Authenticity Of Culture, Not Cuisine

Cheuk Kwan's series at first glance looks like a profile of Chinese cuisine in different places around the world, but as I watched the series, I think that the cuisine, or the authenticity of the cuisine, was not very relevant to consider, but the story and the history of the people behind the restaurants was rather more important. This was true particularly in the countries where most of the restaurants were profiled, because these were not places where people were familiar with the original flavors and incarnations of Chinese cuisine, but rather most people's experience with Chinese cuisine was limited to these restaurants. What that means to me is that evaluating the strength and extent to which Chinese tradition and history is preserved in these restaurants is not related to what is cooked in the restaurant. For example, in Cuba, the Cuban government can send however many people to China to train in the ways of Chinese cooking, but the restaurant that would be subsequently opened does not have necessarily the Chinese history and tradition behind it, at least not in the same way that the restaurant in Mauritius or even the one in Canada does, because the latter restaurants represent a part of Chinese history abroad, and not a conscious attempt to create authenticity.

In looking for an authentic Chinese overseas history in many countries however, I feel that looking to restaurants is particularly effective, because many new immigrants tend to open restaurants, which makes a lot of sense, because cooking is a skill that is very translatable to different places. As an immigrant, you know your own culture and your own cuisine the best, so it seems to be one of the most obvious ways to make a living. However, what I found most interesting was the dichotomy of motivations between restaurants run by first generation immigrants and restaurants run by descendants of immigrants. The former group seem to open restaurants by necessity, again referring back to the transferable skills theme, and they also don't want their children to take over the restaurants either. Restaurateurs who are descendants of immigrants however, seem to engage in the restaurant business more because they feel a need to represent their heritage and introduce their Chinese cultural roots into their non Chinese familiar homelands. It is the second (and beyond) generation that is more concerned about authenticity than first generation immigrants because latter generations strive to fortify connections to traditions that they feel affinity for; it is they who strive to reconcile two cultures, while first generation immigrants are more concerned with making a living before exactly preserving their culture. I would say that in the U.S., this same trend is also true. Consider chop suey, the chow mein sandwich, and other Americanized Chinese foods, which were created in the original immigrant run Chinese restaurants to make Chinese food more accessible to the American population. However, now that Chinese food is established in the American food culture, there has been a surge in demand for "authenticity", often headed by a new generation of chefs in Chinese cuisine who are decidedly not immigrant, but rather more global and fusion prone in their cuisines, such as chefs we have mentioned such as Ming Tsai or Masaharu Morimoto (the Japanese Iron Chef). I think it is for the reason that Chinese cuisine is well established in the U.S. that we can have restaurants like Blue Ginger, Nobu (in New York City), and other high end Asian restaurants, where the wait staff does not have to be Asian for people to consider the food there "authentically" Asian. This is in contrast to restaurants in the countries we saw in Kwan's series, where the presence of Chinese staff or Chinese cultural themes in the restaurant was a major factor in people accepting the cuisine to be "truly" Chinese.

Ultimately, the convoluted paragraph I typed above was meant to point out that looking at differences in the Chinese restaurants and the people that run them is a microcosm where we can look at some of the differences in experience between different generations of Chinese that live overseas. If we are looking at Asian American popular culture, I feel that this is extremely relevant because different generations of Asian Americans are in completely different demographics these days, with different motivations, different priorities, and different consumer patterns. In the United States, the growing demand for "authenticity" makes me optimistic about the state of Asian Americans, because to me, I feel that it means people are willing to learn about and aware of Asian traditions, values, and cultures.

Questioning Authenticity

Several people have raised questions about this issue of authenticity. For me, the word authentic conjures the idea that there is a true or real thing (or way) vs. ones that are false or imitations. There is an implicit value judgment, a presumed hierarchy of real-ness, that seems a bit dangerous because it pre-supposes that cultural expressions, such as foodways, are static and unchanging--even in their places of origin--and that adaptations made by choice or necessity are somehow inferior or wrong. Also, without knowing the deep history of a particular food it can be easy to presume something is authentic simply because it is the way we, our parents, and maybe even our grandparents remember it to be. Therefore, some foods or phenomena that we view as authentic might themselves be “fusions” created in earlier moments of exchange and adaptation.

