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He quickly puts aside the Chop stickes sic, which are evidently possessed of devil, and goes at the stuff with a fork . It is a heroic effort, but it is not sustained. The novice gets a mouthful or two, turns pale, all the time declaring that it is “great”. It is a long time before he can be persuaded to go again , but he is sure to surrender eventually to the enchanting decoction.For a while he half believes there must be “dope” in the stuff .He is now certain there are no rats in it . He is a confirmed chop-suey eater. With the spread of Asian cuisines in recent decades and a corresponding increase in customer sophistication, this account has acquired an air of quaintness. Yet the attitude toward Asian Americans underlying it has far from dissipated; it repeatedly resurfaces in periods of national insecurity , as demonstrated by stories of dog-eating Vietnamese refugees , which have persisted since the groups settlement in the United States after the Vietnam War ( Kalcik 1984:37 ) ; or by a Newsweek article entitled “Pass a Snake , Hold the Rat ,” appearing a propos of nothing , in which “unusual” animal dishes served in China are rated （Liu 1991）. The stories of dog-eating coexist with the growing popularity of Asian restaurants is no contradiction. Asian restaurant owners make their living on the knife-edge between novelty and familiarity, risk and comfort. Their battle with reluctant palates is not unlike the collective struggle that Asian Americans have to undertake in order to maintain a viable identity. Even in the post-1965 era, when diversity and pluralism are the new catchwords , catholicity of taste , whether culinary or cultural , still has an edge of exploitation to it. We become equal-opportunity eaters, especially in situations where we can sample unaccustomed foods while standing and walking around, as at a festival. This appears , in historical perspective , to be an extension of a capitalist approach to life in which exploitation of subordinated peoples is not only expressed in terms of labor but also in appropriating their cultural styles , including their ways of cooking and eating (Abrahams 1984:23) . Asian Americans may be haunted by the phrase “strange people but they sure can cook”(Kalcik , 37) , finding themselves valued only in those areas of life where they are allowed to tend to the needs of the dominant group . THE MAMA FUFU COOKBOOKAs might be expected, the coiner of the term food pornography is the most incisive analyst of the phenomenon. Frank Chins play The Year of the Dragon(1981 ; first produced 1974)is a dazzling study of food pornography; in his hands alimentary images become complex metaphors , commenting on aspects of Chinese American life ranging from family relationships to the art of writing , from cultural transmission to ethnic entrepreneurship .The protagonist, Fred Eng, is a Chinatown tour guide exemplifying the survival strategy of food pornography (which, it should be clear by now, also stands for cultural pornography). He becomes top guide by pandering to the worst fantasies of gawking tourists, feeding them appropriate doses of “foreignness” in his double capacity as confiding friend and trained professional. His parodic sales pitch on Chinese food is a masterful evocation of contradictory stereotypes about the Chinese-the gracious, solicitous Oriental host and the vice lord promising wicked delights ; the healing herbalist and the fiendish brewer of mysterious potions ; the harmless cheap laborer and the formidable purveyor of imperial glamour .You wanna know where to go eat in Chinatown , I betcha .Im telling you right now. Only ninety-nine restaurants and suey shops in Chinatown. I eating in every one and can telling you, its TRUE ! What you hear about.Cantonese sweet n sour goes straight to your scrotum.Pekingese goo makes you dream in 3-D.Shanghai hash cures blind drunkenness and raises your I.Q. six points! And the universal peanut grease of the Chinatown deepfry lights up every nerve of your body, from your vital to your fingertips in a glittering interior chandelier glowing you up so nice and so warm, Chinatown all you can eat faw two dollars fifty cents is all you can eat .Freds practice of food pornography is shown as stemming directly from struggles between the immigrant and his children , it is a stopgap solution devise to satisfy the conflicting demands of Necessity and Extravagance in the short run. The ailing elder Mr. Eng(Pa), a solid citizen of Chinatown like Johnnys father in “Food for All His Dead”(of which the play is an greatly elaborated and expanded version), wants his “number one son” to continue his travel and tour business after his death . An unquestioning believer in Necessity, he sees absolutely no redeeming value in the creative efforts of Fred, a talented aspiring writer whose ambition is to create the “great Chinese American novel” (83). To Pa, Freds writing is childs play, mere fooling around, irresponsible craziness. “You gimme you story. Torty year olyou come home, what you show for it ? Tree stupi page in a cheap book? ” (109). “Nobody read dat stuff” (137). Feeling defeated , Fred gives up his dream to become a Chinatown tour guide . “Blabbing at the tourists is as close to writing I can do without Chinatown hating me”(109) . Even so Pa is disappointed: “I gib you travoo agens meck you some responsiboo what happening? You run around like doze tour guys you hire.You never be famous . Wasting time ! ”Unable to communicate with his father become of profound differences in outlook as well as language, Fred realize that “foods our only common language” (85): if there is any love between parent and child , it can only be expressed silently through special dishes , not through words . On the other hand, both Chinese food and English words can reach the white tourist. Fred hits upon an ideas: Why not combine the two to make a fortune? He collaborates with his outmarried sister Mattie (who has a barometer of white taste in her Orientalia-loving husband, Ross) to create the “great Chinese American Cookbook”(83). “Your recipes and my smut knocked me out, Sis. You invented a new literary form. Food pornography.”