Now more NYT Bestsellers coming near you! (More ways to be above average)
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 26, 2007
Josh Getlin of The Los Angeles Times writes about the expansion of The New York Times bestsellers list to differentiate between trade paperback (the bigger flat books) and mass-market paperbacks (the squatter ones). While the article doesn’t explicitly say this, it’s part of the NYTimes’ desire to value “impact/influence of books” rather than straight up sales (which the Amazon top 100 list is a better reflection of, despite the bias towards techie and business-y books). For example, when Harry Potter books suddenly dominated the top bestsellers list, children’s books were made into a separate category. The Advice/How To/Miscellaneous category was also pulled out some years back.
Topics: Book Musings | No Comments »
From Child Porn to Chinese Food…
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 20, 2007
Today I watched my close friend, Adam, give his closing arguments in his first case as a federal prosecutor. It was a child enticement case where a 49-year-old man showed up in New York City with a condom and a camera expecting to have sex with a 13-year-old girl he met online. Only she as not 13, she was an undercover NYPD detective. But I saw her yesterday and she really does look extremely young, and must have looked younger two years ago. Even though he was from Long Island, the case was tried in federal court, which incidentally is much nicer than state court. (Even the carpets in the federal courthouse are just! They have specially decided gold and blue carpets with an emblem of stars and olive branches).
Hearing the case and watching the transcripts reminded me of the intsen research on child pornography I had done several years back while I was a tech reporter. In my reporting, I came to realize that the Internet had unleashed a tidal wave of extremely bad stuff — much of which the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was at the forefront of fighting. Digital photography meant that you didn’t have to risk having child porn developed at a professional place where it cuold be seen by a clerk or know how to develop your own photos anymore.
So originally, when book agents called me up and asked if I ever thought of writing a book, I would start talking about child porn, and what a massive unknown problem it was and how someone should do a book on it. Then the agents would stop me and say, Hm…what about something less dark?
Less dark? That is how we ended up on Chinese food.
The man was convicted on both counts: 1) attempt to have sex with a minor and 2) attempt to create child pornography. Jury deliberated only 3 hours. The mandatory minimum for child pornography is 15 years.
Topics: Book Musings, Chinese Food, Musings | No Comments »
Books or Babies?
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 14, 2007
Last Sunday I went out for dim sum with my college roommate and her husband and their adorable baby Audrey. Audrey, who is about 9 months old, is normally very picky about food actually loved the rice porridge and the mango pudding. It was very adorable to watch. Random thought that occured to me. Have my friends produced more books or babies now? When I mean friend, I mean more or less peer +/- five years from my own age (loose definition, but that)
I started counting.
The answer seems to be more books, for now.
My friend Michael pointed out, that’s not normal. I move in weird circles.
Topics: Book Musings | No Comments »
Takeover by Charlie Savage is now out!
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 9, 2007
This is a plug for my friend Charlie Savage‘s book — Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of the American Democracy. I just got it today and am reading through it.
One of the more interesting points is the Office of Legal Counsel — which Charlie says is “the most important office that no one outside of Washington has ever heard of.” It functions as the internal Supreme Court of the executive branch, ruling on the legality and illegality of actions, which becomes critical in questions that will never show up in a courtroom. The infamous scene of Alberto Gonzales running to Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside was brought about in part because of a change in management in the Office of the Legal Counsel. You can hear Charlie talking about the book on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
I’m turning in my manuscript (for real this time)
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 5, 2007
Copyedited, factchecked, read-aloud, parsed, reworked. Yay. Done. I’m getting on the Subway to go to the publisher’s office. It is a paper document) From here it goes to galleys. It has been a three-month birthing process. During Labor Day someone asked me “How was your summer?” My first thought was “Why is he using the past tense?” Then I realized that the summer was indeed (symbolically) over. School is starting. Weather is during cooler. Halloween is not so far away. I thought, but I just turned my manuscript in at the beginning of June. Is it already September? Where did the summer go?!
Topics: Book Musings | No Comments »
Is this where fortune cookies go to die?
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 5, 2007
Hal Bergman, a local Los Angeles photographer, stumbled upon three dumpsters full of fortune cookies. LAist has an interview with him.
Here is the entire photoset on Flickr. I was looking at the cookies. The two largest manufacturers of fortune cookies in LA are Peking Noodle and Umeya. These don’t look at either.
