From "I taught America how to be Chinese, says 23-year-old TikTok star/Gen Z is mastering chopsticks and t’ai chi, thanks to Sherry Zhu from New Jersey" (London Times).
You can sample the TikToks of Sherry Zhu here. I'll embed 2 of them:
2. "This is everything a Chinese baddie buys at CostCo."@sherryxiiruii fun fact if you like dim sum, hotpot, szechuan cuisine, biang biang noodles…. #chinese #chineseamerican #中文 #chinesefood #chinesecuisine ♬ original sound - sherry
@sherryxiiruii everything a chinese baddie buys at costco (haul and vlog) chinese new year edition. i didn’t realize there were so many festive items for chinese new year #chinese #chinesenewyear #chinesefood #chinesegirl #costco ♬ original sound - sherry
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71 comments:
They think they're turning Mandarin
They think they're turning Mandarin
They really think so!
Dude learns to use chopsticks and thinks he discovered China. Isn't he about 15 years too old for this sort of cluelessness?
Don’t trust China. China is asshoe!
The article makes it seem as if a big part of "being Chinese" is not wanting to be cold. Lots of hot-water drinking and the wearing of slippers.
I suppose this is an advancement on the playground habits of young ladies in the 1960s while skipping rope would sing:
Ching chong Chinaman sittin on a fence
Tryin to make a dollar outa 88 cents
He missed he missed he missed like this.
I'll tell you what I like about Chinese people: they're hanging in there with the chop sticks, aren't they? You know they've seen the fork. They're staying with the sticks.
Jerry Seinfeld
TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) still deals extensively in the idea of hot/cold effects on the body's Qi (气). 99% of it is phooey, but there's a small bit that suggests outperforming placebo.
After J-Pop and K-Pop comes C-Pop? The vogue for China replaces those for Japan and Korea?
Sherry comes across as totally American, and the idea that buying fresh fruit is something particularly Chinese is comical, but the video does suggest that perhaps Costco (like COSCO, the shipping company) may be an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
Does this mean Gen Z is going to end the concept of cultural appropriation
I like Chines food and eat it once a month or so. Usually in these little Chinese come y vete places we have all over.
There are usually non-chinese people eating with chopsticks. I can use chopsticks but I have never seen the point. They seem a very inefficient way to get food from plate to mouth. Using them always seems pretentious to me.
Give me a knife, fork and spoon.
John Henry
I always eat with chopsticks when I order Chinese food. I find I eat a lot slower and more deliberately with them, which i like. Doesn't really translate to American food though.
Why China and not Japan on S. Korea? Gen Z is hopeless.
Nothing about Tia Chi. I want to do Tia Chi but there are no classes nearby. I live near Seattle - you would think there would be some. Lots of Yoga and Pilates so I take classes in those and do some of the MOSSA resistance and HIT classes. I learned how to do the Tia Chia walk from you tube. Practice it from time to time.
I haven't checked with Grok yet, but I believe that the reason the Chinese invented gunpowder was because, as was their thousand-years-old custom. they had been digging ditches with two long two-by-fours, when suddenly one of them said, "WTF?". Too bad they couldn't come up with a better invention for eating ramen too.
The coming-of-age generation often seeks something new...even if superficial style trends.
Beatles in India in the 1960s. The popularity of bleeding Madras jackets. Japan with cars and motorcycles and fashion and headbands in the 1970s and 1990s. Video games and anime.
New decade = new trend = same old thinking.
Nothing says authentically Chinese like Vocal Fry.
RSM, I assume that most TCM nostrums' active ingredients are lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and strychnine.
Koot Katmandu said...
"Nothing about Tia Chi. I want to do Tia Chi but there are no classes nearby."
Maybe if you Googled "T'ai Chi" instead of Tia Chi you'd get better results.
Nope, just the snake bile and tiger penis Howard. If they really want to get ya they just jab you with acupuncture needles.
My Chinese GF complained about a lower back strain. A few days later she sent me a photo of her on a massage table, her back being "cupped". And the aftermath. It looked extremely painful. Yet my Physical Therapy place offers it.
