There’s No Room for #Bairenfan in an Asian Stomach

Disclaimer: obviously, not all white people eat as if they were born without any taste buds. I’ve felt transcendence from a French onion soup to a gas station Texas barbecue. A week of binge-eating in Taiwan never fails to drum up an intense craving for a slice of pizza, a cheeseburger or even the simplicity of a cheese and tomato sandwich done right, with mayo and onion chutney. White people food is a gross generalization that isn’t so much about race but about the complete obliteration of culture in favor of economy of time, efficiency, and profit margins. It’s about pre-packaged and whole foods that are presented without any feeling other than the omnipresent pressure to get on to the next thing, to be more productive.

White people food as a racist euphemism for bland food in the hyper-capitalistic era makes more sense when you examine the reasons that drove this white people food trend Chinese Internet users adopted: add no spice nor feeling to your food, to help separate work lunches from one’s regular life. Perhaps the reason why this trend took off is that it’s a visceral backlash to a life chained to a desk, in which one has little time to savor long meals with friends. By depriving oneself of flavor that makes life worth living while at work, it verges upon a work/life separation of Severance levels. A whole new meaning to #saddesklunch.

Another marker of white people food, besides it being “the lunch of suffering,” is that it’s processed as little as possible. Whole tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, apples. But the processing rule doesn’t apply to plastic-wrapped bread with a four-week shelf life or Ritz crackers. Industrially processed food is just fine. Cold cuts sliced by machines. The spirit of white people food is a sometimes contradictory mash-up of convenience and nutrition.

Processing, in Asian food terms, means chopping. And that chopping is done with dedicated love.

Processing, in Asian food terms, means chopping. And that chopping is done with dedicated love. The soundtrack of my childhood dinners and family gatherings would always kick off with a chorus of knives hitting wooden chopping boards—my mother, post-work, chopping garlic, shallots, scallions, and cilantro. Hand-mincing meat. Cubing tofu. Wrapping wontons.

It’s easy to give into the convenience of Western food, especially now as a mother myself, living in France. A pre-made roast chicken can be bought, and muffin or cookie can be grabbed at any time, from mostly anywhere—though anytime I see one of those desserts, I can just imagine my mother trying it, wincing, before proclaiming her distaste, “Too sweet.”

When my almost 1-year old started weaning to solid foods, I reluctantly gave her boiled carrots that had been mashed into a puree, on the advice of my French mother-in-law. Incidentally, nearly all French soups are essentially Western baby food: pureed butternut squash, pureed chestnuts, or basically any vegetable that’s been blasted to bits with heaping amounts of butter and cream.

My husband grew up eating meals like blanched asparagus with a mayonnaise sauce, white veal steaks in a creamy egg velouté, and simple salads. Breakfast was usually something sweet, like bread and jam, and dessert was served at every meal. But I grew up eating xi fan, zha jiang mian, ku gua bitter melon, and if we ever had dessert it was meticulously sliced fruit or a taro sago soup on special occasions.

I can’t help but feel that there’s something more urgent and visceral about her developing an Asian stomach rather than an Asian tongue.

The caveat: all of these meals take far more work chopping and cooking. For dinners, it’d be far easier to toss a chicken and some vegetables in a one-pot dish and save an hour on chopping and cleaning alone. This extra hour a day could be used to teach my child Mandarin. And yet—I can’t help but feel that there’s something more urgent and visceral about her developing an Asian stomach rather than an Asian tongue. I have turned into my mother and spend at least 30 minutes a day just chopping green onions and garlic.

Language can deceive us—even native speakers can lose their fluency after having lived in a new country for long enough. And anyway, a language can only communicate between two people who understand it. Food circumvents the vocal cords and goes straight to the gut. I often think about this scene from Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner:

“We sit here in silence, eating our lunch. But I know we are all here for the same reason. We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy. Then we separate. We bring the haul back to our dorm rooms or our suburban kitchens, and we re-create the dish that couldn’t be made without our journey. What we’re looking for isn’t available at a Trader Joe’s. H Mart is where your people gather under one odorous roof, full of faith that they’ll find something they can’t find anywhere else.”

My Asian food culture was always about communicating love even when nobody shared the words. It was said through the sweat lost standing over a fiery wok even when your feet were aching and there was no air conditioning.

Zauner isn’t fluent in her mother’s native Korean, but their love transcended language. It was communicated through homemade kimchi. Yet for some cultures—with white people food as the standall scapegoat—food isn’t a celebration or demonstration of love. Food is merely an avenue toward health and nutrition, or at the very least sustenance. The most efficient route is taken, on individual schedules. My Asian food culture was always about communicating love even when nobody shared the words. It was said through the sweat lost standing over a fiery wok even when your feet were aching and there was no air conditioning.

I want my daughter’s food to transport her across the world back to the memories deep in my own gut brain. I chop garlic and shallots, every day, pan-fry her tofu and offer her wood ear mushrooms. She’s tried rinsed kimchi, tripe, enoki mushroom, red bean paste, steamed eggs, xi fan, and seaweed. I go out of my way to make sure she tastes these foods alongside Roquefort cheese, rotisserie chicken, bread, and roasted ham. I actively prevent her from eating cakes and madeleines—not just because sugar isn’t great for you, but because I don’t want her to have a Western threshold for sweetness.

When my daughter is older, I don’t know that she’ll hold long conversations in Mandarin with her wai po. What I do know is that she’ll have the smell of stinky tofu seared into her core memories when we go on a trip this fall, and that she’ll remember the taste of her wai po’s scallion pancakes. I can only hope that later on in life, she won’t be condemned to a life where she’ll have to eat bland sandwiches to mark an unsatisfactory work life. I hope that she’ll live to eat, not eat to live. I hope that every time she’ll taste mapo tofu or sit down for a hot pot extravaganza, she’ll too, remember my chopping. That the taste of garlic will be like a healing balm of love. That when she’s offered a donut or brownie, she’ll wince, think of me, my grandmother, and say, “Too sweet.”