Topics: China, Chinese, Fortune Cookies | No Comments »
The closing of a Chinatown institution, May May Chinese Gourmey Bakery
By Jennifer 8. Lee | September 3, 2007
I wrote a piece on the closing of May May Chinese Bakery on Pell Street in Chinatown after 42 years. It is so sad, because their food really is amazing — like discernably a cut above anything else you try; flakier, freshier, flavorfuler (is that a word? now it is).
As I explain, May May’s closing is not a tale of rising rent or falling demand — as is often the case with ethnic food shops in New York City that are doubly squeezed by gentrification and assimilation of the customers. The company’s products are as popular as ever.
John Hung, one of the brothers who owns the business, said that he works 360 days a year. They are too tired and didn’t want to sell it to someone that would taint the brand. And the next generation doesn’t want to take over the family business. They are educated and don’t want to work that hard. No matter how gourmet or upscale or written up in Zagats you are: Food businesses are hard labor. Long days, long weeks. So in a way, the goal of the family business (to give their families a foothold) worked so well it killed the family business.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Met with my factchecker today
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 29, 2007
We’re almost at the finish line! The drop-dead deadline is September 5th, according to the letter I just got. Today I met with my fantastic and sweet factchecker, Jennifer Stahl, who works at The New Yorker,
for Cuban food at Havana Central on West 46th. Highly recommended (both the factchecker and the restaurant).
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
The house were Lincoln’s assassination was planned? Now a Chinese restaurant named Wok n’ Roll
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 29, 2007
Here is a bit of Chinese restaurant trivia: The Washington boarding house on H Street belonging to Mary Surratt, where the assassination of President Lincoln was planned is now a Chinese restaurant called Wok n Roll. (They serve sushi too.) These photos are courtesy of food blogger Erin Zimmer.
Topics: Chinese Food, Chinese Restaurants | No Comments »
I’m hibernating because I’m dealing with the copyedit…
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 23, 2007
Dealing with a book opyedit is sort of a strange process if you have never dealt with it before, though good advice can be found on the Internet.
One thing: you need to buy colored pencils, and not of colors already used, to write responses on the manuscript to the copy editors questions. I bought Crayola erasable colored pencils, then discovered that they were too soft to write precisely in the margins. I realized I neeed to go to an art store for higher quality pencils, but there are no art stores in Harlem. So a friend brought me her set.Other things for your copyediting kit, you need post-it notes, a pencil sharpener (weird trying to dig that up…I haven’t used one of those since art class in high school since it’s now all about the mechanical pencil), and a pad of paper. Also, you need a printer and paper if you are going to make significant rewriting that will not fit in the margins. And if you do inserts, you create pages like page 152a.
And then you send it back, as a paper document, but make sure to make copies. And they retype it, which to me seems like it would create opportunities for more mistakes. But I am reassured that this is better than converting a document from Word.
Topics: Book Musings | No Comments »
Manuscript is copyedited
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 20, 2007
So the manuscript is copyedited! I was surprised because I actually get back a physical copy where I have to enter my comments in on the manuscript copy in pencil. And then this hand-edited document gets re-typed in with our comments and changes by a typesetter. I was surprised they don’t just enter the changes into my Word document and convert that. I’m curious as to why.
Topics: Book Musings, Chinese Food | No Comments »
The fortune cookie writer is getting a little saucy…
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 17, 2007
This fortune found on Flickr shows that the fortune cookie scribe was running out of ideas, no?
Topics: Chinese Food, Photo | No Comments »
A fortune cookie romantic comedy!
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 17, 2007
This is another entry into the “Fortune Cookie as pop culture” canon.
I was recently sent a cute funny DVD with a short romantic comedy called Fortune Hunters, about a guy who writes fortunes for his father’s forture cookie company and his embarrassing (and public) experiences to woo back his girlfriend. The short been accepted at least 10 different film festivals, so you can probably catch it somewhere in the country. The filmmakers, Thomas Harp and Mike Standish, have been working on it for several years. It’s loosely based on Tom’s own experiences with his now-wife (then girlfriend).
The short is adorable and I think it appeals to people because it answers the mystery: who does write the fortunes in the fortune cookies? In this case, the scribe is played by Kelvin Yu, who is one of those familiar faces you see in television dramas, so it’s refreshing to see an Asian American in a romantic lead. Kelvin always plays roles where he does things “for honor” so Tom told me on the set, when he wanted Kelvin to do something again, he would say “This time, do it with honor!” (in a Chinese accent of course)
Here is the description of the movie.