Tia Chi is when I do it with your auntie! CC, JSM
I prefer Chai Tea
This post has (so far) two Seinfeld references. I'm Donna Chang
I have Chinese family now. Through a marriage of one of our kids and...the grandkids that followed are half/half. I love them all, including the in-laws. They are wonderful people and they are my family.
And the kids are growing up learning both Mandarin and, of course, English. They love football and...seaweed.
The beauty of it is that they learned, early on, to love so many different types of foods. They'll be well adjusted to the world as they get older, and with their language talents, I look forward to them having careers with either the US or Chinese intelligence services. Scary thought.
"Ching chong Chinaman sittin on a fence"
In Bahasa Indonesia, the phrase cing cang cong, which is pronounced "ching, chang, chang" is what they think Chinese sounds like. Just sayin' if two cultures think this, its gotta be partially true.
ChatGPT confirms my memory is not crazy
Yes 😄 Indonesians do have a stereotypical “fake Chinese-sounding” phrase, and what you’re remembering is basically it.
The common one is:
“cing cong cing cong”
(or variations like “cing cang cong”, “cing cing cong”, “cing cang cing”)
It’s used as an imitation of how Chinese languages sound to so
OK, its mainly just "ching chong"
Its funny people in Indonesia and America both come up with this exact descriptive sound for Chinese?
(and yes, its a bit derogatory there, too.0
For comparison, the sound a dog makes:
ruff ruff (English)
wong wong (Chinese)
guk guk (Indonesian)
Less agreement on dog's barking.
A) At any given gathering of my wife's family/ friends, about half will be using forks. 2) About 20 years ago she was CFO of a startup that was searching traditional herbal treatments (mostly Chinese) for isolatable active ingredients. When I'd visit, the back offices were always full of plant parts from the founder's last trip. Five years, no hits.
I've got nothing bad to say about Chinese food. It's not Italian, but it's pretty good. Chopsticks, however, seem primitive and clumsy. The eating instruments of the Chinese are not as refined as their cuisine......Chinese girls have cute feet. I can understand why they got into foot binding, but it's just as well that this custom has been allowed to lapse.
The key to chopsticks is understanding you can bring your bowl close to your face and shovel with the chopsticks.
"all the rage". Lame writing. And here, in the heart of Asian Silicon Valley, "chinamaxxing" would attract nothing but mild derision.
Meh...
To borrow from another influencer of his day…. If you start your day with iced tea, you might be a redneck.
The biggest mistake people unaccustomed to chopsticks make is keeping the manipulated ends too far apart and using them more like tweezer than scissors. 1) Using them as tweezers is what causes them to twist when grabbing difficult-to-hold items and 2) is extremely tiring because a greater amount of force is needed.
Hold your chopsticks with the rear ends closer together, like a hinge joint on a pair of scissors. Far less taxing.
And just like that 🫰🏽 “cultural appropriation” went… sayonara.
For the few who might be offended that “sayonara” is a Japanese word and not Chinese, I’m sorry. Please don’t cancel me.
Chopsticks also work best with food that is in chunk form.
A western food that works well with chopsticks is salad.
On “not wanting to be cold”. Once you get past the initial discomfort, by literally shaking your body like it’s a drink mixer, the cold water turns into something different. I don’t know how to describe it properly because there is nothing else tactually similar, to liken it to. Whatever it is, it’s not painful though. At least not for me.
Cold shower 👆🏽
No mention of filial piety? With so many young people mad at their parents for one reason or another, THAT should stop the Chinese thing in its tracks.
“One of the more unusual cultural trends to sweep Gen Z recently has been among TikTok users who share wellness tips typically associated with China....”
They’d be better off going back to eating Tide pods. Maybe eat them with chopsticks if they need to feel trendy.
Also, anything about not using people's names when you address them, but their 'title' (senior, official, older brother, sworn brother, younger sister, older sister)?
@Aaron - also for eating noodles.
Thais prefer fork and spoon over chopsticks. But Thai restaurants in the US offer chopsticks, and a lot of the farang customers use them.
I just invented MAGA Minimalist T'ai Chi. It consist mainly of flipping slow-motion birds at here-today-gone-tomorrow TikTok influencers.
