide variety of places: Central Asia, Siberia, the Middle East, China, as well as Turkey. Thousands of years ago, the Turks lived exclusively in Asia. Scholars debate whether they came from Central Asia or further east. One thing’s for sure; they moved around a lot. Early on in their history, they were good at riding horses and harvesting the milk for bubbly beers. And at some point in time, they got the travel bug. They moved into Northwest China, and hooked up with Chinese royals. Then some of them kept going West, laying down roots in Central Asia, while others settled in the Middle East and Turkey. A few more nested in Russia and Ukraine (we have these adventurous Turks to thank for Irina Shayk , better known as Bradley Cooper’s baby mamma). Everywhere Turkic peoples went, they adopted the foodways of the locals. In Western China, the food has Chinese elements . In Central Asia, you’ll spot Iranian touches (next time, we’ll hear about pilaf). But there are a few commonalities that unite people in the Turkic world. Language. Yogurt . Manti (the label in many languages for dumpling). Turkish manti (Sonya Ozbey photograph) Scholars suspect that Turkic tribesmen or traders introduced the Chinese to dumplings just under two thousand years ago. I have to admit that I was initially skeptical. Part of me wanted to scream, “It’s Chinese darn it!” After all, the Chinese are today better known for their dumplings than the Turks. But Chinese sources— “ The Ode to Bing (ca. 265 AD)” — hint of foreign origins. The author, Mr. Shu, puts it plainly. And here, I quote Professor Knechtges’ translation: “[S]ome of these names [for wheat products] originate in the villages and lanes, and some of the methods for making them come from alien lands .” Then our eccentric poet listed a string of foreign-sounding words for stuffed pasta. So we have a Chinese poet fessing up about the foreign origins of the dumpling and other pasta products, but this leaves the question, which alien lands? This is where it is nice to have friends who are linguists. The word here for dumpling is mantou 馒头 (a term, confusingly, that means “steamed buns” in Chinese today). According to linguists, the term is an obvious loan word from a foreign language , probably in the Turkic language family. The ancient Chinese just chose characters that approximated the sound of the foreign word. In ancient China, mantou was pronounced man-teh (just like in Turkish). If you’re straining for a different example of a loan word, consider pudding. People in China say bu-ding 布丁, or, to use an example close to my heart, bulangni 布朗尼 is ‘brownie.’ People only borrow foreign words when they don’t have an existing label. Think sushi, tofu , and seitan: all of these are words adopted from another language into English. In the case of seitan, it makes sense that Americans adopted the term. They weren’t previously in the habit of making meat substitutes from gluten! Loan words, though, can only tell you so much. For example, they will reveal who you borrowed the word from. But they will not necessarily expose the original instigator. If you’re confused, let’s go back to seitan . This was a Chinese invention, but it has a Japanese name in English. Why? Because it was first brought to the United States by Japanese immigrants. With the case of the dumpling, mantou tells us who the Chinese learned their tricks for crimping dough. It does *not* unveil the inventor. Foreign or not, the Chinese took to the dumpling. After a few hours of training, they got the hang of rolling out their dough thin and pinching the pockets into shape. And after a few more centuries, the dumpling had become such a fixture in Chinese cuisine, its origin was irrelevant. New names — for example, jiaoz i 餃子 — also helped people forget the dumpling’s foreign roots. Dumplings are now a traditional food eaten during Lunar New Year, the most important holiday in China. Dumplings (Shaoxing, China, Nov 2018) The Chinese, however, were *not* the only people to take to these foreign pockets. The Koreans also got the manti bug. Their version of dumplings are called mandu , and they are full of things like kimchi. Then folks in India and Nepal wanted some of the action. Their dumplings, which go by momos, serve with chutney. The Japanese were last to the game. They call their pan-fried dumplings gyoza . In case you’re wondering, that’s the Japanese pronunciation of the characters for jiaozi . South Asian momos (Jan 2017) I doubt we will ever figure out the identity of the original inventor of the dumpling. But the dumpling is now everyone’s food. It’s 100% Chinese, Korean, Armenian, as well as Turkish. At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter who got there first. The exercise isn’t about priority, since no one here will make any money with a patent! If anything, the takeaway is this: when it comes to dough, we’re all better off being a little derivative. Recipe resources I highly recommend making your own dumplings from scratch. You can always buy the skins, but why do that? You just need flour and water to make them. I have set out the recipe here in a blog for my students last year. Fun fact: every person has a unique way of folding dough. Think of it like