Chinese\' Food and the Model Minority Study

Chinese' Food and the Model Minority study in ethnic cuisine and culture, marginalization and commercialization, and the paradox of exoticism.

The anthropological theme studied for this work was that of the ethnic compromises and paradoxes inherent in creating a "Chinese" restaurant in America, for Americans. In every English speaking country from England to Canada, Chinese food is a huge business. For many immigrants it is one of the only businesses ready and willing to take them in. Most Chinese restaurants strive to present themselves as cultural representations where the American connoisseur can have a legitimate cross-cultural experience. The more I researched the actual traditions of Chinese and Asian cuisine and the way in which Western prejudices and expectations shape the presentation of this experience, the more it became apparent that --like so many other cultural phenomena-- the cultural relevance of the Chinese-food experience is far from untainted. Repeated immersion at several Chinese restaurant locations gave a wide range of perspective on the reality of this cultural phenomena. Research provided a basis for critique and awareness. Discussions with patrons and workers of several ethnicities further clarified the image. Finally, a day's journey from restaurant to restaurant with a single roll of film provided startling visual evidence of the cultural paradox and juxtapositions inherent in this business. The following is an exploration in three parts into the world of the Chinese restaurant.

Menu 1: Observation and Research.

The research began in a most pleasant fashion before I was even aware that I was doing research. On the day I began the project, my coterie of friends and I went out to a relatively inexpensive Chinese place for dinner. As we were eating, I began to notice little details about the place that struck me as somewhat odd. For example, in league with the restaurant's attempt to be architecturally exotic, the wall-paper was a standard release "Asian" print I had seen previously in a catalogue at Home Depot. The print was by no means a traditional Asian one, rather it appeared to appeal to the same Western flair for cultural appropriation that has Pier One selling faux African ritual masks. I also noticed a very prominent Pepsi ad hanging on the wall next to a dragon calendar. With newly opened eyes, I began looking for other signs of faux culture and of the Westernization of the venue. They were not hard to find.

The disposable chopsticks wrappers were made by a U.S. based company, and yet the English grammar on them seemed artificially strange. I began to wonder if maybe that just added to the mystique. There was a Buddha statue displayed prominently in a dark corner of the restaurant, and yet about a quarter of the menu consisted of beef products. At one point in the night I overheard one of the waitresses lose her accent for a moment. No one who was with me seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary, and at that point the research began.

The cultural concessions of the Chinese food industry, and the strange love-hate relationship between mainstream America and Asian minorities are relatively well documented, if often only in passing. In a lengthy essay regarding 'Racist love' (that is, the way in which exoticism and positive stereotypes can hurt a minority), Tiffany Loui suggests that America has a long history of romanticizing Asian cultures to their detriment. She records the way in which all Asians are lumped together in the modern American parlance, despite the fact that the differences between regions is in many cases more pronounced than those among European cultures. (For example, the gastronomical, social, linguistic, religious, and economic differences between mainland China and Japan are far greater than those between France and England, and that says nothing of the many provinces within China alone) This is something that can be noticed also in Chinese foods: almost all relatively affordable Chinese restaurants, especially those which do take-out, have extremely similar menus. In fact, of the five restaurants in which I did research, three had menus that differed by only one or two items. This is despite the fact that mainland China has hundreds of regions each characterized by its own cooking style. "Chinese food is especially diverse due to the country's numerous regional traditions and clans. With economic development, openness, and reform, this has become even more apparent." (Hung-Youn) Only one or two are practiced in America, and even then these are frequently bastardized.

Loui also speaks extensively of exoticism -- the way in which a majority culture forces its eternal outsiders into certain positive but constricting molds. She speaks of Chinese food as symptomatic of limiting options of new immigrants while perpetuating an image of successful Asian immigrants.