ABC here ... American Born Chinese! RE: hot water, my mom would keep a Thermos full of hot water at the ready. I've started to do the same thing in my old age so I can make a quick cup of tea. I think my mom did the hot water thing because of the poor water quality she remembered from her youth in southern China.
RE: chopsticks -- great for foods that come in bowls. They're not great for plated foods.
@RideSpaceMountain on the correct use of chopsticks.
Absolutely correct. Beginners always choke up on chopsticks and treat them as a two-tine fork or pair of tweezers. This doesn't work. Grab 'em from the back end and spread them wide, wide, wide...but in an innocent non-Epstein way. They function as food pliers.
Asian foods are indeed cut into bite-size portions to facilitate chopstick use. They co-evolved to work together. Per the rarity and cost of (stone or metal) knives in history: One knife in the kitchen and no knives in the dining room.
My little China girl
Wow, using Chopsticks and drinking Green Tea. Gosh, how "foreign" and Chinese. Next up, using soy sauce and eating chow mein. With egg rolls!
I can use chop sticks, but frankly they don't have any advantages over forks, spoons, and knives. Except you save money. OTOH, a wok is better than a frying pan.
A lot of the local Vietnamese restaurants have spoons and forks. Nobody, including Asian-Americans, asks for chop-sticks. Lets face it, you need to get used to chopsticks but any boob can use a fork, spoon, and knife.
Best Chinese practice for old people: Getting up in the AM and going out for some group exercise.
No forks, no spoons, no wine, no women.
Trending online: chopsticks in the hair, cool fashion idea or reprehensible cultural appropriation?
Yancey Ward said...
"No forks, no spoons, no wine, no women."
Turning CHINESE? I really think so.
I shared some of this experience prior, I think, so bear with me:
My Chinese GF travels with her own set of stainless steel chopsticks. And small rice cooker.
During her last visit, I took her to a local Chinese restaurant that had a back page menu of "authentic dishes". I let her order for me. The waitress asked her if she'd like chopsticks. She did not know the English word for them, so the waitress asked in Mandarin, and Qin accepted them. She liked to feed me these dishes which were okay and interesting. As we left, Qin turned to me and whispered, "Cantonese food too sweet".
I cannot wait until her next visit.
Went to a new Chinese restaurant in my town today for the first time.
They only had sticks, no forks or knives. I had some great tuna sushi rolls with eel sauce. I eat them with my hand anyway so no problem.
But what the hell is eel sauce anyway?
The girl at the counter said culebras but thadoes sound right.
It was very good, whatever.
John Henry
I like Chinese
I like Chinese
They only come up to your knees
Yet they're always friendly and they're ready to please
Planetgeo,
A fork seems a lot more obvious than it was. Henry petroski was a prof of engineering at Duke. He wrote a number of really great books on engineering but for lay people.
One was "the evolution of everyday things" with chapters on how different thing evolved to what we now know.
One chapter was on the evolution of the fork. Fascinating book
He is sort of like John McPhee. He writes about mundane stuff, simplifies and over analyzes and makes it very interesting.
McPhee does rocks. Petroski does forks
John Henry
Leland,
What does it make you if you start your day with a mug of hot Dr Pepper?
I think it's a Texas thing.
John Henry
@John Henry: I don't think the main issue with forks was the complexity of invention, rather, they were too fragile before metal became common and cheap. Forks can be made from wood, bone, or ivory, but none of these are tough. Asian hair combs were made from wood and ivory too -- thin and fragile 'forks.'
A chopstick is one tine of a fork and two chopsticks are half way to a full fork. Before the cheap metal age, diners would bring their own knives and forks for eating.
Spoons...dead simple to make a durable one from wood...
What does it make you if you start your day with a mug of hot Dr Pepper?
I think it's a Texas thing.
When I was a kid, it simply meant “no time for breakfast when you have work to do on the farm”. The stories I heard (and don’t care to validate with AI) was Dr. Pepper was formulated to drink warm rather than iced. I certainly think you taste more flavor drinking it warm than cold.