An example might be the Chow Mein sandwich that Professor Lee has mentioned became popular in the Fall River, MA area. Here’s a description from an article in the Providence Journal:

“What is a chow mein sandwich? The chow mein -- a mixture of minced meat, celery, onions, and bean sprouts in gravy over deep fried noodles -- is placed between a hamburger bun and covered with brown gravy.”

And that’s only one version of the sandwich. Others in the region will claim their variation is the most authentic. For Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans who don’t come from the region the very idea of this concoction represents a violation of boundaries that Manalansan argues are markers of ethnic identity, i.e., acculturated ideas about what tastes, textures, ingredients, etc., do and do not belong together. So, is this food item “authentic”? For some people it is an “authentic” regional food and a unique marker of local identity that they remember from childhood. Yet, its history only spans a few generations.

So, in viewing the “Chinese Restaurants” series I didn’t think too much about what was or was not authentic. Rather, I was amazed at the ability of Chinese chefs and cooks to adapt their cuisine to a wide array of circumstances. Some restaurateurs seemed more concerned than others about compromising traditional foodways (I like that term better than authentic). For example, one of the people associated with Restaurant Huang in Brazil listed the popular dishes and said something to the effect of, “We say these are not authentic; they’re just to fool the Brazilians.” In contrast, some chefs like Collette of Chez Manuel in Mauritius were more excited about the creative possibilities of blending different traditions together. I thought it was interesting that she went to Hong Kong in order to learn more about traditional Chinese cooking. Did what she learn there reflect the traditions of the Hakka who had settled in Mauritius or would it have been reflective of other regional foodways within China?

Rye-Ji Kim and Melissa both raised good questions about the restaurants selected for the programs and whether it is a representative sampling of the Chinese diasporic experience with restaurant work. The series focuses primarily on places that are known as having really good food. As a result, there might be a tendency to focus more on restaurant owners who really love cooking and see it as an expression of their creativity, personality, etc. In other words, despite all the hard work, it’s more than a job to many of them. It’s a passion. The exceptions to this model were poignant, as in the case of Maria and the Little Buddha owners. For them, economic circumstance and barriers to other opportunities have trapped them in a profession that only seems to increase their marginalization within the dominant culture.

The métis (a.k.a. the hapas of the world)

Questions of authenticity, nationality, purity, and ethnicity seem to underlie all of the anecdotes in Cheuk Kwan’s “Chinese Restaurants.” The documentary offers a unique lens from which to analyze the Chinese/Asian Diaspora. Kwan’s documentary exposes its viewers to a diversity of flourishing Chinese communities around the world. The documentary reminds it’s viewers that it’s too easy to think of the United States as a unique cultural melting pot compared to the “homogeneity” of other countries. It was intriguing to compare the various nationalistic identities of the interviewees and their relationship to their Chinese identity. Kwan’s documentary reminded me a lot of Renee Tajima-Pena’s “Honk if you love Buddha.” Throughout the movie, Kwan uses his exploration of these diasporic Chinese communities to search for his own family’s history and the meaning of a globalized Chinese identity.

The most interesting case studies featured in Kwan’s documentary was the Chinese community in Cuba and Madagascar. These two communities are examples of opposite ends of the spectrum of reproduction of diasporic Chinese culture. The Chinatown of Havana, once the largest in the Americas during the early 20^th century, is now nothing but a ghost town with fewer than a few hundred authentic and “pure” Chinese. In the documentary Kwan frequently refers to the Chinatown of Cuba as a “artificial fantasia,” a government sponsored tourist trap which retains few of its ties to the Chinese. Bringing it back to the food, Kwan (the Chinese food connoisseur) also questions the authenticity and legitimacy of Cuban Chinese food, which he describes as very salty, deep fried, and soaked in soy sauce. The attitudes of the non-Chinese Cubanos in the film towards Chinese food also reinforce and maintain this view of Chinese as distinct, un-assimilated, and foreign.

