food

by

Politicians visiting China: Practice your chopstick skills

Janet Yellen eating in China

Despite the frosty relations between the United States and China these days, occasionally government officials from the two countries meet. Recently U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited China for talks with Chinese officials. A recent story in the New York Times did not report on the substance of the talks (the newspaper did elsewhere) but instead talked about something more perhaps equally important for visiting diplomats, namely what and how they ate while in China:

Where, what and how American dignitaries eat when they visit China is a serious matter. Choices of restaurants and dishes are rife with opportunities for geopolitical symbolism, as well as controversy and mockery. Chopstick skills — or a lack thereof — can be a sign of cultural competence or illiteracy.

American officials are closely observed, and their meals are widely reported on in Chinese social media. If they order what Chinese people normally eat, they are praised, particularly if the food is “authentic”, i.e. not modified for Western palates. Ms. Yellen has turned out to be somewhat of a sensation in the food department. She eats in a variety of different Chinese style restaurants (Cantonese, Sichuan,Yunnan), orders the right dishes, and, most importantly, is very good with chopsticks. In fact, her chopstick skill were on display in a video shared widely in China on Weibo. She also won points for not eating in a private room, but in the open with other diners. Her popularity even led one restaurant where she ate to create a set menu based on what she had eaten there: it’s called the “God of Wealth menu” (after all she’s in charge of the US Treasury).

My experience in China is that the Chinese are (justifiably) very proud of their cuisine and find it important for foreigners to try authentic Chinese food, and to like it. They are also very appreciative if foreigners make a effort to learn Chinese, and quite surprised when a Westerner can speak even a little Chinese. I wrote a while back about my positive experience when ordering beer in Chinese and getting the pronunciation correct. US diplomats would be even more warmly received in China if they not only were able to use chopsticks but also could speak a little Mandarin.

by

You don’t like kimchi? You’re not really Korean.

Katianna Hong cooking soup.

As I wrote recently in this blog, for those from mixed ethnic backgrounds, one avenue to reclaim what feels like a lost heritage from one of the parents is to learn that parent’s language. The feeling that one does not fit into a personally linked ethnic group has sometimes been labeled racial imposter syndrome. It’s the sense that some individuals may have that their lives are in a sense inauthentic because they don’t conform to key aspects of the ethnic heritage with which they identify.

A current piece in the New York Times describes a different way to connect with that less dominant side of ones family cultural heritage, namely through food. The article, “Food Is Identity. For Korean Chefs Who Were Adopted, It’s Complicated”, explores how adoptees in the US from Korea (a large group) have learned to cook Korean food, with some becoming professional chefs. The situation is described as “complicated” for several reasons. The cooks have grown up in non-Korean environments and often have had little exposure to Korean cuisine until later in life. They tend not to cook straight traditional Korean dishes, but rather integrate Korean cooking techniques and ingredients into many dishes they prepare. One woman in the article, Katianna Hong, is described as “a Korean woman adopted and raised by a German Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother.” She makes matzo ball soup, a traditional Jewish food, in an unconventional way:

Instead of the mirepoix of carrots, celery and onions her grandmother called for, Mrs. Hong opts for what she calls “Korean mirepoix” — potatoes and hobak, a sweet Korean squash — cooked slowly in chicken fat until translucent. She dribbles a spoonful of the mixture around a hulking matzo ball surrounded by swollen sujebi, the hand-torn Korean noodles, all floating in a bowl of chicken broth as creamy and cloudy as the ox bone soup Seolleongtang.

The article describes the soup as “a tribute to her adoptive family’s background and her own heritage”. While for the adoptees, the experience of cooking Korean may bring personal fulfillment, the chefs may face backlash from other Korean Americans that their cooking isn’t Korean enough. Here again, the situation is complicated. Kim Park Nelson, an associate professor of ethnic studies at Winona State University, herself a Korean adoptee is quoted in the article on the complexity involved:

The most common example I hear, and what I have experienced, is being asked if I like kimchi. I do, but not all adoptees are crazy about kimchi. There is almost a nationalistic connection between kimchi and Korea.  It’s like a test question: Are you actually Korean?

