PrintOil for the lamps of China
Living in a Los Angeles suburb as I do, Chinese culture is inescapable. Here in the San Gabriel Valley, formerly lily—white towns like Monterey Park and Temple City have become Sinicized; wags have dubbed such former WASP strongholds as San Marino and Arcadia 'Chan Marino' and 'Arcasia' as their demography metamorphoses. In my neighborhood such tell—tale signs as the erection of exotic 'mini—mansions,' the proliferation of extremely authentic restaurants purveying cuisine of various obscure Chinese regions, and gyms, banks, churches, and beauty salons boasting Chinese lettering poignantly show that the East has moved West.
This does not bother me at all ——— quite the contrary, in fact. The truth is, I love China and the Chinese. Certainly, as with most Americans, the food was my first introduction to the culture. Now, whether in the most Americanized Cantonese place in Chinatown, or the latest obscure provincial cuisine house nearer my home, I revel in it.
In Ireland, during the course of a national lecture tour in 1993, having subsisted off of the (admittedly delicious if heavy) local provender for weeks, I found myself being given a tour of downtown Limerick. When, among the beautiful sights of that historic town, I spied a small Chinese takeaway, against my will I began to run toward it. It was the first and last time in my life that I actually began to slather at the mouth. It didn't matter that the chow mein and chips offered up was only a dim echo of the real thing (as I know it) ——— it was enough to satisfy the craving.
But my education in things Chinese did not halt at the food. From the time I discovered the Chinese Information Service maintained by the Nationalist government in Los Angeles, when I was 13, until the dark day nine years later when President Carter de—recognized our wartime ally, its publications were a large part of my political and cultural formation: Sun Yat—Sen's Three Principles of the People, Chiang Kai—Shek's Aphorisms, Soviet Russia in China, China's Destiny, and innumerable books on every conceivable aspect of Chinese history and culture ——— albeit from a heavily Kuomintang viewpoint ——— were served me and eaten up. Among other things, the result was an indelible preference for the Wade—Giles English transliteration of Chinese, prevalent in pre—World War II China and in contemporary Taiwan, over the Pinyin