On the opposite pole, a sustained and large Chinese influence has manifested itself in very different ways in Madagascar. With a history of immigration dating back before the Europeans, the Chinese have been embraced by Madagascar. Soupe Chinoise (similar to Wonton Soup) is even a staple dish of the coutnry. Described as one of the most multicultural societies in the world, the métis Chinese and their fusion food are an integrated part of Madagascar’s mixed race culture. Through both of these examples, Kwan questions the pure/authentic vs. assimilated dichotomy. As can be seen in an array of very different countries, Chinese (food) culture reproduces itself in many unique ways and is not simply a question of assimilation.

Chinese Restaurants

After watching the documentaries, I've been trying to figure out the roles Chinese restaurants play around the world:

 

In Madagascar, the owner of the Chinese restaurant claims that she opened her business because she loved to cook. But I wonder if there is something more to it than that. The interesting fact is that her restaurant caters to Chinese customers, not the African Madagascans. I wonder if her cooking and taking orders from fellow Chinese Madagascans are her way of establishing a national family, a big Chinese family in Madagascar in which she plays the role of the mother who offers food that reminds them of the "home country." Although she does offer hybrid dishes like "Chicken with pineapples," most of her food seems to be there because her Chinese customers want them. As one old man exemplifies, he "can't go home [China]" for he is  "stuck here," and offering these people Chinese food may be a way to make them feel at "home." In this role, the Chinese restaurant seems to far exceed the expectation of a simple, money-making business.

 

On the other hand, the restaurant in Norway seems to be in business for money making--after all, the owner explicitly says that the quality of the food doesn't really matter as much as the pleasant aura of consumption that caters to the white Norwegian population. No Chinese customers. The couple who owns the restaurant also emphasizes how they cannot take a day off because of money. I understand that they work so hard so that their children will enjoy a better standard of living, however, it is indubitable that this restaurant serves for the sake of business. If there is one role it plays for the greater community, it's providing jobs for other Asian immigrants. The Korean girl, for example, has earned herself a job although she cannot speak the language (the owner himself got made living working in Chinese restaurants around in Germany and other places although he did not speak the appropriate languages). Are Chinese restaurants employment centers for recent immigrants? Who works at Chinese restaurants anyway? And does it matter that a Chinese, a Korean, or a Madagascan works there?

My own Chinese restaurant experience

I've already posted a few wordy comments, so... I've run out of serious analysis for now. Instead, I'll just briefly share my own experience of finding a Chinese restaurant in an unexpected place because... heck, why not.

Well, I was somewhere between Laramie, Wyoming and Denver, Colorado on a family trip several years ago, when hunger drove us to the only restaurant on the side of the road: a Chinese restaurant. It had some sort of very typical name like "China Palace" or "Peking Garden" and the interior looked like a normal, but plain, American cafe / small family restaurant, except with a few bright red Chinese trinkets here and there. There were only about 20 seats total in the tiny restaurant, and we were the only patrons there. The waitress looked at least half Asian, but greeted us loudly in English (and maybe with a hint of a Southern accent). She struck up a conversation with us, which I wish I could remember, because I'm sure my mom asked about stuff like the local Asian population and the waitress's background. I think the waitress could speak Cantonese. Anyway, what I DO remember, though, was that the waitress was pretty proud of her Spanish abilities, which she soon put to good use when a couple of Spanish-speaking patrons came in. My mom asked her about it and her response was something like "Well, yeah, a lot of our customers speak it so of course I do too!"

Also: that tiny little Chinese restaurant in the middle of nowhere had some of the BEST (I won't say "authentic") Mongolian beef I'd ever had. We had to order an extra takeout box of it for the road.

Behind the Scenes of Chinese Restaurants

Cheuk Kwan's documentary "Chinese Restaurants" offers great insight into the stories of Chinese restauranteurs across the globe.  Aside from topics of acculturation, assimilation, cooking methods and personal histories of the restaurant owners, Kwan was able to focus, albeit somewhat briefly, on the wait and kitchen staff in various Chinese establishments from Brazil to Norway.