Arthur Yu (Kelvin Yu) has problems. His girlfriend, Megan (Jessica Skerritt), is leaving to study abroad in China for a year, leaving him to waste another college vacation working at his dad’s (Gedde Watanabe) fortune cookie factory.
Instead of telling Megan that he’ll wait for her, Arthur makes the biggest mistake of his life and dumps the girl of his dreams. As he suffers through another summer at the factory, Arthur’s fortunes become more and more depressing: You will die alone. Two words: colon cancer. It doesn’t take him long to nearly ruin his father’s business.
Finally, at wits end, Arthur decides that the only way to get Megan back is to write her a love letter before she heads overseas. But when his e-mail gets mixed up with his fortunes, suddenly every cookie at every restaurant reveals a piece of Arthur’s broken heart.Â
As to who (in real life) writes fortunes? You can read the final chapter of my book to find out.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Confucius say, You spend too much time on Facebook!
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 13, 2007
Since Facebook opened up the gates for outsiders to create programs for its users, one of the most popular applications has been Fortune Cookie by Tyler Ballance of Slide.com. It now has more than 4 million users, making it variously in the top 10 applications of all facebook apps. And now they let you “send” fortunes to people. The most brilliant thing is that they added an “in bed” functionality mode.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Wakiya NYC Gramercy Restaurant: Review & Reaction
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 12, 2007
I’ve visited six continents and 23 countries trying to find the world’s top Chinese restaurants outside of China. Wakiya in New York is not one of them (though it is priced as though it were). This is all the more sad because the original Wakiya restaurant in Tokyo is truly one of the most intriguing and memorable Chinese dining experiences I have ever had. If anyone is ever passing through Tokyo, I recommend stopping by for their lunch tasting menus. While not cheap, they are a bargain really worth every yen. (Also, the yen is on a downward slide against the dollar right now, one of the few currencies that we’re gaining ground against).
So the befuddling question is: with such a pedigree — the management team behind Nobu, one of the top Chinese celebrity chefs in the world, an entrepreneur whose created the high-service boutique hotel — what went wrong?
(I’m going to cut slack for service and reservation issues — they had my reservation for the wrong Friday, so we had to sit at the lounge — because those things get smoothed out over time).
Instead I am going to ponder the menu.
A long time ago, when I had to write my first book review, I angsted about how to judge a book (“It’s so subjective!” I moaned). The best piece of advice my editor gave me then is to understand what the creator (author, writer, painter, filmmaker, chef) trying to do, and whether or not they achieve that goal.
This is what the restaurant Web site says: Wakiya “offers a new style of Chinese cooking inspired by the traditional food of Shanghai, Szechuan, Canton and Beijing. Currently not available in America, this new genre of Chinese cuisine is rich in imagination and dynamically presented through the eyes of chef, Yuji Wakiya. In fact, the food is so delicately and beautifully presented it’s as if it is painted on the plate!”
Well. This is not true. The style of cooking is not that new, and where it is, it is not that rich in imagination. There are elements of individual dishes which present pleasant surprises (the “golden sand” being one of them — panko bread crumbs and chili spice), but truth be told Wakiya does best when it cleaves to old Chinese classics (Peking duck, bang bang chicken), and there are which are presented pretty well (the cucumber slices in the pork belly were artfully presented in an airy ball). But I feel you can get the Chinese classics for a third of the price elsewhere in the city, though perhaps not with the sultry red-and-black decor. But you can get over-the-top decor with better food (not necessarily Chinese) for less money at many restaurants in the city.
I was trying to figure out what was off about the menu when a stray piece of broccoli caught my attention. Then I realized: this is a French-trained Japanese chef driving much of his high-end menu through the lens of American Chinese food. Among the authentic dishes, the menu is full of stereotypes of American Chinese food gone horribly awry on fancy leaf-shaped white plates.
Topics: Best Chinese Restaurants Around the World, Chinese Restaurants | No Comments »
Can you wok the wok? Why Chinese restaurants aren’t dominated by chains
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 12, 2007
Chinese food is the largest restaurant segment not dominated by chains — as opposed to hamburgers, pizza, Mexican and Italian. Big chains like General Mills and Darden have tried and fled with Leann Chins and China Coast.
Of the 40,000 Chinese restaurants, 
the two big exceptions are the Chinese restaurant chains Panda Express (fastfood) out of Rosemead, Calif. with almost 1,000 stores and P.F. Changs (sitdown) out of Scottsdale, Arizona with just over 200.
