I Want to Be Selfish With My Culture
Culture is meant to be shared. I understand that. I even agree with it—to a certain level. I won’t lie and say that I want to share every aspect of Chinese culture with the entire world. I struggle hard with letting go of my discontent. Why do people get to enjoy my culture now, after finally labelling it acceptable, even at times desirable, when I spent years trying to distance myself from it so I wouldn’t be painted a target? It’s a grudge that I hold—a small pebble in my shoe that keeps me from walking comfortably—that I wish I didn’t have.
It’s not like I hate sharing though. I enjoy it even, when it’s shared with the right people. People who like my culture and me. I feel proud sharing new dishes with my non-Asian friends, who might be skeptical at first but nevertheless trust me and dig in. I like when they ask about cultural significances, like why we can never stick our chopsticks straight up into the rice, and are truly curious about it. Not fake curiosity someone uses when they want to seem like they’re respecting the culture, but they just want to wear it as a costume. Or worse, in their hair (people who use actual, literal chopsticks to put their hair in a bun: I’m looking at you).
The other day I was on TikTok and an Asian creator’s video came up. Throughout the whole two and a half minute video, she talks about being an “Asian from Asia” and how different that is from being an Asian American. The video would’ve been fine if it didn’t have an undertone that implied being Asian American made us inherently less Asian than being Asian in Asia, and therefore our opinions on cultural appropriation mattered less. To pull directly from the creator: “You look like us but you’re American.” Even in the intro, she tells Asian Americans to stop telling non-Asians to not participate in cultural appropriation because “first of all, you’re Americans.” Maybe she truly meant no harm with her video, but to think this creator doesn’t believe I get a say in what other people do with my culture simply because I grew up in America? Because my grandpa wanted a better life for the family? Because we immigrated and struggled and survived?
Some people like to cite mainlanders' love and excitement to share their culture to justify appropriation. And it’s true, mainlanders truly want to share their culture. They have a hopeful, blind optimism when it comes to outsiders trying to peek in. It’s nice really, even heartwarming if I’m being honest. But they’ve never had to deal with being Asian in America. Even the previously mentioned creator says in her video, “The problem is America.” We both agree with that statement but in different ways; she means it the way America is too sensitive, I mean it the way America has a cultural context and history I grew up with that mainlanders didn’t. The looks, the subtle (and not so subtle) racism, the whitewashing of your identity so you don’t get labelled too foreign, too different, too other. And in the end, we’re too western for the homeland, yet still too Asian for America.
The issue also holds roots in capitalism in America, where brands are now profiting off of Asian culture for their own benefit. In early 2021, three white women created The Mahjong Line, where they ‘reimagined’ the traditional Chinese mahjong game and created a Westernized version of it, which they then sold for over $400. On the website itself, it says one of the women believed the game needed a “respectful refresh”—which to them meant completely erasing the traditional symbols to replace them with word art, bubbles, and a bag of flour. Apparently, the cultural significance of the original tiles and symbols were not aesthetic enough for “the stylish masses.”
This past summer, people discovered another white-owned company run by a woman who crowned herself the Queen of Congee. Congee is a type of rice porridge eaten as a comfort food in a lot of Asian countries. Owner and founder of Breakfast Cure, Karen Taylor decided to sell her own “improved” version and even boasts on her blog about how she “discovered the miracle of congee and improved it.” She also talks about the amount of time she spent “modernizing it for the Western pallet—making it a congee that you can eat and find delicious and that doesn’t seem foreign.” The problem isn’t with her trying to spread congee to the masses, it’s the fact that she took this cultural dish, decided it was too foreign and weird for Western masses to consume unreservedly, shitted all over it and its significance, and then tried to profit off her remade version.
I’m not opposed to sharing the game of mahjong or the benefits of congee—it would actually make me happy to see other people trying to learn that part of the culture—but it should be shared in its original form. What’s wrong with the original version, which holds layers of history and significance, that it has to be remade in an unrecognizable, appropriated way? Is it truly so embarrassing to enjoy my culture as it is? This so-called ‘improvement’ on Asian culture just teaches us—especially those impressionable and struggling with their Asian identity—that without Western approval, we and our culture will always be seen as foreign and shameful.
In high school, a classmate of mine asked me once if I ate dog. The people surrounding us chuckled as well. I took a pause—it couldn’t be too long though or else they would accuse me of being too sensitive—and I had to say ‘of course not’ with a smile plastered on my face. At the time, it wasn’t the fact that that classmate had said something like that, stereotypical and overused, which upset me. It was the fact that he said that to me. The last time I had been so violently reminded I was Asian and ‘other’ I had brought seaweed as a lunch snack, which the people at my table had said smelled and looked weird, despite it being nothing but dried seaweed, salt, and sesame oil. I had immediately stopped eating, put it away, and never brought it to school again. I had tried so hard to blend in and erase myself to the point that I wouldn’t be the target of an Asian joke and yet here I was, the victim of the most unoriginal and cliché one of them all. It’s honestly a little offensive that my classmate couldn’t have been a bit more creative with their racism. But I remember thinking to myself, Damn, they still see you as Asian, something foreign, something to joke about.
To that one Asian creator, I may be “American” but I know well enough this country will never see me as American. I will always look like a foreigner to them, someone to ask, “Where are you from? No, where are you really from? No, I mean where are your parents from?” I will always struggle with this aspect of the Asian American identity. I probably will also always struggle with my vehemence to protect my culture against my desire to share it—but I do hope that one day, I will be able to shake that pebble out of my shoe.
Cover Photo by Katrina Kwok. Edited by Madison Case.