handwriting. Supposedly, you can read my personality from my crimping strategy. I have also put together instructions for people who prefer the translucent ones, which come in gluten-free varieties. These were staples of my Cantonese childhood. I used to eat them every weekend at dim sum. But they are very easy to make and I managed to find all of the ingredients on Amazon. Since some of you asked, I thought I would post a link to a recipe for Turkish manti ! Shrimp "Dumplings" (xiajiao), Canton, Nov 2017 Rice dumplings made like wheat dumplings (Nov 2018) Sources for this blog: Buell, Paul D., Eugene N. Anderson, Montserrat de Pablo Moya, Moldir Okenbay, Crossroads of Cuisine: The Eurasian Heartland, the Silk Road and Food (E.J. Brill, 2020). Dunlop, Fuchsia. ”Barbarian Heads and Turkish Dumplings: The Chinese Word Mantou.” In Wrapped & Stuffed Foods: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2012 , ed. Mark McWilliams, 128-143. Totnes, Devon, England: Prospect Books, 2013. Google ebook available for free! She does a great job with the various words for dumpling over Chinese history, and synthesizing Buell, Anderson, & others. Knechtges, David R. “ Dietary Habits: Shu Xi’s ‘Rhapsody on Pasta ’” In Wendy Swartz, Robert Ford Campany, Yang Lu and Jessey Choo eds. Early Medieval China : A Sourcebook (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). Laudan, Rachel. Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Lin-Liu,Jen. On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta (London: Penguin, 2013): “Central Asia,” 115-80. Further reading: Buell, Paul D, and Anderson, Eugene N. A Soup for the Qan : Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Sihui’s Yinshan Zhengyao - Introduction, Translation, Commentary, and Chinese Text . BRILL, 2010. (U-M ebook).

*Written by Ying-Ying Tiffany Liu One sunny day, I had lunch with two South African-born Chinese (SABC) friends at a northern-style Chinese restaurant in Johannesburg’s New Chinatown. They requested that I come to this restaurant because they were curious about the food, but were unable to communicate with the people who work at this restaurant. English was these two friends’ native language, and they only spoke a little bit of Cantonese with their parents at home. They did not understand Mandarin, the dialect of the majority of Chinese migrants to South Africa, and the migrants spoke little to no English. As a result, many SABCs have found it difficult to communicate with the Chinese newcomers. On the other hand, I am a Taiwan-born-Canadian immigrant, conducting research on the Chinese restaurants in South Africa. As these two friends were excited to explore different versions of Chinese cuisines, they invited me for lunch. Once we settled down at the restaurant, they told me what they like and asked me to order for them. I poured tea into their cups, they tapped their finger twice to express gratitude for who serving the tea. I joked that it was a very Chinese thing to do. Foods were brought to our table, we couldn’t wait to try. When one of the friends bit into a northern-style Chinese noodle, she paused and said, “Wow, this food tastes so foreign to me!” For one second, I found this phase awkward. One minute, three of us – who look Chinese and communicated in English – were just joking about being very Chinese, then the next minute, to hear a common, everyday Chinese noodle being too foreign for her. But I quickly reminded myself that this does not mean that this SABC friend is not Chinese enough or knows nothing about Chinese food. The term, “Chinese food,” is really just an oversimplification. Swallows Inn was opened in Johannesburg's First Chinatown during the 1940s, is considered the oldest Chinese restaurant in South Africa (perhaps the continent of Africa...). Although Chinese people coming to Africa is a relatively new phenomenon, Chinese immigration has a much longer history in South Africa. For instance, from 1904 to 1910, more than 63,000 Chinese labourers were imported to work in gold mines around Johannesburg. Early Chinese immigrants in South Africa were predominantly Cantonese and Hakka from Guangdong Providence. Starting in the 1940s, only a limited number of Chinese were allowed to enter South Africa’s border. Then there were migrants from Taiwan during the 1970s to 90s. Today it is estimated 350,000 Chinese living in South Africa. In it, more than 300,000 are new migrants who arrived in South Africa less than 20 years ago and drew from a variety of regions, including but not limited to: Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Sichuan, Liaoning, Henan, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Yunnan. Political factors shaped the shifted patterns of Chinese migrants’ geographical backgrounds. In 1948, the South African state implemented a legal system of racial segregation, known as apartheid, for the next forty-six years. South African populations were officially divided into four groups: 1) “White” distinguished those said to be European descendants, 2) “Native” referred to black South Africans, 3) “Coloured” referred to people of mixed racial or ethnic origins, and 4) “Asiatic” or “Asian” referred to immigrants from Asia. In 1971, the Republic of China (Taiwan) lost its