Panda — which has 16,000 employees – is privately-owned and was started by the Cherng family in the early 1980s. As for publicly-traded P.F. Chang (PFCB), there is no Mr. Chang. The P.F. stands for “Paul Fleming” who was the founder of the Outback Steak House and Chang is an American-friendly version of Chiang, from Philip Chiang, who helped design the menu when the restaurant chain started in the early 1990s.
Sarah Filus of The Los Angeles Business Journal has piece about Panda Express’s plan to expand into the sit-down fine dining Chinese restaurant space — which is currently dominated by P.F. Chang.
So why has it been so hard for Chinese restaurants to become chained? Because it’s hard to ‘wok the wok,’ according to a 2003 Wall Street Journal article by Shirley Leung. Wok cooking is horrifically hard, requiring strength and agility and a fearlessness towards strong flames. Your wok cook is not going to be your minimum-wage laborer off the street. Panda Express gets around this by having no wok-cooking in its stores, much of the stuff is pre-prepared in a way that doesn’t involve woks. P.F. Changs has a weeks-long training course in its headquarters in Scottsdale. (I actually really like the food at P.F. Changs though one time I found it a bit salty).Â
When you look at a P.F. Chang training class, you realizse the guy cooking your Mongolian beef is more like to habla espanol than Chinese.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
General Tso’s Pizza? Why not?
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 11, 2007
Green Tea Chinese Bistro in Newington, Connecticut has decided to embrace Italian-Chinese fusion. Among their new dishes: General Tso’s pizza and roast pork pizza with scallions and red onions. Why not? It’s a bit California Pizza Kitchen — which offers among its choices Thai chicken pizza, mango tandoori pizza, carne asada pizza, and Jamaican jerk pizza. General Tso’s pizza is also a welcome addition to the General Tso’s family, which includes General Tso’s chicken, General Tso’s tofu (served on Antarctica) and General Tso’s dumplings (served in Buddakan NYC).Â
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Some fortune cookies contain no fortunes?
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 9, 2007
I’m trying to decide if this fortune is incredibly zen or totally inane.
Topics: Fortune Cookies | No Comments »
They are supporting a family with your tips
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 9, 2007
Clem Richardson of The New York Daily News was scolded for being a poor tipper to the deliverymen at his local Chinese restaurant. He thought that $2 or $3 was pretty good considering they didn’t cook the food or have to keep visiting his table, figuring they make 15 to 20 deliveries an hour (this is clearly an overestimate as that would be only three to four minutes per delivery!). Then he found out deliverymen (like cab drivers) have to pay for their own gas. Since I was never downstairs when the guys arrived, I assumed they were riding bicycles.
Anyway, his service declined. Deliverymen stopped coming to his door. If they did, they left the bags on the floor instead of handing it to him. Then one day the Chinese restaurant owner called and told him, “Listen, my guys ask me to call you. They say they bring you food but you don’t tip them good.”
“They upset with you,” he explained. “They say they give you good service, get the food to you fast while it’s still hot, but you give small tip.”
“You know, this how they make their money, support their families,” he said patiently. “See if you can do a little better, okay?”
Angry. Mr. Richardson decided to boycott the restaurant, but after several months he went back when he couldn’t find food that was as good. And he gave $2 more in tips and that made everyone happy.
A good number of the deliverymen and restaurant workers in this country are Fujianese, from around the city of Fuzhou. And like it or not, many of them have probably made upwards of $30-$70,000 in smuggling fees for the privilege of delivering your General Tso’s chicken.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Conan O’Brien serenades dumplings in Mandarin
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 9, 2007
Conan O’Brien and a “Chinese deliveryman” sang a West Side Story-style duet about dumplings in Chinese during last night’s show. Came with subtitles and everything. Conan’s pronounciation was pretty decent actually.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Made a reservation at Wakiya Gramercy for Friday
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 8, 2007
Finally have a free night in the city, so I made a reservation at Wakiya with my friend Eric Lee. It wasn’t that hard to get a reservation for 2 (7, 8:45 or 9 p.m.) The feedback on Wakiya at New York Magazine’s Grub Street  and Chowhound have been lukewarm. The Amateur Gourmet has a post from James Felder who says it isn’t bad, but he won’t be back. He says it feels like it’s not part of the city. And that it’s full of tourists.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
The joys of Slideflickr!
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 8, 2007
After some trouble with Simpleflickr and Firefox, I decided to try Slideflickr as a way to do photos on this blog. It’s pretty simple actually. You just type in a set, a group or a user and it generates a line of code that you stick on a blog page and you get this neat slide show. It has a little pink and blue slideflickr logo which is a bit tacky. But whatever. Below, the Chinese restaurants signs group on Flickr (may take some time to load if your connection is slow, apologies).
