In the short story, ' Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey', by P.G. That competitions involved four contestants. In the 2015 Illinois State Fair, in Illinois, United States, the winner of the hog calling contest had already participated 24 times and won 10 of them. And finally some contests divide participants by age (having a separate contest for kids and adults), while others mix everyone. While some contests take the audience excitement as a necessary criterion of a good hog call, others consider that to be a side effect of the performance. However, it is expected that the champion of a contest is able to render the microphone redundant.

Despite being originally about communicating with pigs scattered over a field, modern hog calling competitions will provide a microphone for contestants to amplify their calls. The use of props and costumes might also happen, but is usually frowned upon. For example, some might call out 'SOOO-o-oeeyyy' and others 'Who-o-eyyy'. The contestant should aim to mimic a hog's call, but the exact type of call may vary. The contestants are also judged on creativity. In competitions where there is no set rule for the duration of the call, it can be a criterium for judgement, awarding more points for sustained loud calls. There usually is a time limit of 30 seconds, but some festivals allow for longer time. Hog calling contests are usually held in regions with pig farming. To attract pigs (or family), the calls are based on four strategies: a male call to encourage territorial males to come to fight, a female call to encourage males to come to mate, a general call of dinner is served, and a piglet in distress call which works on adults.Ĭalls are usually simple woodwind instruments, sometimes adapted from other hunting lures. According to Roger Horowitz, author of Putting Meat on the. The organ meats-previously the stew’s chief attraction-had begun to disappear from chop suey. But cookbooks containing chop suey recipes published a few years later offer clues. Liang never said what exactly irked him about the dish. “As for what they call ‘chop suey,’” he fumed, “the cooking skills involved are so subpar that no one in China would ever eat it.” Liang was underwhelmed with the quality of the Americanized rendition, to put it lightly. When statesman and revolutionary Liang Qichao visited New York City in 1903, he was shocked to find hundreds of eateries catering to what he called the American “addiction” to this one dish. Chinese immigrants realized they could make a living selling chop suey and other Southern Chinese fare not just to America’s rich and powerful, but also to the working class. Chop suey adorned tables at Chicago’s exclusive Victoria Hotel, while American socialites served the dish at parties in their upscale private residences. Chefs prepared it for high-brow club meetings, plays, and formal balls. King called the “Chinese epicurean sensibility” to the American ruling class.

This writer also extolled “a toothsome stew composed of bean sprouts, chicken’s gizzards and livers, calf’s tripe, dragon fish, dried and imported from China, pork, chicken and various other ingredients which I was unable to make out.” That was chop suey.Īt the start of the 20th century, this stew came to exemplify what historian Samuel C. In 1886, journalist Allan Forman recalled a splendid meal taken in New York’s Mong Sing Wah, a place he called a “Celestial Delmonico’s”-a label that compared the Chinese restaurant favorably to the era’s leading fine-dining establishment. Then pour in soy sauce and voilà, you have a quick weeknight meal composed of soggy bean sprouts, soft water chestnuts, and faded pink bell peppers.īut chop suey arrived in the United States in the mid-19th century to much acclaim. To prepare it, heat up a pan, add oil, meat slivers, and sauce-covered vegetables from a tin. Nowadays, most chop suey ingredients come straight from a can. Historian Andrew Coe, author of Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, characterizes the dish as a “brownish, overcooked stew, strangely flavorless, with no redeeming qualities, and redolent of bad school cafeterias and dingy, failing Chinese restaurants.”Ĭoe is on the mark about many American incarnations of the dish. For decades, scholars and foodies have heaped scorn on it. Most people in the English-speaking world know chop suey as a vintage Chinese American dish.

Sooey pig etymology