    

I found that the opinions of restaurant owners towards the local staff regularly appeared condescending, regardless of location.  Many non-Chinese restaurant workers in the kitchens, with the exclusion of chefs, tend to hold menial or mundane tasks.  In Madagascar, the female restaurant owner clearly stated that the local staff (with the exception of "one or two skilled workers") were simply unable to learn how to properly prepare authentic Chinese dishes. However, a contradiction exists in her reasoning since many Chinese restaurants throughout the world prepare inauthentic Chinese food in order to please local tastes and preferences.  If the Chinese food produced by restaurants is "fake", then how will locals such as the aforementioned workers in the kitchen experience the true tastes of Chinese food?  If ignorance is shed through education, why disregard non-Chinese and non-Asian kitchen staff as simply "not skilled"?  While I acknowledge that many issues factor into the situation, ranging from issues of socioeconomic status to potential racism, such questions cannot be overlooked when discussing workers in Chinese restaurants. 

"Chinese Restaurants" revealed the various hardships restaurant employees face in modern times.  Many kitchen staff have similar immigration stories, fleeing their home country in search of a better life and greater economic opportunities.  While the restaurant owners received a majority of the camera's attention, many immigrant workers can easily relate to the difficult journeys the Chinese restauranteurs and their predecessors faced in order to survive.  Immigrant employees continue to face such hardships, particularly those that entered a country illegally.  Waiters and waitresses in Chinese restaurants, if not locals from the region, encounter comparable difficulties.

Overall, "Chinese Restaurants" provides much more than simple critiques of Chinese food, but a glimpse into the complex history and world of the Chinese diaspora in relation to the numerous Chinese restaurants open for business worldwide.

Language/Assimilation/Success

An observation/disclaimer: Ironically, Cheuk Kwan's documentary series "Chinese Restaurants" is less interested with Chinese restaurants and more interested in what such establishments can tell us about the Chinese diaspora. Kwan focuses on the bigger picture and often neglects to do, what I would call, a true study of "food culture" to get to the more dramatic diasporic personal stories of struggle, alienation, and regret.

Thus, my post (and I believe most of our posts) will have less to do with food itself. (Any observations regarding this?)

In Kwan's 4th installment of the "Chinese Restaurants" series Latin Passions, Kwan visits Peru and documents two very different stories by two very different Chinese Peruvians. On one hand, we have the owner of San Joy Lao, Luis, a very successful restaurateur who hosts his own Chinese cuisine cooking show in Lima. On the other hand, we have the owner of Chifa San Luis, Maria, a recent immigrant who feels stuck in her job and in her surroundings.

Luis is much more assimilated/intergrated into Peruvian culture than Maria, who still feels like a stranger in Peru. Most interestingly, Maria speaks Cantonese while being interviewed and Luis speaks in Spanish. The level of assimilation and, to an extent, sucess in the restaurant business corresponds directly to language proficiency.

With this in mind, what do we make of Chiang Fu Ching, the bi-lingual Spring Roll King of Buenos Aires, Argentina? How do his abilities to speak both Spanish and Mandarin affect what we think about him as a member of the Chinese diaspora?

Also, a tangentially related topic: The etymology of the Peruvian word "chifa." It's really quite interesting and may help us digest/understand the relationship between language and assimilation.

Peru is the only place where Chinese restaurants are known as chifas. Chifa is a Peruvian word. My grandparents would say "let's cook" which in Cantonese is chui fan. "To eat" in the Hakka dialect--my grandparents were Hakka--is chi fan. Our Peruvian brothers in Calle Capon would hear thousands of Chinese, around 11 in the morning, say chui fan, "let's cook," or at noon, chi fan, "let's eat." Hearing a chi fan and chui fan, they combined into a single word achifa, "let's eat Chinese." That's why chifa refers to Chinese restaurants.

