General Tso’s chicken (by 1973) is an American dish that is found in Chinese restaurants all over the US – yet is little known in China, even in General Tso’s hometown where they have General Tso’s Liquor.
General Tso’s chicken is made up of pieces of boneless chicken that are deep fried and covered in a sweet sauce. It is often served with broccoli and rice. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets are almost certainly based on it.
Most Americans see it as “Chinese” – even though broccoli comes from Italy and deep-fried chicken is unmistakably American. It was created and mostly cooked by Chinese Americans, but, as Restructure! points out:
“Some White Americans use “Chinese food” as an example of Chinese people being unassimilable and not adapting to American culture. (Some White Americans even believe that the popularity of “Chinese food” in the United States shows how Americans accommodate and embrace minority cultures.) The reality is that “Chinese” American food is an example of how Chinese immigrants bend over backwards to create dishes customized for White American tastes.“
White Americans think they are experiencing “another culture” when in fact they are only experiencing their own. It is not unlike disco music, which appeared about the same time.
It gets worse: Chinese restaurants and Chinese laundries are common in the US because White men considered cooking and doing laundry women’s work. That made them fields that Chinese men could enter without seeming to be a threat to White men.
Chop suey is also an American invention but, like General Tso’s chicken – and Asian Americans themselves – it is seen as perpetually “foreign”.
General Tso’s chicken is loosely based on a dish of the same name in Taiwan. It was created by Peng Chang-kuei in the 1950s. He fled to Taiwan from Hunan province in 1949 when Mao took over mainland China. Peng named the dish in honour of General Tso, an admired figure in his home province.
Peng’s “real” General Tso’s chicken is not sweet, not fried, has skin and bones and uses more soy sauce.
It was brought to the US and Americanized by T. T. Wang. It first appeared in the US in 1973 in Midtown Manhattan at his Shun Lee Palace restaurant at 155 E. 55th Street in New York. Most of his customers were not Chinese but Jewish Americans (in part because he was open on Christmas).
By 1983 General Tso’s chicken had spread across the US, coast-to-coast. Chicken McNuggets appeared that same year, Americanizing the idea yet further.
General Tso was a real person, but he never ate General Tso’s chicken: he died in 1885. We do not even know if he liked chicken.
General Tso is the Western name for Zuǒ Zōngtáng (左宗棠). He was one of the generals who put down the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the bloodiest civil war of all time. Millions upon millions died. Millions more fled China. Some came to the US and opened restaurants – General Tso’s true contribution to American cuisine.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: Restructure!, Jennifer 8 Lee, Huffington Post, Wikipedia.
See also:
- Welcome to Asian American History Month 2015
- Perpetual Foreigner stereotype
- disco
- Mock Spanish
- Taiwanese Americans
527
I knew some of this, but not all. Fascinating! Did you do a post on disco and I missed it? I know a bit about the Paradise Garage and it’s whiter version Studio 54.
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@ Shannon
The closest thing I have to a post on disco is this:
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I am not going to lie. I love General Tso’s chicken. Though this post reminds me of my thoughts when my husband and I go out to eat Japanese. It just kills me when you hear that family that claims “this is so authentic!” Ummm no. Those same people would toot their nose up at authentic Chinese or Japanese food.
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@sharinalr
Most Ethnic American food is like that. I did homestay with a family and Italian family that made their own sausage and tomato sauce but they rarely used as much cheese or meat as you see in the olive garden. They did drink expresso and eat lots of olives but the Central Italian version of Pizza was just bread with sausage, olives, slices of tomato not Tomatoe sauce, and a tasty mixture of herbs and spices. And the Nona definitely called it Pizza. Coming from Chicago, my expectation of Pizza was lasagna with pie crust which is basically what deep dish pizza is.And I was pleasantly surprised to find how simple alot of the fare was. Even the few times we had pasta there was very little tomato sauce. We had something with shredded duck meat and sauce that I can’t recall the name of but it tasted amazing.
There was actually an episode of The Girls Next Door where one of the playmates loved the Olive Garden but when she went to Italy she didn’t like Italian Food!
I llove General Tso’s chicken as well. And Pin Yin eggs, but I threw up the first time I even ate one. Just because of the color and not being used to the taste. It tasted good actually. Also shark fin soup.
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@Abagond
it’s maria regina.
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Lot’s of sugar. It’s literally layered in what is indeed a high fructose equivalent.. It really does set kids on the wrong path of food in terms of their sweet preference.
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I love this stuff i always wondered who General Tsos was and how he had a dish named after him. But i was curious if this was authentic Chinese cuisine, I doubted that it was.
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And REAL Italian pizza rarely has any meat and is pretty high on mozzarella.
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@AlitaRegina
I have found that I prefer more Authentic meals over the Americanized ones. They seem more healthy and use certain ingredients in moderation. A lot of times if you search authentic then it turns up not being authentic. I once was talking to someone about wanting authentic Chinese and they told me to try P.F. Chang’s.
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I like how the post takes General Tso’s Chicken and adds little tidbits about
– “chop suey” and “chop suey” style American Chinese restaurants
– it appearing in New York City for the first time
– Jewish Chinese food
– connecting it to the Taiping Rebellion, one of the reasons Chinese came to the USA in the first place
– the early concentration of Chinese men in the restaurant and laundry fields
– the connection to Taiwan
– where “chop suey” came from.
Chicken Tikka Masala might be a good relevant example at how Britain commercialised Indian food to make it popular with the general population.
Anyhow, I worked in a Chinese American restaurant from 1982-1985 in a majority white suburban area. When I first started, the owner referred to his shop as a “chop suey” establishment, although it was a midscale dine-in place with a bar and did not focus on take-outs, and told me that the experience I got there would be similar to any other chop suey place.
By chop suey place, it means a restaurant that geared its menu to white American tastes, with a menu consisting of items that were popular in the 1950s-1960s (think, Moo Goo Gai Pan and egg rolls), although they did have a few new additions from the late 70s (e.g., American style Moo Shu Pork). General Tso’s chicken only appeared on the menu the year I left. But that was certainly from the pressure of the white customer’s demanding that it be made available on the menu.
Another factor would be the Taiwanese immigrants who opened up restaurants looking for ways to cater to white American tastes. It is no accident that those early immigrants from Taiwan came up with ways to accommodate American palates in ways different from the Cantonese immigrants generations earlier.
I would like to understand how it is connected to Chicken McNuggets, though. Or is it just a coincidence?
Another thing that would be fascinating to discuss more is the concept of “Kosher Chinese” food. I think there was only one of those kind of restaurants in metro DC when I was growing up (I had heard about it, but never tried it), but DID get to experience it in New York City. In fact, I am almost certain that the restaurant mentioned in the post is one of those Kosher Chinese ones. I think my uncle took me to one once (maybe even that one – it was in the east upper midtown area – I worked in an office on E. 47th street, so that restaurant (Shun Lee) was not far from where I worked). They even employed Jewish people on the staff. I learned that Conservative and Orthodox Jews were CRAZY about Chinese food which they experienced from the Kosher Chinese restaurants. I worked in an insurance company where the team I was on was 1/2 Orthodox Jewish, and they ordered from the Kosher Chinese restaurants all the time. There was stuff on the menu that you normally did not see in “Chop suey” establishments. That has got to be something uniquely American.
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I also like the last line from the Restructure! link:
I do wonder if the readers and commenters on this blog think of General Tso’s Chicken as anything but American.
I also like this point in that same link:
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…like “French” fries…which you won’t find anywhere in France!!!
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@anon,
But most Americans know that French fries are not French. They will never go up to a French person and try to connect to their culture by telling them they like to eat French fries.
Not so with General Tso’s chicken.
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I think this is the Kosher Chinese place that my coworkers ordered from back in the 1990s in Manhattan.
(http://www.yelp.com/biz/eden-wok-new-york-3)
Eden Wok
“the General Tso’s chicken is also fantastic, and I’ve heard good things from fellow eaters concerning the orange chicken.”
“Eden Wok has the best kosher chinese food in the city (the best kosher chinese food in the states can be found in Maryland)”
Yes, indeed, I heard about Kosher Chinese restaurants in MD, but I did not try them yet.
Personally, I am not keen on Kosher Chinese food. It is obviously purely an American invention. I have never heard of it outside of NY and MD, but I read they also have in California.
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@jefe
That’s what happens in USA, we like to make a fusion of everything. They don’t call it the melting pot for nothing. Jewish meets Chinese meets USA–> Kosher Chinese food.
@All
Funny how General Tso Chicken is an American dish. If I went to China there wouldn’t be anything like what is seen at PF Changs & Bamboo Express. Obesity & heart disease are health crises in the USA and it is no wonder with all mass consumption of high frutose corn syrup, saturated fats, partially hydronenated & etc..