Adoptees learn to cook Korean from different sources, but often from social media such as YouTube. The experience of starting to make Korean food can prove to be emotional: “For a Korean adoptee, eating Korean food can be a reminder of the loss, grief and disconnection they’ve experienced. Cooking may intensify those feelings.” It may be scray to assert ones identity as “Korean” if one has not grown up eating Korean food:

Feelings of self-doubt — the impostor syndrome — can turn into fears of cultural appropriation. Many adoptee chefs say they feel like outsiders looking in, wondering not only if they have permission to cook the cuisine of their heritage, but also if what they’re doing could taint it.

As one Korean adoptee chef stated in the piece: “In some ways, Korean food becomes a marker of what you aren’t.”

by

What? Scones with fried chicken?

Today is Thanksgiving in the US, with many families enjoying the traditional meal of roast turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries, pies, etc. While the food is important, Thanksgiving is a social event, bringing extended families back together, an especially appreciated opportunity this year after the COVID lockdown last November. While the collective meal represented by Thanksgiving is seen as special is the US, in most parts of the world, it is a regular occurrence. I’m reminded of an interview on NPR a few years ago with a Yemeni photographer. She was invited to a family Thanksgiving and was asked afterwards her impression: she responded that it was “like every day in Yemen”.

Popeyes in London

While Thanksgiving celebrates the 17th century migration of Europeans to North America, a story this week in the NY Times described a food migration in the opposite direction, back to Europe, actually to Great Britain, from the US. The first Popeyes fast-food chicken restaurant opened recently in London. Popeyes is known for its fried chicken, and recently made a splash with its very popular chicken sandwich (also seen as one of the unhealthiest fast-food options ever). Beyond chicken, another essential component of a Popeyes meal are its buttermilk biscuits, flaky, buttery, and tender. But when Popeyes set up a focus group to assess how Brits might view Popeyes, the reaction, according to the article was, “Why are you giving me a scone with chicken? I have no idea what you are doing.”

A buttermilk biscuit does look similar to a British scone, although scones are denser, drier and crumblier. But scones are not served with chicken or with meals generally, but rather with tea as a light snack, for example, for “cream tea” in the mid-morning or with afternoon tea. Hence the confusion on the part of the British diners. Interestingly, the word “biscuit” also is used in Britain, but refers to what is called a “cookie” in North America. Interesting as well is the socio-cultural significance of the terms. “Biscuits” in the US are considered a staple of Southern cooking and an essential part of “down-home” comfort food. In contrast to the blue-collar aura around biscuits, “scones”, if they are at all familiar to US folks, are likely seen as upper-crust and a symbol of privileged wealth.

As is the case with other fast-food outlets, Popeyes has made adjustments to cater to local conditions:

The chicken is halal to cater to the area’s Muslim population. Almost all of the ingredients are sourced from Britain, including baby gem lettuce, which is harder to find in the United States. The menu also includes the chain’s first-ever vegan burger, which is made of fried red beans, a nod to the strong demand for plant-based food in the British market

So far, the reaction to Popeyes and its strange version of scones seems to be quite positive. According to the article, the company is planning to open 10 to 15 new Popeyes locations next year.

by

A beloved McDonald’s…in France?!

McDonald’s in Marseille, France, under threat of closure

The popular view of French food veers toward the gourmet side – fine wines, superb cheeses, elegant sauces, local specialties – enjoyed at a leisurely pace, with rich social interactions. One of the delights of being in France is the high quality of dining at neighborhood bistros and cafes, with a surprising variety of dishes on offer. In other words: the opposite of American fast food, epitomized by McDonald’s, with its uniform, mass-produced food, designed to be consumed quickly, often on the go. 

France has its own fast-food traditions and street food, including croque-messieurs, crepes, and baguette sandwiches. But those foods seem more sophisticated and in tune with French culture than what you get at Mickey D’s. No surprise that McDonald’s has a checkered history in France, with its first restaurant in Paris in 1971 closing soon after opening. Over the years, as more McDonald’s franchises have opened throughout France, the company has experienced more success, but also continued resistance – not only to its non-French approach to food preparation and consumption, but also because for the French the company represents globalization, Americanization, and unfair trade and labor practices. In 1999 a group of protesters led by farmer José Bové destroyed a half-built McDonald’s restaurant in Millau.

