General Tso

[yutyeesam]

Who is the man behind the chicken?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu%C7%9...%8Dngt%C3%A1ng

But some say he is not the one and has nothing to do with the chicken. Yet one more gem of Chinese culture with an obscure history!

[Lucas]

A chicken dish, "General Tso's chicken", was apparently named after him, though the reasoning behind this, if it exists, has not yet been discovered. The dish is said to have originated in New York City.


lol

NEW YORK CITY!!!!

(fade in pace picante cowboys)

[The Xia]

http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/foru...24&postcount=9
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/foru...8&postcount=15

[yutyeesam]

http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/foru...24&postcount=9
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/foru...8&postcount=15

LMAO! Brazilian Ninjitsu - now that's a photoshop idea waiting to happen!

[Lucas]

LMAO! Brazilian Ninjitsu - now that's a photoshop idea waiting to happen!

lets hope Ross doesnt get wind of this...i'll wager his photoshop finger is itchin'

[GeneChing]

I love this article.

Secret Technique Survives in Remote Chinese Kungfu Village
Epoch Times Staff Created: Nov 11, 2010 Last Updated: Nov 11, 2010

Master Xie Jin, head of the Yongtai Chicken-style Kungfu research committee in Yunling Village, Fujian Province, recently demonstrated in public for the first time a deadly technique that has been passed down secretly for generations.

Holding a struggling chicken in one hand, Master Xie touched a specific point on the animal with his right index finger. Instantly, the chicken stopped moving, with its head drooping. After Master Xie tapped the point again, the chicken jumped up and ran around.

Because the technique can cause serious injury, Master Xie didn’t demonstrate it on a person, but used a chicken instead.

The Fuzhou Evening News had visited Master Xie after hearing about the mysterious 200-years-old acupressure technique that has been passed down secretly through word of mouth in the village, which is nestled amidst mountains near Fuzhou City, Fujian Province.

According to Master Xie, the technique cannot be taught to those with a fiery temper, nor can it be taught to female students or students from outside the village.

“My father taught this skill to me. Today is the first time the technique is [publicly] demonstrated,” Master Xie said. “Even though I’ve released the acupressure, the hen will become thinner and thinner. If I had used more pressure just now, it would have died right away.

Nearly everyone in Yunling Village, Yongtai County near Fuzhou, has special skills, and they all practice Chinese Kungfu. The village has been dubbed “a place of crouching tigers and hidden dragons," the Fuzhou Evening News said in its a recent report.

Chicken Kungfu

Yunling Village is the birth place of Yongtai Chicken-style Kungfu, a branch of the Nanquan, or Southern Fist, school. Nanquan Kungfu also includes Tiger style, Crane style, Monkey style, and others.

A villager by the name of Xie Jinyu said that during the Qing Dynasty, under emperor Yongzheng, monk Tiezhu from Shaolin Temple passed down Yongtai Chicken Kungfu to his first generation secular student Xie Yousheng. Since then, it has been passed down for over 200 years.

During the second half of the Qing Dynasty, Kungfu became extremely popular in Yunling. Because of its remote location, the village was frequently pillaged by bandits. Therefore most villagers started to practice Kungfu to stay fit and to protect themselves. Today, almost everyone of the some 1,200 residents practices Kungfu.

Kungfu Fair

Xie Wenda, 87, is the oldest Kungfu trainer in the village. He said since 1976 many villagers have left the area to open Yongtai Chicken style Kungfu schools elsewhere. He himself has taught between 300 to 400 students.

Although many of the villagers work or do business outside the village, they all come home for Chinese New Year and to participate in the annual village Kungfu Fair that lasts about 40 days.

Yunling Village consists of six sub-villages, and each has its own Kungfu school that participates in competitions during the fair.
Secret Technique

Master Xie explained that the acupressure technique is still a secret, kept among a limited number of people, but many villagers have grasped the knowledge of energy channels, and they use this knowledge to cure illnesses for people in other places.

He explained that acupressure has to take the change of seasons and time of the day into consideration, as different acupuncture points need to be selected at different times.

In the interview, he emphasized the danger and secrecy associated with the technique: “If someone hurts people with this technique intentionally, he is not allowed to teach anyone else,” Master Xie said.

