David Sedaris thinks Chinese people (and food) are repulsive, which makes me sad, because I used to like David Sedaris.
What do you do when a literary idol decides to take a huge metaphorical dump on the culture and civilization from whence your ancestors emerged? I'm not sure I've figured out the answer to that question yet, but I'm grappling with it.
You see, master mock-and-droller David Sedaris, who's unequivocally one of the great essayists of our time and a personal favorite of mine, has chosen to take his parodic talent and point it at China, its people and its food. Except the piece he's written for the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper is less amusing than it is venomous, xenophobic and dissipated.
Which, to be fair, describes many of his genuinely funny essays as well.
The difference, I think, is that in his adventures in France, Japan and, well, Raleigh, North Carolina, he is usually as self-deprecating as he is other-; he comes off as a general, equal-opportunity misanthrope in the classic Molièrean vein. He also actually bothers to create human characters and enliven them with dialogue, and often wit — they become his comic foils, or he theirs, in a widening outspiral of mannered absurdity.
Not so here. Sedaris announces from the outset that he dislikes Chinese food — "I'll eat it if the alternative means starving" — and thinks of visiting China itself as an unpleasant prospect: "'I have to go to China.' I told people this in the way I might say, 'I need to insulate my crawl space' or, 'I've got to get these moles looked at.' That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore."
But he goes anyway, after spending a week in vastly more civilized (but no less exotic) Tokyo — which he extolls as being sublime, delicate and sanitary. And then, China. China, as described by Sedaris, is a land of phlegm-hawking savages who eat animals that no right thinking person would consume, and eat parts of those animals that no sane person would consider, preparing and presenting them in the most foul and revolting fashion possible. Also, Chinese people shit everywhere, they practically bathe in the stuff, and of course they have no problem eating shit, or at least things that eat shit.
In fact, shit, in its many forms — stinking, floating, abandoned, stepped in or, in his mind, coyly tucked into entrees — ends up being the closest thing Sedaris finds to the satirical counter his prose always seeks out. He and shit engage in a kind of capoiera-like martial ballet throughout the 2700-odd word piece (though mucus and urine do occasionally enter the fray); by the middle of the essay, Sedaris's preoccupation has become less shocking than annoying, and by its final throes, less annoying than tedious. (He's brilliantly noted before that "Shit is the tofu of cursing and can be molded to whichever condition the speaker desires"; the larding-up of his narrative here with shit references points to what this essay really is, e.g., bulk filler with limited taste and nutritional value.)
So look, David: Chinese people eat weird food. There is a saying that "Chinese will eat anything with its back to the sky," and another that says "Chinese will eat anything with legs but a table and anything with wings but an airplane." These are Chinese sayings, I might point out — a sign that Chinese aren't exactly unaware that the "delicacies" that send prim Westerners to their fainting couches are a little off the beaten path.
But Chinese are far from the only culture that eats weird food, and fuck, given that you're from North Carolina, have you looked at what American Southerners traditionally eat? No? Chitlins! Possum! Muskrat! Bull testicles! Oh wait, you're from suburban Raleigh, so probably not, given that most of the more exotic dishes in Southern cuisine, like in many culinary traditions, was the offspring of necessity — invention midwived by destitution. If you're hungry enough, rodents will start to look tasty, as will chicken claws, stray innards and balls. And once you've eaten them long enough, all these things evolve into nostalgic signifiers — especially after you've pulled yourself out of poverty. They go from things you have to eat all the time to things you choose to eat once in a while, to remind yourself you don't have to eat them all the time.
And this is what's truly ugly about your piece, David: For someone who's spent a lot of your career puncturing middle-class aspiration and self-delusion, your essay is unpleasantly blind to the fact that all of China is just a few generations removed from dire, desperate want, and that many people, like the peasant family you had such a bad experience sharing a meal with, continue to subsist on an annual income that's a tiny fraction of what a sophisticated awesome American literary superstar like you loses in his sofa. And in a country of 1.3 billion people, even having braised pig's stomach to occasionally go with your daily rice is a fucking luxury.
But you should note: Those 1.3 billion people have a standard of living that's skyrocketing upward. They're crawling up and out of the economic muck, while we seem determined to drag ourselves down into it. And more and more of them are learning English and traveling abroad and reading international newspapers like the Guardian. So, just sayin': The next time you're eating at a fancy New York restaurant near a table of tourists from Shanghai...maybe you shouldn't turn your back on your Coke.
