Re: Foods and Ethnic Identities

From: "Leo Caesius"

>     On the flip side, quite a few other metaphors have grown up around
food,
> especially with reference to Asian-American culture and related
> sub-cultures.  If a "banana" is something that is white with a
superficially
> yellow skin, I'll give you three guesses as to what an "egg" is.
I've never heard this term before. Having lived in the Chinese culture for
most of my adult life, I found it frustrating at times that if you reacted
to something in what was perceived as the "American" way ("No, I'm not
working mega overtime for free."), people said you "didn't understand the
Chinese way"; if you responded in the "Chinese" way ("He1cha2, he1 cha2" --
"Here, have some tea."), you could get, "Wow, you're more Chinese than we
Chinese!" which was meant as compliment, but for me carried the undertone of
"C'mon, we don't live in the dynasties anymore." (or, "Stop acting Chinese,
you're making me uncomfortable.") Not across the board, mind you, but
definitely out there. You could not win.

>     One particular Asian-American sub-culture has a long list of metaphors
> built up on starches like "rice" and "potatoes."  Consequently you have
> "rice queens," "potato queens," "sticky rice," "mashed potatoes," among
> others (I *know* some of you know what I'm talking about).
*I* don't, please expound (even if in an off-list aside).

In Taiwan, mainlanders who came over with the KMT are known as "o7a2",
"taro" since the mainland is supposed to look like a giant taro (personally,
I prefer that it looks like a chicken which it kinda sorta does if you leave
out Outer Mongolia [which the Taiwanese don't]). Native-born Taiwanese are
called "de7gue1", "yams" since Taiwan supposedly looks like a sweet potato
(again, personally, I always thought it looked like a gastro-intestinal
organ). There may have been a separate term for progeny of "mixed"
mainland-Taiwan marriages (o7a2 men with de7gue1 women), but it escapes me
now. But the starch lives on.

Kou