There are few leather-bound books more satisfying to pore over than the ones you find on a table at a Chinese restaurant. The words inside read like poetry — General Tso’s chicken, Buddha’s delight, sizzling rice soup — and conjure images that put Shakespearean sonnets to shame. The paperback edition (also known as a takeout menu) has the same Pavlovian effect.
In her new best seller for middle grade readers, appropriately named “Chinese Menu,” Grace Lin tells the stories, myths and legends behind many of these beloved comfort foods. She begins with the origins of chopsticks and tea, then moves chronologically through a Chinese feast, from appetizers to dessert. (The history of the fortune cookie is especially complicated, involving a turf war, subterfuge and a lawsuit.) Did you know that empress chicken grew out of an ancient imperial consort’s dream of eating what she called “flying heaven”? Or that mapo tofu — or mapo doufu — translates as “pockmarked Grandma’s tofu” after its creator, whose face bore the scars of a childhood bout of smallpox?
In short chapters illustrated with colorful drawings, Lin explores generations and centuries of fact and fable, often leaving readers at the intersection of the two. The effect is dizzying, exactly as a generous buffet should be. Imagine a lift-the-flap book with layers of tabs to open and you have the basic idea.
Lin, who won a Newbery Honor for her novel “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” and a Caldecott Honor for her picture book “A Big Mooncake for Little Star,” wasn’t sure how this one would be received.
“It’s not a cookbook. It’s not a picture book. It’s not even a novel,” she said in a phone interview. “It’s this collection of stories, kind of like a book of Greek myths, but about Chinese food.”
Lin had been percolating the idea for “Chinese Menu” since 2004, but the pandemic and a simultaneous spike in anti-Asian hate crimes prompted her to get started. “They were calling the coronavirus ‘kung flu,’” she said. “Chinatowns were getting completely decimated. That was really painful to me as a Chinese American. Those restaurants are just as American as the pizza parlor or hamburger joint down the street.”
Lin hired a research assistant to help locate secondary sources for stories she’d heard from her father, who emigrated from Taiwan (and, according to his daughter, has a big imagination). Writing and illustrating the book confirmed something she’s known for most of her life: “The menu at your Chinese restaurant is like a table of contents,” Lin said. “That sounds like hyperbole but it’s really not. Every single dish has some kind of story.”
Elisabeth Egan is an editor at the Book Review and the author of “A Window Opens.”