Chinese Restaurants Response

I found this documentary was fascinating in its approach to the many, many varied geographical places to which Chinese have immigrated all for the sake of making a better life. After watching and hearing each of the restaurant owners talk about their reasons for leaving China, I found what was most interesting was the way they viewed their future in relation to ever returning to China. Some of the restaurant owners, such as Colette in Mauritius, are perfectly comfortable with living where they are now for the rest of their lives. There are some, like the owners of the Lille Buddha in Norway, who hope to move somewhere else that is not necessarily China, such as France, and have the luxury of being able to travel between a dream vacation home and their Chinese restaurant. Then there are some, such as Maria in Peru, who desire to go back to China but stay for the sake of their children. This documentary proved that there are many layers of self-identity when it comes to these immigrants. When asked how he identifies himself, Noisy Jim staunchly replies, “I am myself.” I was touched by Noisy Jim’s story, as he finds himself working for New Outlook Café for free once he sells it to new owners, and emphasizes that he does not mind the harsh restaurant business because he truly enjoys it. His café becomes a community center, bringing everyone together as he walks around, greeting his regular customers.

The environment in which each restaurant functioned affected the food each served incredibly, either through physical means or cultural means. For example, I found it interesting that the Chinese restaurants in Cuba deep fry their food often and use Italian noodles instead of Chinese noodles in their dishes, while Cheuk Kwan notes that the refrigerators in one restaurant are bare. He attributes this to the difficulty in getting imported Chinese goods in Cuba, showing that Chinese restaurants in this region must make do with what they have to make their own Chinese dishes. At the Lille Buddha in Norway, the owners talk about how they serve non-authentic Chinese food to cater to the non-Chinese clientele that frequent their restaurant. Although they are aware of the non-authenticity of their food, the owners are somewhat forced to serve this type of Chinese food, as it is what their customers expect when they visit a Chinese restaurant. On the other hand, the owner of Casa China de Cultural in Argentina purposefully makes authentic Chinese food, as he feels it is his cultural duty to expose people of other cultures to Chinese culture. Based on his success, with patrons attending tai-chi classes and then dining on Chinese food after their class, he has the liberty to make authentic Chinese food since he is able to provide for himself with his methods. Thus, the type of Chinese food each restaurant served was an indication of society’s perceptions of Chinese food, with restaurant owners struggling to appease whatever the community considers to be Chinese food. While Casa China de Cultural had the freedom to try and change consumers’ views of Chinese food, others, like the Lille Buddha, had no choice but to keep serving the typical beef and broccoli. This reminded me of the “Chinese Restaurant Drive-Thru” work we read in Alien Encounters, as Indigo Som talks to the owner’s son in Happy China Garden. He reveals that almost everybody who works at Happy China Garden is Vietnamese, but when asked if they’ve ever tried serving Vietnamese dishes, he replied that “they had tried a few, but the customers didn’t’ go for them, so they gave up on it” (152). This shows that the same mentality can be applied to other Asians wishing to serve more than the typical Americanized Chinese food, as the customers’ response to different Asian dishes can dictate whether the restaurant can extend beyond serving Chinese dishes to serving dishes from their own ethnic countries. I never thought about the cultural implications Chinese food could have on a community (and vice versa), especially communities in which I'd never expect to find thriving Chinese families, and found that Chinese Restaurants did a fantastic job in addressing the varied types of Chinese food found throughout the world. What are the conditions that allowed the owner of Casa China to serve more authentic Chinese food? Why didn’t the restaurant owners of Lille Buddha try to change Norwegian perceptions of Chinese food?

Chineseness and Chinese Restaurants

As I’ve always been interested in food culture and anthropologically dissecting trends, the series “Chinese Restaurants” naturally appealed to me. I found that the documentaries tackle far more than these basic areas, however, and that filmmaker Cheuk Kwan did an impressive job at provoking questions about heritage and diaspora—at least for me, a Chinese American whose mother and father’s parents made their livings in Indonesia and the Philippines before sending their children off to the U.S., respectively.

