Speaking Broadly

In this special episode of Speaking Broadly, I'm sharing a powerful discussion I had the opportunity to moderate, hosted by the New York Historical Society, titled The Journey of Chinese Food in America. My guests were two powerhouses: Jing Gao, founder of Fly By Jing, and Heather Lee, Assistant Professor of History at NYU Shanghai. Food is the entry point to both of their work. Heather puts today's anti-Asian hate crimes in a historical context: "Chinese lives were so cheap 150 years ago, to the point where their lives were expendable. And despite the sort of physical violence they experienced every day they made an effort to find a space of negotiation. And one of the most viable ones, in which Americans, white Americans in particular, started changing their attitudes towards Asians and Chinese people was through food. And this was done through what I call gastro diplomacy. They said, 'You see me as competition; You see me as disease; You see me as racial pollution. But I'm not those things. I'm respectable