Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm Ben, I'm no,
Speaker 1: and we are as always joined with our super producer
Speaker 1: Alex Williams. Have we introduced Alex to the Ridiculous History
Speaker 1: crowd yet? Ah? Yes, everyone, Alex Alex. Everyone. He doesn't
Speaker 1: really talk. He only talks in our ears and dead
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes we get him to turn up
Speaker 1: the high hats and we assure you he's very much real.
Speaker 1: It's very much super. Now he's there, we're looking at him,
Speaker 1: and he is a handsome toothsome young man. Um. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the new Blade Runner movie? At been? I
Speaker 1: have not seen the New Blade Runner yet. No. I
Speaker 1: saw it last night at like ten o'clock. And I
Speaker 1: do really badly with falling asleep at late movies. And
Speaker 1: it's quite long, but I will tell you that it
Speaker 1: moved along at such a It's a very languid movie,
Speaker 1: but it actually has a pretty incredible clip of action
Speaker 1: and activity that kind of kept me awake and alert
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed every second of it. And it's a
Speaker 1: it's somewhat of a slow bird, right if I'm having
Speaker 1: a hard time expression because it is a slow burn
Speaker 1: and it's a very languid kind of drone e movie.
Speaker 1: It's got this amazing score that very much matches what
Speaker 1: Van Gellis did on the original one, but this time
Speaker 1: they've got Hans Zimmer doing it. He's doing his very
Speaker 1: best Vangellis impersonation and it's great. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of movie that used to maybe would
Speaker 1: have put me to sleep watching it at ten o'clock
Speaker 1: and it is three hours long. But I'm just I
Speaker 1: think that says a lot. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: anything away. Everyone should see it. It's really cool. This
Speaker 1: has like literally nothing to do with what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. It kind of does, does it, yes, Because
Speaker 1: because we're we're currently talking about the seventeen the new
Speaker 1: Blea Runner film. In the previous Blade Runner film, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things about it watching watching it as
Speaker 1: a wee Tyke was decort right the protagonists he is.
Speaker 1: It seems like there are scenes where he is walking
Speaker 1: by restaurants and stuff. Man, I totally just pulled this
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, but it absolutely does connect because it
Speaker 1: was the future depicted in the Blade Runner movies and
Speaker 1: in this new one too. There's a definite Chinese influence.
Speaker 1: See where I'm going, and you see where you're going,
Speaker 1: and there are you know, restaurants on every corner. A
Speaker 1: lot of the folks that make the manufacturer the bootleg
Speaker 1: um replicant animals and different things like that, they're they're
Speaker 1: from China, and everyone kind of also speaks Chinese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a second language. It's very important.
Speaker 1: There's this implied subtext that whether economically or culturally, the
Speaker 1: Chinese culture is making these in roads right on place
Speaker 1: is where it formerly would never have existed. And in
Speaker 1: the universe of at least the original Blade Runner, this
Speaker 1: is a given. This is after the fact, after the
Speaker 1: story begins. This is already happened. And what's strange about it,
Speaker 1: you know, there is always the argument that science fiction
Speaker 1: is like prescient, right, it's predictive. In this case, what's
Speaker 1: fascinating is that in the past we have to wonder
Speaker 1: what the directors are drawing from, because in the real
Speaker 1: life past and genuine American history, there was a time
Speaker 1: where people were very threatened by this notion. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of another really awful, embarrassing thing that we as
Speaker 1: a country did. It's it's pretty awful. Um, this is
Speaker 1: kind of a bit of a bummer of a topic,
Speaker 1: but it's really fascinating and for obvious reasons, completely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna be as sensitive as humanly possible about this.
Speaker 1: But there are some kind of upsetting racial themes that
Speaker 1: we're going to get into in talking about America's war
Speaker 1: on Chinese restaurants in the early nineteen hundreds. Now, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know how this sounds. We know how
Speaker 1: this sounds when you're hearing it a war on what.
Speaker 1: And of course it's not as if America as a
Speaker 1: stranger to waging war on various things, various things that
Speaker 1: aren't nations, right. Uh. And it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: believe today because we know that there are over forty
Speaker 1: one thousand Chinese restaurants in the US. This is an institution.