seat in the United Nations to the People’s Republic of China (China). Meanwhile, South Africa faced international condemnation of its apartheid policy. Since both the South African and Taiwanese governments found themselves isolated from the international community, they re-established fuller diplomatic ties, which helped pave the way for the Taiwanese to become the largest group of foreign investors in South Africa. By that time, East Asian immigrants (including Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean) who invested in factories or had access to capital were classified as “Honorary White” and exempted from apartheid regulations. Meanwhile, Chinese South Africans were still subjected to numerous restrictions in residential, educational, and business opportunities. Several Chinese South Africans joined other students in Johannesburg protested against the Separate University Education Bill in 1957 (Mail & Guardian). In 1998, the South Africa government switched its recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (China) and ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Many Taiwanese immigrants left, and their number continues to drop; meanwhile, the population of immigrants from China began to rise in the late 1990s. The term “New Chinatown,” as mentioned in the beginning of this article, indicates that there is an old one. Most restaurants and shops in First Chinatown closed down or relocated to New Chinatown to escape crime and decay; currently there are fewer than ten businesses still operating. New Chinatown is located in Cyrildene, a formerly Jewish suburb on the eastern side of downtown Johannesburg. Most Chinese South Africans tend to support the long-established restaurants in First Chinatown. These restaurants mainly serve old-style Cantonese cuisine that tastes closer to what Chinese South Africans are used to. Recent Chinese migrants prefer to dine in the restaurants in Cyrildene’s New Chinatown. You can find almost every regional cuisine in these restaurants, as they reflect the diverse backgrounds of Chinese newcomers. The two Chinatowns in Johannesburg are not just two different spaces; they also represent regional and generational differences between old and new Chinese diasporas. Johannesburg's New Chinatown is located in Cyrildene, a formerly Jewish suburb. Interestingly, the so called “Canadian or Americanized Chinese food,” such as chop suey, deep-fried batter chicken in sweet and sour sauce, and fortune cookies, can also be found in South Africa’s Chinese take-away restaurants. As in North America, the Chinese food in South Africa, or what South Africans/Canadians thought of as Chinese food for a long time, was predominantly influenced by one regional cuisine in China—Cantonese. As mentioned, the majority of early Chinese immigrants to South Africa and Canada were from Guangdong, which explains why the earlier Chinese cuisine in these two countries was strongly influenced by the Cantonese style. It simply reflected the origins of the vast majority of Chinese immigrants to the country. Typical Chinese take-away menus in South Africa. When I asked a Chinese chef how he felt about the food he cooked for South African customers, he said to me, “This is, and is not, Chinese. We just don’t eat it.” Food can be easily circulated, imitated, and modified to adapt to South African customers’ tastes, but how about migrants’ identity? Can it be easily modified to become less Chinese and more South African just like the food they cook? Chinese food, after all, is incredibly diverse. So are the people. Back to the lunch I had with the two SABC friends: We might look the same, eat the same food, but what we felt about the food tells us apart. From Taiwan to Canada, from Canada to South Africa, I learned that not only do migrants bring their food to a new place, people are also incredibly adaptive and creative when it comes to food. As a proudly Asian person who used to make fun of “unauthentic” Chinese food, I reminded myself that next time when I taste an unfamiliar Chinese dish, perhaps I should try to find out its origin or the story behind its modification before quickly judging it.

By Benjamin Guan, Alison Li, and Andrea Lin April 26th, 2020 Introduction Like the start of a grisly zombie movie (we recommend Train to Busan), the US has found itself mired in an epidemic of apocalyptic proportions. It’s easy to envision Hollywood producers at each other's throats a few years from now, duking it out to cast Dwayne Johnson as the hotshot American scientist who single handedly brought down COVID-19. Unfortunately, reality is far from the silver screen. As of March 27th, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the US has exceeded those in China, the origin of the deadly disease. It is estimated that over 200,000 people worldwide have been killed (Ansari et al.). While both countries have enacted countermeasures since the outbreak started in December 2019, there’s one big difference: the Chinese government actively incorporated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) into its treatment plan while the US government has only used biomedicine. Dr. Fauci, you are a widely respected medical expert and a lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. We have no doubt that your training at Cornell Medical School and your position as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases make you a capable leader. You, more so than anyone else, should understand the limits of Western medicine. Unfortunately, it is time to admit that our systems have failed. We urge your Task Force to consider implementing TCM alongside existing biomedical therapies to resolve the COVID-19 pandemic. You’re a busy man, so here’s the tldr version; TCM uses an individualized approach for treatment, in contrast to the strictly standardized procedures of biomedicine, resulting in bespoke outcomes for patients. It is cost-effective, holistic, and combines multiple types of treatments to alleviate multiple symptoms/causes. While TCM has been practiced in China for thousands of years, it has evolved just as any body of knowledge has and is adept for this modern crisis (MacPherson, “Introduction”). We acknowledge that you have spent your entire career within the realm of biomedicine. Adopting TCM into the COVID-19 response plan might sound insane at first. Our goal in the coming pages is to convince you that it is not. We’ll start by summarizing the current state of biomedical research into COVID-19 cures, followed by describing TCM remedies used to treat COVID-19 in China. Once this baseline of knowledge is established, we’ll break down potential reasons for why the US has been reluctant to leverage TCM thus far. Specifically, we will address common criticisms that TCM is not “scientifically proven” and that is a “political tool” by the Chinese. Spoiler alert: both are untrue. By debunking the misconceptions surrounding TCM, we will demonstrate to you, Dr. Fauci, the potential of this underutilized body of knowledge to alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans. The (biomedical) search for the cure Image Source: www.biochemistry.blob.core.windows.net/public/2019/08/Research-web.jpg In times of crisis, when diseases threaten to anNIHilate our centuries-old way of living, WHO do we turn to? Re-read that sentence. So far, the two most preeminent health institutions in Western society haven’t done much to inspire confidence. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that “there is no evidence that current medicine can prevent or cure [COVID-19]” (“Q&A on coronaviruses”). This sentiment is reiterated by the National Institute of Health (NIH), which explains, “There are no specific therapeutics approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat people with COVID-19” (“NIH clinical trial”). In the absence of a clear cure, physicians must focus on managing symptoms until the virus (hopefully) passes. Therapies used may include antiviral or retroviral medications, breathing support such as intubation or ventilation, steroids to reduce lung swelling, and blood plasma transfusions (“Everything You Should Know”). Rest assured, biomedical researchers around the world are frantically testing over 100 off-the-shelf and experimental therapies as we speak (Langreth and Griffin). As physician after physician touts clinical trials as the “scientific gold standard for studying drugs,” does this mean a cure is within sight? (Brown and Griffin). Unlikely. In late February, the US began clinical trials for its first potential treatment for COVID-19, remdesivir (“NIH clinical trial”). Remdesivir is an antiviral drug developed by Gilead Sciences and the results of the randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study are expected at the end of April (Langreth and Griffin). Sounds suspiciously like your Introductory Psychology professor promising to grade essays by the end of the week, only to “finally get to them” two months later. If the results are positive, have they come too late for remdesivir to be mass-produced and distributed? If the results are inconclusive and the lengthy clinical trial process starts anew, where does that leave the even higher number of COVID-19 patients and their caretakers? How has TCM been used to treat COVID-19 in China? Image Source: www.economist.com/china/2020/04/11/china-backs-unproven-treatments-for-covid-19 President Xi Jinping in February remarked that, “Lots of people like to have Chinese medicine because it has little side effects, it’s effective, and relatively cheap...I myself like Chinese medicine a lot.” (Mai and Lo). It’s no surprise that the Chinese Government has actively used TCM to treat not only the COVID-19 pandemics, but also the H1N1 (swine flu) and H7N9 (bird flu) epidemics. Having survived all 3, perhaps there’s something to be said for China’s millenia-worth of herbal remedies. The US, at the tender age of 244, seems more like the rookie med student eager to prove his mettle. While the US braces for another month of lockdown, China tentatively returns to life as usual. The re-opening can be attributed to basic math: an increasing number of recovered cases plus decreasing number of new cases. Notably, 50,000 recovered COVID-19 patients were prescribed TCM in their treatments (Mai and Lo). In general, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology reports that over 85% of all COVID-19 patients in China (about 60,000 people) were