Flexible Plant Food Practices among the Nineteenth-Century Chinese Migrants to Western North America

Abstract

Plant remains from Market Street Chinatown, San Jose, California, and historical accounts show that Chinese migrants relied on a variety of strategies to obtain plant foods in western North America in the second half of the nineteenth century. They farmed Chinese and European American crops, purchased local and imported foods, and collected wild resources. They faced a diversity of local environmental, social, and economic conditions that required a flexible cuisine and making choices beyond the dichotomy of maintaining a traditional Chinese diet or adopting European American foods.