So why is there a passionate campaign in Marseille to keep a McDonald’s threatened with closure? It’s not the food, it’s the community role that particular restaurant plays, according to the New York Times:

A group of workers and their union leaders in Marseille are fighting tooth-and-nail to save a McDonald’s from closing in a working-class, largely immigrant neighborhood. A so-called “Festival of Dignity” protest was recently organized by the McDonald’s employees in an effort to save their roughly 70 jobs. Even though McDonald’s was once seen as a cultural menace to a glorious French tradition, the workers say this particular McDonald’s, in its quarter-century of existence, has played a vital role as a social integrator in one of France’s most troubled districts — providing employment and shielding local youth from pervasive drug-dealing, getting them out of jail and helping them stay out.

The article chronicles a number of personal stories of neighborhood youth, all from economically disadvantaged families with migrant backgrounds, who were hired by the McDonalds, giving them an initial foothold in life and keeping them off the streets and out of trouble. That has been particularly important for Muslim youth, often facing employment discrimination. The restaurant is the second largest employer in that part of Marseille.

Ironically, the current owners of the McDonald’s want to sell the restaurant to a Muslim halal food operator who wants to open a new restaurant serving Middle Eastern food.  The reaction of McDonald’s employees to that plan, most of them Muslims, as reported in the NY Times has been anger: “’This is an insult. We’re fighting for laïcité here,’ said Salim Grabsi, a local schoolteacher and former employee, referring to France’s official credo of secularism. ‘The republic is one and indivisible’.” That perspective seems to echo the reaction from France decrying some comments on the African origins of the families of many French players on the French national soccer (football) team’s which won the World Cup in 2018 (for example, Trevor Noah’s “Africa wins the world cup!”). The point made was that in France, everyone is “French”, no matter their heritage (i.e., no hyphenated identity descriptors, as in the US).

Here’s another irony of the Marseille McDonald’s story: There was a controversy in Marseille in 2017 on a city government crackdown on street vendors of kebabs. Given that the owners of those establishments are overwhelmingly North Africans, most of them Muslim, this action was decried as “gastronomic racism”. As far as the closure of the McDonald’s is concerned, a French court for now has blocked the sale of the outlet – so that location will for now continue to offer the “Royale with Cheese” (McD’s quarter-pounders; see Pulp Fiction), not kebabs.

by

From cave to KFC

The Wild Boars football team in Thailand

The Wild Boars were released from the hospital yesterday to their families, the young Thai boys trapped in a flooded cave for over 2 weeks. They will be overjoyed to be back with their families, but they will likely be especially eager to get back to the food they love. Having suffered from hunger while in the cave, food was one of the things they tried not to think about, but which, according to notes they wrote to their families, they couldn’t help but daydream about.

Pad kra pao

The foods they craved in the cave provide insights into the tastes, at least, of young Thais. One of the dishes several boys mentioned was pad kra pao, a fried rice dish which usually served with chicken, normally quite spicy. That spiciness is a common theme across most of the dishes the boy mentioned. That even includes KFC, the US fast food chain. The menu in Thailand is quite different from that in the US (and other countries), with most of the chicken dishes being spicy.

It’s an interesting experience to visit fast food chains in different countries. I note that the “burgers” at the Thai KFC do not include any beef versions, only chicken or fish. That’s not maybe a big deal for KFC, but I visited a McDonald’s in India, curious about how beef (taboo in India) would be replaced; after all Big Macs and beef burgers are the staple of that chain – in India, too, plenty of chicken to replace beef, but also many vegetarian dishes.

A member of the KFC founder’s family, Colonel Sanders, has been in the news, defending the Colonel in accusations from the fired former CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, John Schnatter. Schnatter defended himself from accusations of racism by claiming that the Colonel himself had made racist comments, something refuted by the Colonel’s grandson, Trigg Adams

by

Gastronomic racism?

Kebab food truck in Besançon, France

That term, “gastronomic racism” was used by Rim-Sarah Alouane, a researcher at the University of Toulouse, to describe a crackdown on street vendors of kebabs in the city of Marseille. In France, a kebab is a sandwich in pita or flatbread filled with meat, usually mutton, with salad and sauces. The city is making it harder for owners of kebab shops to be licensed to operate in the central business district. According to the story on PRI’s The World: “Although kebab shops are not singled out, the owners of the establishments fear the initiatives will effectively force the entrepreneurs to shutter.” The owners of those establishments are overwhelmingly North Africans, most of them Muslims.

