Mathilde Nai -
*CHOP SUEY*
Inauthentic Chinese
What do you want to make?
The goal of this thesis is to document my process of exploring my mostly Chinese heritage and dealing with my alienation from it.
I will be producing a series of photographs exploring my journey into my family history coming from China to Surinam and finally to The Netherlands and how it culminated into the person I am today. My anger towards growing up in a western country and dealing with racism and Chinese stereotypes. The feeling of unbelonging because of the rejection coming from every culture that I come from.
But also pride. Pride that I have this unique and complicated background. Pride of being Asian because Asian don’t raisin! And pride that I have this enormous culture to explore that I haven’t yet dipped my toes into.
In a previous assessment I showed a photograph of a model in a straw hat at a Chinese restaurant, because I wanted the straw hat has been used in Dutch carnivals as a way of "dressing up like a chinese". I wanted to take this ridicule away from this hat and turn it around into a fashion item. An item to be proud of as opposed to ashamed. This story, however, didn't translate into the work, but it was the start of the idea for this thesis.
How do you plan to make it?
I essentially want to put the thoughts and fears and emotions described below into my work.
Fears and doubts into the exploration of Chinese culture.
I told a tutor before that I started working at a Chinese gift shop in order to learn about my Chinese heritage. This seemed to be an almost crude way of minimising the entirety of the culture into one gift shop (I swear it’s really authentic), but I stand by my words! For me starting out at the gift shop seemed like a non-threatening way of getting to know a culture I know very little about.
But with this exploration also come fears and questions: Am I allowed to get to know and own a culture that I feel like I am an outsider at? I almost didn’t want to show my Chinese shoot to another Chinese student from China, because she is a real Chinese and and what if she thinks I’m a fake bitch who isn’t allowed to? My exploration into the culture can be quite surface level, but is it then also not allowed because I’m not digging as deep as I should or is it okay because my own heritage is quite surface level?
For this exploration I will be diving into Ta Hwa, the aforementioned giftshop. Ta hwa is like a little exotic Asian bubble in a very Amsterdam street. It’s even in a typical Amsterdam townhouse. I will be producing a sort of documentary style type of series where I describe aspects of the store in relation to my own identity and how I am sometimes confronted with my own very limited knowledge of being Chinese.
The garments hanging in front of the shop are described as “Chinese kimonos” but there really is no such thing as a “Chinese kimono” as kimono’s are of course Japanese. Not even sure if they are a traditionally Chinese garment, or just a silk type bathrobe that western people think is Chinese. I always feel kind of culturally insensitive calling them Chinese kimonos, so I usually call them silk bathrobes.
This is my spot. Sometimes people come into the store and say “Ni Hau”. Usually I think it’s racist, but when I’m in the store I wonder if it’s because they themselves are just interested in Chinese culture and think it’s polite to greet me in Chinese. I always kind of smile back awkwardly because Ni Hau is literally the only Chinese word I know.
I used to work with a Dutch guy who studies China studies in Leiden. He knows how to speak some Chinese and can read the characters as well. When customers want to know what a character means, they usually make a b-line for me to ask me what it means. I find it kind of hilarious that I point them to a white Dutch guy because he knows what it means and I don’t. I always tell him that he’s more Chinese than I am.
For these kinds of observations I am not sure if I will only be doing photography or try darling in filming the store as well and do a voice over.
Coping and ridicule of Asian stereotypes.
Like I said before I was bullied for being Asian in my youth. As I grew up I developed a different way of dealing with these bullies and stereotypes. Pretending like it doesn’t do shit to you proved my most effective way of dealing with it. So when people called me “poep-chinees” I just called them a “melkfles (jug of milk)” and laughed in their faces. My sister and I sang the “Hanki Panki Shanghai” song to each other on our birthdays. Sometimes I think the squinty eyes, big teeth, rice hat wearing fella is kind of funny. When I do it.
Asian stereotypes
Asian Stereotypes
Lately there's been a big uproar about this Krupup packaging which also features the stereotypical Chinese with rice hat and I wanted to buy the packaging so that I could do kind of a "Maybe we do look like this in our free time" type of photo. But they had already changed it, so I did a quick and bad photoshop with the packaing.
"Maybe I do chill like that, you don't know"
I went to the Museum of Chinese in America in New York (Moca) and discovered a bunch of Chinese caricature drawings where the Chinese men were the scary Fu Man Chu! Which is inherently offensive of course, but honestly I thought it was kind of cool because they give Chinese this whole air of being almost supernatural, wizard, vampire type people. Which is kind of awesome?
I also saw the movie "Freaky Friday" the other day, where they also featured a Chinese restaurant owner who did her "Chinese voodoo" on the main characters. And so when I was just messing around, I shot a photo that kind of looked like I was doing a magic spell and I immediately thought of the "Those Chinese with their weird voodoo!". Only it had more of a Kiki's delivery service vibe, which I was okay with!
"She did something! Some strange Asian voodoo!" - Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday (2003)
What is your timetable?
- Lots of prototyping and experimenting
- Fears and doubts into the exploration of Chinese culture - doing more research into the feeling of unbelonging. (Terms like: “transnational” “diasporic” “unbelonging”)
- Reflection
- Acceptance and ridicule of Asian stereotypes. - Recreation of stereotypes.
- Reflection
- Exploring the culture within the aesthetics aspect - finding classically Chinese artwork, borrowing elements of these * artworks and translating them into my own work.
- Reflection
- Publishing and presenting
Who can help you and how?
As for the unbelonging aspect I would like to talk to more people who also feel like they don’t belong to any one culture and why we feel the way we do. Reason for this is to also debunk my own made-up ‘criteria’ for when someone ‘belongs’ to a culture. For example a friend of mine is half-Italian/half-Tunesian also born in the Netherlands. She speaks Arabic and yet she tells me she doesn’t feel like she belongs within the Tunisian community at all despite speaking the language. This is because, to them, she doesn’t speak it ‘well enough’.
For the acceptance and ridicule of Asian stereotypes I would like to work with other Asians willing to model these stereotypes so that we can create these types of offensive scenes and turn them around as a way of empowering ourselves!
Exploring the culture within an aesthetic aspect means talking to Chinese people who are knowledgeable of the symbolism and classical traditions. So I would like to talk to Yu Ching more about this!
Relation to a larger context
While this specific story might be personal to me, the feeling of unbelonging is something many people struggle with and a growing number of people will be struggling with. As travel becomes easier, the world gets to be smaller and more people will procreate with someone of a different culture. Schools these days are more and more mixed. We are already living in a world where lots of people come from multiple heritages and there is almost no place for the gatekeeping of these cultures.
It would be nice to have other people see this work and relate to this aspect of it so that we can perhaps create an open dialog.