Conversation with a Chinese restaurateur in a west central Mississippi town
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Running down the road in Clarksdale, Mississippi, I screeched to a halt (felt like Rroad Runner) when I passed by a Chinese restaurant with the odd name Rice Bowl (in Chinese it was Fànwǎn lóu 饭碗楼 — the only characters I saw on the premises). It was a tiny, nondescript establishment, with six or so chairs against the walls where you sat while you waited for your order to be prepared. Most people, however, stood in line or just came in to pick up what they had ordered over the phone.
The owner did a brisk business, but it was strictly take out. There were about 8 spaces for cars to park outside, though they were constantly coming and going.
The clientele was 100% Black Americans. About half of them ordered egg rolls ($1.75 each), a quarter fried rice, and the remainder a predictable mix of standard American Chinese dishes (e.g., General Tso's Chicken, Moo Goo Gai Pan, etc.). I wasted not one second on further scrutinizing the menu as soon as I spotted the Egg Foo Young. There were several reasons for my hasty choice. First of all, I hadn't tasted it for a long, long time. Secondly, Egg Foo Young was my first exposure to "serious" Chinese cuisine. It wasn't La Choy and it wasn't Chun King, i.e., it didn't come out of a can:
The only exception was that once a year our Mom would alternate taking one of the seven siblings to the big city of Canton (population about eighty thousand) five miles to the west and would treat us to a Chinese restaurant meal. I think the owners were the only Chinese in the city. The two things that impressed me most were how dark and mysterious the room was in the unmarked, old house where the restaurant was located, and how the egg foo young (and I just loved the sound of that name!), which was so much better than the canned chicken chow mein we ate at home, was served to us on a fancy, footed platter with a silver cover. It was always a very special moment when the waiter uncovered the egg foo young and I smelled its extraordinary aroma.
(source)
After about 10-15 minutes, the Rice Bowl owner called out, "Egg Foo Young". I walked up to the counter and said a few words in Mandarin to the owner as I picked up my order. She was amazed. "You speak Chinese?", she asked in English. "Yes," I replied. "Nǐ huì bù huì jiǎng pǔtōnghuà? 你会不会讲普通话?" "Not really," she answered in English. "I speak Cantonese." So I said a few words to her in Cantonese. She was stunned, but after she had collected her senses, she asked, "Have you been to China?" "Yes, a hundred times."
That left the owner speechless. So I repeated it in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Her eyeballs were glued to the back of their sockets and she seemed no longer able to breathe.
The owner had lots of other customers to take care of, so I thought it was time for me to leave.
"Zàijiàn / baai1baai3", I bid adieu.
P.S.: The owner's actions were not unexpected. In the many years she had been running that bustling, little take-out joint in Clarksdale, Mississippi, I doubt that she had ever seen a white man come in, certainly not one who spoke to her in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Selected readings
"General Tso's chikin" (6/11/13)
"General Chicken" (8/8/15)
"Chinese Philadelphia Food" (5/6/04)
"Chow mein from a can ≠ chǎomiàn / caau2min6 from a wok" (8/21/17)
Victor Mair said,
June 13, 2025 @ 9:42 pm
Martin Schwartz recommends Hong Kong Restaurant in Eugene, Oregon, a small homesey place with a huge menu and unusual dishes.
I checked their website, and it looks really good. I will go there the next time I'm in Eugene.
Aaron said,
June 13, 2025 @ 10:41 pm
Fantastic that you were able to do the meme in real life.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/white-guy-orders-in-perfect-chinese-shocks-patrons-and-staff
cameron said,
June 14, 2025 @ 12:27 am
my memory always associates egg foo young with the Benny Hill gag: "it's not egg, it's not young, it's just 'foo'"
but of course that doesn't make any sense because it's pretty obviously egg-based
katarina said,
June 14, 2025 @ 12:46 am
Professor Mair's anecdote about language reminds me of a recent experience.