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Deep fried, coated with sweet, sugary goo. The story of American food.
Our family has hosted a series of exchange students from China. So much I could say. Most Americans, for example, might not expect that most Chinese high school students can write at length, with insight and intelligence, about Hegel.
As to food, we used to view China as a paragon of heart health. The mainstays of their diet was rice and veggies, they mostly got around by bicycle or on foot, they didn’t overeat.
However, in the big cities, many young people are consuming large quantities of American-style junk food. They are growing very large — both in height ant girth. And Western-style health issues are creeping into their population: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, etc. America’s export to the rest of the world.
The affect of diet on growth and physical size is itself interesting. North and South Korea provide a control experiment. There, the populations are genetically identical. In many cases North Koreans are siblings or cousins of South Koreans. In North Korea the average adult height is about 4′ 11″; in South K it’s about 5′ 3″. The only difference is diet.
Looking at China, in the big cities like Beijing young people growing to heights well over 6′, with weights well over 200 lbs, are commonplace. These people eat lots of McDonald’s: beef laden with steroids, lots of protein and fat.
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Yep, deep fried with syrupy goo goodness. lol.
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^^^I know right!!!
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@lifelearner
That is one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it is more along the lines of what is laid out in this post, particularly
and
Until about 1970, virtually every single Chinese American I ever met or knew who served clientele outside of Chinatown, apart from the ones who opened grocery stores in black neighborhoods in the South, came from a family that operated a restaurant or a laundry. They had to figure out how to make a living within those constraints. In areas where blacks and whites went to separate schools, Asians could not even find work as teachers.
In places like New York City, which had tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Jews, they were also compelled to adjust themselves and create dishes to serve that market. Little adjustment was needed to open laundries to wash their clothes, but to serve Jews food, they had to invent Kosher dishes suitable for their palates. They also had to open their businesses on Christmas.
What other non-Jewish cuisine was compelled to create new Kosher dishes to serve their customers, even to the point of opening dozens of restaurants serving that type of food? Do we have Kosher Mexican? Kosher Cajun? Kosher Soul?
Yet, Americans, including Jews, still see that kind of Chinese food as “foreign”, proof of how the USA embraces foreign cultures.
Phooey.
By the 1960s, we did start to have Asians going into the medical field. By 1970, whites were more willing to see an Asian doctor or dentist than hire an Asian lawyer. They were still excluded at that time from the skilled trades.
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I once was talking to someone about wanting authentic Chinese and they told me to try P.F. Chang’s.
Lmao
I…don’t even know what to say to that one. I guess if you want authentic go out of America. Go to Markham, Ontario or The Pacific Mall in Scarborough, Ontario which is the Greater Toronto area. For authentic food don’t even bother with chains, go to the ethnic enclaves and if you don’t speak the language ask someone who does to order for you.
There’s a dish called Chapulines, which is fried grasshoppers,
http://mexicanfood.about.com/od/authenticfamilyrecipes/r/chapulines.htm
that a lot hispanic people, like my Dad loves. If you go to certain places in Chicago you can even get Iguana, and honestly it tastes just like chicken.
But that’s why authentic dishes don’t work for cultural reasons. Many cultures eat animals that most Americans would consider to be pets like Iguanas and… chiquauas( they were actually bred to be eaten and when ever I see one, especially those little Peek A Boos, I just think…”chicken”.) Even the Shark Fin Soup was banned in Ontario, but it’s so good because of racism honestly. It was getting popular even with non Chinese people and that was cutting into other restaurants business so that’s why that happened. I mean it’s no more cruel than veal or foie gras or any of those of other specialty foods that basically torture the meat. I grew up hungry so as long as I eat at all I’m happy and I consider myself blessed and try focus on the taste and not what exactly it is that I’m eating or necessarily how it ended up on my plate.
So definitely travel to get authentic food. As close as you can without going to China or Italy. I dated a Cantonese guy who showed me a couple of the places I told you about in regards to Chinese food in Toronto so that’s how I do have it on good authority that the Pacific Mall in Ontario is a good place to go.Its fun regardless, because they have an arcade.
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@Sharinalr
Authentic dishes don’t get served sometimes because of a lack of key ingredients like herbs and spices too. I couldn’t find any of the bases and stocks for Hispanic food, like Masa Harina, when I was in Europe. So I had to make my own if I wanted tortillas or something because I could use Pita Bread but I don’t like the taste of flour I find it too bland. That’s why I love Chinese Cuisine and I honestly would love to visit Peru because Peruvian food apparently has a lot of Asian South American food and I’d love to try it.
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@Sharinalr
I think I already implied this too but that’s one of the reasons I’ve been such a rainbow dater too, dating people from other cultures is another awesome way to get the authentic foods. If you’re single. Always date cooks too or at restaurants compliment the chef, that’s how you get seconds. 😉
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@AliaRegina
Shark Fin is essentially tasteless. It only derives flavour from the stuff it is cooked with. It is almost indistinguishable from vegetarian “shark” fin once it is cooked.
The appeal of eating shark fin is not from its actual taste, but as a status symbol. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with racism.
Also, toxic chemicals (eg, mercury) are concentrated in apex predators like sharks. The higher up the food chain you eat, the more poison you ingest.
China has banned shark fin from its official state banquets, and many companies in Hong Kong, from HK Disneyland to HSBC have banned serving it. There is concerted effort in HK, the global epicentre of the shark fin trade, to fight it. More and more young married couples are asking their parents not to serve it at wedding banquets, as it is starting to offend the younger generation.
Regarding cruelty, it is a moot point whether it is more cruel than foie gras or veal, because it involves the capture and killing of wild animals. 70-100 million sharks are removed from the world’s ecosystems every year. It has completely unbalanced the ecosystems and the food chains and made many shark species endangered. It is more analogous to what happens in the ivory trade.
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@TeddyBearSniffer
It’s literally layered in what is indeed a high fructose equivalent.
And high fructose corn syrup has mercury in it. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again the U.S is trading partners with China for a reason. Our government poisons a lot of the stuff we eat. In tiny amounts, over time. Baking soda is contaminated with trace amounts of benzene. Mercury is a poison not a preservative. I hate the fact that our regulatory agencies seriously tried to say that once they got caught using it. If poisons were preservatives we would still eat from lead cans, but we know that lead causes violence and personality disorders, ask the Romans.
I stopped eating at most restaurants when the HB91 vaccination gave me meningitis and lupus (immune system reaction but curiously I don’t have the disorder lupus anymore after being out of the country and not consuming American Products anymore….weird that. Because I’m pretty sure I said that it was a reaction to HBN1 way back in 2009 when they diagnosed me and the doctor at the ER tried to argue with me about what exactly how exactly it is that the immune system is supposed to function but that’s a whole other discussion, lol) so I became functionally vegan and started drinking filtered water and had to live like a boy in a bubble and I still do just to protect my formerly compromised immune system and I stay far away from immune suppressants.
You obviously can’t see me but if you had seen me then, my hair was falling out, I had scalp lesions within almost a week of getting that vaccination and I JUST found out high fructose corn syrup has mercury in it earlier this week. One of the easiest ways to disguise poisons is to put it in something sweet. And HFCS is addictive, because of how intoxicatingly sweet it is. Smart, right?
It’s so sickening if you think about it. Not the dish I’m sure-if you make it at home you can swap it out with something equally sweet that isn’t also poison- but covert way a lot of things our government does destroys our bodies.
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@Jefe
Regarding cruelty, it is a moot point whether it is more cruel than foie gras or veal, because it involves the capture and killing of wild animals. 70-100 million sharks are removed from the world’s ecosystems every year. It has completely unbalanced the ecosystems and the food chains and made many shark species endangered. It is more analogous to what happens in the ivory trade.
I agree with you but you could honestly say exactly the same thing about clearing forest, particularly the rain forest, for raising domesticated animals and for agriculture. It was racist because the people against it were being really selective(as racists tend to be) about what environmental abuses they tolerated in their cuisine.
The reason why so much of, I forget which part of Africa, but I think it’s Ghana, is a desert is because of all of the domesticated animals that Muslims form Northern Africa brought with them when they invaded. And the dust bowl and ect ect. Every culture and country manages the environment horribly, because that’s basically how humans have evolved, for better or worse. White people, Canadians in particular though, love to single out Native Canadians and Asians when they say nothing about themselves or Qubecers. That’s what I didn’t like about it. How hypocritical it was. The devastating environmental effects and animal rights abuses I agree with you but I more or less am vegan for that reason but if you’re going to single out someone for that do it to the multibillion dollar corporations like Coca Cola, Monsanto, and Tyson AS WELL as the small ethnic business owners trying make a living and practicing their culture. Like do it to everyone, not just the minorities because it’s easier to single them out.
