Cooking of China

Superchef

by Emily Hahn, Time-Life Books

An introduction to the cuisine of China with colorful illustrations of Chinese dishes accompanied by a spiral bound recipe book

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Reference, Nonfiction, Culinary, China

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Emily "Mickey" Hahn was called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker magazine; she was the author of 52 books and more than 180 articles and stories. Her father was a hardware salesman and her mother a suffragette. She and her siblings were brought up to be independent and to think for themselves and she became the first woman to take a degree in mining engineering from the University of Wisconsin. She went on to study mineralogy at Columbia and anthropology at Oxford, working in between as an oil geologist, a teacher and a guide in New Mexico before she arrived in New York where she took up writing seriously. In 1935 she traveled to China for a short visit and ended up by staying nine years in the Far East. She loved living in Shanghai and met both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. She became the lover of Zau Sinmay, an intellectual, whom she particularly liked for his overwhelming curiosity about everything, she felt it rubbed off on her, and together they founded the English-language magazine Candid Comment. During her time in China she learned to smoke opium, persisting for two years until, inevitably, she became addicted; she was then cured by a hypnotist.

In Hong Kong Hahn met Major Charles R. Boxer, a married British intelligence officer; in 1940 she became pregnant and they had a daughter, Carola. Boxer was captured by the Japanese after being wounded in the attack on Hong Kong; Hahn visited him as much as possible in his prisoner-of-war camp, until she and Carola were repatriated to the United States in 1943. On his release they got married and in 1946 they arrived in Dorset where she called herself a "bad housewife". Although Boxer continued to live in England, where he became Professor of Portuguese at London University, Hahn lived mostly in America as a tax exile.

Reviews

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1969 my Berkeley friends and I got ahold of Emily Hahn's book about Chinese cooking...at the time Mao was devastating old China, but somehow Hahn's cooking connected us with the lives of real people used to surviving one natural and political catastrophe after another and making time to cook for family. We spread a clean sheet on the apartment living room floor because there was no dining table big enough...and turned out one rather complex dish after another to eat sitting cross legged on the floor. Since then the world has changed, China and the US both are transformed. There are still natural and political catastrophes, but the recipes still work. Best eaten on a clean sheet spread out on the lawn or floor with family. With google, I was able to look up Emily Hahn's biography, what an amazing woman she was, scientist, traveler, writer, she affected the lives of people she never met, and all for the good....

[Yee-Ning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Authentic recipes. Well-organized. Good selection of cuisine. Lovely pictures.

[Janet Whalen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emily Hahn was an amazing character who pushed the envelope of what a respectable woman of her time could do. Living in Shanghai in the 1930's was one of those bubbles on time. This is only the tip of her iceberg. I'm on a culinary history kick right now. May actually cook something soon.

[Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wish I had the recipe component instead.

[Sandy (WI girl at heart) · Rating 3 out of 5]

love cookbooks!