Speaker 1: You know, we always think of think of about how
Speaker 1: ubiquity is some fast food places might be, but Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurants are taking the cake. I believe there are about
Speaker 1: three times as many Chinese restaurants as the number of
Speaker 1: McDonald's and General so Is Chicken. I've always been concerned
Speaker 1: about my pronunciation of that as a General so Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like yes that I'm gonna go with general. So it's
Speaker 1: uh one of the most ordered dishes online via grub
Speaker 1: hub um in the nation. So it's like one of
Speaker 1: the most popular takeout foods that we have. Um. So
Speaker 1: let's just set the scene a little bit, the creepy
Speaker 1: racist scene, if you will. In the early to mid
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, the um white establishment, which was made up
Speaker 1: of like local governments and labor unions, and boy boy,
Speaker 1: were the labor unions a big part of this problem,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into you later, among other institutions in
Speaker 1: the US, basically put out and supported these Jim Crow
Speaker 1: laws and other regulations that were incredibly prohibitive specifically to
Speaker 1: people of Asian descent. Right. And based on these regulations
Speaker 1: and the underlying and open, we should say this, very
Speaker 1: open racist ideology, this establishment waged a campaign trying to
Speaker 1: drive the Chinese restaurants of the time out of business.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the stuff that we're a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff we're taking as inspiration in
Speaker 1: this episode comes from a fantastic study written by Gabriel J.
Speaker 1: Chin and John Ormand called the War against Chinese Restaurants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the paper goes into every possible angle of this and
Speaker 1: it's it's more than we could hope to cover in
Speaker 1: a in a thirty minute podcast, but um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's such an interesting microcosm for the history of racism
Speaker 1: in America too, because it comes at it from all sides. Basically,
Speaker 1: you have, you know, the idea of targeting a specific
Speaker 1: race with mistreatment and trying to exclude them from earning
Speaker 1: a living wage and being successful entrepreneurs in this country,
Speaker 1: to you know, the boycotts and all of the things
Speaker 1: that go along with that, and protests, to the whole
Speaker 1: idea of the Chinese man being painted and portrayed as
Speaker 1: some sort of insidious threat that would potentially woo unsuspecting
Speaker 1: white women into their you know, underground opium layers, and
Speaker 1: you know, just just the most awful, stereotypical kinds of
Speaker 1: things you could think of. Uh, this paper really dissects
Speaker 1: all of that and gets to the heart of what's
Speaker 1: going on here. Yeah, and the heart of what's going
Speaker 1: on is unfortunately all too familiar because it obeys some
Speaker 1: of the same patterns we have seen in history before.
Speaker 1: And then the strangest and craziest thing about it is.
Speaker 1: The question did America wage war on Chinese restaurants sounds ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and the answer is yes, absolutely and no. You mentioned
Speaker 1: some some of the prongs of their argument here and
Speaker 1: there there two sides, right, there's the econom um excite,
Speaker 1: as South Park characters would say, they're taking our gerbs, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there was you know, a lot of Chinese
Speaker 1: immigration happened in the early eighteen hundreds as a result
Speaker 1: of their willingness to work for less money. And you know,
Speaker 1: we built the Transcontinal Railroad and that was a huge
Speaker 1: part of that labor force. And you know, of course,
Speaker 1: you leave your home and you come to the land
Speaker 1: of opportunity and the hopes of making a better life
Speaker 1: for yourself, and then surprise, you're treated like utter garbage
Speaker 1: and paid nothing and given no protections because the unions
Speaker 1: literally would not allow folks of Chinese descent to be
Speaker 1: a member, right exactly. And you know, labor unions are
Speaker 1: a complex thing in US history, so we're not demigrating
Speaker 1: the idea of labor unions. Overall. This is not capital
Speaker 1: l capital you labor unions the concept. This is about
Speaker 1: the provable, disputable actions of labor unions in this time,
Speaker 1: because you see, they thought that these restaurants for for
Speaker 1: people who are able to literally through backbreaking work probably
Speaker 1: no small amount of luck and endless determination. People who
Speaker 1: started their own restaurants were being targeted because they were
Speaker 1: seeing this competition for American restaurants and that they were
Speaker 1: taking away jobs, right, good American jobs in this case
Speaker 1: pretty much white people restaurant jobs. And the idea of
Speaker 1: this threat was to them a to these labor unions.
