How East and Southeast Asian food movements flourished after Covid racism

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In the years leading up to the cost of living crisis, the question of what we eat, why and how we provide it has become increasingly controversial. From the surge in takeout during the pandemic to ever-longer food bank queues, there is no escaping it, our eating habits reflect the society we live in.

As more and more of us are forced to think more about what we eat, or whether we can eat at all, our weekly series Feeding Britain shines a light on the complex ways in which food affects each of us. From public health messages about healthy eating to the story of food poverty in Britain, this series will leave no plate unturned.

This week, food writer and podcast host MiMi Aye examines the lasting impact of racist attitudes towards various ESEA communities and cuisines since the pandemic, and explains how food has played a role in waking people up to their prejudices.

About ten years ago, I took a group of foodie friends to Mandalay. Not Myanmar City (my dad’s hometown, actually), but the now vanished sanctuary of Burmese cuisine that used to be tucked away on Edgware Road. It was the first time most of them had ever tried Burmese food, and I remember being afraid that they wouldn’t approve. The waiter came to take my order, and with some trepidation I started ordering in Burmese. A friend of mine burst out laughing and said, “Watch out, I bet she’s ordering a popped cat for all of us!”

I no longer speak to that friend, but their response was far from uncommon at the time. And while awareness and appreciation here in the West of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) cuisines seems to have grown over the decades, sadly, that kind of attitude seems to be s be aggravated, especially since the pandemic.

When news of a coronavirus outbreak first broke in December 2019, there was immediate and unfounded anti-ESEA fear and speculation across the West, including its media, where headlines such as Chinese Virus Panda-Monium and China Kids Stay Home appeared, ESEA faces were disproportionately used to illustrate stories about the pandemic, and British journalists tweeted that Made in China should be a sign of shame and mocked Chinese accents in front of the camera. Meanwhile, the (now former) President of the United States has fueled racist flames by renaming the virus Kung Flu.

Eaters Jenny Zhang succinctly summed up all these responses as reactivating old strains of racism and xenophobia that portray the Chinese as uncivilized and barbaric others who bring with them dangerous and contagious diseases and an appetite for dogs, cats and other animals outside Western standards. diets.

Old toxic jokes and jokes about East and South East Asians eating bats have resurfaced, including from famous British chefs and best-selling children’s authors, while in close study, conducted in March 2021, school was identified as one of the settings where racism is most experienced by ESEA people in the UK. Over three decades ago, I was bullied by other kids for bringing strange (i.e. Asian) packed lunches; this should no longer happen in 2022.

And when cases of Covid-19 arrived in the UK at the end of January 2020, it took a heavy toll on the ESEA hospitality industry here. Usually a hive of activity, London’s Chinatown has become a wasteland. Just the previous weekend it had been hectic, because of the Lunar New Year. Martin Ma, manager of Jinli restaurant in Newport Place, told BBC News at the time there had been immediate cancellations with diners citing the virus as the reason. Reservations fell 50% at his restaurants in Chinatown and Ma estimated that Jinli lost 15,000 over the weekend. Another restaurant manager on Gerrard St said people were scared they were staying away.

Chinatowns around the world have struggled to survive the pandemic due to lack of custom, while some businesses have even come under attack. Tin Sing takeaway in Dudley had racist graffiti smeared on all of its windows and restaurateur Geoff Leong of Dumplings Legend in London reported that his car had all four of its tires flat.

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And it’s not just Chinese companies or even Chinese people who have been affected; the fear of anyone vaguely East or Southeast Asian meant that people began to avoid me and others who looked like me on public transport and on the streets. The UK East and South East Asia Network (besea.n), based directly on a desire to represent the UK’s ESEA community during the pandemic, reports that just a month after confirmation of the first cases in the UK, the number of hate crimes against people of ESEA origin has almost tripled in the capital. In London, normally seen as more multicultural than the rest of the UK, there were more than twice as many anti-ESEA hate crimes in the first three quarters of 2020 as the year before.

