In Annette Bay Pimentel’s wonderful new children’s picture book “Mountain Chef: How One Man Lost His Groceries, Changed His Plans, and Helped Cook Up the National Park Service” readers are given the enjoyable treat of hearing a great American story of California and the west.  “Mountain Chef” recounts a tale in the true to life exploits of Chinese American cook extraordinaire Mr. Tie Sing as he undertakes  the vital task of cooking exceptional meals and providing  hospitality and home-like comforts for the members of  Stephen Mather’s elite Mountain party of  1915.

Readers familiar with Ken Burn’s documentary film series on the National Parks,    “Americas Best Idea” (episode 3) will recall that Stephen Mather (the future first director of the National Park Service) spearheaded an all-out campaign in 1915 to establish the National Park System.   They key to this campaign was  to have a select group of rich, powerful, and influential men  experience firsthand Sequoia National Park and the Sierra Nevada Mountain range.  As Mather saw it the expedition would not be a success if his mountain expedition consisted of travel by horseback through exquisite natural scenic sites, followed by  giving a man  “a poor breakfast after he has had a bad night’s sleep…[resulting in a traveler who] will not care how fine your scenery is..”  Food and comfort for the members of the 1915 expedition would be a vital factor in making their park travels a transformative peal experience thus ensuring the successful of wooing these powerful men of the 1915 mountain expedition.

As a result of Mr. Tie Sing’s reputation growing out of decades of work as a trail cook running a field kitchen for the mapping teams of United States Geological Survey (USGS) geologists, Tie Sing was hand-picked by Chief USGS geographer Robert Marshall to cook for Mather’s 1915 mountain expedition. Prior to 1915, Tie Sing’s work cooking for USGS geologists teams  mapping the Sierra Nevada mountain range resulted in the Chief Geographer naming a  10,552 feet mountain peak “Sing Peak” in 1899  to honor Tie Sing for his contributions.

In “Mountain Chef” author Pimentel focuses on the key role Tie Sing played in the Mather Mountain Party of 1915. This overland expedition of rich and powerful American men is part of the founding lore of the National Park Service.  Pimentel’s very thorough research into the life of Tie Sing and the importance of the Mather Mountain party provides for the detail that brings this story to life. In author Pimentel’s hands, Tie Sings story captures the right tone and gets just about all the notes just right, e.g.,

“Tie Sing was a frontier baby, born high in the mountains in Virginia City, Nevada,” “America was a tough place to be Chinese. Bosses paid  Chinese workers less than white workers…,”“Tie Sing…had American dirt under his fingernails—and dreams as big as the country he loved,”  “…Tie Sing, a mountain-loving American who knew how to plan.”

Pimentel’s story telling is accompanied by page after page of rich evocative full color illustrations in watercolor by artist and author Rich Lo.  Pimentel’s tale moves readers along and all the while entertaining, teaching, and providing moments for reflection. A minor quibble would be the use of the term of “fortune cookie” to refer to the baked goods which Tie Sing used to present hand written laudatory messages to each member of the party. No historical record exists as to the exact type of cookie or baked good used. While the 1915 Mather expedition pre-dates the generally accepted dates for the creation of the familiar folded vanilla flavored wafer cookie that constitutes the “fortune cookie,” as an interpretive device the use of today’s widely familiar fortune cookie creates a widely accessible analogy that would be familiar to today’s young readers.

The end of the book contains several pages of factual background material on Tie Sing, the wide spread anti-Chinese sentiment of the 19^th century, the Mather Mountain party and the National Park Service. Rare black and white photos of Tie Sing in the field and manning his field kitchen borrowed from the collection of the Bancroft Library are included.

Tie Sing’s narrative is a story of our west to which all Americans should be exposed. His tale of hard work, perseverance, and dedication is an inspiring narrative that will inspire parents and young readers with a vision of a richer and truer outline of the multiple threads of American life. Chinese Americans readers and parents will welcome this wonderful edition to the small but growing body of culturally sensitive but excellently written children’s books. What makes Annette Pimentel’s book stand out further is its contribution in bringing this Chinese American story farther into the arena of American public history.

Ruthanne McCunn’s new book

In her latest book “Chinese Yankee,” author Ruthanne Lum McCunn (“Thousand Pieces of Gold,” “The Moon Pearl”) tells the life of Chinese American immigrant Ah Yee Way and his service as a combat veteran in the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War. Known in his regiment and in official documents by his adopted name of Thomas Sylvanus, Ah Yee Way’s story of his enlistment in the Union army and his battlefield experiences is typical of what the civil war combat soldier endured. Just like the 177,000 German American immigrants who fought for the Union cause or the 150, 000 Irish American immigrants who fought in the Union Army, Ah Yee Way aka Thomas Sylvanus saw his future in his adopted American homeland. Like thousands of other immigrant civil war soldiers, Sylvanus was willing to put his life on the line in defending new homeland.

While thousands of German American and Irish American immigrant soldiers in the Union army were able to serve in ethnically uniform units i.e., German Americans immigrants in the 68th New York State Volunteer Infantry Regiment, (the Second German Rifle Regiment), or Irish-Americans in the 63rd, 69th, and the 88th New York Infantry Regiments, collectively referred to by the moniker the “Irish Brigade,” Ah Yee Way and the many other Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who served in the Civil war were often viewed as unique phenomena. Ah Yee Way’s contemporaries dubbed him the “Chinese Yankee.”

McCunn begins Ah Yee Way’s story with imagined recollections of his childhood in Hong Kong, his adoption by the American matron Mrs. McClintock, his passage to America and his name change to Thomas Sylvanus. Using historical sources Lum McCunn achieves the difficult task of from piecing together a tale of Thomas Sylvanus’ dreams, experiences, and aspirations. Sylvanus’s story is the story of an immigrant soldier coming to terms with the realities of battle, his subsequent injuries and recovery, as well as his perseverance, his heroics, and his strivings in the post-war years. The story of Thomas Sylvanus’s time in the Union Army is singular in the fact that he enlisted multiple times serving in the 81st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, and then the 42nd New York Volunteers. As a Union solider Thomas Sylvanus fought in major battles of the war such as the battle of the Wilderness. It was in the intense fighting at Spotsylvania that Sylvanus, as Corporal of the Color Guards, saved his regiment’s colors during a Confederate charge. At the battle of Petersburg Thomas Sylvanus — the Chinese Yankee, was captured and subsequently imprisoned in the infamous Andersonville prison. Surviving both Andersonville and the war, Thomas Sylvanus’s life goes on for another almost 30 years as he marries, starts a family and eventually receives a veteran’s pension for the disabilities he incurred while serving in the Union army.

In writing “Chinese Yankee” Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s work as a writer serves fulfills a vital purpose; it highlights the role of Chinese Americans in the American Civil war. Through a fictionalized account, this novel helps address the omissions in the public history of the civil war. A 2014 book published by the National Park service – “Asians and Pacific Islanders and the Civil War”
(https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/books.htm), in which Lum McCunn is a contributing author, has substantiated the fact that more than a hundred Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders served in the American Civil war.

For there to be social justice and the “new birth of freedom” that Lincoln referred at Gettysburg, a complete comprehensive account of the American Civil War and all of its participants is required. Social justice in the present requires an inclusive understanding of the past. For an interesting story of one Asian American’s days campaigning with the union army, I recommend “Chinese Yankee.”

review by Jordan Yee