treated with both TCM and antiviral medications (Gan and Xiong). This highlights the integral role that TCM played in enabling China to recover from COVID-19. Skeptics may argue that it’s impossible to figure out whether it was TCM, biomedicine, or a combination of the two that led to recovery, but even they have to acknowledge there certainly aren’t any downsides observed to using TCM (Mai and Lo). In the same way that there is no universally accepted cure to COVID-19 in biomedicine, the TCM remedies used for COVID-19 are varied. One of the treatments is a soup containing a mixture of herbs and ephedra (ma huang), which is commonly used in TCM to treat asthma and bronchitis (Mai and Lo). Another treatment is shuanghuanglian, a concoction of Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicerae Japonicae Flos), Chinese skullcap (Scutellariae Radix), and forsythia (Fructus Forsythiae) (Gao et al.). Approved by the Chinese Food and Drug Administration, it is traditionally used to treat respiratory infections (Gan and Xiong). Perhaps the most controversial TCM remedy is tan re qing, an injection containing bear bile, goat horn powder, and plant extracts (Fobar, “China promotes bear bile”). Why is it controversial? All it takes are biased headlines such as “After Ban on Eating Wild Animals, China Promotes Injections with Bear Bile to Treat COVID-19” (Fobar, “Bear bile explained”). Even if the article itself mentions that ursodeoxycholic acid, a compound found in high concentrations in bear bile, has been proven to help with certain ailments, how many people actually read beyond the headline? After all, if it’s featured in National Geographic, it must be factual and objective. It’s no wonder that outside of China, TCM is commonly viewed as antiquated, superstitious, or just outright disturbing to delicate Western palates. Is TCM Effective? Image Source: www.catalyst.phrma.org/developing-a-new-drug-is-actually-harder-than-rocket-science?utm_campaign=R%26D&utm_content=25644612&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter When they’re not being socially awkward at dinner parties, Western biomedical doctors love sneering that TCM doesn’t work. “It hasn’t gone through enough clinical trials!” they cry, refusing to acknowledge that their system for evaluating efficacy was established by Western scientists, for Western science. After all, if something isn’t good by your own standards, it must not be good at all, right? Let’s take a minute to debunk that. First, TCM has proven its efficacy both as a broader system and in treating COVID-19. The standards of evidence for TCM are clearly different from the standards of evidence created by biomedical scientists. Simply because TCM sometimes fails to perform well in clinical trials, it loses all credibility in the eyes of physicians. But, as you can see from the image above, clinical trials themselves are often unsuccessful as well. Biomedicine has a standardized approach for developing medicine and evaluating how effective it is. Drugs go through multiple phases of research and review, each phase more stringent than the last, before they are approved (“The Drug Development Process”). This lengthy process establishes credibility to physicians, who trust that the final product will ultimately keep patients safe. Or, at the very least, keep patients alive enough to avoid a malpractice lawsuit. As such, clinical trials are indoctrinated in biomedicine as the “gold standard.” Remember in high school when a new kid joined your class and the popular kids scrutinized her with equal parts fascination, equal parts judgment? That’s what’s happening here. TCM was developed in a disparate world, far away from the tightly-knit echelon of Ivy-educated scientists. What happens when an alternative medicine does not meet the gold standards they have been brainwashed into believing? It’s not taken seriously, viewed as a lesser option, and pushed into the shadows. Unlike biomedicine, TCM treats patients as idiosyncratic individuals rather than entries in an Electronic Health Record. A fundamental tenet of TCM is to personalize treatments and prescriptions to not only the patients’ symptoms, but also their lifestyle and family history. In contrast, biomedicine publishes standardized treatment plans for every ailment and injury imaginable. This enables standardized testing in clinical trials, aka credibility. TCM on the other hand provides a more pragmatic approach that actually “answer[s] real-world questions” (MacPherson, “Evidence-Based Acupuncture”). However, due to its personalization, TCM is deemed “untestable.” Patient-specific prescriptions combined with the historic encouragement for TCM practitioners to develop their own individual styles leads to different treatments for patients with similar symptoms (Zhang et al.). It’s challenging to disprove placebo/sham effects with acupuncture and difficult to doubleblind TCM (Ramsay et al.). Lastly, it seems as if the world of Western medicine is unable to understand that complex interactions exist between multiple TCM agents. Isolating the exact biomedical mechanism through which the prescription acts upon the patient is nearly impossible. TCM was not designed with the system of clinical trials in