If you read the piece, you'll note that unlike most of his stories, there's not a single real Chinese voice — nothing that gives his erstwhile hosts agency or humanity. The closest thing is a woman who notes that it's disgusting to blow your nose into a handkerchief and stick it back in your pocket. (Which, frankly, it is.) Otherwise, the Chinese are silent savages throughout.
Contrast this with Anthony Bourdain or even Andrew Zimmern's travels through the country, where even as they point out the weirdness of the culture, they do so with respect and an open mind, and they give local people plenty of time and space to explain, contextualize and even crack wise. In fact, the native folk in Bourdain's "No Reservations" China segment were among the funniest and most appealing people onscreen. It's possible to do this kind of thing and be amusing and not trash an entire civilization.
And also, I think the piece is just lousy writing, and I frankly expect more from him.
This is one of the purpose of the hankerchief, blowing your nose. It's actually hygienic if done properly. What is the alternative? Blowing into your hands? Maybe blowing it on your shirt?
If you're concerned about stuff from the hankerchief getting into your pockets or hands you can make sure the clean sides are out. It is generally a last resort if you can't go to a bathroom and blow your nose. Some people carry around a small packet of tissues which is fine but hankerchiefs are more compact. Either way, far more cleaner than just doing it in the street.
It's not hard to do and it's been taught for so long.
I haven't read Sedaris' article but 'hawking' and spitting in public is rather gross and having lived in NYC over the years, Chinese are the biggest offenders (eastern europeans probably the next). Not all Chinese do this, but far too often if you hear that sound, it's probably a Chinese. More than likely they're mainlander.
Comparing Sedaris to Bourdain and Zimmern is like apples to oranges but hey I guess he struck too close to home for you....
The comparison between Sedaris and Bourdain/Zimmern was not a literary one, but related specifically to how they each chose to approach documenting their experiences with the decidedly foreign culture of China. Sedaris is free to be as bitchy and xenophobic as he likes — it's a modus operandi for him, and usually it works. On the other hand, I'm also free to criticize him as I see fit, correct? Just like you're free to write anonymous comments to my critique despite ignoring the source material.
That's the great thing about America — we're just so awesomely free. Unlike, say, China.
What should I create an account on your blog? Fatten your ego with more readerships? Come on the only reason you doing is blog is to stroke your ego. Sure the euphemism is 'I'm freely expressing my views' but key MY. I, Me, Mine. Then again this is the main reason behind the success of Facebook and Twitter. That's another story.
Noticed you ignore my comments about public spitting? Too prim for you no?
I write this blog because I write for a living, and the blog is a useful place to develop ideas or respond in real time to things that aren't timely for my column. It's like on-the-job training for the thing that pays my rent. So, no, my ego isn't precisely the only reason I do this blog.
I want to ask you this honestly, however: If you don't like this blog, why would you bother reading and commenting on it? It's like spraying graffiti on buildings that you don't like — you don't live there, you don't work there, but you feel the need to deface it because it offends your aesthetics somehow? I've never really understood anonymous drive-by commenters. It's one thing if you want to have a dialogue and be a part of a community, or have a vested interest in the topics or individuals at hand. But if you think this blog is solely "stroking" of my ego, really, no one is forcing you to read it, any more than anyone forced David Sedaris to go to China. It's your choice. Which means that you can engage in conversation about the topics, but if your only interest is to disparage me, nothing's holding you here, right?
As for spitting and hygiene, sure, no question, China has issues — the same issues that afflicted the Western industrialized countries in the 19th century, albeit on a much larger scale.
Things like public sanitation, consumer protections, social conventions that prevent spread of illness — all of those were responses the the massive technological and economic advances the West underwent in the transition from a largely dispersed agrarian society to a highly concentrated urban one.
And all of this has been happening in China within the space of a decade, and with far more people involved. This is not to excuse public spitting, but it is to point out the amazing hypocrisy of an upper-class Westerner mocking the hygiene habits of, in Sedaris's words, "square-faced peasants."
Well, a hundred and fifty years ago, Sedaris's were square-faced peasants (maybe less). For what it's worth, China's second industrial revolution is occurring right now, in the blink of an eye, and the last things that are going to change, if history is any indication, are social mores.