Speaker 1: It was not so much an act of aggression as
Speaker 1: it was some sort of act of defense or survivalism. No,
Speaker 1: you've already already mentioned the fear that these these strange
Speaker 1: men would capture the white women and involved them in
Speaker 1: slavery essentially for opium. And this also, I think shows
Speaker 1: how how much of a dearth of education there was
Speaker 1: regarding the history of the West China and opium, because
Speaker 1: we we haven't talked about on this show, but in
Speaker 1: the Opium Wars, one of the main reasons they occurred
Speaker 1: is because the Chinese government said, please stop forcing opium
Speaker 1: on our people when it was really happening. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting and heartbreaking switcheroo. As as you said, this
Speaker 1: immigration had been in play since the eighteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: as these as people who came over from China began
Speaker 1: to prosper and save money, they started opening their own businesses.
Speaker 1: American Dream right, textbook American Dream, so to quote from
Speaker 1: um an email interview conducted with the author of that paper,
Speaker 1: Gabriel Jack Chenum non Chinese American cooks and waiters and
Speaker 1: restaurant owners really wanted the Chinese restaurants gone. But what
Speaker 1: got the labor movement as a whole interested was restricting
Speaker 1: immigration in general and keeping Asians out of the workforce entirely. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And this this is a strange case because it begins
Speaker 1: to enter legislation. This fearmongering and this prejudice led to
Speaker 1: Congress passing laws that explicitly stopped, blocked, halted, cut off
Speaker 1: Chinese immigration, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. And the thing is, when the earliest Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurants started in the US, they were not billing themselves
Speaker 1: as quote unquote Chinese restaurants. The restauranteurs were assimilating. They
Speaker 1: were including American food, you know, like grilled steak of
Speaker 1: roast chicken, you know, whatever is around too. I mean,
Speaker 1: we also think about supply chains. In that time, they
Speaker 1: were probably making foods that were easily made from surrounding areas,
Speaker 1: right and agricultural resources. But this didn't stop the unions
Speaker 1: from going after Chinese restaurants, and they use different tactics
Speaker 1: to do this. In some communities, the white union members
Speaker 1: would do what is almost a mafioso tactic. They would
Speaker 1: go into the restaurant and they would say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you just a warning here, be about
Speaker 1: time to leave town. Wednesday is a good trip forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in that paper, there's a whole section on
Speaker 1: some of these attempts to literally run these folks out
Speaker 1: of town like on a rail. Yes, and this was
Speaker 1: not the only arrow in the quiver of these labor unions.
Speaker 1: They also organized boycotts, and a boycott would be you've
Speaker 1: seen these in the modern day. Boycott in this instance
Speaker 1: would be something like a group of people getting together
Speaker 1: to maybe protests outside of a restaurant, to pass out
Speaker 1: handbills talking about this this menace and to exhort friends, neighbors,
Speaker 1: and loved ones not to go to this restaurant to
Speaker 1: make it feel that it is somehow a civic responsibility
Speaker 1: not to support this establishment. And when you bring it
Speaker 1: back to the labor unions, it becomes basically like a
Speaker 1: national boycott because they made a huge deal about not
Speaker 1: patronizing any businesses that weren't connected to the labor unions,
Speaker 1: and they would not allow people of Asian descent um,
Speaker 1: whether they are you know, even children of immigrants, to
Speaker 1: join the unions um. Therefore, they were essentially telling all
Speaker 1: of their members to have nothing to do with any
Speaker 1: business that had any connection with you know, these these people. Yes,
Speaker 1: so let's let's think about this in the human perspective.
Speaker 1: I love that you point this out. So even if
Speaker 1: you were born in the US, maybe your parents immigrated
Speaker 1: and you were born in California, that law would still
Speaker 1: apply to you. It's something more. It's the layer of
Speaker 1: race instead of just the layer of citizenship. And let's
Speaker 1: imagine for a second the other side of the argument.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you are a labor union member and
Speaker 1: you don't have a problem with these other restaurants. Heck,
Speaker 1: once a week you go out for family dinner at
Speaker 1: your favorite place and you order chop suey, which is
Speaker 1: a whole different thing, right, but because you're in the Union,
Speaker 1: you can. It's you're not only told not to do it,
Speaker 1: but there will be consequences if you do, uh, go
Speaker 1: to this restaurant. Yeah, And speaking of chop suey, that
Speaker 1: was actually a kind of an Americanized Asian dish that became,
Speaker 1: you know, a centerpiece for um. These restaurants that were
Speaker 1: popping up all over the place, especially in California. They
Speaker 1: are called chop suey house is And it was a
Speaker 1: dish that was like a stir fried mix of meat
Speaker 1: and vegetables and eggs over noodles. And I was looking
Speaker 1: it up and apparently the origin of the fridly terms
Speaker 1: chop suey comes from the idea of reusing leftovers, so
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, whatever you have left in
Speaker 1: the frid So it's not a specific set of ingredients,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like whatever's around. Um. But they
Speaker 1: were really popular, and these restaurants were popping up all
Speaker 1: over the place, and you know, the they were the
Speaker 1: target of all kinds of racist animosity, um wherever they
Speaker 1: were found, even though they were certainly also pretty popular, right,
Speaker 1: people were people were obviously building restaurants to meet demand. Right.