And mercury from mammalian fat is actually easier to secrete and has a shorter half life than the ethyl mercury that was injected into all of us from the vaccine schedule. If you don’t eat seafood often and the rest of your diet is healthy the negative effects from eating seafood are almost non existent. Ask the Danish, they eat a lot of fish and in the case of Faroe Islanders, Pilot Whale, and they don’t have nearly as high rates of dementia and Alzheimer as Asians who tend eat a lot mercury poisoned food and in the case of China and the U.S. use thimerasol vaccines.
I learned from experience, it’s okay to get exposed to something but not have it injected into your nucleus. Vaccines mutate your DNA and the virus that you’re injected with, because a virus is just DNA that can past the cell wall. That’s why so many people die from vaccines, that’s what SIDS and Shaken Baby Syndrome is. Especially as a baby it’s essentially like a gunshot to your genes. Mercury and those heavy metals are mutagens but if you’re just eating them or wearing them they’re not that toxic. People have evolved to be survive some toxic exposure we haven’t evolved to survive poorly conceived genetic manipulation.
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@jefe
Correction; I meant to say its NOT a moot point
if you’re going to single out someone for that do it to the multibillion dollar corporations like Coca Cola, Monsanto, and Tyson AS WELL as the small ethnic business owners trying make a living and practicing their culture. Like do it to everyone, not just the minorities because it’s easier to single them out. Like it you care so much about the environment, as those people claimed to do, care about it all the time and go after the big players not just the smaller players just to look as if you’re doing something.
It’s a lot easier for a corporation to stop a harmful practice because they have more money, asking starving poachers or family businesses to stop doing what puts food on their tables and in a lot of cases is the only wa they have to to make a living without giving them another kind of trade and pays for their childrens clothes and education is just being a racist d.ck and it’s treating the symptom not the disease which is always capitalism and economic scarcity and culturalism.
All those traditional animal hunting practices that people consider cruel animals have actually evolved their own defense against. Like elephants are breaking their young’s tusks off and finding other ways to mine the minerals they need for their diet. Animals and human beings can’t evolve to fight off ozone depletion or genetic engineering, go look at hoofless cows and pigs that get turned into what you see at the grocery store or see how genetically engineered brown roosters rape hens to death and you’ll understand what the more important thing to be concerned about it. White people love to pull that “look over at what those people” are doing b.llsh.t. Meanwhile they’re causing viral epidemics and destroying entire species but whenever you call out their sh.t they talk about profit or blame big business when they support those big business.
And when you handle thimerasol in a lab, you have to wear a hazmat suit. You can’t even breathe it in, that’s how toxic it is That’s what’s in the flu vaccinations, that’s what in the MMR vaccinations that the CDC admitted gave blakc males autism at a higher rate, and that’s whats in the vaccinations for school children legislation is currently being drafted to make mandatory.
I get where you’re coming from, and I actually only had that three times, but…I gotta keep proportion about certain things and I don’t like hypocrisy.If their principles outwaid their pragmatism those people would have banned way more environmentally devastating animal rights abuses that white people do.
That’s why I think white people need to shut the f.ck up and mind they own business because they look stupid trying to be white saviors in Africa/Asia wherever when their own governments colonialism and capitalism is the reason we all need saving.
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@Jefe
Every culture and country manages the environment horribly, because that’s basically how humans have evolved, for better or worse.
Correction again: every patriarchal culture. Indigenous cultures actually preserve and support the environment. Not that anybody lets them.
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@jefe
Wow, I never even thought about it that way. Thanks for the further analysis.
To be honest I bet there probably is a kosher soul food restaurant some where. Especially somewhere down South! I’ve see a Mexican/Soul food & Asian/Mexican restaurant before.
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I just want to say, vaccinations are mandatory for education. It’s not a choice unless you can afford private school. If you go to a doctor and say “I’m not sure this is safe I think vaccinations should wait until the baby is older(when your immune system has evolved defenses to fight off the damage they cause)”The doctors can report you to CPS for that. Even after though the CDC admitted that they’re linked to neurological disorders.
You don’t have to eat certain things that are unhealthy and problematic but you do have to eat. We all agree on that at least right? And if the only store in your neighborhood sells things like Tuna or thats all you can afford you’re already on your way to any number of disorders and combine that with the vaccines and it’s not as easy to “have a healthy lifestyle” as people think. I learned but it took me a long time and I’m not even as consistent as I should be and I suffer for it. I go to work dead on my feet because I spent all night studying for an exam when I know d.mn well I should get some rest. But that’s how it is. I can’t always afford to sleep or eat well. Even when I work two jobs. And I know it’s cutting my life span in half or killing me slowly. It is what it is. I have no power to stop a lot of what harms me. That’s why I’m so irreverent and I use a lot of black humor.
I’m single and I’m not eligible for SNAP and food actually eats up a third of my income because I eat raw fresh fruits and vegetables mostly and those are not cheap.I HAVE to eat “expensively” because not doing that will make me sick. I made the mistake of eating a tiny amount of tuna and it gave me a migraine for the next two days. It was a free meal too so I felt rude refusing it and I took my chances to cut my expenses back but I just cannot eat a lot of the foods that pantries and churches give away. Half of what I get I have to throw out because I know how sick it will make me. And most of what I buy isn’t sold in my neighborhood it’s sold in nicer neighborhoods that are miles away that I have to spend money and time, that I don’t always have, to get to. Almonds and Aloe Vera juice are a luxury that I just can’t afford sometimes even though they’re clearing up my scars.
All of this is just to buy groceries or even be able to eat in a way that doesn’t render me useless for days. I never had this issue in Europe or Canada because housing/healthcare costs were subsidized just for perspective. Food was expensive there, but it is everywhere. Bananas used to be 0.33 at Walmart now they’re 1.28. That’s what poverty is. I had to basically force myself to stop ” not letting food go to waste” because I constantly try to save things or feel compelled to eat things that I know I shouldn’t, to avoid being rude or ungrateful or bringing about the wrath of the universe for being wasteful.
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@AlitaRegina,
You are basically resorting to a Broken Record argument (eg, the Arab Trader argument – see (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/the-arab-trader-argument/) ) to justify behaviour such as eating shark fin because, after all, no “cultures” or “peoples” have done a good job of managing the environment effectively so it is wrong to single out any single one to point a finger at.
That argument is about as morally bankrupt as they come.
In any case, no one is pointing a finger at any race or ethnicity or “culture” for this. It is not really a race issue per se. Even the Chinese are struggling with this issue amongst themselves.
The fact is simply that over a billion sharks have disappeared in the past few decades. How can eating shark fin be a sign of being savvy about “foreign” cuisines? Anyhow, shark fin is essentially tasteless.
In Chinese culture, eating shark fin is a tradition as a status symbol, similar to owning pieces of carved ivory. It is a Cantonese handicraft to carve ivory balls within several other carved ivory balls. On my first visit to Guangzhou in 1984, I bought a couple to give as gifts to people back in the USA. I was very young and did not understand where ivory came from.
Neither shark fin consumption nor ivory carvings have anything to do with being savvy about non-western cultures. And it has nothing to do with the rights of ethnic minorities to practice their culture. Most of the younger generation has already abandoned this practice, and both China and Hong Kong have active public education campaigns to stop the trade. Much of the ivory and shark fin smuggled into China comes through HK and are seized by customs officials.
Admittedly, China has been reluctant to sign CITES schedules that include endangered shark species and importing shark fin is not a crime. They could do better.
I did not address anything about animal rights abuses – you did. That was strictly your point that you brought up again. That had nothing to do with my point. I was likening it more to poaching of elephants and tigers for stuff like ivory or medicines, the willful extermination of animal species for their body parts.
As you may know, tigers and elephants have been extirpated in China in the wild already. Yes, I know that the dodo bird was wiped out in Mauritius and the Tasmanian devil was wiped out in mainland Australia. The American cougar has been extirpated in Eastern North America. We can point fingers at other people if you want.
Also, sharks are not mammals. They are fish. The point about the high concentration of mercury is simply to point out that eating shark is not really necessarily that good for you either healthwise.
I have an interest in this topic because I am an executive officer of a Marine Conservation charity based in Hong Kong, which was formed in 2007. My group does not focus on sharks, but about marine ecology in general, but we do liaise with the groups that do focus on sharks. HK is the epicentre of the global shark fin trade, so it is logical that the groups fighting to ban the shark fin trade converge in HK. Next week I am giving a talk on marine conservation to a group of kids in HK and they asked me to say something about sharks.
I am also a member of a local task force advising the government on marine biodiversity and the effect of marine use on local biodiversity. I am trying to get a good handle on what activities are destructive and which are not as much.