I had many thoughts on the film series, so I am attempting to touch briefly on the most important ones here. First, there were certain recurring themes in each Chinese restaurant owners’ story: assimilation vs. Chinese distinctiveness in new homelands (which was sometimes reflected in the food they made), choosing to work hard and make sacrifices for the economic security of the next generation, meager beginnings or humble entries into their destinations, and a Chinese tendency towards business and self-employment. Despite whatever niche each interviewee had carved out in his or her country of settlement, these ideas factored into their stories; perhaps this makes them uniquely Chinese matters.

In Norway, the Cantonese-speaking couple put in long work hours that they knew compromised closeness with their children. The husband had jumped all over Europe looking for decent work opportunities, and finally found this option to be a profitable one. He catered to a distinctly Norwegian clientele, providing a more “Western” restaurant front for customers while holding his employees to “Chinese” work standards. In Peru, the medical doctor and “achifa” owner acknowledges the great sacrifices his parents made for their children; he is firmly grounded in Peruvian culture and embraces his dual identity; his Chinese peers are descendents of indentured laborers—coolies working on railroads and sugar plantations. In Cuba, the Chinese are an accepted presence in Cuban culture—they are said to have “exquisite” tastes and a sophisticated nature, according to the native Cubans. But as the Chinese people have become such an integral part of the population, the food has changed too: it is mostly fried and salty, and the noodles are made in the same way as Italian pasta. Pizza graces the menus of most Chinese restaurants. Here is an undeniable story of assimilation. These stories are all unique, but also have uniquely Chinese aspects to them.

Lastly, each family and restaurant owner in the documentary had so much character; each man or woman represented some part of history, the Chinese narrative in (fill in country of settlement). This stands in stark contrast to the depiction of many restaurant owners in Som’s “Chinese Restaurant Drive Through”—people who opened brand-name buffets that deliberately catered to American tastes at low cost (as the food quality leads one to assume). The author describes a Chinese buffet owner who takes his lunch break and fills his plate with white rice and watermelon. It says a lot about his respect for food from his own kitchen. I’m really interested in the explanations for this phenomenon—maybe American culture has forced the Chinese restaurant tradition into a more unfortunate, even shameful chapter.

Response: Chinese Restaurants

I was interested by issues of authenticity in Chinese cuisine around the world. While most of the restauranteurs had come from China, many of them had not undergone formal training in the cooking of Chinese cuisine. Moreover, even those who had often deviated from traditional dishes, experimenting with the fusing of local and Chinese cuisines. As such, could their dishes still be said to be authentically Chinese? What does that even mean? Yet they are certainly different from the native cuisines of the countries these restaurant owners have immigrated to. It seems then that the dishes have become something akin to the restaurant owner we met in Argentina: neither Chinese nor Argentinian, but something else...something international.

This question of what happens when Asian culture leaves Asia is an interesting one, and one that also came up when we viewed The Wedding Banquet. What does it mean to "assimilate"? Is this a bad thing? A good thing? When cultures come in contact I think it is unavoidable that they will rub off on each other in unforeseen ways, and while I think it is useful to examine how this occurs, I'm not sure that casting judgments on this process is. Who are we to say if someone is too assimilated or not assimilated enough? In the end people need to live their lives and do what makes them happy. I understand that not everybody may agree with this, however, and I would be interested to hear what others have to say.

On a side note, I was interested that both the documentary and one of the readings took a travelogue approach to talking about Chinese restaurants in disparate locations. While I find this approach very engaging, I found myself grappling with the problem of crafting a larger narrative from a small sample of individual interviews. Can these interviews be read as being representative? If not, then what can we take away from them? I'd be curious to see what other people think.

Chinese Restaurants

In watching all of the episodes of Chinese restaurants, I'm reminded of my own parents, who've worked in a Chinese restaurant since they game to America 17 years ago. One could hardly say that my parents have assimilated to U.S. culture: they don't consumer any U.S. media, they don't eat American food, and they don't really have American friends. I often question if the Chinese restaurant is an offshoot of this resistance to assimilation. By working in a Chinese restaurant, Asians can inhabit a space filled with their people (there are exceptions, such as the restaurant in Madagasgar), their own language, and their own food (ostensibly).