This is not the first time that kebabs have been involved in issues around immigration and discrimination. According to the story, “A stall at the 2013 annual convention of the far-right Front National called for ‘Ni kebab ni burger, vive le jambon-beurre.’  That means, ‘Neither kebab nor burger, long live the ham and butter sandwich,’ the classic French fast food — a baguette with ham and butter.” In the recent presidential election campaign, the Socialist Party candidate, Benoît Hamon, tweeted the following:

The tweet, “J’ai craqué”, literally, “I creacked”, means I gave in, namely to the guilty pleasure of eating a less than healthy snack, namely the kebab and fries shown.

France is not the only country where kebabs have entered the political arena. Chancellor Merkel has been pictured repeatedly with the popular German version, Döner Kebab. Her love of the Turkish street food has sometimes been seen ironically, in the context of her famous statement in 2010 that “Multikulti ist tot” (multiculturalism is dead). On the other hand, she has been celebrated with being out front in welcoming refugees into Germany. Given the large number of newly arrived Syrians in Germany, maybe in the future she will be pictured enjoying the Syrian version of the kebab, Kufta Kabab.

Story in The World:

by

Too many Chinese?

From Timothy Yu's blog

From Timothy Yu’s blog

A poem this week in the New Yorker by Calvin Trilling, “Have they run out of provinces yet?” has caused some controversy. The poem begins:

Have they run out of provinces yet?
If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret.
Long ago, there was just Cantonese.
(Long ago, we were easy to please.)
But then food from Szechuan came our way,
Making Cantonese strictly passé.
Szechuanese was the song that we sung,
Though the ma po could burn through your tongue.
Then when Shanghainese got in the loop
We slurped dumplings whose insides were soup.
Then Hunan, the birth province of Mao,
Came along with its own style of chow.
So we thought we were finished, and then
A new province arrived: Fukien.

The critique of the poem is that it characterizes China as an endless sea (what, yet another province!) of anonymous people (have they run out). A professor of Asian-American Studies, Timothy Yu. wrote a response he called “Have they run out of white poems yet?”, in which he writes:

When my family arrived from Fujian.
The country they found was now eager
For Chinese food, but not its people.
We’re now just a dish on the menu
For gourmets to sink their teeth into.

Others have defended Trilling, agreeing with his own rebuttal, that he was intending to poke fun at the foodie culture rampant today in US cities, where always finding something new and different is a badge of honor. In fact, Trilling is a big fan of Chinese food; he wrote a fun column about Chinese chef Peter Chang a few years, a master of Szechuan food, which we have the good fortune to have now in Richmond. It is more the tone of the poem (especially in the title) which are unfortunate. In fact, speaking and writing today of issues involving specific cultural groups or immigrant populations can be a minefield, even if writing about something as seemingly innocent as food. NPR published a piece today entitled “Why Hunting Down ‘Authentic Ethnic Food’ Is A Loaded Proposition” which explores some of those issues.

Given the great variety of Chinese culinary traditions, it is wonderful to see that variety finally showing up in the US. It would be ironic indeed for anyone in the US to see this welcome development as Chinese cultural imperialism, given the fact that we have saturated China (and the rest of the world) with our representative cuisine: McDonald’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut.

by

Gourmet poutine

Poutine, as traditionally made

Poutine, as traditionally made

As I am writing this, at a state dinner for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is being served by the White House chefs a dish famous as a late-night treat in Quebec, poutine, composed of French fries, covered with cheese curds and topped by brown gravy – a triple cholesterol threat. The version being served at the state dinner is somewhat different, according to the Washington Post: “shavings of smoked duck and cheese curds finished with red wine gravy and served on delicate wafer fries: a one-bite canapé.” The basic dish is well known in Canada and in parts of the northern US and, according to Wikipedia, in other places as well, including an Italian poutine with Bolognese sauce. Given the numerous jokes about US citizens moving north of the border, as soon as President Trump is sworn in, those would-be Canadians may want to get used to the notion of eating the fastfood treat, but without the gourmet makeover being served tonight.

