How to Cook and Eat in Chinese

Illustrator	Calligraphy by Hu Shi
Country	United States
Series	An Asia Press Book
Genre	Cookbook
Publisher	John Day Company
Publication date	1945
Pages	262
Followed by	How to Order and Eat in Chinese

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese is a cookbook and introduction to Chinese cuisine and Chinese food culture by Chao Yang Buwei. It was first published in 1945, and appeared in revised and expanded editions in 1949 and 1956; the third and final edition appeared in 1968. Much of the text was written by her husband, Y.R. Chao, who coined the English terms "stir fry" and "pot stickers." It has been called "the first truly insightful English-language Chinese cookbook."

Pearl S. Buck, at that time the most widely read American author on the subject of China, wrote in her Preface to the book that she wanted to nominate Mrs. Chao for the Nobel Peace Prize: “what better road to universal peace is there than to gather around the table where new and delicious dishes are set forth, dishes which, though yet untasted by us, we are destined to enjoy and love?”

During World War II, Mrs. Chao's husband, Y.R. Chao, ran the Special Language Training Program at Harvard to teach Chinese to American soldiers. Each night the instructors gathered at the Chao home to prepare the teaching material for the next day, sometimes late into the night. Mrs. Chao developed a repertoire of dishes to feed them that could be prepared in an American kitchen using ingredients from local groceries. Then Agnes Hocking, wife of Harvard professor William Ernest Hocking, and friend of many years, told her to write the book.

Her "Author's Note" explains she was "ashamed" to have written it, first because as a medical doctor she should have been practicing medicine, second: "I didn't write the book". She goes on to explain how she, her daughter Rulan and her husband collaborated:

Much of the book bears Y.R. Chao's style and the chapters are structured in the same way as his Mandarin Primer, the language text that also grew out of his wartime language program. While the book describes a family collaboration, Jason Epstein, who met Mr. and Mrs. Chao when he edited the 1972 reprint of the book, claims "it is obvious from the text that the professor wrote the entire book in his wife's name, using her recipes," that is, "pretending to be his wife...." However, Yuen Ren later told an interviewer that Rulan did the translation: "She would complain sometimes, 'Daddy, you have so many footnotes. Somebody will think that you translated the book,' not that she was the translator."

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Wikipedia