Horrified by this rise in anti-ESEA sentiment, lawyers Claire Sachiko Fourel and Lex Shu Chan decided to raise awareness and drive change by creating Recipes Against Racism, a cookbook with recipes contributed by restaurants in East Asia. East and South East London. Fourel and Chan said, “Food can be a vehicle for positive storytelling to challenge otherness and celebrate multiethnic and multicultural identities and heritage. Proceeds from the book (now out of print) were split between the charities End Violence and Racism Against ESEA Communities (EVR), whose projects include On Your Side, a multilingual, nationwide hate crime reporting and support service. UK, and Stop Hate UK, which fights against all forms of hate crime and discrimination.

Food has also been used in response to rising prejudice in the United States. Anti-ESEA hate crimes in the United States rose 73% in the first year of the pandemic, and by April of that year nearly 60% of independent Chinese restaurants across America had ceased their activities. The Ajinomoto Company launched the #TakeOutHate campaign backed by celebrities such as comedians Jenny Yang and Margaret Cho and actor Harry Shum Jr to encourage Americans to order takeout from ESEA restaurants struggling to stay in business.

Ajinomoto happens to be famous for producing monosodium glutamate aka MSG, a condiment that has been unfairly reviled in the US and UK since the 1960s after it was wrongly blamed for non-existent Chinese restaurant syndrome and led to sectarian stereotypes about ESEA food in general, even though it is widely used in the rest of the world. Yang was also the face of Ajinomotos #DinnerWithGoop, an invitation for Gwyneth Paltrow to come to dinner where Yang could dispel clean eating myths about MSG that Paltrows Goop’s lifestyle platform had reinforced.

Along the same lines, I started a podcast with Viet chef Hoa Huong Black called The MSG Pod where guests such as Nigella Lawson explained to listeners how they use the condiment, and we appeared on BBC Radio 4s The Food Program to talk about its usefulness. I also guest-edited a special MSG-themed issue of Pit magazine.

However, despite the best efforts of Black, myself and many others to counter misinformation, people continue to avoid Asian food because it is full of MSG and ostensibly Asian products and menus that still appear on our supermarket shelves and in our restaurant windows, proudly declaring that they are MSG-free, while Oxo Cubes and Monster Munch Pickled Onion happily list it on their ingredient labels.

Back in the United States, the slogan Love our people like you love our food has become a celebration of ESEA food within the Asian-American community, as well as a viral battle cry against the hypocrisy of some in the world. exterior; As Eaters Jenny Zhang said, Americans treat Chinatowns like playgrounds, their people like photo backdrops. They grab Chinese labor products and spill them with the same hands on the street.

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Here in the UK, Georgie Ma, host of the Chinese Chippy Girl podcast, and Anna Chan of the Asian Leadership Collective founded the hashtag #ESEAEats in a bid to take the ESEA food narrative from negativity to joy. Although the campaign originated during the pandemic, it was born out of frustration after years of bashing ESEA food in the UK, culminating in it being called dirty by chefs on TV, or strange and foreign by cookbook authors, or the parody that was Japanese Week on the nations favorite baking show.

Instead, Ma and Chan have brought people together across the UK to appreciate and celebrate ESEA’s community, culture, heritage and storytelling through our food, and at the time of writing this article, there are more than 12,000 results on Instagram for #ESEAEats, as foodies around the world took the hashtag and ran with it, often combining it with another hashtag highlighting #ESEAJoy moments.

Last month, Chans Asian Leadership Collective even held a number of in-person events to celebrate the second anniversary of #ESEAEats, as well as an online series featuring members of the ESEA community called Humans of #ESEAEats.

Jenny Lau aka Celestial Peachs, the popular #AsianDessertExchange and #CongeeCon, were also born out of a wish to bring the ESEA community together through food, during and after the pandemic. I’m a proud owner of several Laus Congee Lovers Unite t-shirts that have the word congee in multiple Asian languages ​​(including Burmese!) and have raised money for the London Chinese Community Center which was in danger of closing during collection of funds. charity activities and events such as Lunar New Year and Moon Festivals have had to be canceled or postponed due to the lockdown.

Ultimately, whatever our wider population may think of East and Southeast Asian cuisines, it is truly inspiring that such powerful and joyful culinary movements have arisen within the ESEA community. , and I hope this love for our people, as well as our food, will continue to spread throughout the rest of the UK.

MiMi Aye is the author of Mandalay: Recipes and Tales of Burmese Cuisine and the host of The MSG Pod

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