I think this piece just proves that he's lost his material. His writing used to be funny because he was in such a state of pathetic desperation- a dug addict enrolled in art school in his 30's, or a migrant apple picker hitch hiking through the North West and getting abducted by men with dildo enshrined bedrooms...
Now he is no longer desperate and destitute. There probably is not too much shocking about his life and, thus, worthy to write about (his last two books were about talking animals), so he thinks he can be edgy again and gain some publicity by writing a vitriolic and knowingly controversial piece, reducing a world power into a mass of unsanitary savages.
I think it just shows the end is near for Sedaris.
In this age of mature, advanced, entrenched Political Correctness, being scrupulously PC in the Anglosphere is a no-brainer.
Alas, there is one notable exception. Asians, especially Chinese, both Chinese in China, and ethnic Chinese in the West, are not covered by the PC umbrella.
When it comes to Chinese, the requirement that ostensibly civilized and educated elites tiptoe around the emotional sensitivities of minorities, goes totally out the window. Chinese are fair game. For Chinamen, especially Chinese males, it's open season.
Even auteur John Hughes, with his extraordinary regard for the sensitivities of American teenagers, showed extraordinary regard only for the sensitivities of white American teenagers.
He had no qualms whatsoever about "taking a dump" as you so aptly put it, on Asians, with his repellent and racist "Long Duk Dong" caricature.
And so it is with David Sedaris.
The fact is, such expressions of ugly bigotry say more about the author than they do about their ostensible targets.
What David Sedaris did, ironically, was to take a public dump. What David Sedaris did, was exactly what he was denouncing. What David Sedaris did, was make a public confession, about his own coprophilia, his own preoccupation with feces.
I always try to remind myself, that hate consumes the one who hates from within.
Those who fail to understand this simple truth, will remain prisoners of their own inner demons.
Just as virtue is its own reward, so bigotry is its own punishment.
Bevin Chu
For anyone who think it's about the food, it's not. Mr. Sedaris was only disgusted by a dish of hacked up organ meat. On other occasions, it was the perceived lack of sanitation that robbed him of his appetite. A 'C' sanitation grade? I know of two other places that received 'C' sanitation grades. Gilt and A Voce, Michelin starred restaurants in Manhattan. If Mr. Sedaris were an equal opportunity germaphobe, he would have starved to death a long time ago.
That's just some clannish proclivity towards censorship talking, snidely. Just think, if you were
a high party official, you could have Sedaris disappear for an unspecified amount of time, after which he would be expected to mind his manners.
That's just some clannish proclivity towards censorship talking, snidely. Just think, if you were
a high party official, you could have Sedaris disappear for an unspecified amount of time, after which he would be expected to mind his manners.
Anyways, I really dunno what you are going on about. Where did I say I didn't like your blog? I only came in after finding this article. Defacing? Really now. Let me guess, the other comments that match your POV are beautifying your precious literary landscape? What do you have against graffiti? It can be beautiful too you know. Are you really that sensitive?
Were you one of those thin skinned kids in school who'd have a meltdown and scream 'OMG everyone's being so mean, boohooo!' . It's not like I'm blowing my nose in your hankerchief and putting it back into the pockets of your Banana Republic chinos.
Why can I and others not comment on one article and then leave? Maybe your other articles don't interest me? Do I want to be part of a community where the creator thinks Obama is Asian American?
I came in to say: too much hot air over nothing.
I read Sedaris' article, I don't see the fuss (does that make me a hater?). You admitted to knowing his M.O.. From his books you can tell he's not exactly the most open minded person. Why are you so offended by his piece now? From the get go he admitted to not liking the cuisine but still went down and gave things a try. He could have easily eaten at PF Changs and called it george...
Let me summarize your long winded article. "Hey David Sedaris, I liked your books, probably because you are popular and well I like to follow the mainstream. However, you've written something I don't like because well you're taking jabs at my people. It's okay for you to make fun of other groups but not mine. To top it off, you didn't do it in a fashion I prefer.
Thus, I hate you!
p.s. you're probably not going to read this but I'll gets some traffic anyways!"
To the commenter about going on about PC and open season on 'chinamen'. Can you really say Chinese or even Asian Americans have been really PC or open minded towards other groups?
It goes both ways my friend.
In general I can say yes Asian-Americans have been very supportive of other groups of color. Asian-American political groups have always supported affirmative-action in universities, even when in general those policies did not always benefit Asian-Americans as directly as Latinos and African-Americans. (Aff-Act benefits everyone, but it takes historical perspective to understand why.)
