Tong Atchew, reckoned to be the first Chinese immigrant to have arrived in India around the turn of the 18th Century to recoup the damages wrecked by civil wars, took to cooking only after his ambitious enterprise, blessed by none other than Warren Hastings - the then Governor-general of British India, to become the owner of a sugar mill near Kolkata, had gone kaput [Chini and Chini…prophetic]. Initially, his compatriots safely chose to leverage the traditional skills to survive on foreign soil. The Cantonese moved into carpentry. The teeth-setting Hubeis picked dentistry with the Hakkas turning shoe-smiths. So, none of them came here to cook!
Eventually, the Chinese diaspora of Calcutta, sensing a need to impress the city-dwellers with grubs exotically yummy, ended up doing to Chinese cuisine exactly what Guy Ritchie did to Holmes years ago. How empathetic! I am safely counting on your incapacity to read my mischief...
No comments:
Post a Comment