Speaker 1: If people didn't like this food, then these would these
Speaker 1: restaurants wouldn't exist. That's just how this business would work.
Speaker 1: When the boycotts didn't work, though, and when the threats
Speaker 1: didn't work both to let's remember the people who owned
Speaker 1: the restaurants and the people who already existed in labor unions.
Speaker 1: There was another step, and a very serious step. This
Speaker 1: is where a story takes an even darker turn. There
Speaker 1: was a missionary named el Ci Siegel and she was
Speaker 1: found murdered in nineteen o nine in a room above
Speaker 1: a Chinese restaurant in New York City. And this, as
Speaker 1: Marcavelli in cold and I would say evil as it sounds,
Speaker 1: was the opportunity that these anti immigration forces have been
Speaker 1: waiting for. Yeah, this became a really huge story, not
Speaker 1: just in New York but all across the country. And
Speaker 1: there's a really great article on the site of the
Speaker 1: Tenement Museum, and it's got some great clips of the headlines.
Speaker 1: One of them is fine miss Seagal dead in trunk.
Speaker 1: Her body was found in a trunk, um strangled with
Speaker 1: a rope around her neck, and she was actually the
Speaker 1: granddaughter of a very well known Union general from the
Speaker 1: Civil War. So this was a pretty big l One
Speaker 1: of the other headlines was Chinese suspected of slaying white
Speaker 1: girl is in custody. Yikes. It's like how much more
Speaker 1: divisive can you get in the headline. It's like where
Speaker 1: they were definitely trying to push an agenda here and
Speaker 1: stir up hysteria and kind of like a panic you
Speaker 1: know too, We've got to do something about this problem.
Speaker 1: This the inherent threat that has now gone beyond. This
Speaker 1: is me speaking hypothetically, the voice of these kind of
Speaker 1: awful people. Um has gone beyond just threatening us monetarily,
Speaker 1: but there is a legitimate threat to our children. Things
Speaker 1: insidious menace, think of the children. We have a moral imperative.
Speaker 1: And this propagandization, this this smear campaign reached a fever pitch.
Speaker 1: It became a media tropes when when Elsie Seaguals death
Speaker 1: triggered a new era of this. It came from a
Speaker 1: pre existing thing, this white female victimization. In Chin's paper,
Speaker 1: they cite an eight film called King of the Opium Ring,
Speaker 1: and it features a clown who rescues a young white
Speaker 1: woman in dire straits on the balcony of a Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 1: This thing played around the country. People loved it. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't, you know, tabula raz It wasn't a blank
Speaker 1: slate for the labor unions to exploit this stuff emotionally.