I think Jeff did an awesome job explaining why this piece was problematic:
"David: For someone who's spent a lot of your career puncturing middle-class aspiration and self-delusion, your essay is unpleasantly blind to the fact that all of China is just a few generations removed from dire, desperate want, and that many people, like the peasant family you had such a bad experience sharing a meal with, continue to subsist on an annual income that's a tiny fraction of what a sophisticated awesome American literary superstar like you loses in his sofa. And in a country of 1.3 billion people, even having braised pig's stomach to occasionally go with your daily rice is a fucking luxury."
I'm African-American, I like David too, from what I read and heard of him I don't remember him talking about any ethnic group this negatively in this extensive of a manner before, because if he had I am sure i would have noticed that. I'm sure Jeff would have noticed it too, but right we're talking about what David did right now. Are you saying people aren't allowed to say they are offended? Why can't he say on his blog he didn't like what David stated? Why does this seem to be bothering you so much. Or is it people of color can't objectively criticize anything in regards to race, because we have poc bias disease?
Lark
It's home to the world's oldest civilization. There is architecture, arts, and indeed a lot of cuisine to be enjoyed. Not to mention the varied landscape. It's a shame Sedaris didn't voice his disgust to his hosts, who surely could've taken him out of Beijing or wherever they were and seen the many other things China has to offer.
More than that is this. Much as the man is a satirist, he's a well-respected member of the "liberal team" (if we have to label him politically). By focusing only on the negative, he gives actual bigots an excuse to vent their overtly racist opinions as "hey, I'm just telling it like it is!"
THAT'S the truly worrisome part for me, in terms of what people take away from this. I wouldn't try joke about how much I hate homosexuals because I'm disgusted by anal sex. Anal sex is a tiny part of being a homosexual man. It's not my cup of tea but that's my problem. We can't write people off just because they do something we disagree with or don't understand. This is a tactic employed by many people on the political right. Things have value even if we don't "get" it.
Because he's so respected, he's given a much higher profile platform from which to speak. However he actually intended the piece to be received, it'll be widely interpreted in many ways. It gives true racists a liberal voice to couch their beliefs behind. Does Sedaris really want to be THAT kind of mouthpiece? Because that's what's going to happen.
"There are distinctions among the grazing animal eaters as well. People who like lamb and beef, at least in north America, tend to draw the line at horse, which in my opinion is delicious. The best I've had was served at a restaurant in Antwerp, a former stable called, cleverly enough, The Stable. Hugh was right there with me, and though he ate the same thing I did, he practically wept when someone in China mentioned eating sea horses. "Oh, those poor things," he said. "How could you?"
I went, "Huh?"
It's like eating poultry but taking a moral stand against those chocolate chicks they sell at Easter. "A sea horse is not related to an actual horse," I said. "They're fish, and you eat fish all the time. Are you objecting to this one because of its shape?"
He said he couldn't eat sea horses because they were friendly and never did anyone any harm, this as opposed to those devious, bloodthirsty lambs whose legs we so regularly roast with rosemary and new potatoes."
http://news.insing.com/tabloid/singapore-now-home-to-1-million-prcs/id-74333d00
We here in Hong Kong have largely similar views on mainlanders hygiene, although much less problems with the food - we're Cantonese, after all, and eat stuff that many mainlanders find disgusting.
Apologies if you're not really juk seng, but this post does read like a typical American born Chinese getting all offended in a typically American way about honest thoughts on aspects of modern Chinese mainland culture that are neither racist nor inaccurate and are actually shared by a good number of people of the same ethnicity as those disparaged.
Right now, anyone who knows anything about China knows that the big coastal cities are full of displaced rural migrants — who are very poor, with relatively little education, and who are effectively a "ghost population" without most legal rights.
You see, to move to a new city in China, you need to change something known as a hu kou, which is often impossible — or very expensive. But the poverty is so great in many rural areas that people move anyway, making them ineligible in their new cities for everything from healthcare to schooling and daycare for their kids to subsidized housing. The only jobs they can get are the most menial service, factory and construction jobs, including in many cases cleaning up after wealthy urbanites.
