In thinking about my project this week, there were lots of different questions that were coming up. It is fun that the more I get into researching, the more questions I have as I realize how much further I could explore and all the little avenues I could go down.
I started thinking about how there are not nearly as many Filipino restaurants compared to the number of other Asian/American restaurants, which altogether I am finding out more and more, there really is not much data and stories about. Through googling, I found there are about 41,000 Chinese/American restaurants, 5,000 Korean/American, 5,000 Indian/American, and no data (without far more searching) about Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, etc. Then or somewhere before that process, I was thinking about my memories walking to the Asian market in town and getting sweet rice in palm leaves, aloe drinks, and salt/vinegar chips. Also, going to my Lola’s house and eating ube hopia and peanuts with lots of garlic and salt from the Asian market we would go to to send money to our family in the Philippines four times a year.
A fun project I thought of out of this would be to photograph Asian markets and take portraits of the family that owns it along with gathering their story on when they started that store, what their experience has been, and what ethnic group they are from. In Bremerton where I grew up, the Asian markets I went to were owned and operated by Filipinx families whereas in Olympia, the Asian market that I go to is owned by a Thai family. It is interesting because they have different products available, the language in the store and packaging is different, as well as there being a alter (I was assuming it is a Buddhist practice). While this project won’t happen anytime soon, that got me thinking of another issue.
I feel like when lumpia is brought up to people and it has to be explained, it gets the definition of being like a Chinese egg roll. This is interesting to me because “Too Hot to Handle: Food, Empire, and Race in Thai Los Angeles,” which I read for my annotated bibliography talked about the beginning of Thai food being introduced to America, restaurants would label themselves at Chinese and Thai food. This is interesting because Thai and Chinese food are very different from each other. So it makes me wonder, since Chinese restaurants were the first APIA food places in the United States that took off,does this explain why people connect “Asian” dishes to Chinese food because that is apparently the wide connection people have to “Asian” food. This is also weird because Chinese/American food is not the same as Chinese food in China. This illustrates the way food and how food is talked about is changed, especially in the process of being brought into the American way of life. The subject of food keeps bringing in more and more topics like side dishes at a Korean restaurant being brought out, spread across the table, tantalizing you at the site of all the fun that is yet to explore.
Also, another post for this week about my project is posted under the title “Writing Process”