Speaker 1: And the Seagull murder lad to lobbying for laws that
Speaker 1: completely banned white women, exclusively white women, not just from
Speaker 1: working at a Chinese restaurant, but from visiting one as
Speaker 1: a customer. And now we have the benefit of history
Speaker 1: when you think about the murder, Well, it's crazy too,
Speaker 1: because I mean, the language and the legislation is just
Speaker 1: absurdly Obviously it's racist, but it's really sexist that talks
Speaker 1: about how women are somehow weak willed and you know,
Speaker 1: appliable and easily you know, led astray, and just very
Speaker 1: condescending stuff. But as it turns out, this case had
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting conclusion. So it turns out that the
Speaker 1: apartment where else where Elsie Siegel's body was discovered, belonged
Speaker 1: to a man by the name of Leon Ling, whose
Speaker 1: cousin owned the restaurant um underneath the apartment, and they
Speaker 1: found a box with a whole lot of love letters
Speaker 1: from Um miss Siegel to this man Leon Ling, and
Speaker 1: apparently some of them sounded very as though she were
Speaker 1: pleading with him to not leave her or you know,
Speaker 1: to to stay with her. And it also came out
Speaker 1: that there was another player in the story. There was
Speaker 1: a man Um who was seen as being a potential
Speaker 1: jealous uh spurned lover of mis Seagull. And this man's
Speaker 1: name was Chew Gain, and he admitted to Um also
Speaker 1: being in a relationship with Elsie Uh, and that he
Speaker 1: had received anonymous letters threatening her life. And then eventually
Speaker 1: the police discovered another man by the name of Chew
Speaker 1: Gain who admitted to of having having had a relationship
Speaker 1: with Um Elsie and he received all these anonymous letters
Speaker 1: threatening his life and her life if they didn't in
Speaker 1: the relationship Um. Ultimately the cops arrested three people, and
Speaker 1: um Ling eventually left the country and was never apprehended,
Speaker 1: and the murders apparently an open case, you know, more
Speaker 1: than a years later. But all of this stuff just
Speaker 1: stirred up these wild rumors that things from like Elsie
Speaker 1: had killed herself to you know, the Chinese community had
Speaker 1: smuggled ling out of the country. So all of this
Speaker 1: just served to pour fuel on this you know, racist
Speaker 1: fire that was burning already, and because it was such
Speaker 1: a sensational story, it kind of spread this, you know,
Speaker 1: all over the country, and this this went city to city.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that some conscientious local politicians
Speaker 1: didn't fight against these bills, some airs vetoed them. But
Speaker 1: there was a change there was There was this wave
Speaker 1: of people who were convinced, convinced that the enemy was
Speaker 1: within and the enemy was making delicious food as a
Speaker 1: cover for some larger, perfidious motive opponents. Luckily, luckily for me,
Speaker 1: the opponents were not successful in ridding cities of Chinese restaurants,
Speaker 1: and eventually the good news is that the organized movement
Speaker 1: against the restaurants started to fade out. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons the Chin sites that have faded out is pretty ugly,
Speaker 1: but it makes sense. It's the Immigration Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: four which made things worse in terms of immigration because
Speaker 1: it took the Chinese Exclusion Act that just banned Chinese laborers,
Speaker 1: and then it expanded it to include any immigrant from
Speaker 1: the Asian continent, which is insane. These laws, according to Chin,
Speaker 1: gave the white power structure that Nolan I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: a little bit of I guess you'd say reassurance, a
Speaker 1: security blanket where they said, well, we don't have to
Speaker 1: worry anymore about our jobs and our incomes being taken
Speaker 1: quote unquote, and this and the popular mindset meant that
Speaker 1: Asian Americans were not going to be a labor threat,
Speaker 1: at least not as much as they were seen at
Speaker 1: the time. Okay, So you that I felt like there
Speaker 1: was a silver lining coming there, Ben, and I just
Speaker 1: I just I don't see it. Yeah, he basically you're
Speaker 1: saying like it got better because it got worse, you know.
Speaker 1: I uh, yeah, I tell you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think that might be the case. And I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm getting at is it got better in terms of
Speaker 1: there weren't there wasn't as much of a problem for
Speaker 1: the folks that were doing horrible angry racist stuff. So
Speaker 1: therefore some of the horrible angry racist stuff stopped, I guess.