So there's a combination of culture shock (many migrant Chinese have never seen seated flush toilets — it's all squat toilets in the rural areas) and, frankly, some degree of rebellious spite involved in some of these things Sedaris is talking about and that some of you have seen. Why would you take care of a city that doesn't want you and where you're treated as little better than a beast of burden? A lot of migrants just want to earn enough money to be able to be comfortable once they go back home. The city is something they have to survive to be able to feed their parents and kids — it's not their world.
That's not to excuse these things — but it IS to say that the idea that it's somehow a cultural thing specific to Chinese is ludicrous and willfully blind. And it's also to say that things are changing incredibly fast, even for these rural migrants. Don't make any quick, stereotypical assumptions about what China or Chinese are like today, because they won't be the same as you expect even a decade from now.
I don't know if that changed your point of view, but if you read the above, maybe it at least led you to think about the situation differently: Instead of saying "Chinese are dirty and gross," you might think, "Chinese are poor. But they're getting richer."
But hey, feel free to keep your mind in the 19th century while the rest of the world zooms through the 21st.
China is a large, complex and fast growing (in some parts) place. However, the idea that any article written on Chinese culture or the experience of some aspect of modern China today has to contain a mandatory disclaimer saying "but hey, these former peasants are going into the future fast!" is a guarantee for boredom. Sedaris is a comedian, not an anthropologist, sociologist or economist. And does anyone these days NOT realise that China is not a nation of former peasants benefiting from rapid economic growth?
Anyway, I do agree with the statement "But [the Chinese are] getting richer". They are also getting more civilised - I heard a mainland tourist in downstairs at IFC in HK today hawking up (Sedaris's cappucino machine analogy is not something I've thought of before, but now realise how accurate it is), but then he spat the gobbet in the rubbish bin rather than on the floor. That's progress!
I arrived at your site via my friend Adam’s RandomWalks.com site. I always find Adam’s links, comments and posts, if not insightful, inspiring or poignant, than at least thought provoking. I’ve read through your full SFGate post a few times now, and then I read the Sedaris piece.
While I think understand your reaction as a Chinese descendant who feels like his heritage and people are misunderstood and maligned, I think you’re missing the point. As usual with Sedaris, he’s mocking our own ignorance and shock at the culturally different as “Americans” in showing his own reaction, which is also hilarious, to the world around him.
I’ve also read quite a number of his writings over the years, listened to his pieces on This American Life, and I’ve always enjoyed them because of the poignancy and tension he creates in walking the fine line of the snarky, misanthropic or self-deprecating and just describing the reality of his (albeit edited) experience. It feels as if we’re there. This essay on The Guardian was no different. It walks the same tone and style and implied meaning as anything that is David Sedaris that I’ve experienced.
Your essay, in contrast to his, comes across as a reactionary yelp and fails to nail down your frustrations with his seeming demonizing and ‘discriminating against’ an entire culture and people. I think most readers of The Guardian and SFGate are well enough informed to understand the challenges of and rapid pace of growth and its potential impact on the peasant, middle, and upper classes of China.
Yet, somehow, you assume they are not. You assume maybe that many of us are racist, ignorant, or idiots, that will probably take everything that Sedaris says as “the way we should think”. Or so your essay leads me to believe. But it seems that you are missing the poignancy in the humor of the alienation experienced as a traveler to a foreign country and also of simply being averred to things that are different. Mr. Sedaris didn’t suggest that we cut all ties and bomb the country because of their “uncleanliness” or their backwardness, rather he adeptly showed how ignorant most of us are. But I feel you missed that.
Perhaps you missed it by choice. China is a subject close to your heart. Close to your very being. I can see that. I understand that. My wife and I traveled to China last year and spent over a month there, in various locals, before we left only to return a few weeks later, by way of Japan ironically enough. And I’ll tell you Sir, that returning to China, or arriving to China for the first time after being in Japan is nothing less than amped up shock and awe. The contrasts are SO extreme that the dirty and the unusual things that arise from the differences in habits of cultural practice are exacerbated.
We traveled to China because my wife is both 1st and 3rd generation Chinese, born in the states to a Chinese first generation father and a Chinese born mother. We both, myself, the gringo from Texas a latino-germanic-anglo-saxon mutt and my wife wanted to know a little about the culture of her descent and our future children’s descent.