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Forget Atkins, South Beach, Lemonade Diets. The Ultimate Plan? Moving to China.
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 8, 2007
John Vause of CNN says he has lost 10 pounds in the last several weeks because he is terrified of Chinese food products. As he writes:
But these days, the joy of anticipation of what the next dish will bring has been replaced with, well, the dread of what the next dish may contain.
When ordering at restaurants, I wonder: Is that drug-tainted fish and shrimp? Did that pork come from a pig that was force-fed wastewater? Any melamine added to those noodles?
Those are among some of the recent food scares here. Even drinking a glass of water instills fear: A recent government report found half the bottled watered in this city was counterfeit.
I was never a particularly brave soul when it came to eating at exotic little restaurants here, but now I am terrified. When traveling across China, that fear goes off the charts. Packing for trips now includes muesli bars made in the United States and imported almonds.And then there is the grocery shopping. Everyone else around the world it seems is buying cheap food and other products made in China. Not the Vause house. My wife searches across this city for breakfast cereal made in the United States. We have meat and fish flown in from Australia, milk from New Zealand, and on it goes.
Topics: Chinese Food | No Comments »
Stuck Elevator: The Super-Heroic Stationary Journey of Ming Kuang Chen (in Opera!)
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 7, 2007
Ming Kuang Chen — the Chinese deliveryman who was stuck in an elevator for more than three days in 2005 — has apparently become quite the muse for creative artists. A movie script is in development, I’ve heard. I have a whole chapter in my book wrapped around him. And he also has been the solo character of an opera called “Stuck Elevator: The Super-Heroic Stationary Journey of Ming Kuang Chen” which played in Seattle in June of 2006, and is further development. Byron Au Yong is the composer and Aaron Jafferis is the librettist.
Carolyn Li of The Northwest Asian Weekly (where the photo at the left of Xike Xin as Chen is from) writes:
In the show, the character of Chen sings a song called “Disappear†while he waits in the elevator. He ponders why no one has found him, when he will be missed and how he exists only because his wife and son need him. “I think viewers will relate to Chen’s emotions and hopes and have a deeper understanding of the hardships and risks people still take to live and work in this country,†said the show’s costume designer, Michelle Kumata, a fourth-generation Asian American. “I relate Chen’s story to my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ stories of their struggles immigrating, working and surviving in the States in the early 1900s, and the difficulties with culture, racism and language,†she said. “Chen’s story shows that not much has changed in the present day.â€
I actually snuck into the security office to see what was wrong with the security cameras — if anything. They were all completely functioning and you could look right into the elevator he was in (among a dozen cameras and some were a bit dark). The hourly “security guards” with the clip-on ties didn’t look so incredibly diligent. I did notice that they were eating fried chicken wings and fried rice from the local Chinese take-out.  What I like about the opera is that Ming is wearing a similar jacket, dark blue with and white stripes, as Ming himself was that day.
Again. It’s interesting to see how delivery men are invisible, as I’ve observed before.
Topics: Chinese, Fujianese | No Comments »
The leading cause of death in the Chinese restaurant industry is homicide
By Jennifer 8. Lee | August 6, 2007
Peggy Lim of The News and Observer in North Carolina has put together a touching profile of Song Ni, 34, a Chinese restaurant owner who was fatally shot at the end of July in Stantonsburg, N.C. (population 800) during a robbery in his home. His wife and two daughters were in the other room. In so many ways, Song Ni’s story is the arc of the Chinese restaurant owner. He came from around the city of Fuzhou, he went to New York City as a Chinese restaurant worker and then scraped enough money to buy his own modest restaurant in a strip mall in North Carolina. North Carolina was supposed to be a lot safer than New York City.
Violence is an inevitable part of the Chinese restaurant industry. In talking to the Fujianese workers, everyone knows somebody who knows somebody — a cousin, a neighbor, a neighbor’s cousin — who was killed during a holdup, or a delivery. New York City averages about one dead deliveryman a year, which is why the NYPD went all out when looking for Ming Kuang Chen after he disappeared while making a delivery in the Bronx in 2005. They had helicopters in the sky, divers in the reservoir and canines sniffing through the apartment building. Three days later they found him. Alive. In the elevator.
(brief plug. My first interview as Chinese restaurant expert is in the sidebar)
Topics: Chinese, Fujianese | No Comments »