Speaker 1: But right, but it didn't. See that's the thing. It
Speaker 1: didn't get better for this power structure because it never
Speaker 1: got worse, you know what I mean, Like this this threat,
Speaker 1: this this perspective of a threat is clearly based on
Speaker 1: racist ideology. It's not based, it's it's not a solid
Speaker 1: economical argument, you know what I mean. I think it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the was it the forties that you that
Speaker 1: the US lifted this ban on Chinese immigration or no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't on immigration, It was on Chinese people becoming
Speaker 1: nash realized US citizens. So as as far as recently
Speaker 1: as the forties, this was this was a concern. But
Speaker 1: you know what's funny, like what always happens is what
Speaker 1: really turned the popular mindset, um, you know in the
Speaker 1: favor of some of these business owners, was you know,
Speaker 1: celebrities doing stuff and uh, you know we've got like
Speaker 1: Bob Hope and and Ronald Reagan were big fans of
Speaker 1: a place in San Francisco called Charlie Lowe's Forbidden City,
Speaker 1: which is such a cool name place. Um, and it
Speaker 1: was like a nightclub and a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was this guy named Larry Ching who was considered, uh,
Speaker 1: the Chinese Sinatra, and I was writing this article in
Speaker 1: San Francisco Gate. There was also like a Chinese Sophie Tucker,
Speaker 1: a Chinese Fred Astaire, probably a Chinese Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: I don't know what have you, but they always had
Speaker 1: to be couched, you know, as some American you know,
Speaker 1: popular Chinese version of this exist. Um places like this
Speaker 1: because of the appearance of acceptance from influencers like you know,
Speaker 1: these movie stars and president presidents. Uh it's people started
Speaker 1: to kind of like chill out about it a little bit.
Speaker 1: So what changed? You know? We have these celebrity endorsements,
Speaker 1: one of which, famously by Man would later go on
Speaker 1: to serve as US President. But the wheels of legislation
Speaker 1: often grind slow. And as we said, it was until
Speaker 1: forty three that the specific ban on Chinese people naturalizing occurred.
Speaker 1: But even after that point, immigration laws made it incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult for people of Chinese origin to immigrate. And this
Speaker 1: was in this lasted up until get this, nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: three years after the Immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five was an acted into law, So three years
Speaker 1: after it was supposed to happen, it happens pretty mind boggling.
Speaker 1: And it's in the six takes so long to do
Speaker 1: normal stuff in this country. I don't get it, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, now here we are as we said
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, they're just you know,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of Chinese restaurants. It's like
Speaker 1: a hugely popular family meal night takeaway, you know thing.
Speaker 1: I love it, my kid loves it. It's very delicious,
Speaker 1: you know, tasty food, and a lot of it like too.
Speaker 1: This is it's such a such an amazing variety of
Speaker 1: things too, like in like different styles between Sechuan and
Speaker 1: Cantonese and all of the spices, and it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a huge, huge fan of Chinese food. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When we were looking at some of the research here,
Speaker 1: my my question for some of my friends started becoming,
Speaker 1: when's the last time you're eate Chinese food? Everybody, it seems,
Speaker 1: had it in like the past month at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, people are voting with their taste butts. But
Speaker 1: the journey isn't over yet, because the authors say that
Speaker 1: they see clear echoes of the early twentieth century today.
Speaker 1: We've got a great quote from Chin who says there's
Speaker 1: a long tradition in the United States of good things
Speaker 1: being reserved for white folks and misguided economic race tinged xenophobia,
Speaker 1: the waves of discrimination have always proved to be unnecessary
Speaker 1: and counterproductive, and honestly, I agree because when we see
Speaker 1: these sort of who wasn't Mark Twain said that history
Speaker 1: doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. I'm paraphrasing there, yea.
Speaker 1: George Lucas always also said that about them, how brilliant
Speaker 1: the Star Wars prequels were, Like it rhymes. I don't
Speaker 1: know what he means by that, but the slight Red
Speaker 1: Letter media that does these amazing kind of lampoons of
Speaker 1: these Star Wars prequels, they're always using this clip of
Speaker 1: George Lucas thing about everything rhyming. I am going to
Speaker 1: check that out and tell you right now, I am
Speaker 1: in the mood for some orange chicken because just doing
Speaker 1: this this episode has made me so hungry, and I
Speaker 1: feel so fortunate that we're able to go find Chinese restaurants.
Speaker 1: I mean, what if this, what if this went the
Speaker 1: other way? Man? What if they were non existent? That
Speaker 1: would be a shame. That would be a crying shame.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing I really love about living in
Speaker 1: Atlanta is that we have this amazing, um just explosion
Speaker 1: of fantastic you know, culinary options on We've got a
Speaker 1: place called Buford Highway where there are you know, everything
Speaker 1: from Korean to Chinese to all kinds of Latin American food,
Speaker 1: the Opian, whatever you want. And that's That's one thing
Speaker 1: that's cool about living in the United States is that
Speaker 1: you have access to all of this great stuff. And
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't have any other way. I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of what makes uh makes this country special.
