Stirring the Pot

when what would become one of America’s most ubiquitous home-cooking techniques first entered the English lexicon. In her cookbook, , 55-year-old Chinese immigrant Chao Yang Buwei described a process common in her homeland, wherein cooks would cut meat and vegetables into small bites and tumble them rapidly together over heat. The Mandarin term for the technique, , “with its aspiration, low-rising tone and all, cannot be accurately translated into English,”