by

Language & Identity

Traditional Navajo clothing

Traditional Navajo clothing

The language we speak is a crucial part of our individual identities. Language can also be a social identifier – a way to tell who’s in and who’s out. This has been the case within the Native American Navajo Nation, where a candidate for president was disqualified last fall because he didn’t speak Navajo fluently. That candidate, Chris Deschene, had an impressive resume, having graduated from the Naval Academy, and subsequently earning a law degree and a master’s in engineering, before serving one term as a state representative. But he doesn’t speak Navajo fluently, having grown up away from the Navajo community. According to a story last year on NPR, “Deschene blamed his limitations on what he calls the tribe’s cultural destruction. Up until the 1960s, the U.S. federal government forced thousands of American Indians to attend boarding schools – among them, Deschene’s mother. While there, she was punished for speaking her native language. The U.S. government later relocated his parents to Southern California, where Chris was born.” This summer the Navajo Nation held a referendum on whether the president of the Navajo Nation should be required to speak fluent Navajo. The majority voted no. The story on NPR about the issue included laments from members of the Nation that the vote will erode the connection between the members of the tribe and their culture. It will also, they say, lead to less interest among the young in learning the language. They point out that many rituals and traditional aspects of the Navajo culture are tightly linked to the language.

The Navajo Nation has been in the news this summer also because of the action taken to tax junk food and soda. This too has a cultural side to it. The action was taken because of the very high rate of obesity and diabetes. The intent is to encourage members of the tribe to eat healthier food, especially more fruits and vegetables. One of the problems on the reservation has been the paucity of grocery stores; as a consequence, many people rely on convenience stores and fast food restaurants. To get to a good grocery store, tribal members need to drive off the reservation. According to Denisa Livingston, a spokeswoman for the grassroots group that pushed for the tax:

When people have to drive that many miles across the Navajo Nation in this food desert, it definitely is discouraging because healthy fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy foods will not last a very long time when you have to take it back hundreds of miles across the Navajo Nation.

The tribe plans to use the funds generated from the junk food tax on local farm initiatives. This is the socio-cultural aspect of the plan. Traditionally, Navajo people traditionally lived off the land. New initiatives such as the North Leupp Family Farms have helped about 30 families return to subsistence farming and eat healthier foods.

Moving the Navajo people – or any other community in the US – in the direction of embracing traditional ways of life, including native language use, family farming, and healthy food culture, is likely to be an uphill battle, given the ubiquitous presence of mainstream US media and advertising which point decidedly in opposing directions.

by

Binge Eating Stars

Rachel Ahn, a Korean binge eater [NPR]

Rachel Ahn, a Korean binge eater [NPR]

I have written before about “slow TV”, exemplified by Norwegian television, with shows on stacking firewood and watching slow-moving ships. Another country with interesting video productions is South Korea. Well-known are the video productions of contests of online gaming, which have a substantial viewership outside the country. Recently NPR had a story on the popularity of eating shows, or mukbang. It profiles one of the better known binge eaters, Rachel Ahn, who goes by “Aebong-ee”. Every weeknight, she gathers a huge amount of food — noodles, dumplings, seafood — in front of her and starts to eat and broadcast. Her fans expect not just a large volume of food to be devoured at a sitting, but also to have it done in a particular way:

The demands on Ahn and other mukbang stars like her are high — she can’t just eat, she must eat ferociously. As she devours noodles, loud slurping is a must. Audiences offer feedback on a live stream, asking how spicy the noodles are, suggesting she move dumplings closer to the camera or do a dance in excitement. The stream continues for three hours every night.

The most successful binge eaters can make a lot of money and become quite famous. It may be that such shows offer a way for Koreans living alone to have a kind of companionship, even if it’s virtual. According to Ahn, most of her fans are women, many of whom are on a diet; she speculates that the eating shows are popular as a way for those women to eat vicariously. A professor of Asian Studies at UC-Irvine, Kyung Kim, has a different explanation:

Eating is something one activity that is strongly identified as being natural, and spontaneous…You think about K-pop or K-drama [and] they’re very artificial, they’re all about makeup and plastic surgeries. And a lot of people find this — mukbang — to be the exact opposite of all the things right now Korean popular culture really stands for.

Of course, describing the huge volumes of food consumed in the eating shows as “natural” might seem a stretch. I’d be curious if the binge eaters ever include a strangely popular food in Korea, Spam, the U.S. processed pork product from the 1930’s, which is particularly used to make a spicy soup known as budae jjigae, or army stew.

by

Scotland’s other national drink

Irn-BruWith the upcoming vote on independence, there have been a good number of stories in the US media about Scotland. Of particular interest seem to be stories about the distinctiveness of Scottish life and culture (especially as differentiated from England). On NPR this week there was a story about Irn-Bru, an orange flavored soft drink very popular in Scotland. The story featured interviews with Scots professing their love the neon orange colored drink, connecting that passion with Scottish patriotism:

As Scots prepare to vote on independence next month, the fizzy fervor for this fluorescent fluid may offer some insights into Scottish nationalistic tendencies. When asked why they’re so crazy for this Scottish soda, people most often reply, “Because it’s Scottish.”… Much of the world treats Scottish icons as kitsch. Kilts. Haggis. Bagpipes. But for Scots, these are potent symbols of national pride. One of Irn Bru’s advertising slogans is “Made in Scotland, from girders.” Girders, as in the steel beams that hold up buildings.