In my little town near San Francisco, I ride the senior bus, which is free of charge for senior citizens, taking them to shop at the major supermarkets and large stores like Target and Costco. I am Chinese and I met two other Chinese senior citizens on the bus. I heard one chatting fluently in Spanish with the bus driver, who is from Mexico. I learned that she (the Chinese person) is from Panama, doesn't know Chinese and only understands a little Cantonese. Her parents had a grocery store in Panama. Her principal language is Spanish and her second language English. I asked the other Chinese person where she was from, and whether she knew Chinese. She said she was from Semarang in Indonesia, didn't know Chinese, and could only understand a bit of Hokkien (a Chinese topolect). Her principal language is Dutch. Age 94, she grew up when Indonesia was called Batavia and was a Dutch colony. She also knows English and Indonesian Malay.
katarina said,
June 14, 2025 @ 12:53 am
correction:
"when Indonesia was called the Dutch East Indies and Jakarta the capital was called Batavia"
KWillets said,
June 14, 2025 @ 9:08 am
My only story of this genre involves going to a Korean restaurant in Redmond, WA with a Taiwanese-American colleague who had asked me to recommend something from that cuisine.
The server greeted him and asked for our order in Korean, obviously mistaking his ethnicity, so feeling the awkwardness I replied "보쌈 하고 맥주 크게 한병 주세요" (bossam and one large bottle of beer), and they both cracked up.
Jerry Packard said,
June 14, 2025 @ 9:34 am
When my son Sammy was in the Peace Corps in Panama many years ago we went to visit him at his hut deep in the jungle near the Darien Gap. Part of his job was to teach the local Emberá language to other pc volunteers. It took us 2 1/2 days by bus taxi and canoe to reach his village. In transit we found our best way to communicate with the local populace was to go the corner store which was invariably run by ethnic Chinese. They always understood my Mandarin and replied with heavily accented putonghua. And of course I received the same eye-popping reaction I always do when Chinese came out of my mouth.
wgj said,
June 14, 2025 @ 11:34 am
As someone who doesn't look Caucasian but speaks a European language (which isn't English) fluently, I get the same reaction every time I do so outside countries and regions where that language is natively spoken. I think this must be true for almost all languages other than the world languages – i. e. English, and to a lesser degree French and Spanish.
J.W. Brewer said,
June 14, 2025 @ 11:44 am
The ethnic-Chinese community in the small towns of the Mississippi Delta is an interesting one with a longstanding history, although now much diminished in numbers. See, e.g., https://www.npr.org/2017/03/18/519017287/the-legacy-of-the-mississippi-delta-chinese
I've seen footage of members of this community and seeing visibly-East-Asian-ancestry people speaking English with a very thick rural Mississippi accent is perhaps at least as unexpected as seeing someone white (or black) speak Mandarin fluently.
J.W. Brewer said,
June 14, 2025 @ 12:27 pm
Another relevant "world language" is Portuguese, where the vast majority of L1 speakers live outside Europe and probably less than 50% of all living native speakers worldwide are of exclusively-or-predominantly European ancestry. If modern Indonesia (mentioned in a prior comment) were Dutch-speaking the way Brazil is Portuguese-speaking, you would have a similar demographic/geographic situation with Dutch-speakers, but for a variety of reasons and differences in circumstances the Dutch imperial venture in that part of the world left much more modest linguistic traces. (Although linguistic connections between various former Dutch colonies are responsible for a stratum of Malay-origin loanwords in Afrikaans.)
Jonathan Smith said,
June 14, 2025 @ 1:58 pm
While the "zero-to-native" language learning curve shares certain features with say the "zero-to-Fats Waller" piano learning curve, the differences are decisive for ethnolinguistic common sense. Where a language is experienced as belonging exclusively to (and thus "defining") a particular community, (practically) every community member is Waller, has been so for the entirely of their living memory, and appreciates the world to contain two kinds of people — an in-group of Wallers and an out-group of non-players + occasional hopeless patzers. The impression given by the last is at first "wow weird and amazing" and not long after "ohjeezus what a patzer"
Linda Seebach said,
June 14, 2025 @ 2:52 pm
We made our first visit to China in the summer of 1986, a get-acquainted visit because we were hoping to spend my husband's sabbatical the following year in Shanghai. As part of our planning, I had taken the beginning Chinese courses at St. Olaf. where he taught.