It is completely disingenuous for you to suggest that the effort to clamp down on the global shark fin trade has anything to do with racism or singling out any single ethnic culture. Even Yao Ming is very active in promoting to ban the shark fin trade. Are you trying to say that he trying not to be Chinese?
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@lifelearner
I seriously doubt it. If there were to be one, it would have to be where there are at least tens of thousands of Jews living in close proximity. We have kosher chinese restaurants in New York City, and I know there are some in Maryland surrounding DC and Baltimore. I read that there are some in LA.
If there were Kosher soul, Kosher Mexican, Kosher Japanese, Kosher Italian, Kosher Cajun, etc. they would likely have to be concentrated in those metropolitan areas. If New York city does not have it, you will not find it down South, except maybe near Miami.
Re: Soul food, how could it ever be Kosher? Just think about it for a second.Can you think of any soul food chef who might bend over backwards to invent dishes suitable for orthodox Jews?
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@Jefe
You are basically resorting to a Broken Record argument (eg, the Arab Trader argument – see (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/the-arab-trader-argument/) ) to justify behaviour such as eating shark fin because, after all, no “cultures” or “peoples” have done a good job of managing the environment effectively so it is wrong to single out any single one to point a finger at.
No I’m not because I don’t agree with it when anyone does it. One just has a much more devastating long lasting impact that the people than the other one does. And I don’t judge other people for what they do if it only affects them because I don’t feel it’s my place, or anyone’s place to tell people what to eat unless you’re going to feed them or pay for their food. I don’t think any culture has the “right” to tell another one how to live unless they’re doing something that’s harming that culture and by far white people are currently winning that competition, I mean they fought so hard to have all that money and the power that comes with money therefore they have all the responsibility and they constantly try to have it both ways, so I was actually making the opposite of that argument if you actually read what I wrote.
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@jefe
I did not address anything about animal rights abuses – you did. That was strictly your point that you brought up again. That had nothing to do with my point. I was likening it more to poaching of elephants and tigers for stuff like ivory or medicines, the willful extermination of animal species for their body parts.
I didn’t either if you knew about why people advocated Sharkfin be banned thats the arguments that THEY used which I though were a conveinent cover for Asian racism. I wasn’t even actually talking about it to YOU at all I was talking to Sharinalr and you brought up the same covert Asian/Africa racism those people were using.
If one thing is bad, all of it is. I just wish white people would stop dictating to other people and get their own sh.t together, because they are actively messing up thing and they still haven’t cleaned up even past messes enough to say anything to anyone else. Yes them especially and most of all. And it was racist. Its not as white culture cares about the environment or animal rights abuses… or anyone but themselves.No culture really does but other cultures don’t constantly dictate to everyone else all the time and they mind their own business. If white culture really cared about animals they wouldn’t have zoos or aquariums. Or buy so much ivory for that matter. In that particular case with the banning of shark fin soup it was just covert racism. They just didn’t want Chinese people competing with them.
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The point about the high concentration of mercury is simply to point out that eating shark is not really necessarily that good for you either healthwise.
Neither are vaccines and the method of action of those mutates your DNA. You know that stuff that controls everything else in your body including cell reproduction? That stuff? The stuff that causes autism in black males.
One is mandatory for basic education the other one you “sort of” have a choice about.
And my brother or millions of other black males never had shark fin soup. he did have 33 vaccinations though.One of which is MMR.
Are you trying to ban those too? No one is. Because….?
It is completely disingenuous for you to suggest that the effort to clamp down on the global shark fin trade has anything to do with racism or singling out any single ethnic culture. Even Yao Ming is very active in promoting to ban the shark fin trade. Are you trying to say that he trying not to be Chinese?
It has everything to do with white people or people who share their interests but are not white, acing as if white people are any “superior” authority on anything. That’s what any -ism is by basic definition. Therefore them banning a cultural dish from someone else culture was about them was more about them proving their own “cultural superiority” over Asians in this case the Chinese and acting like White Culture is a moral or environmental authority on naything when……
I am also a member of a local task force advising the government on marine biodiversity and the effect of marine use on local biodiversity. I am trying to get a good handle on what activities are destructive and which are not as much.
It’s cute that you have a passion. I respect that. I had/have(still not sure) Lupus. My sister has Lupus. My littlest brother has Autism/ADHD. My other brother almost died from bacterial pneumonia and menengitis from the tetanus booster vaccination.
It’s cute you got hobbies, everyone where I’m from has cancer:
http://wethepeoplemedia.org/altgeld-gardens-environmental-issues/
They actually settled a class action lawsuit. A whole block of homes of people and individuals and their families. Human beings that were systematically poisoned by their environment….that was made by other human being who were white.
Sharkfin soup I never had any issues with I think animals and us are constantly evolving and the idea that they need special interests groups to “protect” (control) them when nobody gives a f.ck about human beings, who are babies just makes whatever environmental arguments white people try to make laughable especially. The sharks can save themselves honestly. They don’t need human saviors they just need humans to leave them alone. People can barely manage their own affairs or that of others. That is why white folks need to fix their sh.t before they try to get into other people’s business. They just look like the hypocrites they are trying to tell anyone else anything.
And this is mad off topic but we can continue in the open thread if you want.
@Abagond
Sorry, I’m done.
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@Jefe
It is completely disingenuous for you to suggest that the effort to clamp down on the global shark fin trade has anything to do with racism or singling out any single ethnic culture. Even Yao Ming is very active in promoting to ban the shark fin trade. Are you trying to say that he trying not to be Chinese?
They’re white, they forced black mothers to give their children something that causes a neurological disorder in order to have a basic education and then they covered it up. Thats just the most recent edition of that episode of their “culture”. IDGAF what people who use other people as guinea pigs, and then lie about, have to say about what anyone else eats. No one with any sense does because…consider the source.
Chinese and Russian gangs traffic a lot of women(and Men) for Canada’s sex trade but curiously last time I was there parliament struck down the bawdy house law because all the men in that country love to visit those illegal “rug and tugs”. Knowing that the people in them are being held hostage and that they’re using their economic security being in the majority gives them to take advantage of a power imbalance…to get their d*cks wet. And since largely white men support that with their bodies and their wallets, it continues to this day and as of now nothing legally can be done to stop it. (But advocates painted THAT as a feminist issue when it was really the best thing they could have done…. to support white male supremacy but they won’t realize that until white men stop marrying them because they can buy Asian/Russian brides domestically instead of having to import them or travel like they used to.)
I just don’t think white people have any cultural, moral or otherwise authority they just had a majority in Canada and they just wanted to compete with Asians in some area they could actually win in since they clearly can’t compete with Asian engineering or academics, and they chose that just to flex their white superiority muscle and ,b> gang up on a minority And Canadians pride themselves on being multicultural when they they know d.mn well they mean cultural hierarchy with whites at the top. That’s what annoyed me about it.
That’s all I got to say and we clearly have two very different perspectives on it And I thought and still think there were way more important issues for people to take a stand on there in that particular instance especially.
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@AlitaRegina,
How does this have to do with white people?
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@Jefe
The majority of people in Canada are white and the majority of people who wanted that dish banned were White People. That’s who proposed that piece of legislation, that’s who voted for it to be passed.
Let me tell you, something, because I think your heart is in the right place but your argument is flawed and you need some perspective:
You think meat processing in general doesn’t harm the environment?
Have you ever seen a farm or a slaughterhouse? Because I have.
Have you smelled the blood? Because I have.
Have you smelled the manure that runs off into the groundwater that people from the surrounding communities have to drink? Because I have.
Or watched genetically engineered chickens get raped to death by a rooster so pumped up on steroids and antibiotics he doesn’t even know how to do his biological function and rule the roost? I have: the Hen screams and then the Rooster cuts her throat with his spurs. and I was so horrified I asked WTF was going on and they just told me, “They do that all the time. It’s because of Tyson company.” Non genetically modified roosters can be aggressive enough to rape chickens, and other roosters, but not to that point. And it was just as horrible as it sounds.
Have you seen chickens who live their very brief lived covered in their own feces and cannibalizing their own eggs? I have. I cleaned a chicken coop many a time and they’re absolutely disgusting. Pigs are actually very clean they just don’t sweat that’s why they cool themselves in mud. Even genetically modified Hogs have more intelligence, cleanliness and compassion than chickens do.
Have you seen how depressed domesticate and wild animals get from being in captivity? They actively become suicidal that’s why they get tranquilizers. I know I’ve seen castrated bulls and hogs who get angry be sedated. And they get hooked onto the tranquilizers to just a human would. They go into withdrawal and fight if they don’t get their dosage on time. Because they’re on so many hormones and steroids their testosterone is out of control.
That’s not normal by the way. That’s not from nature that’s from man.
But you know what the difference for me is? Everyone needs to eat. Everyone eats some kind of meat.
