In the fall of 1971, Judith Jones, the Knopf editor who had salvaged many a manuscript from the gallows of the rejection pile, was looking for a Chinese cookbook. She noticed a recent profusion of Chinese restaurants in major metropolitan areas, feeding an American fascination with the regional cuisines of China. Chinese cooking in that era had become synonymous with flamboyance, with foundational techniques that intimidated most American home cooks. Jones wanted someone who could bridge that perceived cultural chasm, to translate the dense aesthetic of Chinese cooking into a familiar culinary grammar for the American reader.