We visited a friend in Chengdu, someone my husband had met at an American Mathematical Society a year or two earlier. On the flight back to Shanghai, we were seated near a Chinese-American, from Seattle, who knew no Mandarin. When the flight attendant came to take orders, she naturally addressed that man, and was taken aback when he did not reply, but I did.
Chris Button said,
June 14, 2025 @ 3:13 pm
I recall being in a store in Seattle in the early 2000s with a friend of Chinese descent who had been born and raised in London, England. The store clerk was amazed at how my "Chinese-looking" friend could speak flawless English with a British accent rather than an American accent.
Julian said,
June 14, 2025 @ 8:23 pm
@wgj.
White Anglo-Saxon protestant ancestry here.
Greeks are usually curious about how I come to know greek.
Chas Belov said,
June 14, 2025 @ 9:10 pm
I rarely get to use my middle school Spanish as the Latinx business people usually address me in English when they seem me. On the other hand, there are a few businesses where I haven't been there for years but when I go in they address me in Cantonese.
I did have the experience once of going into a Russian business and being addressed in Russian even though I don't speak any, as well as being hit on on the street once in Russian in the Russian neighborhood of SF.
John S. Rohsenow said,
June 15, 2025 @ 2:54 am
Cf: The Mississippi Chinese : Between Black and White, Second Edition
by James W. Loewen AND Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers by John Jung AND Lotus Among the Magnolias: The Mississippi Chinese by Robert Seto Quan AND the video "Far East Deep South".
Kate Bunting said,
June 15, 2025 @ 9:40 am
'Rice Bowl' seems a perfectly natural name for a Chinese restaurant/takeaway to me (but I'm British).
Scott P. said,
June 15, 2025 @ 10:53 am
Cf: The Mississippi Chinese : Between Black and White, Second Edition
by James W. Loewen AND Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers by John Jung AND Lotus Among the Magnolias: The Mississippi Chinese by Robert Seto Quan AND the video "Far East Deep South".
A cultural stratum well-represented in the excellent movie Sinners
Victor Mair said,
June 15, 2025 @ 11:37 am
Cf. the 1991 film, "Mississippi Masala". which is about Indians in the same general area, but focuses on biracial romance and motels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood,_Mississippi
wgj said,
June 15, 2025 @ 11:58 am
@Kate Bunting:
The oddity of the name lies in the Chinese name 饭碗楼, with the latter character meaning "multi-storied building". In terms of sentiment, a more accurate tanslation would be Rice Bowl Mansion. The "rice bowl" part is both intentionally lowbrow and relatively modern, whereas the "mansion" part is both highbrow and classic (any restaurant in China that calls itself 楼 is either more than a century old or pretends to be so – or making an humorous/ironic/sarcastic joke of such pretension). This contrast is rather jarring – a restaurant name like this would be unusual even in China, despite its much higher density of restaurants and accordingly huge diversity of names.
HS said,
June 16, 2025 @ 2:19 am
"A little take-out joint in Clarksdale" sounds to me like a great opening line for a Blues – and it would be even better if it happened to be located at a crossroads…
Runnin' down the road in Clarksdale, I came to a screeching halt
Runnin' down the road in Clarksdale, came to a sudden screeching halt
Felt like that fleet Road Runner, when something hit me with a jolt
It was a little Chinese restaurant, by the name of the Rice Bowl
Yes, a little Chinese restaurant, by the name of the Rice Bowl
And I'd just come from the Crossroads, where the Devil took my soul
I was feeling very hungry, stomach rumblin' like a train
Oh Lordy was I hungry, stomach rumblin' like one of them big long freight trains
So I went into the premises, to ease my hunger pains
A little take-out joint in Clarksdale, six chairs against the wall
A little take-out joint in Clarksdale, six chairs up against that wall
where you waited for your order, if you hadn't made a call
And I scrutinized the menu, to see what they had there
Yes, I scrutinized all the menu, Lord, to see what they had there
The predictable mix of dishes, all the standard US fare
There was General's Tso's Chicken, Chow Mein and Pork Fried Rice
General Tso's Chicken, Chow Mein and Pork Fried Rice
But then I spotted "Egg Fu Young" and that sounded rather nice
Now here in this take-out joint in Clarksdale, I got egg fu on my mind
Yessuh, in this take-out joint in Clarksdale, I got egg fu on my mind
And it's the genuine tasty item, not the tin-canned cardboard kind
So I went up to the counter, said some words in Mandarin
Yes, up there at the counter, some casual words in Mandarin
The owner's jaw dropped like a brick, her eyes began to spin
She said "Have you been to China?", too shocked to take my dimes
"Have you really been to China?", far too shocked to take my dimes
"Yes" I replied most modestly, "about a hundred times"
So we chatted for a moment, Mandarin and Cantonese
Yes we chatted for a moment, Mandarin and Cantonese
But others there were waiting, so I turned and took my leave
And I walked back to the Crossroads, where the Devil was on patrol
Yes I went back to those Crossroads, met the Devil there on patrol
And when I let him share my meal he gave me back my soul
(For non blues fans, Clarksdale Mississippi is just about Ground Zero of the Delta Blues.)
