Preliminary Research
Brainstorming
Web Research
China’s long history and architectural style
Food culture
Chinese Traditional Market
Luck Figures
Vendors Connecting With American Culture
Culture Combination: Tattoos
Alcohol
Library Resource
Exploration: A Deep Look Into Chinatown
As we stumbled through Chinatown in the flowing crowds, we were amazed by the abundant shops and various flashing lights it incorporated. It is an area in the city with endless energy. People with different cultural backgrounds come here and make connections here. It’s a place where true culture combination happens. As a group with great interest of Chinese food culture, we approach Chinatown from this specific aspect and try to dig out more from it into discovering a country’s slowing evolving, diversifying cultural background.
Abundant Shops in Chinatown
Flyers, Paints and Advertising Boards
The food culture in Chinatown resembles values. In the multiple times we have visited Chinatown, we went to a dim sum place called “Golden Unicorn”. We found dim sum to be a really big culture not only celebrated by Chinese culture but also American culture. The line was extremely long each time we went there, and we always got a number ticket to wait to be seated. Through our observation and later research, we find it interesting that culture difference can reflect on people’s eating habits.
First-hand Data Collection
Golden Unicorn Dim Sum Place 10.29 Sunday Morning
Even some difference can slowly faded away, there are certain cultural barriers that remain hard to be broken. For example, in China, people celebrate the culture of eating every part of an animal. This includes chicken hearts, chicken feets, pig brains and pork livers. Most of Americans find this act to be cruel and unacceptable. Moreover, the way Chinese eat pork belly with the pig skin and the outside fat is being considered as disgusting. Coming from a different history background, there are also certain ways how chinese people preserve and cook food raise extreme discomforts in American eyes. For example, the century egg, is a typical kind of preserved egg Chinese people love to eat, sometimes raw with soy sauce and sometimes cooked with congee. This typical kind of eggs can be traced back to 500 years ago, the Chinese Ming Dynasty. “To make the eggs, a vat is typically filled with a combination of strong black tea, lime, salt and freshly burned wood ashes, and is left to cool overnight. The next day, duck, quail or chicken eggs are added to the mixture, and they soak anywhere from seven weeks to five months – not for a century as the name implies.” Neglecting how much efforts Chinese have put to make the century eggs, American people find it the one of the most disgusting food around the world and people have described the taste as rotten eggs. Not only this cultural grey zone in food selection raise our attention, but also the way how Chinese people celebrate table manners from Americans.
Chinese Food Raised Extreme Discomforts in American Eyes
When we went to the hot pot place in Chinatown called “99 Favor Taste”, we noticed that it is usual to share a selection of dishes. As we think deep into the cultural background and go through deeper research, we hypothesize that this is because in Chinese culture, people value collectivism. Not to mention, Chinese people also find it significant to not leave any leftovers of certain foods. In Chinese food culture, people believe that every part of the animal that is edible should be a dish because it provides many different nutrients that can be beneficial to their diet.
99 Favor Taste Hot Pot Place 11.1 Wednesday Night
We also discovered some interesting customs from our interviews and observations. In China, when a group of people are being seated on a dinner table, whoever that’s the oldest or the most admirable should sit on the seat that faces to the door entrance. Moreover, because in China there is not a prohibition law for the underages drinking alcohol. It’s actually encouraged and considered polite for younger ones to exchange toasts with the elders, disregarding the ages. Sometimes a 5-years-old is being praised for being able to be take a sip of the Baijiu (White Spirits), a typical kind of high concentrated Chinese alcohol. In the southern area of the China, mainly in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, when people are eating dim sum, it is considered to be a conventional manner for younger people to pour tea for the elders whenever they see their cups are empty. In return, whoever recieve tea will tap the table twice to say “thank you”.
Baijiu
Tea
There are also many food that are important in Chinese holiday traditions. During Chinese New Year, it is important to eat dumplings because the way dumplings are made and wrapped is to purposely make it look like a gold shaped object that symbolizes luck. Furthermore, during the moon festival, it is also a tradition to eat moon cakes. Many of the foods that are made and eaten during Chinese celebrations are usually very abundant and rich in different flavors and nutrients. In recent years, chinese people even start to add edible gold onto their dishes to represent fortune and luck.
Dumplings Symbolized Luck (Gold Shape)
Another aspect that drives us into further research as we wandered around Chinatown is the display of food and vegetables in Chinese traditional market. We went into a couple of markets in Chinatown and Zak found extreme disgusting and uncomfortable of how the meat and vegetable are displayed and introduced to their customers. There were still blood on the meat, and flies were all flying around. It was hard for Zak not to concern about the quality of the food there. However, me and Kelly seemed to be adapted and relaxed going around that environment because of our Chinese background. Going through further research, we found that in China that’s actually how people get their food. In fact, the one we went to actually had already been modernized. With air conditioner running on, the environment were more comfortable to shop in than in most of the traditional markets in China. In China, traditional markets are built in obsolete wooden house. It is usually an open space with a lot of trash discarded on the floor. Depending on the weather, the inside of the market can be really humid and hot in the summer or extremely cold in the winter. It’s definitely a much worser environment to shop in. However, surprisingly, Chinese people can accept the condition and feel satisfied shopping under such an environment due to the cheaper prices.
Chinese Traditional Market with Raw Meat Displayed
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “a nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people”. It’s interesting see how Chinatown has survived in New York, the one of most originating places of American culture’s heart and soul, with its own cultural identity and people. It’s a truly combination of culture differences and its existence will definitely challenge the idea of cultural singularity and monopoly in United State. As new ideas continues to bump into each other, nobody can predict where globalization will eventually us. Will American culture still be just American? Will Chinese culture still be just Chinese? We don’t know. All we know is that it’s going to be a magical and mysterious process.
Visual Analysis Graph
Final Deliverables : A series of posters inspired by the Food Cultural Gaps between Americans and Chinese
Poster 1: Century Egg vs. Normal Egg
“Black” or “White”
Poster 2: Chicken Feet Vs. Human Hand
“friends”
Poster 3: Naked Displayed Hanging Chicken Vs. Falling Human
“fly”