（86）. Instead of the great Chinese American novel that no one reads, Fred will write “a book of recipes telling the story of a Chinatown family” (86). The print medium promises to fix the ephemeral, local form of the tour guides spiel and sell it to a national audience. In an appropriate spirit of self-deprecating (but at heart vengeful) shucking, the cookbook is to be named the Mama Fu Fu Cookbook, mama fufu being Cantonese for “perfunctory,” “sloppy,” or “mediocre,” The team envisions “a chain of Mama Fu Fus . Franchises . Mail order.A syndicated column . Frozen food .” (118) . Eventually , Sis reminds Fred , he may be able to retire on the income from the Mama Fu Fu project and return to serious writing (81) . He may also be able to get Ma and his young brother Johnny out of Chinatown. Fred is excited by the possibility of permanently freeing himself from Necessity by a temporary indenture to it .The plot of the play is propelled by his hesitations about promising Pa to stay in Chinatown after his death .As the name Mama Fu Fu implies, Freds scheme is domed because it is by nature makeshift and phony. At the end of the play Fred is back to hawking “local color” (79) of the most demeaning sort.You dont feel comfortable about eating in a neighborhood that shows no cats. The dogs here dont look healthy. And you seen garbage climb out of the trash wearing the clothes of dead men. And act like bums. Makes you wonder what Chinamans eat, dont it.I know the feeling.BAD FEELING (142)The references to the stereotype of cat and dog-eating Asians recall other Chinese American stories we have examined that portray attachment to pets (farm animals, “dove birds ,”crabs) as an indulgence disdained by the hard-boiled immigrant generation . NONPROFESSIONAL “FOOD PORNOGRAPHERS”To the extent that Freds peddling of bastardized ethnic food is a means of livelihood, one can speak of the Mama Fu Fu enterprise as adaptation and consider The Year of the Dragon a reflection of a certain stage in the economic development of the Chinese American community. But to the extent that food pornography represents a stance toward white society characterized by simultaneous dependence and subversion, it also implies a certain limited vision of Chinese American community one that cannot yet conceive of, or cannot yet take for granted, a robust culture created and maintained by free-acting, self-possessed men and women. Such a vision, though originating with the Chinese with their early involvement in food services, is by no means confined to them. Since white society tends to treat all Asians alike ( the derogatory Chink is “generic”) , the kind of identity conflict embodied by Fred Eng is experienced by many Asian Americans who believe ,rightly or wrongly , that they have to choose between being “somebody” in a closed , suffocating ethnic community and being “nobody” in the larger , more hostile white world (116-17) . How many Asian American actually feel this way , how acutely they feel it , how soon or how thoroughly they give up the search for an alternative , how readily they take on the role of cultural comprador , how closely they allow their means of livelihood to be tied to such a role- all fluctuate with the vicissitudes of Asian American history . It is safe to say , however , that Freds dilemma represents a widespread phenomenon that is likely to persist for some time to come . Thus it is that we find versions of the food pornographer in Asian American literature since at least the 1930s and up to at least the mid-1980s . These characters differ from Fred Eng in that they are nonprofessional-that is , they practice food pornography in personal relationships (including relationships with an intended reader ) rather than in their occupations . They also differ from each other in their attitude toward the role : some take it on good-naturedly , others shamelessly , still others in desperation . However , their strategies for winning white attention and favor show a fundamental commonality .Korean American writer Younghill Kangs fictionalized autobiography , East Goes West (1937) , shows an interesting early example of food pornography . Chungpa Han, the protagonist who has left Japanese-occupied Korea for intellectual adventures in the West , uses his familiarity with New Yorks Chinatown to woo his Caucasion dream girl , Trip . He takes her to an ornate Chinese restaurant, buys her Chinese teas and preserved fruits in a small shop, and goes down into a cellar to get Chinese wine. ( The narrative is set during Prohibition, which lasted from 1919 to 1933 . ) While Trip is waiting for him duty to “ protect American girls in Chinatown ” as a titillating den of iniquity. “Marvellous ! detectives ! danger ! Just what you expect from Chinatown , and never get”(345-46) . When Trip gets home , she shows off her gifts to her roommates and flaunts her newfound expertise in things Oriental : “All different kinds of mysterious things , and there is one thing-a little ugly black thing-when you break it between your teeth-you taste a marigolds smell-not at first , but slowly and gradually”(345-46) . Though the episode is rendered in a light-hearted , self-mocking tone , as befits the fantasy nature of Hans unsuccessful (in retrospect , impossible) courtship , it is reminiscent of the more blatanly condescending account of the “chop suey eater,” whose initial misgivings are transformed into delight under the guidance of a friendly insider . A piece of advice given to Chungpa Han by Kim , a talented but luckless fellow exile ( Kim eventually takes his own life a frustrated love affair with a highborn New England woman ), epitomizes the