Victor Mair said,
June 16, 2025 @ 7:42 am
@HS
Thank you for the wonderful blues adaptation of my post.
You are so right about Clarksdale, Mississippi being Ground Zero of the Delta Blues. Indeed, the exact Crossroads is at the intersection of Route 49 and Route 61/278. I spent a fair amount of time running around there. It is clear that the local people are proud of their blues heritage. It is illustrated on the sides of buildings, conserved and explained in small museums, and recognized as the fount of many superlative singers who went off to the big music centers in the north to spread their art.
Tye S Power said,
June 16, 2025 @ 8:35 am
This post, and the related comments, represent the best of Language Log.
/df said,
June 16, 2025 @ 10:37 am
What even rabid devotees of the genre, as I count myself, may only discover late on is that the Delta of the Blues is (was?) a triangular cotton farming area by the Mississippi hundreds of miles inland, and nothing at all to do with how the river flows out into the Great Water Hazard, even if there is also superlative music from New Orleans.
Also, Clarksdale MS brings to mind the fictional Clarksville (it could have been TN) that replaced Clarkdale AZ as the place at whose station the Monkees' girl should meet them before they possibly never come home … from Vietnam?
katarina said,
June 16, 2025 @ 9:39 pm
@HS
What a beautiful blues rendition of Professor Mair's experience in Clarksdale, Mississippi ! Thank you, HS !
katarina said,
June 16, 2025 @ 10:03 pm
Another tidbit personal experience:
Once I was walking down the path to the Stanford University cafeteria when I saw two young Black men walking towards me.
They were chatting and I expected to hear them speaking English with a Black accent (to my ears similar to the accent of people in
the American South, say, Louisiana). But when they walked past me I heard them talking in German.
PMB said,
June 17, 2025 @ 11:38 am
Brilliant – but what did the EFY taste like?
Thomas Mair said,
June 17, 2025 @ 1:39 pm
The Chinese merchants in the movie 'Sinners' seemed out of place until I read the comments to this post. I'm surprised this conversation hasn't yet circled back to Robert Johnson, the blues singer behind the original 'Crossroads' The talented young singer in the movie, Sammie, is a nod to Johnson. The 1986 movie 'Crossroads' reinterprets the myth with a young white boy. There are an endless number of cover versions of Johnson's immortal song, the best of which is by the band Cream. It's unlikely that Johnson, or any of the musicians who subsequently sang his song, enjoyed the EFY that my brother Victor did.
Victor Mair said,
June 17, 2025 @ 5:09 pm
Also from my brother Thomas:
Great depiction of the devil at the crossroads on this film clip. This same movie has an opening sequence which takes place 50 years earlier with a meeting between the devil and the now old man when he was young.
https://youtu.be/-m5gqDGe5xc?si=BzeSXPthQZW85Xo6
Victor Mair said,
June 17, 2025 @ 5:14 pm
A nice page about Clarksdale as the birthplace of the blues, also from bro Thomas:
https://www.clarksdale.com/crossroads.php
HS said,
June 17, 2025 @ 6:18 pm
> what did the EFY taste like?
The Devil loved it – that's why he gave Professor Mair his soul back.
