Occupational Hazard: American Servicemen's Sensory Encounters with China, 1945–1949.

While well-fed and well-dressed GIs in China had plenty of beef, eggs, milk, alcohol, cigarettes, and candies, Chinese soldiers ate rice, bamboo roots, and pickles, and looked small, malnourished, and filthy.[76] Such food disputes cast a shadow over Sino-U.S. relations throughout the war, and continued into the postwar era, when the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration clashed with the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration over distribution of war surplus supplies and relief goods in China.[77] Food politics extended far beyond the store, kitchen, and dining room, reaching the cattle farmland, the slaughterhouse, presidential memos, and national treaties. In January 1947, William W. Lockwood, future president of the Association for Asian Studies, who had served for eighteen months as a U.S. Army officer in China, wrote that the "first venture in large scale American tourism in China" caused "many sour, even hostile, reactions to the Chinese." According to John Hersey, an eminent reporter and writer born into a missionary family in China, the winning jockey was crowned "Miss Rickshaw" by General Albert C. Wedemeyer, commander of American forces in China, and "the winning horse was given a floral horseshoe" and a prize of about seven U.S. dollars.[23] While Chinese media criticized the implicit dog analogy, the winning rickshaw man was invited by the chairman of Madison Square Garden to compete with a famous American runner in New York City.[24] After reports in major U.S. periodicals, this GI creation led to such an enthusiastic response that a Sino-American sporting event was proposed to recreate the spectacle and provide a thrilling experience for audiences back home. [Extracted from the article]