Toward an Actual Understanding of Asian Culture

Toward an Actual Understanding of Asian Culture

         I have experienced many racial and cultural misunderstandings since I began my journey of studying in the United States as an Asian international student. The longer I face these experiences, the more resentment I have. The idea of a culture being understood solely by stereotypes propagated by uninformed individuals is reprehensible. But, in my experience, most people would rather believe in stereotypes than get to know cultures other than their own or experience the truth. Some people blatantly refuse to learn about the world outside their realm of experience. Hurtful misunderstandings could be eliminated by addressing the sources of misinformation about “other” cultures, for example entertainment shows and media, which most people access through readily available digital resources. The wrong information and propaganda can do extreme harm by propagating negative racial stereotypes. Still, despite these sources of misinformation, which have a vested interest in reproducing whatever brings profit and viewership, growing international populations can help explain and clarify realities about cultures which people have not actually been exposed to before. International populations, including international students and immigrants are ourselves the best primary source for cultural explanations that will combat negative and harmful stereotypes.

Stereotypes about Asian food are some of the most negative I have encountered in that they actually make some westerners feel disgust. According to “History of 150 years Chinese food development history”, between 1860 and 1890, people spread ideas of extreme negativity about Chinese food because of the anti-Chinese movement.  The political cartoon entitled “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner,” drawn by G. F. Keller from the San Francisco Wasp, which is now cited as a piece of Asian-American defamation material, shows a Chinese man eating a live rat at the dinning table while onlookers are disgusted by him. My personal experience reflects this same discrimination.  One of the questions I was most frequently asked by American students when I was in high school was, “Why do you eat pets?” The question was always accompanied by a look of contempt and abomination on the face of questioner. What they never knew was that dog meat is only eaten by very small percentage of the Chinese population in small towns, and according to HK Apple news, the participants of the Yulin Dog festival are around twenty thousand people, which is approximately 0.00000015 percent of the total Chinese population.

Orientalism, another wrongheaded stereotype that involves a specific perception of gender roles in East Asia also finds its source midway back in the 19th century. Fu Manchu was presented as the picture of the East Asian man. Fu Manchu’s image was absorbed into the American subconscious as borderline Satanic and extremely cruel. According to The Politics of Asian Americans: Diversity and Community by Pei-te lien, Mary Margaret Conway and Janelle Wong, between 1850 and 1940, in most American media, the East Asian man was depicted as a considerable threat to white women who had the intention of invading the US to rape them. Even the law stipulated that if a white woman married an East Asian man, she would forfeit her American citizenship. According to White Sexual Imperialism written by Sunny Woan, “While much discourse addresses the correlation between rape and war in the context of Western imperialism in Asia and has substantiated how sexual stereotypes of Asian women perpetuate commodification and exploitation of their bodies”(Woan 277). In her writing, Woan recalls the rape of an Asian woman by a white man and how the real event correlates to the “China doll” stereotype.  In more recent times, stereotypes and the pervading tenets of orientalism have changed, but not in a good way. The East Asian man is now described a sexually unattractive nerd who is socially awkward, effeminate, cold blooded, cowardly and a massive eater. Sau-Fong Siu’s Study of Literate Asian American Students at Risk demonstrates the social and psychological struggles that result from Asian Americans’ peers treating them based on model minority stereotypes that foster discrimination and anti-Asian sentiments.

Ultimately, orientalism remains a pervasive force in American culture to this day. In terms of the entertainment industry, looking back to the Bruce Lee era is imperative. According to “The Kato Show: Bruce Lee as The Green Hornet’s Sidekick” from News Week, The Green Hornet was the first media show that featured acting by an Asian in a main role, which was different from older times when Asians only appeared as representations of characters like Fu Manchu. Still, Bruce Lee was angry about his role because in the show he could not be the protagonist—just a sidekick—expressly because of his Asian heritage. More recently, the TV show Into the Badlands aired in 2015 and was led by the Asian actor Daniel Wu. However, even in this day and age, Wu still occupied an obvious sidekick role in the show. A report by the University of Southern California Annenberg’s Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative, indicates of the top 100 films in 2014, only 5.3 percent featured Asians. “When Asians are represented, the portrayals are often problematic because they enforce racist stereotypes, ” said Ashley Qiang in her article “When Asian Americans Appear On TV, It's Usually As One Of These Racist Stereotypes.”

One of the most important ways to change the image of East Asian’s is to change the image of East Asians in the media. As western TV series and movies start to accept East Asian actors or actresses and cast them as characters that challenge pervading stereotypes, perpetuation of those stereotypes will wane. For example, as evidenced by the How Bruce Lee Changed the World documentary, Lee broke into the international movie scene to fight against the Asian stereotypes and prejudice. Unfortunately, as he led a wave of Kung Fu in Hollywood, he perhaps accidentally instigated the stereotype that all Chinese know how to fight. "After Bruce Lee, you had the image of the hyper-focused martial artist, focused on his craft, aesthetics," said by L.S. Kim, assistant professor of film and digital media at University of California. "But as I was watching 'Romeo Must Die,' I was waiting to see if Jet Li was going to kiss Aaliyah. But they never kissed. … Asian actors almost never get to kiss the girl." According to an article In Bruce Lee’s Shadow written by Bryan Robinson, “The characters played by (Bruce) Lee, (Jet) Li and (Jackie) Chan always save the day, but they never get the girl.” Modern day stereotype of East Asians have their lineage in the films of Bruce Lee, and people can readily notice the immense impact Lee had on how Americans think of Asian males.