Soft Power: Chinese food is not your personal entertainment

As a Chinese American, I’m no stranger to the “lunchbox moment.” For those who aren’t familiar with the term, the “lunchbox moment” typically refers to a moment in an Asian American’s life when one’s lunch is shunned for being “smelly” or “gross.” It’s such a pivotal moment of the Chinese American consciousness that to ignore it would be to ignore the ways that food has shaped Chinese American identity. 

While we usually associate this moment with our childhood, it’s clear that the “lunchbox moment” is still happening, just in a different format. “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts,” a recurring segment on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” often utilizes this trope of Chinese food being disgusting, albeit in a more understated way. 

The whole premise of the segment is that celebrities must answer difficult questions about their personal lives, and if they fail to respond, they must eat a “disgusting” food of their opponent’s choice. Yet the majority of the foods deemed “disgusting” are foods deeply important to Chinese culture: chicken feet, 1,000-year-old egg and bird’s saliva. When I first watched the segment, I remember feeling shocked and a bit saddened that the food I had long considered not only “normal,” but a part of my own conception of “home,” was being ridiculed and laughed at. 

Shunning Chinese food feeds into this larger narrative of “othering” Chinese food and identity while profiting off of it for entertainment value. This goes beyond a “lunchbox moment.” When white cookbook authors build their entire careers off of being “authorities” on Chinese food and when restaurant owners project their own ideas onto Chinese food to make it “upscale” or “trendy,” we run into a serious problem of not only cooptation but the idea that Chinese culture should only be respected when white people produce it. 

The purpose of mentioning James Corden’s segment isn’t to say, of course, that we should stop watching that segment altogether. It is entertaining, which is what entertainment is meant to be. Yet in holding the show accountable, we should be mindful of what exactly we’re finding “entertaining” and how our consumption of entertainment reflects certain dominant discourses about Chinese Americans. 

While writing this column, I wanted to think carefully about how food reflects Chinese American identity. As a Chinese American, I believe it’s necessary to move beyond individual anger at the “lunchbox moment.” Instead, we need to move toward a collective understanding of the implications of subverting that narrative. I would implore everyone to think more critically about what — and how — they consume, whether it’s TV segments about food, food writing or food itself. 

In the context of Chinese food, we ought to look more carefully at the ways that representations of Chinese food are connected to broader issues of culture and power. If reclaiming our lunchboxes means subverting that larger narrative of Chinese food being a source of entertainment or ridicule, that might mean paying more attention to what Chinese food is. 

Journalist Clarissa Wei is doing some great writing on the complexities of Chinese food. Recently, Los Angeles Times reporter Jie Jenny Zou called out a non-Chinese cookbook author on Twitter for describing Asian supermarkets as “full of strange and alien ingredients” in her writing. In addition to so many Chinese writers speaking out about the necessity of nuanced perspectives when it comes to food, we have actual Chinese-owned Chinese restaurants who have been hit hard by anti-Chinese rhetoric and racist attacks amid the coronavirus pandemic. We should take the time to acknowledge these individuals who are doing necessary work within their communities to truly understand the significance of Chinese food for Chinese Americans. 

Throughout “Soft Power,” I intend to focus on my personal response to culture across national boundaries and the empowerment of the individual and collective through cultural criticism and understanding. I hope that, in turn, we can rethink our ideas of “soft power” beyond American political scientist Joseph Nye’s definition of it in international relations — a country’s power derived primarily from cultural resources — and apply it to our understanding of our own identities and the cultural forces that shape them.

Valerie Wu is a sophomore writing about the arts and pop culture in relation to her Chinese American identity. Her column “Soft Power” runs every other Monday.