Take for example the invention of the fortune cookie by white American businessmen aiming to capitalize on the interest in Asian culture. The fortune cookie was a product conceived to further the exotic image of Chinese restaurants. The shape was designed to be radically and fundamentally different from anything American, just like the "perpetually foreign people" that the cookie was to be designed for. Even the fortune inside of the cookie is a product of Orientalism in that it attempts to mimic Confucian ideas and "Asian" proverbs." (Loui)

Many people of various Asian origins have spoken out about the way in which their families have been forced into these molds. One brilliant Japanese-American independent screen writer says:

My parents were Japanese-American... because they lived in a primarily white, racist community, they found that the best way and the only way they knew to make a living was to open a restaurant and they found that by serving the Americanized 1950's style fake Chinese food they could make a pretty good living. They didn't really pretend to be Chinese but they didn't deny it when people thought that they were. (Mariye)

Others speak of the way in which the food presented is foreign to true Chinese (or Asian) eating habits and recipes. Specific examples of invented "Chinese food" include chicken balls, the ubiquitous fortune cookies, and chop suey. One young Asian writes, "the ritual of drenching rice with soy sauce is also a Western custom. In China, plain rice is eaten alongside the main dishes in order to absorb the sauces and flavors present in the meal. Soy sauce is considered an ingredient, not a topping." (Yu)

Menu 2: Discussions and Debates

Of the many interviews performed, several points stick in my mind. One of the saddest was the short interview I had with a woman working at the Chinese buffet. That day I attended with a strictly vegetarian friend, who had to call over a worker to inquire as to the meat-content of every dish. The woman working the buffet grew strangely excited. "You are vegetarian? Do not eat meat?" she asked. Over the course of the following few minutes, she began to tell us about how she was herself Buddhist and a vegetarian. She spoke of how upsetting it was to have to make all her dishes with beef for the people who came, because they all wanted meat. She herself would not eat meat. She explained that in her native country she would never have cooked with meat, and no one ate meat, but here everyone wanted her to put beef in the food. "They all want meat food. I don't know why." Some study of meat-eating and traditional Chinese cuisine shows that for religious or economic reasons, most traditional meals do not use a lot of meat. Those that do seldom use beef. Yet cow products constituted a huge percentage of the menus at all four of the restaurants I visited.

Another interview point that stuck in my mind came from an interview with an Asian-seeming punk-alternative young customer named Dor at one of the sit-down restaurants. I ended up at dinner with him and a female friend he called Raintalyn (apparently an adopted screen name). The two were as talkative as they were unique. Dor was, as it turned out, Scottish-Japanese, and Raintalyn was an "educated American mongrel." Once we got on to the topic of Chinese restaurants, cultural appropriation and compromise, Dor had a lot of opinions. One of his biggest concerns was the fact that this particular restaurant never had chopsticks unless one specifically asked for them, and then they were the "splintery disposable kind." He explained that rather than catering to those who understood the food and the culture, and rather than trying to educate people about the culture through food and experience, most of the time restaurants just try to do whatever it takes to make America happy. He complained about common American "mistakes" in eating, such as the problem with silverware and disposable chopsticks. "Chopsticks are the most artistic utensils. They're meant to be weighted right, and re-used. These aren't weighted at all, and forks! No Asian food tastes right eaten with a fork. The fork flavor interferes. It's noodles with fork." (Dor, it turned out, had actually brought his own chopsticks, and was complaining mainly for his companion's sake) The pair also suggested that Chinese restaurants fall into two categories: those that are really aren't Chinese at all, and just cut and paste Chineseness over their actual cultures, and those that really are Chinese and have to fight to express that while compromising with dominant culture.

Dor and Raintalyn agreed that there was also a large degree to which Chinese food was Americanized in its creation. Both commented on the absence of many traditional ingredients such as seaweed, and the degree to which American meats replaced Chinese meats or meat substitutes.

A also interviewed a couple non-Asian culturally unaware individuals. Many of them suggested that they were glad that they were automatically given forks and spoons instead of chopsticks, and were either unaware or nonchalant on other cultural differences. Several refused to believe that soy sauce usage, for example, was not culturally relevant. One woman who was getting food with her three children said that she liked exposing them to the foods of other cultures to build tolerance. She said that even if it was maybe a little contrived, it was good that they tried to present themselves as authentic, because it made the experience more interesting. Another gentleman said that he never thought about it being a different culture, it was in America, and that made it American. He said he preferred forks to chopsticks, pop cans to tea cups, and liked Chinese food partly because it was "more interesting and filling than a just a burger, but just as fast." The discussion with him presented an idea of some of the forces arranged against cultural relevance in the restaurant business.

All in all the discussions and debates entered into at the various sites suggested further evidence for the contrasting elements going into the creation of an ethnic eating establishment. The paradoxes could only be made more clear by photographic analysis.

Menu 3: The Photographs

The following section looks at each of the photographs in order and comments on the elements of cultural compromise and paradox within them. Many of the shots are far from fully indicative, but each adds something to the larger picture.

