{"id":401,"date":"2008-02-20T22:19:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T03:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2008\/02\/20\/welcome-to-general-tsos-hometown-xiying-hunan\/"},"modified":"2011-02-11T18:02:30","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T23:02:30","slug":"welcome-to-general-tsos-hometown-xiying-hunan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/welcome-to-general-tsos-hometown-xiying-hunan\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to General Tso&#8217;s hometown! Xiangyin, Hunan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is the billboard from when I visited <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zuo_Zongtang\">General Tso<\/a>&#8216;s hometown in rural Hunan province in my journey to find the source of General Tso&#8217;s chicken. (yes he is real, he played a huge part in suppressing the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Taiping_Rebellion\">Taiping Rebellion<\/a>, started by a guy who thought he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ)<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"A billboard welcoming General Tso at his hometown in Xiying, Hunan\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/welcome-to-general-tsos-hometown-xiying-hunan\/a-billboard-welcoming-general-tso-at-his-hometown-in-xiying-hunan\/\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a title=\"A billboard welcoming General Tso at his hometown in Xiying, Hunan\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/welcome-to-general-tsos-hometown-xiying-hunan\/a-billboard-welcoming-general-tso-at-his-hometown-in-xiying-hunan\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/generaltsowelcomesigninxiyinghunan.jpg\" alt=\"A billboard welcoming General Tso at his hometown in Xiying, Hunan\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It basically says Welcome to the Hometown of the Famous Qing Dynasty Figure General Tso, Xiangyin. (The transliteration of General Tso&#8217;s name in modern pinyin Chinese is Zuo Zongtang, <span lang=\"zh-Hant\" xml:lang=\"zh-Hant\">\u00e5\u00b7\u00a6\u00e5\u00ae\u2014\u00e6\u00a3\u00a0<\/span>). Zuo is roughly pronounced &#8216;juoh.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Here is a close up of the General himself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zuo_Zongtang\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/generaltsoonwelcomesigninxiyinghunancloseup.jpg\" alt=\"A close-up shot of General Tso at his hometown in Xiying, Hunan\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nHis family &#8212; five generations later &#8212; is still hanging out in that town. They actually have a whole section of the village named after them &#8220;The Zuo Family Section.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The short story is there is no General Tso&#8217;s chicken in his hometown, but they still think fondly of his military exploits.<\/p>\n<p>What I discovered.  In America, General Tso, like Colonel Sanders, is known for chicken and not war. In China, he is know for war and not chicken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the billboard from when I visited General Tso&#8216;s hometown in rural Hunan province in my journey to find the source of General Tso&#8217;s chicken. (yes he is real, he played a huge part in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion, started by a guy who thought he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ) It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-food","category-general-tso"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-6t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3294,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/3294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}