01.19 | on mishaps in east west cultural exchange
Even a monkey can fall from a tree. Even a kappa can drown.
猿も木から落ちる. 河童の川流れ.
– Japanese expression
✉️ letter #24
I went to the Asian Art Museum a couple of weeks ago and came across these wonderful Japanese prints of foreigners in (I'm guessing) Nagoya around the Meiji Restoration era and wanted to write something about it.
Who knew that this week would afford me that opportunity?!
The BBC and The Guardian both put up Chinese recipes in time for the Spring Festival with hilariously bad cultural connotations in their art direction. Basically, they used pretty things to decorate those dishes - except all those pretty things are for reserved for funerals. RIP I died laughing.
But after seeing a lot of people whose reactions were more on the side of "aghast" and "deeply insulted," I thought it'd be good to revisit this whole idea of who's actually hurt by these cultural insensitivities.
Turns out I had a lot to write, specifically about this in relation to an incident that happened years ago (but it seems like only ~ yesterday ~) at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. So I'm throwing it into its own separate 1300-word blog post here:
Speaking of cultural exchange and Chinese food, I've finally kicked off my short video series on the breadth of Chinese dishes that you can get around China. I'm aiming to throw a new one out weekly (about all I can handle, content creation-wise) and the first one is about Hairy Crab dishes in Shanghai.
The season may have ended for it, but in Shanghai, they will find other ways to get that taste all year long.
I've also posted it to my Instagram and Tik Tok (both of which didn't do that weird color correction that Youtube chose to do). Follow for more upcoming!
🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel
- Chile may be one of the first countries in the world with a constitution that specifically tackles climate change. The nation is extremely rich in lithium, which is utilized to create all modern batteries, and its citizens are worried that mismanaging these resources to "make the country richer" will come with massive ecological and unequitable society costs. Thus, they want constitutional wording addressing this issue.
- Nocturnal owls produce about 18 decibels less noise than other birds at similar flight speeds due to their unique wing configuration... and now scientists in China are seeing if they can apply some biomimicry of owl wings to the design of airplanes.
- Berlin is considering creating a car-free zone in an area of the city larger than Manhattan. The auto ban would apply to the space ringed by the S-Bahn train line, which circles the city center. Berlin's always been near the top of my bucket list travel destinations, and I guess this is yet another reason to go!
- This story isn't so positive, but very important: Did you know wolf packs are being slaughtered in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming at rates not seen in over a century? Ever since gray wolves were taken off the "threatened with extinction" list, those states have declared open season on the species. Idaho and Montana contain 75% of the gray wolf population, and they both allow bounty payments on dead wolves. Meanwhile Wyoming has no upper limit for how many wolves you're allowed to hunt. It's ridiculous and backwards and only going to lead to wolves being forced near extinction yet again, to the detriment of biodiversity everywhere.
If you can, urge your state and the US Fish & Wildlife Service to support restoring federal protection to the gray wolf. NRDC makes it easy with this template email form.
🎵 song of my week
Maybe slightly ironically, considering the whole chat about about cultural appropriation up above, Jack Harlow's SUVs (Black on Black) became the top favorite of my exercise playlist recently.
The 23-year-old (i feel old) Kentucky rapper was in the controversy bullseye recently for being a white guy who received three BET nominations on "Black Culture's biggest night."
In a very Gen Z move though, his reaction to all the questions about race re: music didn't pull an Iggy Azalea ("how dare you bully me by saying I'm privileged") or a Macklemore ("let me now write too many earnest screeds about how my privilege makes me feel").
Instead, the privilege was acknowledged (in a bit of a word soup with Yahoo) and he addressed what it means to him to rap in a space he recognizes is for Black people, as well as what he needs out of his fandom while he continues to occupy this space. Especially around Black Lives Matter.
“The things I was doing last summer, any fans who didn’t feel like criticizing the police or were on the other side of things, I was going to weed them out. That could have been a moment for them to no longer be fans,” he said. “But what is important is that I lead by example for all the white kids looking at me. This is what you do. You don’t just enjoy Black culture. You stand up next to Black people in a time of need.”
IDK. The words are there, which is already better than it was for Millennials. And anyway, this song slaps and is fun to jog to.
✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun
I really didn't expect to find this show as charming as I did. In fact, at the end of the first episode, I was like "oh my god, these two British idiots are completely in over their heads. They've never even done electrical, how the hell are they going to renovate an entire 40+ room five story castle?
But somehow they made it work. Props to the jolly engineer colonel with the mustache that screams "jolly engineer colonel" for being shockingly handy, and for having an Angie's List worth of other British builders at the ready whenever French people want to eff off at 5pm.
And while I found the designer wife's tastes a little too circus-whimsical for myself, she is able to create surprisingly well-decorated spaces on a shoestring budget. Good for her for being willing to dig through mold and dust in order to ensure each vintage find in every hidden nook of this chateau gets its day to shine in the sun.
I've just started on Season 2 of this, but there's 8 altogether and they're all streaming on Peacock TV in the United States, and Channel 4 in the U.K.
Did you enjoy it?
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