I have to admit that although I have visited Scotland several times, I have never tasted Irn-Bru, although I did liberally partake of Scottish ale, which has its fans as well, although it certainly pales in popularity to Scotland’s true national drink, Scotch whisky.

The NPR story led me to think about other soft drinks associated with specific cultures. The obvious example is Coca-Cola, a US icon, but less well known are some other drinks I have sampled. In Austria, for example, students I have taken on study abroad trips often discover and enjoy Almdudler, a carbonated drink made from apple, grape, and herb flavors. In Germany Spezi is popular – cola mixed with orange soda, as is Apfelshorle, apple juice mixed with minteral water. On hot summer days in Bavaria, I have enjoyed drinking a Radler or two, a mix of beer with lemon soda.

Particularly memorable for me was drinking cold Kvass in Moscow a few summers ago, when there were massive fires in the region, covering the capital in smoke, with the temperature the hottest it had been in years. Kvass is a slightly alcoholic drink (at most 1.5%) made from fermenting black or rye bread and one of the few drinks in Russia consistently served ice cold. In the summer there are Kvass stands all around, similar to root beer stands in the US at state fairs.

A drink I have heard about but never tasted is Inca Kola, a widely enjoyed soft drink in Peru. I would guess, given its popularity, that the Peruvian cola must be much better than the worst cola I have ever had, which was in East Berlin before German reunification. Coca-Cola, as a symbol of capitalism, was not available in the German Democratic Republic, instead a home-brewed version was made, Vita-Cola. To me it tasted like soap, but maybe it was just a bad batch, because with the nostalgia for things East German (“Ostalgie”), Vita-Cola has enjoyed a comeback.

by

Fortune Cookies in Shanghai

Co-owners David Rossi and Fung Lam of the Fortune Cookie

Co-owners David Rossi and Fung Lam of the Fortune Cookie

A few years ago I went with two visiting colleagues from our Chinese partner university, Fudan University in Shanghai, to eat at what was considered the best Chinese restaurant in Richmond. They had a hard time with the menu, despite the fact that dish names were given in both English and Chinese.  What really baffled them, however, were the fortunes cookies, which they not only had never eaten, but had never heard of. Anyone who has visited China has experienced how different authentic Chinese restaurant food is from what is sold as “Chinese” in the U.S. This is not unique to the U.S. or to Chinese food.  Consider “Indian” or “Mexican” food in the U.S., but the same applies to Chinese food in India or Russia. In India, for example, adding cheese to a “Chinese” dish is common. Jennifer 8. Lee in her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles discusses the various origins of American Chinese food.  She also has done a nice TED talk on the same topic, the hunt for General Tso.

These thoughts were brought on by a story on NPR on a recently opened restaurant in Shanghai, called Fortune Cookie.  It features, of all things, American Chinese food, including General Tso’s chicken, and has turned out to be popular, especially for ex-pats from the U.S. who are nostalgic for the particular variants of Chinese food they grew up on.  The comments from Chinese diners, however, were not universally positive, with the majority finding the dishes too sweet or too salty. Intriguing to the Chinese customers, however, are the white cardboard takeout boxes, something else unknown in China.

by

Pasta not rice

Melanie Vanderlipe Ramil & her parents

Melanie Vanderlipe Ramil & her parents

“I ate pasta, family ate rice,” says Melanie Vanderlipe Ramil, who comes from a Filipino-American family and wrote that phrase as a contribution to the Race Card Project and as a way of characterizing one aspect of her cultural identity. As a girl Melanie was embarrassed that she couldn’t offer visiting school friends main-stream American snacks like hot dogs or Tater Tots – such things weren’t to be found in her family kitchen.  Melanie’s friends were mystified (and she was mortified) by the huge rice dispenser which was the centerpiece of her family kitchen. Her family ate Filipino food, and rice was served with every meal.  In middle school Melanie told her family she wasn’t going to eat rice any more and her accommodating mother made her pasta instead.  Her story is not unusual for immigrant families.  Fortunately, Melanie’s subsequent story is common these days as well.  In her 20’s she came to discover that her Filipino heritage made her special, and she has since embraced Filipino cooking. Ironically, as she told NPR, she is now making sure Filipino traditions are kept alive in her extended family, making sure the young people in her family know how to make the traditional dish of lumpia, (similar to an eggroll):

