One night TC, a Chinese from Malaysia, made stir fry for dinner.\u00a0 Two African-American women, Shunelle and Niecy, promptly drowned their dinner with gobs of Louisiana hot sauce.\u00a0 As I watched them pour hot sauce over their stir-fry and eat their food, I became increasingly angry.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.mccormick.com\/~\/media\/Images\/Recipes\/Recipe%20Details\/Vegetables\/Stir-Fry_Vegetables.ashx?w=380\")
<\/div>\n
So of course, like any good Chinese-American, I stuffed my feelings.\u00a0\u00a0 But like most feeling-stuffed Asians, my anger came out in passive-aggressive ways.\u00a0 By bedtime, they accused me of picking on them.<\/div>\n
I had to \u2018fess up.<\/div>\n
I told them I was mad at them that they poured hot sauce on their food.<\/div>\n
They were flabbergasted.\u00a0 You\u2019re probably flabbergasted too (unless you\u2019re Chinese and you know exactly what I\u2019m talking about here).<\/div>\n
As we talked, I realized I was offended because I had come to their community, was trying to understand and serve their culture, but when my food (stir-fry made by a Chinese-Malaysian) came to them, they weren\u2019t willing to taste it the way it was supposed to be made, but wanted to make it over to fit their preferences.<\/div>\n
On top of that, Chinese chefs make their food exactly the way it\u2019s supposed to be eaten.\u00a0 When they bring it to the table, they say all sorts of terrible things about their creation \u201cIt\u2019s too salty, the vegetables were old, I overcooked the beef.\u201d<\/div>\n
You, as guest, ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO AGREE!\u00a0 You say, \u201cNo, it\u2019s delicious.\u00a0 What a wonderful meal you\u2019ve made.\u00a0 I\u2019m so grateful you worked your fingers to the bone and almost chopped off three fingers in the 5 day preparation of this meal.\u201d<\/div>\n
In other words, putting extra salt, soy sauce, or Louisiana hot sauce over the food is just about the hugest insult you can give to a Chinese chef.<\/div>\n
In Shunelle and Niecy\u2019s culture on the other hand, food comes and you can do whatever you want to it to make it taste better.\u00a0 The chef doesn\u2019t take it personally.\u00a0 Everyone just enjoys their food with whatever condiments are available.<\/div>\n
Hot sauce on stir fry became a parable for our summer project. \u00a0We realized that when faced with a different ethnic group, too often our desire is to pour hot sauce all over their experiences or culture, so they\u2019re more palatable to us.\u00a0 \u00a0We noticed how small misunderstandings easily arise from cultural biases that then can get blown into huge racial wars.<\/div>\n
Thank God for 2 friends who were brave enough to tell me I was being a jerk and then to ask why.<\/div>\n
When are you tempted to put hot sauce on someone else\u2019s stir fry?<\/em><\/div>\n
What makes it difficult to just receive someone and their experiences without trying to \u201cdoctor\u201d it up or recast it?<\/em><\/div>\n
What\u2019s your favorite brand of hot sauce?<\/em><\/div>\n
This was first posted on What She Said<\/b><\/em><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why Louisiana Hot Sauce didn't Go with Chinese Stir Fry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"During graduate school, I spent summers doing inner city urban ministry with a multi-racial bunch of students in the African-American community of Austin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2012\/02\/why-louisiana-hot-sauce-didnt-go-with-chinese-stir-fry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Louisiana Hot Sauce didn't Go with Chinese Stir Fry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During graduate school, I spent summers doing inner city urban ministry with a multi-racial bunch of 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During graduate school, I spent summers doing inner city urban ministry with a multi-racial bunch of students in the African-American community of Austin on the West Side of Chicago. \u00a0When you live in multi-racial community with several folks of each color and stripe, quickly the simplest issues have racial overtones. One night TC, a Chinese […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n