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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/ShabtaiBenOron on 2024-04-15 23:55:54.
Original Title: TIL that the American laws against Chinese immigration in the early 20th century had a loophole that allowed Chinese to enter the US if they managed a Chinese restaurant. As a result, the number of Chinese eateries in the US quadrupled between 1910 and 1930.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But, as MIT legal historian Heather Lee tells it, there was an important exception to these laws: Some Chinese business owners in the U.S. could get special merchant visas that allowed them to travel to China, and bring back employees.
Lee says Chinese immigrants found ingenious ways to get around these hurdles: They would pool their money to start luxury “chop suey palaces,” then each investor would take turns running the joint for a year or 18 months.
In practice, she says, this turned into a quid pro quo situation: A small group of white vendors would secure the restaurants’ business, and in exchange, they’d vouch for the investors.
For one thing, as historian Yong Chen notes in Chop Suey, USA, Chinese food’s cheapness made it an affordable luxury and helped democratize the dining out experience.
By 1910, “going out for chop suey made middle-class Americans feel pleasantly naughty,” write Lisa Stoffer and Michael Lesy in Repast, their history of dining out during that era.
Cultural historians also tell of the rise of “slumming parties” — groups of well-heeled suburbanites and out-of-towners in New York who’d pay for tours of Chinatown, where the supposed “depravity” of the place was the main attraction.
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