[GeneChing]

There was that documentary on General Tso's chicken. I thought we mentioned it here somewhere on the forum, but I can't find it just now (not that I searched that hard - it's late Friday, whaddyawant? ) That doc came up on Netflix I think, and I was planning to watch it but I didn't. Maybe someday when I run out of Kung Fu movies there. Like that's ever going to happen...

[GeneChing]

Inventor of General Tso's Chicken dies in Taipei at age 98

The inventor of General Tso's Chicken and founder of famous Taiwanese Hunan-style restaurant chain Peng's Garden died in Taipei on Wednesday

By Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2016/12/02 18:00

Chef Peng Chang-kuei (彭長貴), the founder of the famous Hunan-style restaurant chain Peng's Garden Hunan Restaurant (彭園湘菜館) and inventor of the world famous Chinese dish General Tso's Chicken, died on Nov. 30 at the age of 98 from Pneumonia.

A native of Changsha, Hunan Province, Peng began training at the age of 13 under the tutelage of the famous Hunan chef Cao Jing-chen (曹藎臣), who was the family chef of Tan Yan-kai (譚延闓), the prime minister of the Nationalist government from 1926 to 1928. After WWII, he was put in charge of running Nationalist government banquets, and in 1949 he fled to Taiwan after the Nationalist forces were defeated by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War.

According to an interview with the China Times, Peng says that his most famous dish was created in 1952 during a four-day visit by U.S. Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Arthur W. Radford. After three days, he had served the guests most of his repertoire of dishes, so to try and mix things up a bit, he decided to chop some chicken into big chunks, fry it to a golden hue and then added a different combination of sauce and seasoning to create a new dish.

The admiral was so impressed with the dish that he asked Peng what it was called, he thought quickly on his feet and said "General Tso's Chicken" (左宗棠雞).

Peng chose the name to honor General Tso, a famous military leader from Hunan who helped put down the Taiping Rebellion as well as other rebellions in the 1800s during the Qing Dynasty. He was well respected not only for his successes on the battlefield, but also for his contributions to Chinese agricultural science and education.



In the 1973, he opened a restaurant in New York City, where he began to gain the attention of officials from the nearby United Nations headquarters, including U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was very impressed with his cooking. It was because of these high profile visits that media outlets started to report on his restaurant, including the New York Times, which ran one of the earliest published accounts of the dish in 1977:

"General Tso's thicken was a stir‐fried masterpiece, sizzling hot both in flavor and temperature, and dragon and phoenix was a combination of pearly, dewy fresh lobster chunks on one side of the platter and stir‐fried chicken with peanuts on the other."

In 2014, a documentary film was released called "The Search for General Tso" directed by Ian Cheney that explored the origins of what has become an iconic dish in Chinese restaurants across the United States and even the world. The film first shows how Americans are generally clueless about the origins of the dish and then visits China, where Chinese are equally ignorant of the existence of the dish. It then covers the exploits of the real General Tso in Hunan, where the filmmakers find that the general had a number of favorite dishes, but the modern sweet fried chicken incarnation was not among them.

The documentary then covers the history of Chinese immigration in the U.S. and how the Chinese Exclusion Act forced Chinese into self employment, leaving them few options other than opening laundries and restaurants. To gain customers Chinese restaurants started modifying their dishes to suit American palates, by deep frying them, adding sugar, and including extras like fortune cookies.

After the thawing of relations between China and the U.S. after Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972, the film pointed out that there was a resurgence of interest in Chinese food and there were a number of restaurants that began to try and cash in on the new craze. Among them was Michael Tong, who opened Shun Lee Palace in Manhattan, and in 1973 introduced General Tso's Chicken to the menu for which his establishment received a four-star review from the New York Times.

The documentary revealed that businessmen from Shun Lee visited Peng's restaurant in Taipei in 1971 and brought back several dishes "inspired" by Peng's, including General Tso's Chicken. The dish's original creator, Peng, tried to open his own chain of restaurants in New York, but was not as successful as his rival, choosing eventually to return to Taiwan where his Hunan-style restaurant chain continues to thrive to this day.

I don't eat chicken anymore but I do remember General Tso's chicken being tasty.

[GeneChing]

I'm posting this on the Kung Food thread and also copying this for its own indie thread: General Tso.