But Men don’t need sex. Women may need to sell sex to survive, or if they’re being forced to but Men don’t die of horniness it just doesn’t happen. You don’t need to rape someone to put food on your plate. And sex during slavery is rape. If you’re brought over to completely different country where you don’t speak the language or know anyone and you’re travel documents are taken away so that you can’t leave, that’s slavery. White Canadian men don’t need cheap sex from victims of trafficking.
White Canadians don’t want to interfere in the Chinese community when it comes to trafficking, especially the diseases White men who visit those places spread and give to women in and out of those brothels but the White Canadians want to dictate to the Chinese community about what they can eat?!
GTFOH with that. It’s funny how White Canadians will treat sex trafficking like its an ethnic community problem when all the people who financially support trafficking, with their wallets and their d.cks by population are, by MAJORITY, white men. Over the age of 40 because they have the most money for discretionary spending. But White Canadians voted to strike down the bawdy house law, the one law that allows rub and tugs to be prosecuted for trafficking people.
But Shark Fin Soup was what had to be banned? Really? Really? They’d rather save some sharks on the other side of the world but turn a blind eye to their politicians essentially legalizing sex slavery. They care more about Asian and African animals than Asians and Africans.
One of the easiest ways to disguise racism is to have a disproportionate reaction to something trivial, like strangling someone to death for selling cigarettes. Or shooting someone to death for playing their music too loud. Or shooting someone for running away from you. Or shooting someone for being a different color and walking around at night in a neighborhood that they live in. Or shooting someone for knocking on your door in the middle of the night. Or getting sucker punched and then raping the nearest person who for the description but didn’t even punch you with a broom handle and bragging about.
And unlike White people, those Chinese Restaurants weren’t forcing anyone to eat SharkFin Soup they were just being Chinese and enjoying traditional cuisine.
White Canadians and White People in general, through their direct or indirect actions are actively creating or forcing things on everyone else that they would never want being done to them. Try to white people not to eat foie gras or visit body rubs. Or those same chickens that end up in the grocery store. Or those same crops grown from genetically engineering terminator seeds.
But I have to be forced to take a vaccination that give me an immune response so string it almost kills me and permanently disables me to be a nurse. I bet the people who manufacture vaccines, and the people who sit on Administration Commiities and work in labs world wide are White would commit seppuku if vaccinations or any kind of medical treatment was mandatory for them like it is for healthcare workers and military service members. And it as deadly as that stuff is if I get sick give me paid sick leave to stay at home. Don’t force me to take a vaccine that might permanently disable me just to keep me on the clock constantly.
That’s what white people have to do with it. They’re constantly forcing things on people but refusing to take responsibility the consequences of what they do but then they have the nerve to talk about other people?
It was white people and they were being racist. All the xenoestrogens, and chemical runoff and plastics are probably more dangerous to the sharks anyway since you can only die once. Once a gene is disabled or deleted as far as we know it’s gone. White people have made entire ethnic groups and species extinct. They have no room to tell Chinese people anything. The Chinese people were being Chinese and eating traditional cuisine and minding their own business. The sharks didn’t ask white people to some save them. Nobody did they’re just being controlling d.cks and that’s what I couldn’t about the issue.
If Chinese want to kill sharks in their ocean that’s not my concern, I’m too busy doing me and taking care of and improving myself because I’m not perfect, nobody is and the Bible said let he who is without sin cast the first stonefor that reason.
Chinese people aren’t forcing me to eat Shark Fin Soup to get a basic education or keep a career. Poachers in Africa aren’t forcing me to buy Ivory. If White people wanted to end poaching and prostitution they’d do like the Netherlands did and ban it outright and punish the people who buy Ivory and Sex. But they won’t do something like that if the primary consumers of an illegal harmful substance are white and that’s just the d.mn truth.
This week especially I don’t want hear any arguments supporting the bullsh.t that White people advocate, invent, or do. I’m tired of hearing White people run their f.cking mouths, they need to shut f.ck up, sit down somewhere and focus on the problems in their own community before they try to “fix” the problems in anybody else’s.
White people have YET to even take responsibility for ANY of their f.ckups, which were largely cruel and intentional so they can k.ss my a.s in regards to that Shark Fin Soup Ban. It was good. It didn’t make me sick either so maybe the Shark Fin I ate had less mercury in it than the tuna I had at the church dinner.
I’ll go out and buy a bowl of Shark Fin Soup right now and I dare one of them to come up and talk sh.t. to me. Or anybody.
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@Jefe
Sh.t if we’re being honest there’s no non brutal way to hunt and butcher something. All of it’s brutal. None of it is humane and anyone who tells you halal or kosher or something is more humane they’re lying. Go watch it get done and then see if you can stomach eating ANY meat after. That’s why I don’t eat meat anymore unless I can’t afford not to. And people have to eat something. Some people just have different preferences. Some people eat genetically modified crops and meats laced with cancer causing hormones, other people like to eat pin yin eggs, and dì yáng. Everything that’s horrible for the Environment is done by and for the benefit of White People and they do it the most, the worst and it has longer lasting more far reaching impact.
I’ve seen Pigs get slaughtered if you have to kill something I don’t think you should be cruel about it and I don’t get how a human being could and live with themselves but the only way to get meat is to hunt and kill something or raise it, fatten it up and then kill it and have it butchered. Thats why butchers exist in the first place. People can’t kill something they’ve grown attached to so they give the job to someone else because people have to eat. Even if you wait for the animal to die of old age, it still has to, and it will, die no matter what.
The only issue I sort of had with Shark Fin Soup was that one of the things I heard was that SOME of the people who harvest it just cut the fin off and leave the animal in the Ocean to die, which is cruel and it’s a waste, but other than that it didn’t sound any worse than the Whale Hunting that White Danish Faroe Islanders do, that nobody cares about or is trying to actively stop.
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This issue is not about white people,
unlike General Tso’s chicken.
But General Tso’s chicken is of U.S. origin rather than Canadian.
Interesting how you appropriate symbols of both “white” “Chinese” & other “ethnic” cultures.
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@jefe
I was talking about authentic ethnic cuisine, and again NOT TO YOU, and in the context of that main discussion, I mentioned why most ethnic American cuisine isn’t authentic and where I’d had some and what I had eaten that I enjoyed and though was authentic. Shark Fin Soup is as authentic as Chinese food goes and I thought it was something cool to try, if Sharinalr wanted authentic food, and yes you can still get it Toronto. I was telling her to, just that I had tried it, along with Pin Yin Eggs and that I thought it was banned because of a race issue.
And again I wasn’t even talking to you in the first instance.
And how am I appropriating? Canada isn’t a majority white country? Faroe Islanders aren’t white people who also hunt and butcher marine animals and yet don’t have legislation banning the consumption of pilot whale like Shark Fin, which is largely consumed by Asian people? I don’t see any difference
I just don’t see any difference between this:
and this:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/23/massachusetts-ban-shark-fin-trade/S1eoogIdZ8W9UbqalQguQO/story.html
Except that one is being actively attacked and legislated against when it’s done by a group of non white people. And the other, nobody necessarily like but no one is forcing it to be stopped when it’s practiced by white people. If they’re both the same wrong, and you clearly feel that shark hunting is wrong and harmful to the environment, I don’t know why you don’t seem to care about the Danish people that do it for the same cultural reasons?
Is there a difference that I’m not seeing that you are for some reason? Can you explain that to me at least?
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@Jefe
I’ve eaten pilot whale also when I was in the Caribbean not Denmark, it tastes like a very salty and meat jerkyish in texture… or a piece of one, and I didn’t have any issue with either group of people eating it. But I guess I was “appropriating”….whale hunting and fishing culture, even though lots of island dwelling people of all races, like the black people in St. Vincent’s eat it? And it’s actually been around for all of human history?
I suspect they’d eat Sharks in the islands too if they weren’t so afraid of them. But many Island people eat whales, dolphins, and sharks. Sh.t they’re in the middle of the ocean, it’s not like they have as many other options as land blocked people do.
Like do you even want to make your argument look even more ignorant and ridiculous and out of it’s depth than it already does or are you quite finished?
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@Jefe
White people get to keep and profit from their barbaric cultural traditions and nobody else does. Got it. Thanks.
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@ Abagond and Everyone
Sorry. I’m not gonna feed the trolling backbiting comments. I just though he was actually in earnest and not attention wh..ing.
@Sharinalr
I still think Shark Fin Soup and any traditional cultural cuisine tastes different but is equally as appetizing if you can find it and in some cases get used to the difference in texture, taste and spice. But everybody can’t and that’s cool too. I find most ethnic American cuisine to be so laughably different from the originals I have tried that it makes me want to go out and try more different cultural dishes also. But except for when it’s poisoned and unsafe, I rarely have issues with any food. Because food is a blessing and it’s probably one of the best “free” things in life when it’s not being meddled with. I love and will probably eat all of it. No matter how made up and weirdly divorced from the mother culture it is.