Image (i) shows the exterior of the China Wok Fast Food restaurant, a very typical quickie meal place that served as one of my favorite in-a-pinch sites. There's a certain element of paradox inherent in the absolute lack of external ethnicity. From the left over Christmas lights and jingle bells to the very Americanized signs, this is an entirely American establishment. When one steps inside, (image ii) one sees a very Western-style tile wall that would feel perfectly at home at a McDonalds. However, on it there is a painting/carving of a ship with mother-of-pearl sails. It's an obvious appeal to ethnicity, especially amusing in that an identical ship hangs in several other fast food Woks around the area. It's an example of an appeal to the need for ethnicity as part of the business. Image (iii) is one of the rare photos I was allowed to take of workers. Like much else in this establishment, there's an interesting mix of culture here. The cook in this photo spoke very little English, being one of the most convincingly Asian things in the restaurant. Charmingly, he is wearing a Rocky T-shirt. Image (iv) shows the same worker, standing behind the glass sculpted fish and china plate that adorned the bright red counter. This elegant sculpture seemed paradoxically out of place in the small but brightly lit restaurant with its visible steel kitchen and sterile walls. One thing that I noticed in comparing fast Chinese food with fast food American-style was the degree to which the former seemed required to litter to store with ethnic decorations. It is rare to walk into a Burger King and see the counter covered with minor cultural artworks, for example. Image (vii) demonstrates much the same principle, as another small Chinese-styled trinket poses next to the cash register, in front of a fridge of cola.

Image (v) is a close-up on the menu at the China Wok. This lighted menu is very typical of fast food Chinese restaurant. In addition, I noticed that all of the restaurants I visited had very nearly identical menus. As mentioned earlier, regardless of from where the individual workers may have hailed originally, must restaurants serve a small set of foods from one region. What is interesting in this photo, though, is the fact that barbecue ribs are featured proudly next to the other dishes, and beef is also on the menu. Neither cow eating (discussed earlier) or barbecued ribs are remotely traditional. Both show a concession to the demands of the dominate culture as surely as the Chinese trinkets on the counter cater to its exoticism. Image (vi) also illustrates these concessions: it's a photo of the condiments and utensils at the China Wok.

Image (iix) shows the exterior of a restaurant in which I was not allowed to take photos. Of all the restaurants I visited, this one was actually the hardest in terms of trying to find chopsticks; they were kept in a backroom and it took about 10 minutes to get a pair. I like this photo, because through the window one can see the gigantic mural of a pagoda gracing the far wall, the bottle of soy sauce and tray of aspartame sweetener, and the reflection of the actual American city outside. The next image (ix) is from the same restaurant. This restaurant was also the least vegetarian of all the sites visited. It was quite literally impossible to find a single dish that did not feature meat products, except for the green beans. This state of affairs made it somewhat ironic and even tragic that right near the front (as far as I could get with my camera) there was a bright orange glowing Buddha. (Buddha, it will be remembered, taught respect for all life, and most Buddhists are vegetarian) Honestly, an electric orange Buddha would most be considered a sell-out of the culture and religion in any context. As with the China Wok, this restaurant could be classified as a American restaurant with Chineseness glued on top as a selling point.

Image (xi) is at the final restaurant that would allow photography. It features a very ethnic worker (common to the restaurants, whose workers were generally Asian. My inability to speak the languages made it difficult to say for certain what nationalities these workers actually were). Between the woman and the camera is a large bowl of that wonderful American invention: fortune cookies. Fortune cookies were a staple in every single Chinese restaurant I visited. Image (xii) shows the imperial dragons featured prominently in this restaurant, carved into the wall over a wine glass hanger. As illustrated in the photo of the menu in image (xvii), this restaurant served a wide variety of exclusively American or "tropical" drinks such as pina colada. None of the drinks on the menu were Asian in extraction, despite the buddha-esque figure son the menu next to their descriptions, or the dragons above their non-Chinese-styled glasses. It was at this restaurant that I had met Dor and Raintalyn, and the former had commented that considering the sacredness of dragons in ancient Chinese culture, it was a little strange that they were showing up in such mundane forms as sketchings on chopstick wrappers and wall plaques. Image (xiii) also deals with the Americanization of drinks here: it is the Pepsi cooler at this restaurant.