Victor Mair said,
June 17, 2025 @ 7:18 pm
unexpectedly delicious and authentic for such an out-of-the-way place
lots of thick gravy-sauce with fresh, crisp scallion slices
Victor Mair said,
June 17, 2025 @ 7:58 pm
Having reached the extreme southern point at which the Mississippi debouches into the Gulf, I'm now headed back north to Philadelphia, and less than an hour ago checked into a motel on the eastern side of the state of Mississippi at Meridian. Lo and behold, what do I see when I walk into the lobby than a photo montage of the famous Crossroads of the Blues (Routes 49 & 61) at Clarksdale on the western side of the state.
M. Paul Shore said,
June 18, 2025 @ 3:58 am
It’s nice to see positive thoughts about Egg Fu Yung, particularly ones originating from a standpoint of knowledge and discernment. It’s a long-ago favorite dish of mine, which I haven’t experienced in decades.
I’ve repeatedly tried to persuade my New England (mainly Boston-area) relatives that for one of our periodic dinners together we should have a retro (as it were) Chinese meal from one of the restaurants that still offer some of those traditional American-Chinese-restaurant dishes; but I’ve been greeted by a remarkable lack of enthusiasm. The two main objections seem to be (1) “a place that would serve that kind of food probably isn’t good”, and (2) “I had plenty of that kind of food back in the seventies and earlier, and I have no particular desire to have it again”. I think their real objection is that they simply see eating such a meal as something that a respectable modern, cosmopolitan person wouldn’t do.
Philip Taylor said,
June 18, 2025 @ 5:25 pm
I feel a certain empathy for your New England (mainly Boston-area) relatives, MPS, as while I wouldn't avoid on principle an establishment that offered egg foo yung, I would most certainly avoid any establishment that offered chop suey, and indeed have done so on more than one occasion.
Chas Belov said,
June 19, 2025 @ 6:07 pm
I have not had good luck with egg foo yung, although I admit to rarely trying it. It's fairly unusual in San Francisco, although not unheard of. Chop suey, on the on the other hand, is close to nonexistent here and has been for the 30+ years I've been here.
Philip Taylor said,
June 20, 2025 @ 3:55 am
When we were looking for a home in Cornwall in or around 2016, Chas, we were considering Callington as a base, but were put off by the fact that its sole Chinese restaurant offered chop suey … But if you live in (or near) San Francisco, then you are very lucky indeed, because as I am sure you know there is a thriving Chinese community there and authentic Chinese cuisine is not hard to find. Cornwall, on the other hand …
Chas Belov said,
June 20, 2025 @ 7:35 pm
@Philip Taylor: Actually, some immigrants have shared that Chinese food in San Francisco proper is often toned down for white folks and they need to go down the peninsula to get satisfactory Chinese food. While I've only rarely had Chinese home cooking – and Cantonese only – and so cannot speak authoritatively, I don't actually think the situation is quite so grim. For example, quite a few northern places, even northeastern places, have opened in San Francisco.
But you do have to choose carefully. And I have to admit I consider the presence of egg foo young on a menu to be a caution sign. My main strategy is to look at the chef's specials for unusual dishes and then order something from that section if I see something interesting that also fits my dietary needs.
And frankly, sometimes I'm in the mood for Americanized Chinese food, as long as its of good quality.
Chas Belov said,
June 20, 2025 @ 7:42 pm
Another good sign, which seems to be in play mostly at Cantonese places, is dishes advertised on handwritten wall signs in Chinese only. Whether I am successful in ordering those is dependent on my limited Chinese character knowledge and whether there are any curves thrown by the Chinese name.
For example, frog is rice-paddy chicken. Not a problem for me as I also like frog. But it's a good example of a curve ball.
Victor Mair has mentioned "pimple soup" and the Cantonese for catfish is literally "pond louse."