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Mexicans say the same things about “Mexican Food.” The tacos in Mexico are nothing like most of the tacos served in the U.S. And of course the Burrito (Little donkey) was unknown. The entire Taco Bell menu is obviously a fabrication.
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@Kiwi
I was going to link a documentary that talked about the whale hunting in the Faroe Islands and how people feel about but I decided not to bother because it clearly wasn’t a serious argument- but the researcher basically said when pictures of it leaked there was general outrage about the fact that people who looked so “white” were doing something so “aboriginal”.
http://retrieverman.net/2012/08/17/the-truth-about-the-faroese-pilot-whale-harvest/
…. When if any dumba.s person stopped to think about the geography of where those people live, they would understand why they hunt whales since the live in the middle of f.cking ocean and you can’t farm the sea. The only way to eat is to hunt what’s swimming around you. It’s EXPENSIVE to import things and since I think everyone should mind their business, I would support any local supplier that’s apart of the community over and non local one any day.
Some foods like chitterlins and fry bread are problematic and unhealthy but people eat them for cultural and hunger reasons. Sense memories, especially those linked to food are the hardest memories to dispel and I doubt anyone who’s hungry enough has the will to ignore them all of the time.
Eating luxuriously is a status symbol in every culture. Lobsters weren’t always considered a luxurious food either, but people still see them that way. And as a Vegan, all human agriculture animal domestication is problematic to me, just for different reasons. All of it. I’m still consuming animals anyway because the phosphorus that fertilizes the soil my vegetables and fruits are grown in probably comes from animal bone meal, like it always has, all throughout human history. That’s why farms used to have pigeons, because there’s no other way to get it, except maybe strip mining which if I have to pick I’d say kill the pigeon, not ravage the earth-because that will kill all of us, the pigeon included. When I’m dead and buried all the fungus and bacteria will consume me and turn me into nitrogen for the humus that seedlings grow in and the circle of life will continue so I’ll pay back the debt. That’s the evil I prefer.
I hate to sound like Clarice Starling but..much as I love bacon I can still hear the hogs screaming in my dreams. And they do scream, all of those animals know when they’re about to be killed. That’s where the term “squealing like a pig”. And they run too, even some of the genetically engineered ones still have wild instincts and they always know when the end is coming. And the pigs… sounded so eerily human I can’t look at bacon, eggs, chicken, or milk the same way again. Sharks are predators and I don’t live with those so I can kind of ignore their suffering but…pigs are so cute and sweet and they have families and they give you baby back ribs and insulin for diabetics. I just respect them too much.
I watched that “The Cove” and like you know how much mercury was in the HBN1 vaccination? Toxic amounts of Mercury are < 200ppb. That’s the only amount that’s safe to consume in a month. Most standard flu vaccinations have 50,000ppb(even the CDC website says it. They don’t publicise it but you can go on the government websites and see where it explains that.) but they just injected that into my DNA without even telling me. No wonder I caught a brain fever and almost died. Your immune system is supposed to do what it did, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the foreign toxic entity that my body was trying to fight off.
I was just as horrified by that part in “The Cove” where they show the hand in film actually touching mercury. and the dolphin killing but less so because all killing for meat is brutal. I didn’t even find out how much mercury was in the vaccine schedule until recently. And apparently mercury is just in basically everything, for some reason no wants to explain or advertise!
And the vaccines don’t even make people immune! because the mercury in them mutates whatever virus, so that it evolves into a different strain each year so you constantly have to keep getting new vaccinations each year. That’s the REAL reason they put mercury in the vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry kills and permanently disables people on purpose. Vaccines are business and they’re legally not liable for whatever damage they cause, at least not in the US.
I’ll take my chances with the flu, not the American version of Mina Mata disease and one person in my family already has that. He’s permanently disabled but he was fine when he was born. He never would have been the way he is if it wasn’t for that MMR vaccination. I never had SLE until HB91 either.
That’s why I’m not trying to hear White People complain about anyone else’s cultural practices when my whole f.cking neighborhood- h.ll billions of people all over the world, including the people who died or were permanently disabled from the HBN1 or the Gardasil vaccination in Italy or the people who were unknowingly steralised by it in Kenya, suffer behind the sh.t that they do. They need to mind they f.cking buisness. Or pay me and all those people back. And they can’t ever, that’s why they hid and continue to hide all the damage from the vaccines, even to the point of making up fictional diseases, like SIDS and Shaken Baby Syndrome just to blame at the parents and throw them in prison for some sh.t that those researchers, who have lied repeatedly, did. They put Cancer causing hormones in milk and meat…like GTFOH about some shark fin soup, that no one is forcing people to consume.
I’m not trying to hear that this week and I was really just trying to chill and talk about food, I don’t know how an offhanded comment about liking a certain dish was as “disingenuous” as what I’ve personally seen, lived and experienced every of my life. People have f.cked up priorities when they care more about some animals in an ocean half a world away than they do about women and children that live next door to them. And yes, much as love animals, I love people a LITTLE bit more as a species because I am one and the human beings I live with take priority over the animals that I don’t. I’m sure sharks care more about other sharks than humans. Every organism does.
Well except White people with a covertly racist agenda and a white savior “cause”.
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@ Kiwi
And as far as whale hunting goes, there’s a theory in literature that Ishmael from “Moby Dick” was a Black mariner. There’s so many contextual clues that Ishmael is Black like the fact that:
1) The Biblical Character he’s named after, Abraham’s son Ishmael was black:
http://www.faithwriters.com/article-details.php?id=114830
2) The fact that Ishmael even had a biblical name is a contextual clue that he was probably descended from African Americans. All of our names are European or from the Bible. Up until recently a church baptismal certificate was basically the same thing as a birth certificate. Many people my mothers age have one, and it’s the same as a birth certificate because the Bible is a notary and a legal document. Always has been that’s why you swear on it when you testify in court.
3) All the jobs Ishmael has on the ship were what black mariners who worked in Nantucket would have done. Qeequeg was I think Polynesian, most of the people who harpooned the whales were usually Polynesian and labor on a whaling ship was divided along racial lines because each culture brought their own experience to it.
4) Ishmael is always hanging out with black or non white characters, like Pip and Queequeg(his roommate in the beginning of the book.) I don’t think Ishmael ever has a white roommate
4) In one of the early chapters Ishmael goes to a black church, when he’s wandering around the docks and there’s all these dark and light(blackness) biblical metaphors, similes and allusions throughout the novel.
5) Ishmeal talks like a black american from that time would have. His cadence and his speech really give it away.
There’s a whole bunch of other things too that I can’t recall right now. Melville didn’t put that stuff in it by accident. And that novel is So. Godd.amn long(it took me from 3rd to about 7th grade to actually finish reading it, so I can only imagine how long it took him to write that b.tch) because of all of Melville’s research and attention to details.
My personal theory was that Melville was gay and had a black lover, theres so many sexual references and metaphors, Ishmael seems to have no interest in women, Melville knew WAY too much about whaling to be a casual observer and he was obviously fascinated with it to the point that he put himself in the mind of black man he had nothing in common with and I can’t think of any other reason that a white man at his class and social status in life would have been interested in something like whaling. He might have just had a passion but…many male sex workers and seamen in general were bisexual and…there’s I mean “seamen”/semen. Sperm Whales: because they look like dongs…to men who live together and work at sea for some reason that’s not..sexually charged…at all apparently. All male environment, for months at a time. Its a dirty dangerous almost sexy kind of male occupation…
Melville was gay and probably in love with a black mariner. I can’t prove it for a fact but there’s so much evidence to support that idea I stand by my opinion. I did read the book after all. That’s why writing so much is compulsive to me. You cannot spend your childhood and life reading novels that long and complex and then write and think the same way as people who don’t I’m just not capable of it.
And that’s why I love classic literature, you learn so much about history, and life in general from it. But yeah I’m appropriating whaling and fishing culture and ish and Melville was too apparently. Because whaling and fishing is only Chinese and I gotta steal other people culture because I don’t none of my own.
When no I don’t actually because black culture is actually quite diverse enough already and I know my history and I like my culture so I don’t need to appropriate or become a tourist in other people’s culture. There’s something I can relate to and understand and enjoy in every culture usually. Because I love my own so much.
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Looking at the pic upthread is making me h-u-n-g-r-y! Mmm mmm! Yummy goodness!
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@Kiwi
That documentary about the Faroe Islanders was actually pretty sympathetic about the whale killing because the activist who was against it changed her mind when she realized how important and what a human tradition it was and she just wanted to make it more sustainable and the most serious conservationists that actually knew what they were talking about that I’ve met in real life were hunters and fishers. The people who actually lived it and didn’t just talk about it.
