01.06.09
White American culture is General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey.
very interesting and enlightening post de-bunking assumptions of Chinese cuisine. another example how subtle attributes influence American society in determing who and what is American.
White American culture is General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey.
(courtesy of Racialicious and Restructure)
December 29, 2008 — Restructure!
Finally, somebody summarized the myths that non-Chinese Americans have about Chinese food. Most of what White Americans consider “Chinese food” is mostly eaten by white people, and would be more accurately described as “American food” (and perhaps even “white people food”).
Jennifer 8. Lee has a great video on TED Talks titled, Who was General Tso? and other mysteries of American Chinese food.
Here are some important points from the video:
- Fortune cookies are almost ubiquitous in “Chinese” American restaurants, but they are of Japanese origin. Most people in China have never seen fortune cookies. Fortune cookies were “invented by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, and ultimately consumed by Americans.” Fortune cookies are more American than anything else.
- General Tso’s chicken is unrecognizable to people in China. It is the quintessential American dish, because it is sweet, it is fried, and it is chicken.
- Beef with broccoli is of American origin. Broccoli is not a Chinese vegetable; it is of Italian origin.
- Chop suey was introduced at the turn of the 20th century (1900). It took thirty years for non-Chinese Americans to figure out that chop suey is not known in China. “Back then”, non-Chinese Americans showed that they were sophisticated and cosmopolitan by eating chop suey.
- “Chinese” take-out containers are American.
- There is Chinese French food (salt-and-pepper frog legs), Chinese Italian food (fried gelato), Chinese British food (crispy shredded beef), Chinese West Indian food, Chinese Jamaican food, Chinese Middle Eastern food, Chinese Indian food, Chinese Korean food, Chinese Japanese food, Chinese Peruvian food, Chinese Mexican food (which look like fajitas), Chinese Brazilian food, etc.
- If McDonald’s is Microsoft, then Chinese food is Linux. Read the rest of this entry »
01.04.09
Q: how to feel incompetent?
A: go to graduate school!
graduate school shoves you into making face to face contact with your limitations. many times i feel like i was told to swim in the deep end when i have only had one swimming lesson. bungling around with copious strategies and methods hoping to hit the target is a daunting task. i ferret out answer(s) by asking multiple sources. responses are often subjective, vague, or even more frustrating- conflicting. to sustain my sanity, i surmise that this is part of the “learning process”. it allows me to believe the troubles served a purpose, rather than interpreting it as unnecessary pain. i try to store this axiom in brain for later incantations. yes, i know at this level much of the education is self-taught. indeed, it butresses my sense of self-efficacy when i discover- after much floundering- the right answer, technique, or whatever it is i am searching for. nonetheless, i occasionally want someone to hand it to me and save me the agony.
01.02.09
practice, practice, practice.
the main purpose of this blog was to tweak and improve my writing skills. i made a silent promise to myself to write each and every day. write something, anything. with school obligations and maintaining some vestige of a social life, the vow to myself was broken. i am by no means on the verge of making a new year’s resolution, but i have re-committed myself to this blog. i will carve out moment to drop a sentence or a couple daily.
