Authentic Dignity
“Just take a look at the menu, that’s not authentic, it’s not real Chinese food”. I hear this from my friends (Chinese and oddly non-Chinese), I hear this from family, I hear my own voice echo this sentiment about certain Chinese restaurants. One such restaurant, China Town, is in the town my wife went to high school in and grew up near, Barre, VT. For some context, Barre is a town of about 9,000 people and is 93% white. The menu at China Town features dishes like orange chicken, General Tso’s chicken, and crab rangoons, among other dishes that may or may not have rose to prominence through Panda Express. These dishes were different than the ones my parents, grandparents, and aunties and uncles made growing up. They’re different than the ones I love when I visit Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. I rarely go out of my way to find these dishes and they’re not what comes to mind when I think of Chinese food. And yet, I can’t shake this feeling that I’ve thought about this wrong. This feeling surfaced again as I was reading Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination.
In his book, Lloyd offers his key assertion that Black dignity, and perhaps dignity in general, “is not an essential quality or a gift; it is something that is performed through the struggle against domination”.[1] I especially appreciated and gravitated toward how he talks of the breadth of dignity when embodied in action.[2] Lloyd goes on to unpack what this looks like through his encompassing chapter titles on Black rage, love, family, futures, and magic. The section that stirred my own thoughts of dignity, and perhaps Chinese-American dignity, came from his section on love. In discussing Black love, Lloyd posits that “love is how it feels to struggle together against racial domination, whether that struggle manifests at a protest or in daily life – or in intimate encounters… dignity is nourished by the unique power of self-love and bodily encounter.”[3] While Lloyd goes on to talk about bodily and erotic dimensions of that love, it is food that embodies love in Chinese-American communities.
Food, in Chinese culture, can be a means of communicating feelings, expressing values, and telling stories.[4] My family would gather around food, we plan trips around what we’re going to eat, my parents and grandparents would show their care and affection with food offerings. As witnessed by the resounding popularity of the Disney short animation, Bao[5], the meaning and value of food runs so deeply within Chinese and Chinese-American communities that cultural tensions and realities can be explored through interactions with and over food. Perhaps that is why my reflections on what food merits the label of being “authentic” are so hurtful. For these restaurants like China Town, the food tells stories of survival, family, and change. Food was likely not only the strongest connection to where they came from, but the only means for survival and relationship in the place they had moved to. In discounting their food as non-authentic, I was ignoring the stories that they told, the realities that this family lived, and the dignity that these people struggled for.
[1] Vincent Lloyd, Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 1.
[2] Ibid, 3.
[3] Ibid, 58.
[4] Guansheng Ma, “Food, Eating Behavior, and Culture in Chinese Society”, Journal of Ethnic Foods 2, no. 4 (December 2015), 195-199, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jef.2015.11.004.
[5] Domee Shi, “Bao”, directed by Domee Shi, produced by Becky Neiman-Cobb, Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, April 21, 2018, animated short.
About the Author
Caleb Lu
11 responses to “Authentic Dignity”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Caleb,
Thank you for this post.
Reading your post made me feel like I was able to pull up a chair to your family’s dinner table. I feel like I have so much more to learn. I like how you tie in the food that you love and the meaning of this food. Food communicates! (I JUST finished watching the Chosen and the episode on Jesus feeding the 5,000….Jesus uses food to communicate)
I appreciate how you personalized your post.
What is your favorite Traditional dish?:)
I am curious what your parents or grand parents would say about your post. I am curious what points they might want to add?
Wow…I have never considered how Jesus used food to communicate. Thank you for this wonderful thought. It is pretty amazing to consider all the things that food communicates (preparing, presentation, how we eat it, etc).
Kristy, yes! Food means so much to many different cultures. I love and remember my grandma’s warmth and love whenever I have a dish called lion’s head meatballs. It’s a dish that has a pork based meatball with napa cabbage and a clear broth. It’s my comfort food. I have to admit that I am also a sucker for Chinese-American dishes as well!
My family immigrated pretty recently (my parents came from Taiwan when they were in high school). It’s interesting to talk to one of my sister-in-laws whose family has been in the Pittsburgh area for 4 generations and owned a restaurant. It was interesting to hear the struggle they had with trying to serve “authentic” food and see another restaurant that catered to more American tastes as sellouts to some degree.
It is fun to have these conversations with my parents, grandparents, and older generations because much of these feelings have gone unspoken. When the conversations are had however, there seems to be more of a recognition of common experiences and a mutual respect of the struggle to survive.
Caleb, thank you for sharing. I love your concluding line, “In discounting their food as non-authentic, I was ignoring the stories that they told, the realities that this family lived, and the dignity that these people struggled for.” It reminds me of “Elemental” and how the characters changed in their new environment, but also maintained the stories and traditions of their family. Thank you for sharing about your family and connection to food. How will this inform you when eating out in the future? Does it inform your thinking when eating at other ethnic restaurants?
On a random side note, after watching Bao, I was about ready to boycott Pixar! The story line hit a little too close to home for me.
I haven’t seen Elemental, but have heard good things!
In terms of eating out, I’m not sure, I still like what I like and dislike what I dislike. I generally will try to avoid labels of “authentic”. For “ethnic” food in particular, when people say “authentic”, I feel more often than not, they really mean not that expensive. I find myself gravitating toward chefs that tell stories of their food, the history of the dishes, the changes that have happened over time, and their own twists and flairs that they’ve layered onto it. On YouTube, a guy named Lucas Sin does a great job of teaching some of the history behind the dishes he prepares even if he doesn’t always prepare it in the “traditional” way.
Great post, Caleb. You have thought me to not assign labels of “authentic” and “non-authentic” to food without first learning more about the story behind the people the food comes from.
Caleb,
Great posts. It made me think of the tables I gathered around growing up and the tables I have set for my family. It made me think of how my girls want to help their mom bake and how that is an action of transference of what it means to be a family and the dignity that it carries. I will not refer any food as “authentic” or “not authentic” anymore.
There’s so much power to getting together around food! Like you’re sharing, whether that’s in the eating or preparation.
I am hesitant to say never label food as “authentic” or not, but just personally, I hesitate to put those labels on fellow Chinese-Americans. There’s a comedian under the moniker Uncle Roger whose whole brand is evaluating various non-Asian people cooking Asian food. I find that valid. I think there is a difference between evaluating the lived experience and discounting the stories of immigrants versus evaluating chefs trying to incorporate what’s hot at the moment without understanding the history and stories that come with the dishes.
Caleb – As many of our peers have noted above, your thoughts on judging the authenticity of food really made think about my own propensity to judge things as either right or wrong, good or bad instead of seeking to understand. It even applies to the way I read Black Dignity. I found myself pausing often to ask myself whether I agreed with Lloyd’s assertions instead of simply reading to understand his views. Thank you for this revelation!
Caleb, Thank you so much for your post and for sharing your personal experience. I feel like there is so much power in people’s personal stories. This line from your blog stood out for me: “In discounting their food as non-authentic, I was ignoring the stories that they told, the realities that this family lived, and the dignity that these people struggled for.” Your words are so loaded with teaching. Thank you for your vulnerability in sharing this. Your approach fits with Jean’s blog. I think you’ve given many of us something transformative to think about. So appreciate your insight, Caleb. Thank you.
Eat to live, or live to eat?
As always I loved hearing about your family and traditions. Thank you for making us apart of your family and including us!