kind of self-Orientalizing cultural stance of which food pornography is a common manifestation . “You have to eat. And to eat, you must enter into the economic life of Americans. Listen then.In making a living, Oriental scholarship may help you more than your American education.You must be now like a Western man approaching Asia”(276-77;italics added) . The comparative of the foreignera gaze , may be considered merely a subtler , more elegant version of food pornography .The variety of nonprofessional food pornography found in East Goes West also appears in Chinese American writer Chuang Huas Crossings (1968; rpt. 1986). In this modernist novel about a deracinated upperclass Chinese American womans “wanderings and homecomings” (187) , the narrator (known as Fourth Jane in the family) is shown trying to save a waning affair by a series of home-cooked dinners . Although the setting for this given instance of food pornography is Europe (where Fourth Jane does some of her wandering ), the narrator suffers from a recognizably Asian American identity problem(121-22), and her use of ethnic food to win the heart of her white lover is reminiscent of Chungpa Hans attempt to impress Trip . Both protagonists do not feel they can be appreciated for what they are , since their white lovers have certain preconceptions about their Asian background .That Chungpa Han can show Trip around Chinatown vastly overshadows the fact that he is well-versed in Western literature from Shakespeare to T.S.Eliot. Fourth Janes lover goes as far as to deplore her “Americanness”(which she cannot have avoided), preferring to think of anyone of Chinese ancestry as simply “Chinese” and belonging only in China (120).At the beginning , the alimentary images have no particular ethnic connotations ; after all , the association of eating with sensuality or seduction is not only common in mainstream Western literature from Tom Jones to Ulysses but arguably “universal”(More 1977:195-257). When Fourth Jane prepares special dishes (Crossings, 24, 61, 67, 97) as “offerings”(117)to her none-too-enthusiastic lover , she joins the ranks of numerous mistresses , East and West , who have hoped to tie down their men by creating the illusion of home with gastronomic feats . However , as it becomes increasingly clear that the journalist has no interest at all in deeper attachments , and that he has expected her to be more of a Chinese and less of a drifting exile (120), Fourth Jane abandons Western-style cooking . She resorts to her piece de resistance : Chinese-style duck , marinaded in “honey ,salt and pepper , crushed ginger and garlic , chopped scallion , soy sauce and .sherry and bourbon” (116) , and slowly roasted in the oven . The silent message Fourth Jane is sending to her man is that she is no waif. She is not a “generic” woman interchangeable with other warm bodies but someone who can divert him with a unique array of culture novelties ; cosmopolitan as she appears , what little she has retained of her ancestral culture should suffice to mark her as different and therefore more worthy of favor . Her culinary labor of love is , for Gods sake , ethnic . (The Tao Te Ching in translation that Jane tries unsuccessfully to read to him serves the same purpose 116,118.) This mentality , though expressed in the context of a love affair , is clearly an analog of the professional Chinatown tour guides and shares with the latter a wider applicability : an inclination to justify ones existence as an Asian American by appealing to white taste for exotica .In addition to literary works showing characters who practice food pornography in romantic relationships, we also find autobiographies in which the narrator takes the white reader on a verbal gastronomic tour . Pardee Lowes Father and Glorious Descendant (1943) and Jade Snow Wongs Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945) both contain descriptions of Chinese meals , taking pains to explain the ritualistic significance of certain meals and folk beliefs about the medicinal properties of certain ingredients . In Father and Glorious descendant , in addition to brief paragraphs on the dishes for seasonal district and family association banquets (46), Chinese New Years (69-70), and Fathers birthday feast（315），Lowe devotes a chapter to the familys comic encounter with “wildcat soup” a tonic meant to increase ones strength and vigor (259-66). Fifth Chinese Daughter is even more openly solicitous in anticipating the white readers curiosities. The obligatory disquisition on Chinese New Year delicacies (39-45) is augmented by a lengthy section on Chinese housewifery( which includes tips on how to cook perfect rice and salvage burnt rice) (56-62); an account of a dinner for the narrators college friends (which details the proper way to cook egg too yung and tomato beef, accurate to the tablespoonful) (159-62); and a chapter on a “rediscovered” Chinatown herb shop, complete with an elucidation of the Chinese theory of humors (217-25). A remark that the narrator lets till reveals the eagerness for acceptance that motivates the food pornographer: “Within half an hour, her comrades had raised Jade Snow high in their estimation. To be worthy of this new trust, Jade Snow racked her brains to decide what dishes she could cook without a Chinese larder” (158). Although Jade Snows friends are not exclusively Caucasian, it is obvious that the primary object of her brain-racking is not to cement her friendship with the handful of fellow Chinese students. Jade Snow is unlikely to forget that she enters exclusive Mills College under the patronage of its president, who “has had a lifelong interest in Oriental people” (148). Her scholars status may distinguish her from the “entirely Chinese” kitchen staff, “some of them descendants of the first Chinese kitchen help who worked for the founders of the college” (158). However, her acutely felt sense of inferiority to the white students, wh