This question of assimilation is played out in the various restaurants in these documentaries. What we see is a very diverse set of restaurants and restaurant owners, some of whom have assimilated better than others. The restaurants have customer bases that range from all Chinese to very diverse. Their owners have learned their new languages to varying degrees. They also serve food of varying degrees of authenticity.

But regardless of what owners do, it seems that the fact of opening a Chinese restaurant can make a person more foreign in the eyes of the local population. The exoticness of Chinese food translates to beliefs that owners are exotic. Locals may view owners as lacking a will to assimilate. This creates a problematic tension between trying to assert one's culture and trying to blend in and drop the label of foreignness.

Another interesting aspect of these restaurants is that often, their workers are illegal immigrants. The sociologist Georg Simmel notes that in cities, immigrants often being working in the black market until they assimilate to the city and learn the customs and culture. This seems to be what's happening in the Chinese restaurants, as the cultural identify of the owners almost predisposes them to helping other (illegal) immigrants.

All in all, the various episodes in the series were very interesting and showed many different dimensions of being and eating Chinese across the world.

Bentonville, Kim Son, and Chinese Restaraunts

I found Chinese Restaurants to be very enlightening especially when it came to telling the individual stories. Honestly, I had no idea the extent of both Chinese immigration and Chinese restaurants (Norway?!). The movie challenges the idea of countries being homogeneous and that the U.S. is the only country that is a “melting pot”, for example, the Chinese influence in Madagascar. Furthermore, the movie challenges the idea of what is a Chinese restaurant (ex. New Outlook café). As a side note, I totally got choked up watching the very end of the segment on Noisy Jim and his funeral. I wasn’t really that surprised to see that each person opened a Chinese restaurant in order to survive but the more I think about it (and having read Manalasan’s essay), the dishes served at the each restaurant could be considered “fusion” cooking.

However, there were some aspects of the documentary that I didn’t find so appealing. The first is how the Hakka people were described in the Mauritius segment. I felt that it bordered, if not crossed, into the area of essentializing a group of people. Nevertheless, this seemed to happen only once. I felt, though, that the documentary’s strongest moments were letting the people and the stories unfold on their own (if that makes any sense) rather than the narrator’s journey or his interactions with them (so I guess kudos to the editing). By focusing on the individual’s more, the film was able to bring to the surface a more universal theme of Chinese immigrants and influences in their communities. Another small nitpicky part I found a little incongruous was I believe I heard him say Cuba gained independence from Spain in 1902 but wasn’t the year actually 1898?

As far as my own experiences in Chinese(/Vietnamese) restaurants, I find them to be comforting. For those that live around the Houston area (Go Spring!), ya’ll know what I mean by saying that Kim Son is probably one of the best around (and if you want, I could totally point out some others that are great). On their menu is the story of how the restaurant (chain) got started and from what I remember, her story (though a Vietnamese immigrant) very much resembles those from the documentary in that the restaurant was more about survival than someone who dreams of opening their own restaurant. However, it is interesting that no one ever points out that the restaurant serves both Chinese and Vietnamese dishes or is it just assumed that the two are interchangeable? However, whenever I go to a Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant I sometimes feel a little out of place. I think the main reason is that I don’t speak Vietnamese so I always feel a little awkward ordering. And as a last note, my parents did run a Chinese (Vietnamese?) restaurant for a while. And once again, it was more of a matter of making a living than fulfilling a dream. Their restaurant was in Bentonville, Arkansas (kudos to anyone that can name the importance of that city). Though they no longer run a restaurant, it is always interesting listening to them talk about it and how hard it was.

thoughts on eating Asian and global food culture

Ming Tsai and his fusion ways
I remember watching Ming Tsai in high school on Food Network. My mom loved Ming Tsai and was thrilled to see an Asian American chef on TV next to figures like Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay...plus my mom found him really attractive.
On that note, it was interesting in the Manalalasan's reading in Alien Encounters about how Ming Tsai's body and image was read as a central piece of his show East Meets West. Participants commented on his tall, athletic body, speech and body movements. One participant even characterized Tsai as a "white jock". Several participants noted the “whitening” of his voice. To me this was implying that the audience saw a level of assimilation (along with his fusion cooking) to white-dominate American culture and a "disconnect" along class lines--many, if not, all the audience participants were immigrant working/lower middle-class--as Ming gives off an educated, wealthy class sensibility, which appeals to his audience base.

