Stencil for week 6

For my stencil, I’m going to incorporate different foods that represent my Chinese American heritage. For example, I’m considering making graphic renditions of foods like xiao long bao (soup dumplings), boba, and dim sum. To me, food is one of the few cultural items that can travel and be passed down throughout generations and around the globe. While I’ve forgotten a lot of the Mandarin I learned growing up, I still eat traditional Chinese food when I’m at home and when I visit my family in China. Food is connected to tradition and ritual; dumpling making is common to celebrate the lunar new year with family, similar to how Carmen Lomas Garza commemorated and depicted tamale making with her family as a ritualistic act. Living in Los Angeles also means having the privilege of accessing wonderfully prepared Chinese cuisines, especially in areas like the San Gabriel Valley. I’ve been interested in the idea of food being “authentic” and what that actually means in the context of cultural appropriation vs. cultural mixing. I think Los Angeles Chinese food, in particular, mixes many cultural influences (e.g. American, Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Italian, the list is endless). But when do we draw the line between cultural food innovation in Chinese American cuisine and cultural appropriation? Does it depend on who’s making it, and where? For example, my parents making dumplings with pork, shrimp, green onions, and zucchini (though cabbage is traditionally used). This is because they knew grad student from China who grew zucchini in their yards upon moving to America in order to feed themselves affordably, and they took what they had (in a rasquache fashion, in my opinion) to build on a long held Chinese tradition. Does the same apply to things like avocado eggrolls or fortune cookies?