And on our first pass we traveled up from Hong Kong, via Guangdong and headed west and the cultural shock was lessened and I think we were able to adapt a much more realistic, thoughtful if not romantic view of the country as we travelled via train, bus and plane to various locales. But upon landing in Beijing from Japan, we almost wished we hadn’t returned. While we managed to make the most of our experiences there, as you’ve illustrated adeptly, the stark differences between neighborhoods, classes and change that has come (or trundling through so to speak) to Beijing in such a short time, smack you in the face like a warm steaming diaper.
I laughed full-bellied at Sedaris’s characterization of his experience as it matched in many ways to many similar experiences in our own travels. I think we ate Hot-Pot at the same restaurant in Chengdu. That said, what he says is intended to be take with a grain of salt and yet brevity.
I urge you to reconsider the piece and re-read it with a bit of distance. If anything, I think the Sedaris piece forces us to think about these issues, very much like being there watching the little boy in his split pants taking a shit on the sidewalk. It puts it right there in your face and you have to fucking deal with it. Whether today or tomorrow, you will reflect on what drives people to do what they do. The writing itself encourages curiosity and thoughtful consideration amongst a far wider audience than your piece from on of the ‘left’ coasts(or two so to speak in your case). Food for thought.
Yours,
@angrywayne
http://www.surleevoyage.com
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/08/03/the-people-you-meet-when-you-write-abo...
Thanks, Mr. Yang, for bringing this sad article to the internet's attention. I read Sedaris when I was in high school and thought he was frickin' hilarious. I wonder what I'll think if I ever re-read his books now...not that I have a great desire to anymore. Honestly, I'd rather deal with real shit than a celebrity metaphorically shitting all over an entire culture.
"I think most readers of The Guardian and SFGate are well enough informed to understand the challenges of and rapid pace of growth and its potential impact on the peasant, middle, and upper classes of China.
Yet, somehow, you assume they are not."
That's because there is *no* evidence IN THE ARTICLE of any of this mysterious understanding you refer to. You know what they say about assumptions: To ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME.
Mr. Yang is supporting his conclusions with evidence found in the article. Notice he begins with a quotation. Basing analytic conclusions on evidence is one of the basic building blocks of good writing. I don't see any counter examples of the evidence you use to support the conclusion that Sedaris and his readers are "well informed [about] the challenges of...growth and its potential impact...on China."
@curt
@aka47 (btw, what's up with the violent webname? that's a rhetorical question, please don't answer)
@most commentators
I totally wish I got to keep all the fake money I won off your comments with my bingo card.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/3185596306_c5f5d3815f.jpg
PS. I'm probably not going to reply to any more comments if anybody bothers to respond because I'm already shaking and I'd probably just repeat what I've said, but do whatever you want anyway. (Not that you wouldn't already.)
*bows to the master*
"So an hour or so ago, I posted a frustrated note about how I didn’t understand people who made adobo and complained about it being sour or vinegar-y, since you put close to a full cup of vinegar in the marinade/sauce. And a few people rightfully pointed out that new cooks probably wouldn’t look a recipe and have the proportions tip them off, which — totally fair. It was a note that was in truth only peripherally about people’s ability to cook.
Because when I’m cooking, food politics never leave me alone.
As a light-skinned PoC who experiences most of zir “ethnic” experiences around food, food is the place where I experience the most microaggressions. Because food is racialized too.
And not just in obvious ways, like my liberal arts college serving “soul food” night repeatedly through Febuary — which is coincidentally Black history month — but in more insidious and pervasive ways.
I get defensive of people complaining about specifically ethnic food because it’s almost never a value neutral judgement. I wish I could just say that some people like some food and others like different food. But it’s not that simple. Food is a site of normalization, of colonization, of resistance and community. Food has been a place where colonizers enforced their will on the people they colonize, or where colonized people have resisted the idea that they (and their food!) were ‘bad’ or ‘disgusting.’
If we lived in a world where everyone was equal, I probably wouldn’t care if someone called something that I ate “disgusting.” It’s a personal perference, right? But that’s not the world I see, and this is what I see.
I see that white and Western people have the right to pass judgement on any cuisine they try, but when I say that I don’t like American food I get called a snob. It’s that when white and Western people criticize food of other ethnicities, they use value laden words like “gross” “disgusting” or “nasty.” It’s that white and Western people seem to think that it is okay to spit out food like it is so physically disgusting that they cannot finish the food in their mouth.
