Because of the ongoing civil war in China between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and Mao Zedong's Communists, however, she returned to the United States just after her 22nd birthday.
It was here that they opened their two highly successful restaurants: Through publicity events such as holding Barbra Streisand's 20th birthday bash at the Lichee Tree in 1962,[5] commissioning composer Dick Hyman to lead an orchestra accompanied with Chinese cleavers for the Year of the Monkey,[6] and being in the public spotlight in radio, television, and newspapers throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Kuos became relatively well known in American culture of the time.
The Lichee Tree had well-known Chinese New Year celebrations, frequented by famous patrons such as Rocky Marciano, who offered to “fight anybody in the house.
[2][3] Together with copy editor Suzi Arensberg and the illustrator Carolyn Moy, Jones and Kuo worked for more than five years on the manuscript, polishing it to make the concepts and organization understandable for the intended Western audience.
[2] It continues to influence food and cookbook writers such as Barbara Tropp, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo,[2] Fuchsia Dunlop,[11] Anne Mendelson,[8] and Grace Young.