But as the historian Michelle T. King writes in her fascinating biography of Fu, “Chop Fry Watch Learn,” 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.’”
In teaching people how to cook, both in Taiwan and abroad, Fu played a critical role in defining the Chinese food served at home. Though Fu was in many ways quite different from Child, they, along with other pioneering television cooks, were instrumental in not only defining cuisines, but also professionalizing a role for women in the traditionally male-dominated world of food.
Fu was born in Dalian, a major port city in northeastern China, but fled to Taiwan in 1949 as a wartime refugee, aged 18. Married by 20, Fu was, by her own admission, a terrible cook. She spent her dowry (gold and jewelry) hiring various Chinese chefs to instruct her, eventually studying cuisines from the provinces or regions of Sichuan, Jiangsu/Zhejiang, Beijing, Guangdong, Fujian and Hunan. War had divided China, and Taiwan had become a place of refuge for millions. Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, fled with “not only the funds of China’s central bank and the most prized items of the imperial collection” but also “a coterie of China’s best chefs, who were national treasures in their own right,” writes King.
For many, the voyage was a memorable rupture. As King writes, in the hold of the ship that brought Fu to Taiwan, “a passenger had brought along a gigantic wok and a crock filled with lu sauce, a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, and a unique blend of spices, used in all manner of braised dishes. The remains of each iteration of the sauce are used in the next batch, intensifying and deepening the flavor over many decades, much like a sourdough starter.” Fu never forgot it.
