Join us for a free one-day workshop for educators at the Japanese American National Museum, hosted by the USC U.S.-China Institute and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This workshop will include a guided tour of the beloved exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community, slated to close permanently in January 2025. Following the tour, learn strategies for engaging students in the primary source artifacts, images, and documents found in JANM’s vast collection and discover classroom-ready resources to support teaching and learning about the Japanese American experience.
The popularity of Chinese food in America
We look into the rise of Chinese food in the US and Chinese food emojis on your phone.
March 12, 2020
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get them delivered straight to your inbox!
When Americans set foot in China in 1784, they described the food as "the repose of putrefied garlic upon a much-used blanket." While it took another century for the food in New York City's Chinatown to start becoming popular, interest exploded when Americans saw President Nixon eating Peking duck on his 1972 trip to China. People wanted to taste "authentic" Chinese food.
The popularity of Chinese food only continued to grow: in 2015, General Tso's Chicken was the 4th most popular food ordered on GrubHub in the US. That same year, designer Yiying Lu submitted designs for new emojis to the Unicode Consortium, the non-profit that controls the icons on your keyboard. They added her illustrations of a dumpling, Chinese takeout box, fortune cookie, and chopsticks. Her emoji for boba, however, was rejected.
A few years later, Lu and a team of researchers submitted a second proposal for a boba emoji. In addition to the history of the Taiwanese drink, they included research on its growing popularity, such as the expected growth of the global bubble tea market to hit $3 billion by 2023. The proposal was accepted and the new boba emoji will be on your phone later this year.
More about Chinese food in America:
- One woman's quest to understand Chinese food in America
- The importance of boba in Los Angeles
- A collection of Chinese restaurant menus (search "Chinese")
- Nixon had to practice using chopsticks before his 1972 trip
Featured Articles
October 20, 2024
October 20, 2024
Please join us for the Grad Mixer! Hosted by USC Annenberg Office of International Affairs, Enjoy food, drink and conversation with fellow students across USC Annenberg. Graduate students from any field are welcome to join, so it is a great opportunity to meet fellow students with IR/foreign policy-related research topics and interests.
RSVP link: https://forms.gle/1zer188RE9dCS6Ho6
Events
Wednesday, November 20, 2024 - 3:00pm
Hosted by USC Annenberg Office of International Affairs, enjoy food, drink and conversation with fellow international students.
Thursday, November 7, 2024 - 4:00pm
Join us for an in-person conversation on Thursday, November 7th at 4pm with author David M. Lampton as he discusses his new book, Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War. The book examines the history of U.S.-China relations across eight U.S. presidential administrations.