Their livelihood depends on the environment so in actual fact they’re the population group that does the most to preserve it. Everything I’ve read about the Faroe Islanders was sympathetic and everything I’ve read about the Shark Fin Trade was sensationalizing the negative aspects of it. And it was so obviously about Asian Racism when you compare it to the press about synthesizing GMOs and basically everything white industries have done and continue to do …like I just can’t with that b.llsh.t.
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My point was exceedingly simple:
Poaching large wild marine animals (ie, sharks) to the scale of 70-100 million per year for their fins has caused marine ecosystems to collapse globally.
It is analogous to poaching elephants for their tusks.
Any cruelty involved in the process is a distant secondary concern, albeit still a concern.
There is no need to confound white racism on a global scale, even if it might be a factor in certain locales.
Even in Greater China, there is a large backlash, both grassroots and top down, regarding the use of shark fin. No one is attributing that backlash to white racism or western / foreign interference (unlike the row over the South China Sea islands, or democratic movements or Uyghur / Tibetan autonomy).
There is a western activist group Sea Shepherds (www.seashepherd.org/) (headquartered in Washington State) that does use aggressive confrontational tactics to effect marine conservation, but their targets are both Western and non-Western,
BTW, mariareginacd = AlitaRegina? Sock puppet?
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@King,
Is some of the origin of what is viewed as Mexican food in the USA actually of Tex-Mex origin, or something that Tejanos did to make their food more palatable to Anglos? Outside of Texas, they might simply be marketing it as Mexican food.
Anyhow, that would be a good topic to address again in Hispanic Heritage month.
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@Kiwi
Now that I think about it whaling and sailing is probably the most multicultural industry there ever was. Even in that book, every race is present:black, white, asian that’s why I actually wanted to read it as a kid.I saw some Black and Asian people in the movie with Patrick Stewart and I was immediately interested, even though I had no idea what was happening. It kept my attention during the slower parts.
And that’s why even though I’m vegan, but for cultural and upbringing reasons(my father was a mechanic on ships, he’s from Balboa and lived in Panama City) my one meat weakness is any kind of seafood, and pork. My other friend who has SLE and is vegan now for the same reasons I am, is Chicken. I try to be an honest omnivore though but lobster could be a puppy and I’d still eat it if I was hungry enough.
I think it’s horrible to use a person’s appetite against them by poisoning their food with trace amounts of heavy metals. That’s literally the evilest thing that any industry has ever thought of.
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@jefe
You don’t read very well:
on Thu 7 May 2015 at 23:54:37AlitaRegina
@Abagond
it’s maria regina.
Naishee already tried that and it was just as transparent as you doing it now. IDK what you’re butthurt about but you tried it, again. And it was an epic failure.
Deuces ❤
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@ AlitaRegina,
Thank you for reminding us about the post where you changed your name upthread. I first saw it occur in another thread (where you did not explain that you changed your name) and trying to confirm if it was the same person or not.
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@Jefe
Since you find me so disingenous for having a different opnion, please stop talking to me. I have no idea what you’re on about and I really care anymore. I was talking about food. And I wasn’t even talking to you so on my end I’m done with, you can spit at the wind if you want to, from this point on.
You and Naishee and Anne who I suspect are the same person, even someone with rudimentary technological knowledge can mask or fake an IP that’s why I didn’t bother to ask Abagond to check it. It’s pretty obvious when you and some random commenter keep bringing up Abagond’s comment policy as if I don’t know it.
This is why I stopped commenting on Abagond’s, too many people, like Zek J Evets, get on here and try to piggy back off of Abagond’s popularity and start dumb flame wars, and distract from the main discussion by redirecting the conversation back to themselves and attention whoring. It’s bad enough when white trolls come on here and do it but now black people are doing it too?
This was a really nice place to discuss things before the trolls and the social cliques chased people off of here. And I was enjoying my discussion with Sharinalr about food, a decidedly neutral topic, with someone else and you had to be the donkey of the discussion so I have nothing to say to you from here on out.
Have a good weekend, and please don’t address anything I write from now on.
Thank You and Deuces ❤
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on Sun 10 May 2015 at 04:28:26jefe
@ AlitaRegina,
Thank you for reminding us about the post where you changed your name upthread. I first saw it occur in another thread (where you did not explain that you changed your name) and trying to confirm if it was the same person or not.
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Hmmm… was it the Marilyn Mosby thread by any chance? You realize you just told on yourself right?
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on Sat 9 May 2015 at 15:37:13naishee
…..Hey Abagond, don’t you at least have a rule against people using two usernames? AlitaRegina/mariareginacd have already used two in this thread.
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Listen if you got beef, make a sandwich. And you got the nerve to talk about sock puppets and being “disingenuous”. GTFOH man.You admitted to stalking my comments, just to take issue with them and find a reason or make up one, like mock offense just to get me banned from the site?
Jesus, are petty internet grudges that effing serious now?
@ Abagond
I’m sure they don’t have the same IP but they’re clearly the same person Jefe/Naishee. He just admitted to stalking my comments which at least counts as trolling? Like no one was born yesterday and this is the third time he’s addressed something I’ve written in regards to the comment policy. Jefe and Naishee both asked about the name change, right around the same time.
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@Kiwi
You already know this that’s why I couldn’t even take that whole issue seriously. Racists always overeact over trivial BS.
@Abagond
Later for this whole topic and I’m sorry the thread got derailed. My bad. I still think Jefe/Naishee and possibly Anne are the same commenter and they’re trolling me because they’re attention whores.
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AlitaRegina
“Authentic dishes don’t get served sometimes because of a lack of key ingredients like herbs and spices too.”—I so agree. I use to cook a great deal of Asian dishes in my home. I started when I was in my teens. Many ingredients were so darn hard to find. I had to order from overseas. This started a habit as I began to order everything from overseas. Lately I have been on a Mexican food craze. Lucky for me we have a Mexican owned grocery store.
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@sharinalr
I eat a lot of Middle Eastern/East Indian foods lately because Trader Joe’s has really good ready made falafel and vegan tikki marsala. It tastes exactly like the chicken version. I love all kinds of cheeses and Mexican Food but stay away from cuisine with cheese and dairy because the kinds you get in America give me inflammation issues.I do add avocadoes to the masala. Makes it that much tastier. I learned to be flexible with foods overseas.
Now if only Trader Joe’s would get some ready made Doubles and Peanut Punch I’d be all set. 😉
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@AlitaRegina
Where I live there is not Trader Joe’s. 😦
But to be honest I prefer to prepare fresh.
“If you’re single. Always date cooks too or at restaurants compliment the chef, that’s how you get seconds. “—I am married. My husband is Mexican and no my husband refuses to cook. I have to be a bit creative with cooking Mexican or anything for my husband, so a lot of the authentic dishes get taken off the table. His brother on the other hand will try and devour anything. When he told me he ate cow tongue I was done.
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@sharinalr
But to be honest I prefer to prepare fresh.
I have to share a fridge, with people I’m don’t have anything culturally in common with(middle to upper class urban liberal white people) so I’ve got to be cheap and fast and I can’t do restaurants. Plus I don’t have the time or storage. When I lived with ethnic or low income white people, Asians, Hispanics, Africans, Caribbean people we would all cook. Sometimes together and it was pretty fun. I might get a tiny crock pot soon though. Since there’s no stove.
My husband is Mexican and no my husband refuses to cook.
My dad is Hispanic too but he cooks. I think it’s because he lived without a mom so most of what a mother would have done he basically had to do taking care of his younger siblings(he’s the oldest). But he’s not as good a cook as my mother. He can make certain dishes he’s no good with improvising. He made a lot of hodgepodges but they were rarely ever palatable. And I ate iguana and fried grasshoppers as a child and I would turn my nose up at what he cooked sometimes.
My oldest brother is an excellent cook and always has been and we’re very close. So…a Man has got to put on that apron and get in that kitchen to put a ring on my finger. I fully understand and accept that this is probably why I’m still single and I’ll never get married. But I expect men to feed me. Because I’m really a fat greedy child on the inside and …I like to eat. Everything delicious.
One of the guys I dated said I was spoiled. I don’t think so but I understand why he might have that perception.
When he told me he ate cow tongue I was done.
Lmao. I’ve eaten fried grasshoppers and iguana(as a kid, yay bugs and lizards) but not cow tongue. That’s just too…profane somehow. And I’m really over-analyzing it but: when I did eat meat still, I couldn’t eat things like eyes or tongue or the brain because those are sentient organs and parts. It would just feel too much like cannibalism. I couldn’t even eat caviar or lychee because they remind me of eyes and I’m superstitious. I do believe in the evil eye and I can’t devour a living thing with it… staring into my soul. I feel like that’s just inviting bad karma into your life. I could be that animal in my next life, watching people eat me. It could still happen but I haven’t done anything to deserve it so..my conscious would be clear, in that event
I know: I’m weird but I’m not going to take any more chances than I have to.