Speaker 1: And this means that we are all fortunate. There's a
Speaker 1: happy ending to this story. Of course, no story ever
Speaker 1: really ends, so maybe it's better to say, at this
Speaker 1: point in time, it feels very fortunate. And for now
Speaker 1: that's where our episode ends, but not our show. We
Speaker 1: will be back very soon with more ridiculous history. And
Speaker 1: in the meantime, we'd like to hear from you, so yeah,
Speaker 1: write us your ideas and tell us. You know what
Speaker 1: a bummer this episode was. Spoiler alert, we know we're
Speaker 1: bummed out too, but you know, you gotta learn from
Speaker 1: this stuff and makes you appreciate where we are now.
Speaker 1: I guess, oh sorry, I'm just it's a it is
Speaker 1: a bummer because I'm starting to think about like we're
Speaker 1: not that much better. It's like people are still awful,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's just a whole another culture that
Speaker 1: people are acting this way towards. You know, there's really
Speaker 1: no silver lining at all here. I hate to sound
Speaker 1: so depressed about it, but it's just kind of making
Speaker 1: me realize, like this notion of like, oh, we've come
Speaker 1: so far, and maybe some of us have, but I
Speaker 1: don't know, like we've come so far in one regard
Speaker 1: and devolved so far in another. You know, I wonder,
Speaker 1: I wonder what other cycles like this exists. There's obviously
Speaker 1: there's obviously modern day versions of this where maybe some
Speaker 1: of the language has changed, but the intent is not.
Speaker 1: I know, I guess. I mean, I just saw an
Speaker 1: article the other day about like, you know, a Jewish
Speaker 1: deli in New York being sent an envelope with like
Speaker 1: a swastika on it and saying, you know, Jews get
Speaker 1: out and things like that. So, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is I think this stuff is is informative and illuminating,
Speaker 1: but it's like it's just a bummer to me because
Speaker 1: it's like I don't feel like we've fixed it exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how do you fix something
Speaker 1: like this that's so deep seated in certain people. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not as widespread hopefully. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's also it may be a downer, but it's very
Speaker 1: very important to have knowledge of this out in the world.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's true. I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. This
Speaker 1: is uh, this is so crushing to me. I just
Speaker 1: kind of like had a moment where I started to
Speaker 1: think about, you know, this is there's so many parallels
Speaker 1: with this story. I guess that we're seeing now in particular. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think if if we just at
Speaker 1: least educate ourselves, then we can speak out when we
Speaker 1: see people acting like jerks and speaking and speaking out.
Speaker 1: We'd like to hear from you. What do you think
Speaker 1: about these sorts of cycles in history? Also, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite Chinese food? I think I've thrown that one in
Speaker 1: there because I'm hungry. You're into your the orange chicken guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, it just came to me,
Speaker 1: but it's always a game time decision when I'm in
Speaker 1: front of the menu. I mean, when it comes to
Speaker 1: like super americanized Chinese food. Huge fan of orange chicken especially.
Speaker 1: I like, you know, the crappier, the better. I like
Speaker 1: Mall Orange Chicken. There's a particular, you know, flavor that
Speaker 1: Mall Orange Chicken has for me and a soft spot
Speaker 1: in my heart, very nostalgia because I remember being a
Speaker 1: kid and eating orange chicken at the mall. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to more traditional stuff, like you've you've done
Speaker 1: the dim something, Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've got a
Speaker 1: great place on Bover Highway called Canton House. Been there, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is Gratwin dim sum, also a lot of regional cuisine.
Speaker 1: Big fan of se Juan and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: get out there. Actually, I'm I'm gonna head out and
Speaker 1: grab something to eat. Yeah. The dim sums so cool
Speaker 1: because you literally don't know what you're getting. It's just
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. It's like a surprise every and every bite,
Speaker 1: and they're all like small bites. But now we're just
Speaker 1: talking about delicious Chinese food and we've got to get
Speaker 1: out of here, don't we been? Yes, yes, we do,
Speaker 1: my friends. So speaking of speaking out and uh, speaking
Speaker 1: of surprising things, speak out right to us, surprise us.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, we're on this
Speaker 1: social media. Just search for us on Facebook, um and
Speaker 1: Instagram and you'll find us. You can also send us
Speaker 1: an email at ridiculous at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and we will be back with you very soon for
Speaker 1: more ridiculous history, depending on how long it takes for
Speaker 1: the Orange chickens