
The Struggles of Writing About Chinese Food as a Chinese Person - DiabloD3
https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/the-struggles-of-writing-about-chinese-food-as-a-chinese-person
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rayiner
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get out of this article. As a counter-
example. My family is Bangladeshi but we live in the U.S. Bangladeshi food is
mainstream in the U.S. in many ways (many Indian restaurants are owned by
Bangladeshis) but there will always be stuff Americans find unpalatable. I
think it's awesome to see Americans (of any color) enjoying Bangladeshi food;
do I care that they'll probably never develop a taste for shutki (extremely
pungent dried fish)? Is that a mark of "structural oppression?"

And moreover, its sad to see the author engage in racial and ethnic
stereotyping of her own. "White people," of course, have many different
culinary traditions. My father in law is from the Oregon coast; he loves
salmon, smoking things, pickling things, etc. Can he complain about
"structural oppression" now that the East Coast cultural elite have embraced
salmon, but continue to find sucking on fish and lobster heads disgusting? Can
he claim "cultural appropriation" now that pickled foods are super trendy?

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rhino369
I don't understand the growing demonization of cultural diffusion by labeling
it "cultural appropriation." The author is just upset that Americans are
incorporating her culturing into our own under our own terms. But that doesn't
harm Chinese culture at all.

~~~
kristjansson
It seems to me that cultural appropriation, like other recent attempts at
critical thinking about culture, is reasonable when applied to a very narrow
range of activity, and unreasonable when applied broadly. Moreover, we've
moved toward the broader interpretation at such blinding speed that the idea
is understood only in the broad fashion.

It seems reasonable that the majority culture should hold some sensitivity to
minority elements. Christians would be upset to see a tabernacle used out of
context. We should show the same respect to the morally equivalent symbols on
other cultures. That idea seems compatible American values - no prohibition of
speech, but mutual freedom and respect.

This idea has been rapidly and rabidly misinterpreted as absolute ownership of
all unique elements of a culture by its members, and an imperative to shame
anyone that uses any symbol they don't 'own'.

I don't know that I had a broader point besides that those crying cultural
appropriation should take a deep breath, and those of us shaking our heads
should recognize that the idea does have some value

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coldcode
Every country has this issue. In this global universe we live in all "native"
foods merge with local culture to produce something new. For example "Mexican"
food in various parts of the US is nothing like the food I ate when I worked
in Mexico, yet even there regional differences are almost as different. Even
"Chinese" food is wildly different dependent on where you are from in China. I
grew up eating "German" food that is only barely like any restaurant I've seen
in the US, and nothin like what you find in Germany today because it came from
my parent's remembering what they ate as kids and my grandmother's what she
learned from her mother. Food is not a static item and never has been. Trying
to say the food you remember or eat is "yours" to talk about is sort of
ignoring that it is a very personal concept as well as rooted in time and
place.

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newsbinator
Of all the problems of disenfranchisement and discrimination that genuinely
hurt people, this politicization of identity is the least interesting.

> "Only certain dishes like noodles, dumplings, kebabs, and rice bowls have
> been normalized. The majority is still largely stigmatized because, bluntly
> put, white people have not decided they like it yet."

You know what: if you like whatever dish and you wish others would too, then
write and vlog about it and try to popularize it. Use a pseudonym if you think
your name connotes the wrong ethnicity for your audience's sensibilities. I
do.

> I myself had many of my pitches labeled by as "too niche," only to find
> those same topics surface in articles by white people years later.

Or perhaps you were pitching the right thing at the wrong time. We'll never
know.

> Please, think about who you give the microphone to.

If you want the microphone, take it, it's yours. But please fight battles with
more obvious foes and more serious stakes. There are lots to choose from.

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andybak
The greatest weakness of the left is its inability to choose its battles
wisely. And discern friend from foe.

~~~
prestonh
And driving away would-be-allies by constantly referring to 'white people',
which is not only a fallacy (we're not a homogeneous group) but incredibly
hypocritical.

~~~
rayiner
I'm beyond frustrated by the mainstreaming of derisive comments about "white
people." Hey, my daughter is half white you assholes!

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DarkKomunalec
"Though the country [China] only has 10 percent of arable land worldwide, they
produce food for 20 percent of the world's population."

Nice way of saying they produce enough food for their own population, and make
it look like an act of charity.

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tyingq
_" Only certain dishes like noodles, dumplings, kebabs, and rice bowls have
been normalized. The majority is still largely stigmatized because, bluntly
put, white people have not decided they like it yet."_

Is it really "white people" though, or just Americans in general?