“I would prepare my grandmother’s lumpia recipe and kind of set up a lumpia sweatshop, if you will,” Ramil says. “For each of my cousins’ children … there are about 25 or 30 of them — I would put a place mat in front of them, lumpia wrappers … a little bowl of raw meat.”

Melanie is making sure such traditions have some permanence and extend beyond her family, writing a blog, Lola’s Journal, based on her grandmother’s life (and cooking).

For many of us food is an important part of our cultural identity, which may or may not be tied to ethnic backgrounds. Melanie’s story shows us that sometimes that connection is complicated and changes over time.  I’m writing this on Thanksgiving and I’m looking forward to a new tradition my family started last year:  the 10-minute instant Thanksgiving dinner, consisting of a purchased roasted chicken (how great that our main grocery store is open on Thanksgiving), boxed stuffing, instant mashed potatoes, canned vegetables and gravy, heated-up rolls. No gourmet feast, but it does allow more time for socializing, games, and emptying my growler, not to mention eliminating the 5 a.m. turkey preparation – a tradition I’m willing to pass up.

by

How to insult: Shoe or Vegemite?

vegemiteTo express unhappiness with a public figure, such as a President or Prime Minister, one of the non-verbal methods sometimes used is to throw something at that person.  In 2008 an Iraqi journalist hurled both his shoes, one after another, at President Bush, in protest against the Iraq War. In many cultures, showing the sole of one’s shoe is an insult, as is throwing a shoe.  There is a long list of shoeing incidents listed by Wikipedia, mostly directed at politicians in the Middle East and India. This week it was Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard who was attacked, but not by a shoe – by a Vegemite sandwich. It was thrown at her by a school child as she was visiting a school. It’s hard to tell if there was anything symbolic in choosing a sandwich – most likely it was just what was at hand.  Gillard is deeply unpopular at the moment in Australia and the sandwich toss may be a reflection of that fact.

What’s Vegemite?  If you’re Australian you wouldn’t need to ask.  It’s as popular there as peanut butter is in the U.S. or Nutella (a chocolate nut spread) is in Germany.  Like those foods, it is a sandwich spread, made from yeast (a by-product of beer brewing) and vegetable paste. Generally, I think of food as a great way to ease intercultural communication, but in the case of Vegemite, unless you ate it as a child, you are not likely to be a fan, as the video clip below between President Obama and Prime Minister Gillard illustrates:

Speaking of food, there was a wonderful article this week in the Guardian on how much an average family spends on food per week, with great pictures – amazing range of cost and volume of food consumed.

by

Cheap lunch

lew

US Treasury Secretary Lew at a Beijing dumpling restaurant

New US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, on an official visit to China, was spotted eating at a dumpling restaurant in Beijing.  One wouldn’t think that would be newsworthy, but it is created a stir in China.  Why?  Because government ministers in China would not consider eating at such a modest establishment.  Total cost for Lew and two colleagues for lunch:  less than $20 (109 yuan).  While such actions as this, and similar behavior by US government officials, such as new US China ambassador Gary Locke buying a coffee with a coupon while carrying his own bag, have brought praise on Sina Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) from ordinary citizens, some Chinese officials are complaining that US officials are trying to embarrass them by their conspicuous non-consumption.  This is all the more stinging for Chinese officials who, under new national leadership, are fighting against perceptions of corruption, cronyism and opulent living on the part of party officials.

Of course, American politicians tend to make a show of being one of the people, in line with American egalitarianism and populism.  In China, despite an official communist “government of the people”, different behavior and treatment based on social status is a long-standing aspect of Chinese culture.  However, with the rise of social media, which has spread fast and widely stories of abuse of power by party officials (and sometimes their offspring), the traditional respect for higher-ups is waning, while the admiration for the modest behavior of US officials is on the rise.