mind as biomedical drugs were. Is this important? To TCM practitioners, not necessarily. After all, TCM has its own system of laws explaining how its prescriptions work. But to Western practitioners, you’d think we just called their baby ugly. Clinical trials serve as the foundation of credibility for the biomedical community, and because there are many complications in testing TCM, doing so for the sake of appeasing them doesn’t necessarily increase TCM’s credibility. Despite TCM’s difficulty in conforming to clinical trials, numerous biomedical studies have shown using TCM results in significant improvements in patient outcomes. Examples include a greater reduction in Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms when treated with TCM (Bensoussan et al.) as well as increased fetal activity and cephalic presentation after the use of moxibustion (Cardini and Weixin). TCM has even proved effective in solving global health crises where biomedicine could not. Tu Youyou discovered a cure for malaria in a TCM remedy called Artemisinin. Perhaps to the amazement of biomedical scientists, this discovery saved millions of lives and later earned her the Nobel Prize. And she didn’t need an MD to do it (“Tu Youyou”). With clear cases for its efficacy as a broader system, there is no reason beyond xenophobia why TCM should not be incorporated into treatment plans for COVID-19. Even under the West’s process for establishing efficacy, TCM has been shown to improve patient outcomes when incorporated with biomedicine (Ni et al.). In another trial in China, COVID-19 patients were treated with either Western medicine or a combination of Western and TCM remedies. The results concluded that mixed treatment patients had a 33% higher recovery rate, had higher lymphocyte counts, and left the hospital sooner than those treated with only Western medicine (Gan and Xiong). Unless biomedical scientists want to admit that their own system of clinical trials is flawed, the numbers speak for themselves. The United States is in a pandemic. We don’t have time to rely on the slim possibility that biomedicine will find a cure in time. Failure is more common than not in both clinical trials and convincing Western practitioners to give TCM a chance. Even when there is significant evidence in favor of TCM, TCM still faces disproportionate scrutiny compared to Western counterparts. TCM should be treated as an equal to Western pharmaceuticals in the treatment of COVID-19. There is currently no evidence that biomedicine is equipped to tackle COVID-19 on its own. If TCM can lend a helping hand, why not take it? After using hand sanitizer, of course. Is TCM more than a political tool? Image Source: www.respectfulinsolence.com/2019/05/29/mao-triumphant If the 20th century was any indication, unwavering belief in the superiority of capitalism is as American as apple pie. While firmly ignoring any instances of moral questionability in their own government, patriotic Americans are quick to complain that spreading TCM is no more than another cog in China’s grand scheme to rule the world. Let’s take a moment to clarify what spurious journalists will not. TCM has a mixed history with the Chinese government. While once cracked down on by the CCP as antithetical to China’s modernization, it later received immense support as Mao rose to power. Mao saw TCM as an opportunity for China to develop a self-reliant national identity during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (Scheid, “The People’s Republic”). Even today, President Xi Jinping describes TCM “as a ‘treasure’ of Chinese civilization that will help in the ‘rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation’” (Mai and Lo). Despite TCM’s historical ties to the CCP as a form of propaganda, it has its merits as a cheaper alternative to Western medicine (Zimmerman). Especially in recent years, TCM has gained popularity in modern Western countries. Ironically, a significant catalyst to TCM’s acceptance was President Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. During this trip, journalist James Reston was fortunate enough to develop a severe case of appendicitis, requiring immediate surgery. In an amazing feat of American bravery, James Reston agreed to be poked with needles under the assurance that yes, these painful-looking spiky things will in fact reduce post-operative pain. To his amazement, it worked. And just like modern day vloggers, Reston absolutely needed to share his brush with death with the public. However, these were the pre-internet days so he had to settle for the New York Times (Reston). Back then, people actually read the paper, so news of TCM spread across the country like an infectious disease. As TCM became more and more widespread, Americans became uneasy with the idea that a foreign invention could work better than their homegrown solutions. They questioned if the 1972 delegation was overly optimistic to improve US sentiment towards China and exaggerated the success of TCM to flatter their new friends. Since then, TCM has never quite lost its reputation as a chess piece in diplomatic relations. Even after TCM gained acceptance by the WHO last year, opponents are still quick to mischaracterize it as Communist hogwash. At