January 26, 2012 at 11:07 pm
filed under Uncategorized
photo by weylin lee
i’ve been craving chinese food for a week.
this doesn’t happen often. i attribute this occurrence to the fact that 1. chinese new year was monday, and i keep seeing food pictures from the weekend on my facebook and instagram and 2. i’ve been talking extensively about where to get chinese breakfast with jeff, my friend and now co-worker, who wanted to find a good place. and now all i can think about is chinese food. beef noodle soup. boba. green onion pancakes. dim sum. mango dessert. on and on and on and nom nom nom nom nom.
r and i made pork lo mein tonight, spurred in part by my craving. (the recipe was from cook’s illustrated, but no matter. it was good.) as i washed the dishes, another thought occurred to me: maybe it’s not just that i crave chinese food.
maybe i miss being asian.
the phenotype hasn’t changed, i know. but when i look around my life these days, there isn’t a lot of asian in it. my husband isn’t asian. most of my coworkers aren’t asian. most of my friends aren’t asian. (these are not complaints, mind you — these are simply observations.) and then i got to wondering how exactly i practice my asian-ness. i write about it and talk about it in sociological terms, but i haven’t done a lot of that lately. i eat the food, but i haven’t done a lot of that lately either. i hang out with other asian people, but i don’t really have a group of asian friends here anymore, and the asian friends i do have i tend to see in the context of my very diverse social circle. so there isn’t a lot of asian going on for me right now, in terms of either people or practice.
… but there is a hint of it, just enough to remind me that it’s there. like jeff at work, for example, with whom i talk about asian things constantly, and all my asian friends from home and college who i see on facebook and twitter and instagram. if i had no exposure at all, maybe it would slip to the back of my mind — but i seem to have just enough to remind me that that’s a part of my identity; just enough to make me want to practice it in whatever form; and just enough so that if i don’t practice it, i feel a loss. which is what i’m feeling now, in the form of craving chinese food.
don’t get me wrong: i love having a diverse community and a diverse workplace, and i don’t take these things for granted. but i was reminded today that i also have cultural needs that require attention. so i think i’m going to tend to them tomorrow, and by that i mean i’m probably going to get in my honda civic, drive to monterey park, get a taiwanese breakfast, and listen to people around me talk. maybe break out a little (horrendously atrophied) mandarin. certainly stop at 99 ranch and half and half tea house on the way home. i always saw these kinds of things as luxuries, but i’m starting to think that maybe they’re necessities.
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