Upcoming Events
Eating Chinese: Global and Local Perspectives on Memory and Identity
April 4th& 5th, 2008.
Panelists and Presenters
(in order of appearance):
Cheuk Kwan grew up in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. After earning his masters degree in engineering in the US, he immigrated to Canada in 1976. In 1978, Mr. Kwan co-founded The Asianadian, a magazine dedicated to the promotion of Asian Canadian arts, culture and politics. The following year, he helped lead a nation-wide fight for equality for Chinese Canadians. His first five films, Song of the Exile, On The Islands, Three Continents, Latin Passions and Beyond Frontiers are based on his Chinese Restaurants documentary series and bring together his personal experiences, love of travel and appreciation of Chinese culture worldwide.
Mark Swislocki is Assistant Professor of History at Brown University. He received his PhD in History from Stanford University in 2002. His research focuses on cultural history in China, and on the value of cultural topics and approaches for the rethinking of categories of historical understanding. His first book, Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture in Shanghai, examines the long durée of Shanghai food culture, from late imperial to modern times. He is currently engaged in research on the history of human-animal relations in late imperial China.
Ellen Leong Blonder is the illustrator and co-author of Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America. The book documents recipes and techniques both from the family operated Hong Kong Café in Sacramento and the kitchens of the extended family. The book won an International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Julia Child award in 1999. Ellen’s second cookbook, Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch, followed in 2002. Ellen’s career as an illustrator includes work for books, greeting cards, tabletop items, and stationery products, as well as drawings for advertising and magazines. Her delicate watercolors reflect her love for nature, gardening, and botanical art. She works now from her studio in northern California.
John Chan is the proprietor of Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining located in Woonsocket, RI. Chan’s continues a business founded originally as the New Shanghai Restaurant in 1905. Ben F. Chan purchased the restaurant in 1965 and nine years later the Chan family refurbished the original dining area and applied the Chan name to the marquee. In 1986, the restaurant size was doubled to make space for jazz, blues, folk, cabaret, and comedy performances; since then Chan’s has established a regional reputation as a performance venue; its musical program is regularly featured on cable television.
Jacqueline M. Newman has studied, written about, and followed Chinese foodways throughout her career as an educator. She has accumulated thousands of Chinese cookbooks which she donated and are the foundation of a library special collection that bears her name at SUNY- Stony Brook. She is the author of Food Culture in China and of a forthcoming cookbook about the cuisine of China's Fujian Province. She writes for and edits Flavor and Fortune, the only US periodical devoted to the science and art ofChinese food. In addition, she is a frequently invited guest at forums around the world on Chinese food topics.
Kenny Lao has been known to eat 40 dumplings in one sitting. While growing up in Southern California, Lao’s family and close friends would gather at his childhood home to create a meal of freshly made, steaming, hot dumplings. This tradition of gathering over conversation and comforting food established his love for dumplings. This lifelong shared experience inspired Lao to open Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, New York’s first fast-casual eatery focused singularly on his favorite food. And with it, Lao earned numerous awards, among them, inclusion in Inc. Magazine’s 2006listing of the “30 Under 30 Coolest, Young Entrepreneurs in America”. Kenny is a graduate of Brown University and the NYU Stern School of Business.
Martin Yan is a TV cooking personality and cookbook author of worldwide reputation. His first cooking lessons, ones he still considers his most influential, took place in his childhood kitchen in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (Canton), as he helped his talented mother prepare family meals. As a teenager he apprenticed with a Hong Kong chef, and received further training in Canada and the US, culminating with a graduate degree in food science from the University of California-Davis. Yan’s contributions have been celebrated repeatedly by his peers; his recognitions include the title “Distinguished Visiting Chef” for the Johnson & Wales Culinary Arts Program.
Moderators and Discussants
Evelyn Hu-DeHart is Professor of History, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown. She formerly served in similar posts at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and has also taught at the City University of New York system, New York University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Arizona and University of Michigan. Professor Hu-DeHart often describes herself as a multicultural person who speaks several languages (including English, Chinese, French, and Spanish) and moves easily among several cultures. Her lengthy publication list establishes her as one of leading scholars of the Chinese diaspora, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and the Americas.
John Eng-Wong is a Visiting Scholar at the Centerfor the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America where he is researching the globalization of Chinese food. He was a co-author of “Chow Mein Sandwiches: Chinese American Entrepreneurship in RI”. He has also lectured and written about the history of the Chinese community of Rhode Island.
Robert G. Lee is Associate Professor of American Civilization at Brown. His current research is a study of how immigrant Chinese and their American-born citizen offspring constructed discourses of citizenship in the face of legal and social exclusion. Between 1882 and 1943, when they were excluded from immigration and prohibited from naturalization, American Chinese enacted a wide range of informal citizenships: they made use of the courts; organized social, cultural and political institutions; and mobilized massive civil disobedience. Inventing Chinese America is an intellectual history of that experience and focuses on the ideas and cultural milieu in which American Chinese, immigrant and native born, established themselves as civic actors and in the process shaped and reshaped a distinctive Chinese-American identity.
Lingzhen Wang is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture at Brown. She received a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1998. She is the authorof Personal matters : women's autobiographical practice in twentieth-century China, a work that explores concepts of identity and gender.
Susan Smulyan is Associate Professor in the Department of American Civilization at Brown. She is a cultural historian who works in twentieth century American popular culture, history of technology, and broadcasting history. Her studies of media, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934, and her work about the expression of ideas and representation, Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century, as well as her regular presence at Chinese restaurants give her an entry point for food talk on TV and elsewhere.
Eating Chinese Schedule
Friday, April 4, Brown University, John Nicholas Brown Center, 357 Benefit St, Providence, RI
1:00 to 3:30 pm
What’s “Chinese”? Food & Identity (Cuba and Canada)
Screening followed by a conversation with film maker Cheuk Kwan, Evelyn Hu-Dehart & John Eng-Wong
JNBC Library
4:00 to 5:30 pm
Restaurants, Food and Memory
Panel Discussion with Mark Swislocki, John Chan, Ellen Leong Blonder, discussants Robert Lee and Lingzhen Wang
JNBC Library
6:00 to 7:30 pm
“The Chow Mein Sandwich:” Chinese” in Local Perspective”
Exhibit Opening and Demonstration
JNBC Courtyard and Kitchen
Saturday April 5, Johnson & Wales University, Harborside Campus,
Providence, RI
1:00 to 2:00 pm
Gallery Opening
- “Culinary Beginnings – Asia”
- “Illustrations from Every Grain of Rice”
Culinary Arts Museum
315 Harborside Blvd
2:00 to 3:30 pm
Globalizing Chinese Cuisine
Panel Discussion with Kenny Lao, Cheuk Kwan, Jacqueline M. Newman –
moderator John Eng-Wong
Culinary Arts Museum
3:30 to 4:00 pm
Break – Tea, almond cookies, fruit.
Culinary Arts Museum
4:00 to 5:30 pm
A talk with Martin Yan/ Susan Smulyan and a Cooking Demo featuring Martin Yan*
Tyson Amphitheater
Harborside Academic Center
Johnson & Wales University
Dumpling Reception follows at the Culinary Arts Museum
* These event by reservation only. Contact Sarah Cresta at the Culinary Arts Museum.