Philip Taylor said,
June 22, 2025 @ 7:15 am
"Another good sign, which seems to be in play mostly at Cantonese places, is dishes advertised on handwritten wall signs in Chinese only" — yes, strong agreement from this end. When I used to visit Waterloo/Kitchener (Ontario) in the mid-to-late 80s, I found just such a restaurant and asked the (very friendly) Chinese front-of-house staff if they would kindly translate for me. Once they realised that I was genuinely seeking authentic Chinese food, they could not have been more helpful, and thereafter I ordered from the handwritten notices using the best approximation I could manage to their native pronunciation.
Chas Belov said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:08 pm
@Philip Taylor: Thinking about it, any city having a university with a large population of Chinese student is likely to have authentic Chinese restaurants nearby. The last time I was in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh I ran across a couple examples of hyper-authentic Chinese restaurants specializing in a particular cuisine.
Victor Mair said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:13 pm
From anonymous:
A few of the comments mention the striking town scene in 'Sinners' that starts with the Chinese-run shop in the seeming black town that mid-scene opens up to reveal it is the black side of the street with a white side of the street opposite and a parallel Chinese shop run by the same family, husband in one, wife in the other, daughter freely crossing between.
I didn't previously know of either of the actors playing the couple yet my initial reaction was it doesn't seem right for the story to cast, in that time and setting, a tough as nails Mainland woman married to a softer Southeast Asia man. There was nothing in the story to suggest those origins for the characters, just my instant reaction involuntarily developed by years of being around Mainland impolite views of Southeast Asia. I pulled up IMDB and see the actor playing the wife is from Shanghai and the actor playing the husband is from Malaysia. I have seen the movie twice, it is original and superb.
Victor Mair said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:14 pm
From Thomas L. Mair
Gayle and I are intrigued by anonymous's observations. Gayle's son Hunter was in Singapore for ten years, so we became somewhat familiar with stories about how the Singaporeans do not think of themselves as Chinese and also how they looked down on the Malaysians who crossed the bridge daily to work in Singapore.
Neither of us realized that the street portrayed in the film represented a cultural divide as well. To the Chinese family, the border was porous.
The scene anonymous describes is a cinematic masterpiece. The Chinese father sends his daughter on an errand to the other shop the family owned, on the white side of the street. She carries the message to the wife (who is managing the store on the white side) that she must return home and start preparing food for the big opening of the juke joint that evening.
The magic of the scene is in the cinematography. The camera follows the beautiful young daughter from one store, out the door, across a busy street, into the other store, she takes her mother's place behind the counter, her mother then exits her store on the white side, and retraces her daughter's steps back to the store on the black side – – – – all in a single shot with no editing ! ! ! ! It's an example of beautiful, virtuoso camera work, especially as it was shot with a 70mm camera, of which there are only 7 (?) left in operation. (I believe I have that right.)
'I’m Singaporean': TikTok CEO grilled by US Senator repeatedly about ties with China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W-ufw5Z7ac
HS said,
June 24, 2025 @ 7:31 pm
For a great, long, leisurely, and fascinating look around Clarksdale, see this video.
As the video maker says, it looks like a pretty poor and run down place, as you would expect of a small town in the Mississippi Delta, but with a rich and fascinating musical history. You can see all the murals and blues bars and museums Professor Mair mentioned – and I note with a certain satisfaction that the main blues club is actually called Ground Zero, the very term I used. (I am surprised to learn that it is owned by Morgan Freeman, who apparently comes from Clarksdale). I didn't spot the little Chinese takeout joint, however, but it may well be in there somewhere.
It must be a fascinating place to visit if you're a blues fan (though I certainly wouldn't want to live there). And it must be great to be in one of those blues bars potentially watching the next unknown Muddy Waters.
The Crossroads looks a bit disappointing to me, however; it really needs to be out in the middle of nowhere to fit the legend. Though as the video maker says, it would have been rather different back in the 1930's. It seems a bit disrespectful somehow that it is now surrounded by barbecue joints and the like, though I suppose it was inevitable.
And towards the end there is a nice in-joke with the black cat – "I ain't superstitious, but a black cat just crossed my trail" is a famous blues song by Howling Wolf (who of course also came from Clarksdale…).
Victor Mair said,
June 25, 2025 @ 6:55 am
@HS
Thanks for sharing that awesome video. Made me feel as though I were back in Clarksdale. I was so privileged to run through that fabled town, purely by chance.