UNC-Chapel Hill historian Michelle T. King demonstrates in a moving and ambitious biography how culinary icon Fu Pei-mei was far more than “the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.”
Fu’s first appearance aired a few months before Child’s. And if Child was exploring America’s preoccupation with France, Fu was mining China’s rich and vast cuisine, which is as wide-ranging and diverse as its geography. It would make more sense, King points out, “to call Child the ‘Fu Pei-mei of French Food.’”
King’s new book is Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food.
The Washington Post also featured the book.