Throughout And China Has Hands, protagonist Wong Wan-Lee’s black cat makes several appearances as his pet and companion in his otherwise lonely laundry house. Wong Wan-Lee regularly feeds the cat dried shrimp, as described in Chapter 4: “He went into the inner room and took a handful of dry shrimps and threw them on the floor. One piece, two pieces, three pieces…And he threw all the dry shrimps away and the cat ate them all” (60). In fact, Wong Wan-Lee’s dutiful attendance to feeding the cat even competes with his attraction to Peal Chang, such as during their most intimate encounter in Chapter 8: “The cat meowed without stopping. He separated from Pearl Chang and went inside to take out a handful of dry shrimp. When the cat had the dry shrimp, she was quiet” (101). I find it interesting that Wong Wan-Lee’s cat serves as a point of comparison to Pearl Chang, sometimes to emphasize Pearl Chang’s absence or to highlight Pearl Chang’s (apparently charming) ignorance. While there are certainly many layers to the cat as a symbol, I am particularly interested in how Wong Wan-Lee only ever feeds her dry shrimp, as if it is her designated meal. It is entirely plausible that Wong Wan-Lee only feeds the cat dry shrimp because the cat has other sources of food, such as the mouse she proves she can catch later in the novel. But why dry shrimp specifically?
Perhaps the answer to this question is about easy access. Dry shrimp is a common flavoring ingredient in many East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines, especially for coastal regions with abundant access to the fruits of the ocean. Dry shrimp remains extensively popular in both northern and southern Chinese dishes, including soups, dumplings, stir fry, and particularly Cantonese XO sauce. My own family has a glass jar of 虾米 (xiā m, lit. “shrimp rice”), a shelled bulbous type of dried shrimp, in our fridge that my father uses liberally in vegetable stir fry and dumpling filling to add umami flavor.
There are records from the early 1800s of Native American, French, and Filipino residents of states such as Louisiana sun-drying shrimp for preservation as subsistence fishermen. In the 1850s, Chinese immigrants to California began drying seafood commercially, both for their own consumption and for export back to China. However, due to environmentalist concerns and anti-Chinese sentiment in the early 1900s, California banned dried shrimp exports in 1905. Meanwhile, the Chinese-run dried shrimp industry of Louisiana boomed, exporting dried shrimp not only to China in place of Californian sources but also to countries of South America and the Caribbean. The Chinatowns of the US, such as in San Francisco and New York City, were also formidable markets for Louisiana dried shrimp. Thus, for Wong Wan-Lee, dried shrimp would have been a cheap and familiar ingredient available for purchase in grocery stores of New York City’s Chinatown in the 1930s, handy as flavoring or as pet food.
It was quite meaningful for me to learn about the flourishing of a largely Chinese-owned dried shrimp industry in Louisiana during an era of heavy anti-Chinese nativism in the US. Just as Chef Lucas Sin’s presentation has helped me realize, Chinese-Americans have historically occupied a variety of roles in American society. Stories of Chinese-Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries are largely confined to those about miners, railroad workers, and restaurant owners, and while it is important to acknowledge these existences as central to Chinese-American history, it is equally important to understand that Chinese-American identities can and have looked different from the commonly recognized narrative.
Works Cited
Ho, Winston. “Shrimp Drying in Louisiana: A Tale of Industrial and Political Revolutions.” 64 Parishes, https://64parishes.org/shrimp-drying-in-louisiana
Tsiang, H. T. And China Has Hands. 1937. Kaya Press, 2016.
Zhu, Maggie. “Dried Shrimp.” Omnivore’s Cookbook, https://omnivorescookbook.com/dried-shrimp/