~~~
prestonh
Most Americans for sure. It's totally reasonable that people are slow in
expanding out of their comfort zones. 20 years ago eating raw fish was
considered weird, now high school kids are doing it to impress their
classmates.

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malandrew
Lots of great points in this article, many of which I agree with. What's
absent is the acknowledgement of the importance of the _audience_. The
gatekeepers generally represent the audience/market the content is being
published for.

Take the movie industry for example. The highest paid actors of color don't
make movies that appeal to audiences of their own ethnicity. They make movies
for audiences that are more greatly represented in the United States, mostly
white people. At the end of the day, that's where the money is.

With this all in mind and the fact that the audience completely missed the
importance of the audience in this rant, I can't help that this is the reason
she's still feeling this frustration as it's the gatekeepers that she
complains about that understands that audience better than she does. If she
understood that audience, she would have at least acknowledged the importance
of appealing to them in her post.

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ouid
My grandmother had what I would call food racism. She would regularly dismiss
rice as being ethnic food. It was profoundly annoying to deal with, but I
always felt that I really had no right to confront her about it. I wish I
could articulate why I felt that way. It's almost exactly the same pattern of
thought that people racism is (but without victims).

She didn't really have a good system for describing what made food (or by
extension, people) good, and instead of just living with some uncertainty, her
brain created a bunch of rules that correlated with her enjoyment. Then she
lazily conflated that with an honest to god definition of good food (people),
and used that to exclude just about everything else as uncivilized.

I don't think that the author of this article would consider this the
underlying cause of the problem, and I agree that he comes off as a bit whiny,
but I think he's noticing a real problem. Maybe the most intractible problem
that we have.

~~~
ajmurmann
I think what you are describing is actual racism what the author is describing
to me sounds like someone being unhappy with the culture the live in being
different and being badly educated about the culture their ancestors came
from. Food is core to every culture. We all need to figure out what is edible
and what isn't. Raw foods and fermented foods are right in the riskier
category of what's edible and therefore frequently considered problematic by
other cultures. That's a good thing. It means we have different cultures and
diversity on our planet.

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iamacynic
i'm asian american.

the overwhelming cringe factor in reading this kind of drivel is it's so
obvious the author desperately wants acceptance from the in-group, while at
the same time demonizing it, while at the same time humblebragging their
newfound coolness.

what person of any race or culture would respect someone with such an obvious
inferiority complex?

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Safety1stClyde
It doesn't really make a lot of sense. If anything, Chinese people have more
credibility than white people when writing about Chinese food, not less. That
is not a new phenomenon either, since people like Ken Hom and Martin Yan have
been doing it since the 1980s. Is she really claiming she was "bullied" for
eating pig intestines? One minute she claims that everyone thinks Chinese food
is cool, then the next minute she is complaining about how she gets funny
looks for chewing on jellyfish heads.

~~~
jwong_
I definitely get this feeling. She means Chinese food is cool, but not when
she's eating it. It's trendy when someone white picks it up (mostly because
they're eating things that white people are accustomed to). It's because she's
eating something that's more "authentic", which likely is less palatable. I
know I make an effort to only share certain foods with people who aren't
accustomed to actual Chinese food, because I get a lot of dirty looks when
offering some dishes.

~~~
Safety1stClyde
> I know I make an effort to only share certain foods with people who aren't
> accustomed to actual Chinese food, because I get a lot of dirty looks when
> offering some dishes.

I have given Marmite to foreign students to eat, and they responded with a
funny look or horror. Sorry but I can't work that up into some kind of anti-
Britishism. Similar with the turducken issue, can she really be serious about
working that into some kind of anti-Chinese prejudice?

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rendall
Here is a critique of the essay's assertions about the Wade-Giles romanization
system. The TL;DR is that it is inaccurate and misinformed.

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=32434](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=32434)

