Chow Leads Discussion on East Asian Food Cultures Against Backdrop of COVID-19

Folding pork and chive dumplings as she spoke with Duke students on March 22, Eileen Cheng-yin Chow lectured and led a discussion about how food connects to many facets of life – and how those relationships have heightened or changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chow, a lecturing fellow in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, walked undergraduates through the ways in which food is related to health and our bodies, the environment, gender, class and labor, and so much more.

The virtual event was the latest installment of a discussion series for first- and second-year Duke students, Exploring Self and Community in Dark Times. Each gathering involves examining the world through a humanities lens and two sessions remain this academic year.

“Food is so much more than food,” Chow noted. “Food is always about companionship and love and sustenance and community…and cultural belonging.”

East Asian cultures have sometimes come to be known in the West primarily by specific foods, such as dumplings or ramen or boba tea. But food cultures can also be used to polarize. “Bat soup” came to be identified with the COVID-19 pandemic as did Asian “wet markets,” a catch-all term for markets where fresh meats and produce might be sold – not that different from farmers markets. But in 2020, East Asian food practices became suspect, and widely equated with zoonotic diseases and sources of contagion.

A series of dumplings being made

“The way that Asian Americans are scapegoated…this has not been an easy time for any of us,” Chow said. “And it taps into long-held stereotypes and narratives of Asians as contagious, as disease carrying, Asian women as hypersexualized, and Chinatown commerce as unsanitary and illegal. One thing I have been trying to do very hard…is to kind of talk about these as stories that are baked into the story of Asians in America, rather than saying ‘oh, this is just happening now.’”

“The way that, in calmer times, we might think of food as a delicacy from the East can so quickly slide into these dangerous discourses when tensions rise,” she added.

Chow also connected food with key historical moments during her talk, including periods of hunger and scarcity in China, foreign investment by Western corporations in Asia, waves of immigration resulting from Chinese exclusion laws in America, and how colonialism and military interaction sometimes changed the nature of Asian foodways.

“Much like thinking about regional dialects and linguistics and accents, these are not things that are divided by national boundaries,” she said. “These are not things that are divided by political understandings of the nation or empire. But often they mark points of contact, points of transfer, and when people are introduced, trade with, and live among others.”

For their part, attending students reflected on how their eating habits differ from those of their Asian parents and also discussed “boba liberalism,” a term sometimes used to deride upper- or middle-class Asian Americans who focus solely on pop cultural representation and shared love of Asian food delicacies as points of identification at the exclusion of all else.

Though much of the discussion about COVID-19 has focused on health care and policy, our current global crisis also highlights the relevance of rigorous, critical humanistic thinking. The Exploring Self and Community in Dark Times series is an opportunity to better understand ourselves in relationship to each other and to the world.

All sessions are hosted on Zoom and attendance is capped at 16 participants. Register for an upcoming session or learn more: https://trinity.duke.edu/exploring-self-and-community-dark-times.