Gender in the audience participation is something that can be explored just on its own. Most of the female participants were not surprised the guests on the show were male. Cooking in public for pay and in public both in "back home" in China and in America, one participant claimed, is still the domain of men.
I feel like there are several shows now on Food Network (and other cooking shows) that exotify and objectify the female chef/hosts. Giada on Everyday Italiananyone? How would East Meets West be framed differently if the chef/host was a woman?

Chinese Restaurants
After watching this documentary series by Cheuk Kwan, I saw a lot of common threads within all of the countries . I'll just list them cause there's kinda a lot:

>Food service as a mode of survival: "When Chinese open restaurants abroad it's basically for survival" (restaurant owner in Brazil)
>Generational issues: many of the parents wouldn't want to pass on the business to younger generations. The work being tiring came up a lot and most parents wanted their children to pursue an education
>Government repression: In almost every country from Bombay, India to Cuba to Mauritius to Canada. How did the government exclude Chinese immigrants, force them out of the country, etc.
>Race and nationality: How do people identify and how does that change/shift based on generation? immigration? This was extremely profound for me and really made me question my own understanding of race in the U.S. versus abroad and the similarities (experiencing racism as an Asian American and many others) and the differences. How is racial identity constructed here in the U.S. versus in India? Trinidad and Tobago? Norway?
>Racial mixing in almost every country (this really stood out to me in Cuba and India).
>Feelings of connectedness to the "homeland" - immigrant versus later generation.

I apologize for not putting this into paragraph form! This documentary series especially raised a lot of questions for me that I hope we will explore on the blog and in class.

Global Chop Suey: Chinese Restaurants in the Diaspora

After watching Cheuk Kwan's documentary, Chinese Restaurants, I've gained a newfound appreciation for Chinese restauranteurs and their families. Kwan's subjects are, overall, portrayed as very hard-working and aspiring, often sacrificing a great deal in order to keep their dreams afloat.

I like the fact that each segment of Kwan's documentary focuses on a specific area of the globe. Of the three parts I watched, my favorite profiles were the ones Kwan did in Cuba and in Norway -- I hadn't even known that Chinese restaurants would be popular in these places. The cultural perspective Kwan provides focuses on the cross-cultural exchange that occurs between the Chinese immigrants and their surrounding locales. I especially found the interviews of the Chinese restauranteurs' children intriguing, because many of them faced the conflict of being a "hyphenated Chinese", caught between their parents' Chinese customs, and those of the country in which they were raised. In Trinidad, for example, Maurice's son says that he thinks of himself as "Trinidadian first, and Chinese second". In Cuba, one interviewee says that "a true Cuban is one part Spanish, one part black, and one part Chinese" -- I hadn't even been aware that there was a sizable Chinese community in Cuba! The Chinese parents of the diaspora often wanted their children to marry Chinese, and to continue the Chinese traditions in their adopted countries. many of the older Chinese people interviewed also expressed a wish to be buried in China, underscoring their strong attachment and longing for their homeland. Noisy Jim's story, in this regard, was especially poignant.

Also interesting was the fact that many of the Chinese restauranteurs had modified traditional Chinese cuisine into a fusion of Chinese and local foods, especially if Chinese ingredients were difficult to come by where they lived. In Norway, I was especially impressed by the dedication the Wongs had -- long, long hours, virtually no vacation time, and little opportunity to spend quality time with their children. Their life seemed very hard, and I wasn't sure if they were really happy or not; they emphasized that this was not a business they would want to pass on to their children.

The Chinese restauranteurs create a rich culture in their adopted countries, mixing Chinese and local cuisine, as well as interacting with the local people. The next time I visit a Chinese restaurant in a foreign country, perhaps I will ask about their story, and I wish, that as Kwan says, it will be one of perseverance and hope.