This white mug features a green Foo Dog on the front, with open mouth, resting his paw on an embroidered ball. The mug was used at Joyce Chen Restaurants. Chen opened her first restaurant in 1958. It was located at Central Square on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge. It was halfway between Harvard and MIT. It was a tiny take-out place and in no time people lined up to get Chinese food of a kind that few Americans had ever tasted. A few years later she opened the next restaurant in north Cambridge and more would follow. In 1962, she published The Joyce Chen Cookbook. In 1968, she starred in her own cooking show. She is credited with popularizing the Mandarin style of Chinese cooking in the United States. Chen died of Alzheimer’s disease in 1994. Her namesake restaurant closed in 1998. Chinese guardian lions or "Foo Dogs" in the West, are a common representation of the lion in pre-modern China. Statues of guardian lions have traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, Imperial tombs, government offices, temples, and the homes of government officials and the wealthy, from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), and were believed to have powerful mythic protective benefits.