The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-05-18
CHOP SUEY DISH
 IS UNKNOWN TO
 NATIVE CHINESE
Invention Of Connection, 5; However, Attributed
 To Chinaman

China has played littl. joke on the world. Its citizens in America have popularized chop suey as if its dish were characteristically Chinese. It is not. It is unknown in China, writes Thomas Steep, in the New York Trib- une. Search China from end to end you could not find, except perhaps in the American quarters of Shanghai, dish of chop suey, Chinese cook who knew how to prepare it, or restaur- ant of the kind that in America passes for Chinese restaurant.
 eYet the invention of chop suey is at tributed to a Chinese. It is said that the genial Ii Hung-chang, when on a visit to the United States, was at loss to entertain some American guests, who asked that they be served Chinese banquet His cook, collecting such in . gredients as were available, concoted a dish to which he gave an exotic tang by adding a piquant sauce made from the soya bean.
 "Chop SOya"
 When asked what the Gish was called in his native land, the jolly Li was reluctant to disillusion his guests. At that moment his merry eye happened to light upon the chopsticks and the bottle of soya sauce, and he answered "chop Soya." which was corrupted by the guests into chop suey.
 The gusto of the guests was hint enough for the willy Chinese cook. He communicated his discovery to his >com- patriots in San Francisco. Such, tradi- fionally, is the origin of Americas chop suey business, which has no counter part in the country from which 1t is supposed to be imported.
 AL. ' can say from observation they eat enormously and yet so economically that what is wasted in the United States would feed 60 million Chinese in comparatively luxury. Every two Americans throw away enough food to nourish a human being on the other side of the world.
 Seining For Harbor Refuse
 Nothing is wasted in China; orange peelings, potato parings, the minutest scrap that contains food value is util- ized. I have seen Chinese in sampans in the harbors seining for bits cast off liners. In the country the green tops of vegetables are eaten, for what is good for rabbits is good for man.
 The cost of feeding one adult .n China averages two cents a day. A coolie never drinks milk or eats butter. He seldom tastes sugar or meat. His diet is tea, steamed rice, cabbage, fish in small quantity, raw turnip pickled in brine for relish, and dried watermelon seeds for desserts. On diet such as this the labor of the most populous nation in the world is performed, and it is pro digious labor, which provides luxuries for the rest of mankind.
 Two cubic inches of bean curd, four walnuts, five peanuts, fifteen roasted beans and twenty melon seeds make meal" says Prof. Edward Alsworth Ross, in describing the way in which the poor of China, the majority, dole out of their food with miscrosopic regard for enonomy "The melon vendors stand is decked out with wedges of in- sipid melon the size of two fingers. The householder leaves the butchers stall with a morsel of pork, the pluck of fowl and a strip OF fish as big as sardine. tied together with blade of grass. In Anhwei the query correspond :nS to How do you make your living? is How do you get through the day? On taking leave of his host 1t is man. ners for the guest to thank him express ly for the food he has provided. Careful observers say that four-fifths of the con versation among the common Chinese relates to food"
 From 24 to 40 Dishes
 F Bdt there is another table set in China. It groans with what Chinese consider luxuries and it is placed before the globular stomachs of retired merch- ants, sleek office holders and military overlords. No expense is spared on it. Etiquette requires, if you are a guest, never to refuse any dish. When there are 24 or 40 dishes--accOrding to an cient custom they must be in multipies of four-and you are seated at the table perhaps for three hours. it is strain on etiquette. You have sharks fins, birds-nest soup. seaslug soup, fir tree cones, cells in strange form of picking, eggs preserved in lime, lotus lily roots, ducks tongues, Jumps of steamed dough, raw this and raw that, an unlimited quantities of rice wine served hot out of a teapot. I have known a few Europeans who, having survived such a dinner, appeared upright on the street the next day, but they were exceptional.
 It would seem that a nation which eats with chopsticks ought to be dainty, because the food must be lifted to the mouth in morsels. Nothing is served on a Chinese table in large pieces. It always is chopped or cut into cubes so that it may be picked up deftly with SUCKS. MdDlpuldleu Uy lht pOWuCItu hand of q. cultivated woman. a pair of ivory chopstieks certainly appear more delicate than the polished metal eating implements of the western world. Even in the hands of a cOOlie the wooden sticks are used so skillfully that the food, passing swiftly from dish to mouth is scarcely seen. Yet, the Chinese, gen. erally, are not dainty eaters. Too often the sticks are used as shovels or rams to force in ordinately large Jumps of rice into vora racious mouths.
 Rivals Of French Chefs
 > Chinese cooks are reckOned as being second only to French cooks in their versatility. The rating of cooks in the order of their profundity, as fixed by in ternational eaters is, l believe, French, Chinese, American and English, not to consider the cooks in Central Europe. But for pure delight in compounding viands that taste like medicine and yet will not cure you of anything, the Chinese cook is the worlds peer. He is a culinary magician.
 But there is one dish which he either can not make or will not make And that is chop suey.
 Custom in China is like hardened plaster; you can break it, but you can not change it. It is as unplastic in the lower as it is in the higher stratum of Chinese civilization.
 Some coolies were working on an ex-