Jean Rhys Goes for a Chinese (and an Indonesian) in 1930s Paris

References to Chinese restaurants and food in literature again. Regular readers will remember that this debate was originally sparked by reference in the first series of excellent TV show The Hour (set in 1950s Britain among BBC types) to the staff “going for a Chinese” – see my post on that here. Was this a phrase used in 1950s London? The jury still appears to be out on that – some respondents have said yes, some no, but we’ve not found a literary reference despite some close ones. 1930s British literature has a number of references to eating Chinese food (see my post of Eric Ambler here) and I came across another recently worthy of mentioning (at least on this blog where such things are seen as highly merited).

I happen to be reading a lot of Jean Rhys (below) at the moment and am discovering her earlier works from the 1930s, rather than the better known post-war stuff. All very pleasurable. Good Morning, Midnight (published 1939 but dealing with the earlier 1930s) is set in Paris among the city’s transient shop girls and refugee floating population on, or pretty near, the breadline. Rhys’s heroine (sort of) Sophia Jansen is an English girl adrift in Paris working boring shop jobs, meeting all manner of men and sinking into the drink. She does however like a Chinese – and is keen to have lunch at the Pékin Restaurant.

More revealing is her trip to a café specialising in Indonesian food – somewhere behind the Halles that caters to workmen who need somewhere to get a drink, eat and maybe catch some sleep. She finds the café taken over by a Dutchman and, though the décor is still English pub (it has been such an establishment previously) the menu is now Javanese. The place attracts some Parisian Chinese and we get a little idea what a menu inspired by a man from the Dutch East Indies is like and how much it cost in French Francs:

Spécialitiés Javanaises (par personne, indivisibles)

Rystafel complet (16 plats), 25.00

Rystafel petit (10 plats), 17.50

Nassi Goreng, 12.50

The menu is apparently rather amusing featuring cartoons of the struggling colonial Dutchman’s lament in the East Indies, “send more money, send more money”.