However, I did do a quick search, and it seems that people used to heat Dr. Pepper like tea. Seemed to be a thing in the 60s. I never saw that done. I’ve seen a flaming Dr. Pepper, but that’s something else entirely. I never would have thought of heating Dr. Pepper, because the sun did a good enough job.
Leland,
My boss, back in the 70s, used to drink heated Dr Pepper instead of coffee.
He was from Texas. Fort Worth I think but not certain.
John Henry
Enigma,
Its been 25 years or so since I read Petroski but my recollection is that forks, for individual use when eating were invented about 1000 years ago in Europe. Grok confirmed this just now.
Again, relying on sketchy memory, knives were used to spear chunks of food>then purpose made single tine spears>then 2 tines> then 3 and 4. The process of getting from knife to something like we know today took 100-200 years.
Two caveats: I've read a lot of Petroski's work and found him to be generally reliable but that is no guarantee that he is right on this. It has been 25 years, I'm getting up towards middle age, and I don't guarantee my memory of what he wrote.
I do guarantee that he is one fine and interesting writer.
It took another 500 years or so to reach that pinnacle of biting gear: The Spork
John Henry
In cockney rhyming slang a China is a buddy. Short for China Plate = Mate.
@John Henry on forks:
My knowledge comes from a bunch of documentaries and writing on pre-history and ancient history rather than a specific publication on forks.
Humans have used stone knives and stone-tipped spears and arrows for ages and ages. So, they'd have speared food from the very start of hunting with these weapons and then cooking over fires.
Metalwork was the province of elite jewelry (soft gold; silver), weapons, and armor before the industrial age. They'd have started casting and forging brittle copper, potentially toxic bronze (e.g,. arsenic), then rusty and nasty tasting iron, then costly and nasty tasting silver, and finally stainless steel (1913; link below).
Knives had to be sharp regardless of durability, and they can easily function as a single-tine fork or food spear. A wooden stick (single) can be a disposable food spear (e.g., hanging over an open fire). Those all rotted away or were burned up after use.
Various sources say that stainless transformed the dining industry, as it's strong enough to cut food but durable enough to withstand regular washing. It also adds no flavor to food. Just over 100 years ago.
https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8307
I, for one, recall the 1970s when we all went Japanese with hot tubs and sushi. And the 1980s, when we went all nationalist American, eating hamburgers, or became useful idiots for Soviets in opposition and ate our own faces. And the 1990s, when we all went European with debonaire EU insouciance. And the 2000s, when we all went globalist and decided America sucked compared to our betters living under authoritarian socialism. And the 2010s, when we all went socialist here and enjoyed Obamacare! And now here we are, going Chinese - I love the idea of the CCP going to Hell. I, for one, look forward to the South American phase coming soon, with really good tapas, and the succeeding African phase where we all wear dashikis (again). Reminds me of the home decor changes in Rosalind Russel's portrayal of Auntie Mame.
And of course the wonderful Wondermark comic in which a man is eating Cheetos with chopsticks. "Keeps the orange crap off my fingers," he states. He is hailed as a modern day Prometheus.
https://wondermark.com/c/601/
I can use chop sticks, but frankly they don't have any advantages over forks, spoons, and knives. Except you save money.
You eat more slowly, too, and get filled up before you can gorge yourself. At the margin, this might contribute to the famed slenderness of Asians. Just 100 fewer calories per meal is equivalent to 30 pounds of fat per year.
I'm old enough to remember when Chinese restaurants were uncommon outside of large cities, and the average American had no clue how to use chopsticks.
My grandfather had spent time in China as a young man and we would go out for Chinese food regularly. I learned to use chopsticks by the age of 8 or so.
TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) still deals extensively in the idea of hot/cold effects on the body's Qi (气). 99% of it is phooey, but there's a small bit that suggests outperforming placebo.
I expect most of the benefit of Asian medicine comes from ingesting nutrients in the various herbs and mushrooms they use medicinally.
My Chinese GF complained about a lower back strain. A few days later she sent me a photo of her on a massage table, her back being "cupped". And the aftermath. It looked extremely painful. Yet my Physical Therapy place offers it.
My daughter did that a few years ago when she had back pain after a long backpacking trip, and said it was very effective. Maybe the pain in one place distracts from the pain in another?
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