this point, it’s basically a competition to see who can come up with the most clickbait-y headline. In third place, “Widespread consumption of Chinese herbals of unknown efficacy and potential toxicity will jeopardize the health of unsuspecting consumers worldwide” by CNN (Hunt). Coming in second, “Madagascar’s president promotes unproven herbal cure [TCM] for COVID-19” by Mongabay (Vyawahare). And taking the trophy is The Economist with “State- sponsored quackery: China is ramping up its promotion of its ancient medical arts.” But no headline can damage TCM’s legitimacy as much as the words of the US Commander-in-Chief. In an incredible display of international diplomacy, Trump has decided to label COVID-19 “the Chinese Virus” (Cillizza). He is seemingly unaware of the fact that the US has quickly overtaken China in confirmed cases. Trump has also been a strong opponent to the wearing of face masks in public, joining hundreds of Americans in abstaining from the practice due to its association with Asia (Smith). What’s wrong with being associated with Asia? The US certainly didn’t have any issues with that when it decided to open a Panda Express in every shopping center as the hallmark of authentic Chinese cuisine. Even before COVID-19, healthy populations in Asia are used to wearing face masks to pre-emptively stifle the spread of disease. However, the West perceives wearing masks as a sign of being sick. Additionally, critics argue there is no scientific proof that face masks are effective, meaning that they are unnecessary (Friedman). Image Source: www.twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160 Recently, the US has reversed its negative stance on face masks. Though there has not been sufficient time for new clinical trials to scientifically prove their effectiveness, the government is now encouraging everyone to wear one when in public. Now that public officials and celebrities alike are showing off designer masks on social media, the stigma has been reduced. Finally, the everyday American can wear face masks in public without fear of being judged. At the end of the day, TCM has unfairly suffered from an image of being a political tool by the Chinese government. Whether it’s an inaccurate name by Trump in 2020 or backlash from Tiananmen in 1989, the perception of TCM by Americans has been inextricably linked to the fluctuating relationship between the US and China. But the recent open-mindedness towards wearing face masks demonstrates that lack of “scientific” evidence and association with Asia shouldn’t determine how willing we are to try a solution or judge its efficacy. Let’s learn from the leap of faith we took with face masks and extend TCM the same generosity. Conclusion Image Source: www.activeherb.com/blog/origins-of-tcm.html Dr. Fauci, we implore you to incorporate TCM into the US response to COVID-19. In the midst of a pandemic for which biomedicine has yet to find a cure, it is only right that all options be explored. As the US struggles to supply hospitals with sufficient equipment and medication, it is apparent that a more effective approach is needed. From the perspective of Western scientists, TCM is illegitimate and little more than placebo. Yet, TCM has seen consistently positive results throughout its long lifespan. Volker Scheid addresses this dissonance in his book. During a study on menopause, he found that symptoms have long been treated with TCM, but if TCM is removed from its cultural methods, it becomes less effective (Scheid, “Globalizing Chinese Medical Understandings”). As Chinese medicine comes under increasing pressure to legitimize itself through evidence-based research, he questions if we should disregard TCM-accepted treatments simply because they do not show clinical effectiveness. We have noticed that while TCM’s credibility is constantly questioned, Western scientists never have to ask themselves why their system for evaluating efficacy is more credible than TCM’s. Why are only clinical trials considered scientific? Why do we only believe a drug works if it is developed in a lab and explained by technical jargon? Given the current global pandemic, now is not the time for medicine and politics to clash. Even if TCM was once weaponized by the CCP as political propaganda, it has since proven itself as an effective, affordable, and less harsh form of treatment. And while thousands are dying everyday, who has time to wait for clinical trials when a proven alternative exists? We may not have clinical studies as evidence, but we know adopting face masks has certainly done more good than harm. TCM presents a similar scenario, right down to its early adoption in Asia versus balking protests in the states. At the end of the day, how are they different? If we’re willing to give face masks a try, why not TCM as well? References Ansari Talal, et al. “U.S. Coronavirus Cases Surpass Those of China, Italy.” Wall Street Journal, March 27th, 2020, www.wsj.com/articles/governments-clamp-down-as-coronavirus-infections-surge-11585218656 Bensoussan, N. J. Talley et al., "Treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome With Chinese Herbal Medicine: A Randomized Controlled Trial." 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