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To AlitaRegina:
“My bad. I still think Jefe/Naishee and possibly Anne are the same commenter and they’re trolling me because they’re attention whores.”
Naishee’s and Jefe’s writing styles are quite different.. and FYI Jefe wrote at least 11 guest posts on this site:
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@Kiwi,
This is technically not correct. Even most Asian-Americans get this wrong.
Fortune Cookies are originally of Japanese origin.
The concept and practice of fortune cookies was brought to the USA by Japanese immigrants. However, Japanese-Americans made some modification in the ingredients used (perhaps to adapt to ingredients more available locally, or more suitable to the American palate).
A few Chinese restaurants bought fortune cookies from Japanese American suppliers to sell in their restaurants starting in the 1910s.
The practice of serving them in Chinese restaurants proliferated during WWII, during the time that Japanese Americans were sent to the internment camps. Post-WWII, they became associated with Chinese American restaurants.
So, whereas the practice of serving fortune cookies in Chinese American restaurants are an American thing, fortune cookies themselves originally came from Japan.
The link to Jennifer Lee’s youtube link that Abagond provided discusses this (along with the origin of General Tso’s Chicken and chop suey), but you can also read about it here:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/fortune-cookies-were-invented-in-japan-not-china/
In 2012 when Abagond asked me to email him a list of topics related to Asian American history and culture, I included both fortune cookies and General Tso’s Chicken. This time he chose General Tso’s Chicken. Maybe next time he might choose fortune cookies.
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^^
Abagond I accidentally posted the same comment in two threads, I meant that to go in the open thread.
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@Uncle Milton
My response is in the Open thread if you want to read but I’m done talking about this.It’s getting too stupid now. And I keep trying to change the subject back to the main topic and you guys keep dredging it up. And I wasn’t even talking to either of you so I really don’t care about this anymore.
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^ Well, we can agree that they are definitely not Chinese. In Chinese language, they have to devise some translation over from English to find a word, and still most readers of Chinese would not know what they were referring to.
Would agree that the proliferation of fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants (ie, the practice) is an American thing, but I said that already.
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My understanding of fortune cookies is that they came from Japan to the US and were used in Japanese American restaurants. They did not became a “Chinese” thing till Japanese Americans lost their restaurants in California during the internment of the 1940s. They are little known in China.
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Kiwi,
I agree that the practice of serving fortune cookies in Chinese themed restaurants is distinctly of American origin. I disagree that fortune cookies themselves are distinctly American.
Meanwhile, Pizza IS from Italy and brought over by Italian immigrants to the USA. Pizza can still be found in Italy, across Europe, and in places which have large Italian immigrant populations, e.g., Argentina. Different places developed their own local styles, including regions in the USA. The fact that it has been popularized in the USA does not erase the fact that it is of Italian origin and still served there. It is not distinctly American. Besides, most Americans who eat Pizza, including those who regularly eat the American style versions of it, believe it originated from Italy and brought over by Italian immigrants, which is indeed correct.
Fortune cookies, or some variety of it, can still be found in Japan. We can trace a direct line of origin to the USA from Japan via Japanese immigrants to Japanese American restaurants. True, a variant of the food was developed in the USA using different ingredients, but it does not erase the fact that it originated from Japan.
As Abagond has also researched, they became a mainstay in Chinese restaurants around WWII, an indirect effect of the Japanese American internment experience.
Sorry, but your suggestion of comparing Pizza to Fortune Cookies is therefore wrong. It is comparing apples to oranges.
However, it definitely is NOT of Chinese origin. We do not find them in China and the words used for them in Chinese are reverse translations from English, and defined as a custom / practice of Chinese American restaurants in the USA. Americans associate them with China, but Chinese in greater China associate them with the USA. That is correct. But they are not distinctly of American origin.
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Hamburger paddies came from germany but didn’t the actual “hamburger” as we know it, buns etc….come up in the US or Canada?
PIzza on the other hand is considered to be from Italy.
Even with all the changes we made to it.
So with that in consideration why wouldn’t we still consider General Tso’s chicken, a dish made by a Chinese immigrant based off a Chinese food be considered Chinese still?
Is it really that much farther from the changes americans made to Pizza?
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Kiwi,
BELIEVE ME. I got your point. Loud and clear. Believe me.
BELIEVE ME got it.
But you seem to have completely lost how your logic is flawed. They are not comparable.
Completely and utterly wrong. That is not what I am doing.
I know what the bits that are distinctly American and what is not. But do you?
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V-4,
It looks similar, but is somewhat different from Pizza.
General Tso’s chicken was invented entirely within the USA using ingredients and cooking styles found in America. The only connection to General Tso is the name. General Tso’s chicken did not originate from China. The persons responsible for creating General Tso in the USA brought the idea of the name, but in essence, created something completely different and not like anything in China.
Pizza, on the other hand, did originate in Italy and was brought over by Italian immigrants in more or less its original form, then modified to appeal to other American tastes.
Where they are similar is how General Tso’s Chicken and American style pizza is something that is done in American style, and done to appeal to Americans.
What is different is that most Americans think of American style pizza as something American whereas they think of General Tso’s Chicken as something Chinese, not American.
<>
Americans do know that Pizza originally from Italy. They do not know that General Tso’s Chicken did not originally come from China (beyond the name of it).
General Tso’s Chicken might be more analogous to Chicken Tikka Masala in the UK, the popular version of which was created entirely within the UK. However, it seems that most Britons know that (perhaps not all of them). Most know it is British food created by Asian Indian Britons. But do most Americans know that General Tso’s Chicken is American food?
What I do think is more similar to how Pizza was modified in the USA is American Style Moo Shu Pork, which you find in many Chinese American restaurants starting in the late 1960s. This dish DOES exist in China. I have eaten it in Shandong province. It is remotely similar to the US version, but the US version was modified and now looks different from the Chinese version.
This example is probably more similar with what happened to Pizza.
But, Americans, although aware that Pizza originated from Italy and was modified for American ingredients and tastes and now seen as part of American daily cuisine; they do not seem to see Moo Shu Pork in that light.
When I have had Pizza in South America or Europe, I still recognize it as Pizza, albeit a bit different. When I have Moo Shu Pork in China, it is different, but still recognizably related to what I had in the USA. Not so, with General Tso’s chicken, which I have only seen in the USA.
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Kiwi,
I got your point loud and clear from the get go.
I got your point.
Apparently, however, you did not get mine. In fact, what you just wrote about “my point” shows that you did not get it. I 100% agree that fortune cookies are no less American than, say, Hamburgers and pizza (ie, no argument there), but you seemed to totally miss my point (esp. about why your statement about fortune cookies is not totally correct and why the example about hamburgers and pizza did nothing to prove your point).
I could do a spreadsheet or table pointing out where we do agree and where the argument starts to fall flat, but I am not sure it is worth it. At this point, I will just drop it.
I worked in a suburban Chinese American restaurant for over 4 years in the 1980s, serving fortune cookies every day. Just before I left, they started to introduce General Tso’s chicken as a new menu item. Later I moved to New York and have been to the restaurant which introduced General Tso’s chicken. I really do know all about this stuff, and how it is similar to hamburgers and pizza and how it is different.
By the way, I just had fortune cookies last night in HONG KONG of all places. It was the first time I ever had ever been served fortune cookies here. It was served at a western style Asian fusion restaurant opened by a chef who had returned from the USA. Posted the fortune cookies on facebook, and one of my friends in Japan, of all places, said he hadn’t seen that (American style fortune cookies) since he was studying in the US.
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No, I most certainly got your point. loud and clear.
Yes, I did.
You did not say that fortune cookies are American. You said that they were distinctly American. That was wrong. I still say it is wrong. The “practice” of serving fortune cookies at Chinese American restaurant could possibly be argued to be distinctly American. If you had said that, I would not have disagreed. But you did not say that. But fortune cookies themselves — NO. Sorry.
You tried to bring up an analogy with hamburgers and pizza, but the situation between the two is not analogous. It is a false analogy.
I really want to drop this now. I will not discuss it further. As I said I could outline point by point where you argument is correct, and where it falls flat but I will not.
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Kiwi,
I am dropping out of this discussion.
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Peng Chang-kuei has just passed away.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2016/12/03/general-tsos-chicken-inventor-dies-98/94879708/
Brietbart news, however, took its own twist to the story.
General Tso’s Chicken Inventor Dies: The Anti-Communist Origins of America’s Favorite Chinese Dish
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/12/02/general-tso-chicken-inventor-dead-98/
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