It’s that French cuisine is renowned worldwide as the ultimate haute cuisine, and Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese and many other cuisines from Asia are simplified down to “Asian” food where no more explanation is necessary. It’s that people always assume that their food eating experiences are universal — “I don’t understand how anyone can eat that” “How do they eat that” “Can you believe that’s popular over there?” It’s that white and Western people complain about the ingredients in ethnic cooking, as though only the parts of an animal that they deem valuable are worth consumption, and people who have to/like to eat other parts are automatically deemed “lesser.” It’s that aspersions are cast on the content of ethnic cooking — “Do they eat cats there” “How does that dog taste” “No I don’t trust where it comes from.”
It’s that a white or Western person complaining about ethnic food is not the same as an ethnic person complaining about white or Western food, because white and Western people are given permission to dislike “inferior” ethnic food while ethnic people who dislike “normal” Western food are deemed picky, hypocritical, snobbish, or unnatural. It’s that ethnic food is automatically deemed “strange” or “adventurous” and Western food is automatically “normal.”
It’s that colonization has touched ever part of our lives including our food, and it has left a lasting impact on the way that the world views the “goodness” of food. So while it’s fine that someone doesn’t like spicy food, or Asian food, or whatever, it is a form of privilege, in the United States. Because the food that person likes is always going to be coded as normal, and there will always be a plethora of choices for you to choose from. Because that person can refuse food that they don’t enjoy without being told that they are ungrateful. Because that person is considered “normal” and their food is considered “normal” too.
Just like Peaches talked yesterday about how religion and race intersect, this is how food and race and colonization intersect. It’s not as simple as you think, and that’s why I’m defensive. Because a lady can not pay attention to the predominant flavors of the Philippines, make adobo, write a review calling it “disgusting” and talk about how her step-son had to spit out his food, and it will be the #3 review on a major recipe website. That’s why we’re so defensive about our food."
from http://badparsiqueer.tumblr.com/post/5399056932/in-the-end-its-about-food-pol...
Nasty and incredibly sexist"
Eh? Are you saying my wife doesn't actually do that all that time? When did you meet her and have arguments with her?
Jeff, very insightful article. I came to the site via a link from Racialicious.com.
She instead often uses the emotionally charged storm from the room tactic. Neither Chinese women nor men commonly use that tactic because the loss of emotional composure is a clear loss of face.
But, I'm willing to be educated so I can be a reconstructed male. Can you let me know the nature of the sexism in my comment?
All that derailment said, it was still a nasty comment I made to Jeff.
But there's a big difference between honestly listing the things you didn't like, even exaggerrating them for humorous effect, and writing 2k-odd words strenuously laying into *every aspect* of a culture starting even *before you arrive*. There's also a context and a history - white racism has traditionally loved to paint 'foreigners' as dirty, disgusting and ignorant of basic social and hygiene rules. Sedaris seemed to revel in observing without attempting to understand or even ask, He seemed determined to focus only on the phlegm and the shit, and not on the fascinating tumble of ancient and modern buildings and customs and life. He went there with shit-tinted glasses, if you like, determined to confirm his prejudices.
I was not impressed and will not be buying or recommending any more of Sedaris' books.
It does NOT MATTER if a country has "just emerged from poverty" or not: it is NOT OKAY to diss cultural differences or practices, because that reflects on the entire culture!
This includes the city itself, which is a personification of the nation. If many city residents are displaced as Jeff mentioned, and if it is this subgroup that has more rural habits, then they are a reflection on the entire city, and still deserve to be spoken about with respect. We cannot insult the behavior of some Chinese people because we're trying to convince white people that "Chinese people are really quite civilised! we're almost there!"
No, I'm putting my foot down. Non-Chinese people have no right to make moralised, sweeping judgements about the nature of Chinese people regardless of how outside of Western norms our various behaviors and foods are. Just shut up.
I'm sick of entitled, privileged white people literally grimacing when I talk about food that I love and that I see as integral to my cultural identity. And I don't care if you say "you can hate burgers and I'm not insulted!" because you don't constantly have to deal with being told that your culture is "less civilised." by the way, "civilised" is code for "white imperialist."
Cleverness does not mean that something has genuine value. There have been many clever monsters in history and those of less-than-monstrous accomplishments. Cleverness does not redeem cruelty, unless we make the choice to numb ourselves to it.
Thanks for writing your blog post.
Kind regards,
Matthew
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