totally not feeling the good food night noodle markets

Let's talk Pasar Malam. 

Pasar Malam (or night market) is a stalwart of my childhood: many evenings spent swinging my legs under my chair, eating my char kuay teow or my lontong and slurping on my freshly squeezed watermelon juice, served to me in a clear plastic bag. The noise and the clatter of two dozen stalls, woks hissing, and over it all the yelling and the chatter. The floors were always solid, the chairs plastic and uncomfortable. The food was fast, and cheap, and if I was feeling picky I'd stand with the lady at the front and add and remove things from my order until my char kuay teow was perfect (I've never liked prawns, or chinese sausage), and this was not an inconvenience, it was merely an expectation. 

There are other Night Markets, across the rest of Asia and indeed the rest of the world; but to Australians, the image of a night market most frequently conjures something like a pasar malam. 

This week, the Night Noodle Markets have come to Melbourne as part of Good Food Month, and it is nothing like this. 

If you were lucky enough to gain entry on Monday night (25 000 people attended, and some were turned away at the gates), you might have passed through a Shinto Arch, erected at the Western Entrance. That's funny, you might think. Shinto temples do indeed host festivals, and I've had some delicious noodles at festivals held on Shinto grounds, but they're nearly always religious and the Shinto Arch, religious as it is, seems an odd choice for a pan-asian food festival. 

To one side are the food trucks. If you're wondering where you're going, there's poorly planned signage: with streets like Lotus Avenue, Jasmin (sic) Way, Orchid Lane and Peppercorn Lawn, coupled with the Shinto Arch and the names of some of the vendors, perhaps you're thinking about losing your way. 

The Night Noodle Markets are nothing like what they're trying to evoke: they're trying to evoke something South East Asian. The Good Food Month webpage talks about SEAzn experiences, describing the market as hawker-style, and even quotes Teage Ezard (of Ezard), saying about his first pasar malam experience in KL: "I ate late at night with a local who took care of our ordering. We ate a huge amount for next to nothing!" 

Here's what I ate on Monday night:

Mint, ginger and lemon iced tea: $5

Serving of sweet potato fries (not that large) and one single spring onion pancake from Ghost Kitchen: $10.50 

Pandan, coconut and mango sundae (called the En-Thai-Sing, which, ew but also lol): $9

Originally I joined the Wonderbao queue, because I've never tried Wonderbao and I've heard many a good thing. However after standing in the queue for ten minutes and not moving a single step, I ditched it and wandered over to the food trucks, where at least the queues were faster, though dumplings were still $2.50 each. 

Street food across Asia is a success because it's ordinary, cheap, accessible and fast. Vendors often do only two or three things but they do those two or three things well, and fast, and to order, which none of the vendors were doing. As a vegan, when I'm hanging in the pasar malams of Penang with my sceptical extended family I never have any problems modifying my dish to get exactly what I want. Asian street food gets a bad rap amongst vegos, which is totally unfair - I so rarely have problems, particularly in SEA, due to the fact it is literally put together in front of me. It is always convenient, cheap, fast, and exactly what I want. The food available at the Night Noodle Markets is none of these things, and is the antithesis of a pasar malam in every way. 

In part, this is due to the participating vendors. To get a more accurate night market we should be staring down the face of Camy's Dumpling House, a Dessert Story or two, and the Noodle Kingdom. Some of the vendors come from outside the CBD (Footscray and Burwood), and some are lower range, but for the most part the vendors were all inner-city, catering to toned-down Asian (ie, for white people) mid-range to high-range dining. The Good Food website describes the vendors as "Top-notch eateries." If I wanted to eat at a top-notch eatery at higher than usual prices, I'd go to those eateries and book a table. That's not what a night market is for.  

This is different from the specific cultural events like the Melbourne Malaysia Festival, which are usually run in partnership and aimed at both those whose culture is being eaten, and those who just want to share in our deliciousness. This superficial pan-Asian (but not even really) event appeals to us, but ultimately cannot meet our expectations, because they're not designed for us, the Asian-Australians (or Asian Expats) who long for these things familiar to us. This event is not that event. This is exotification and appropriation, dressed to be Good Food. Good Food is special, by this definition. Hawker food is not Good Food, and there will never be a real pasar malam if this is all we can aim for: an event for those who love us for a specifically modified image of our food, rather than its reality. 

Even the setting was like nothing out of a pasar malam. When I arrived, everything was wide and spread out, necessitating a five minute trek between sections. When I was leaving, there were queues at each entrance, with people being turned away or choosing to turn themselves away and venture into the CBD for their dinner. 25 000 people visited on that first evening, and that is a fucking nightmare by any standards, in a space the size of Alexandria Gardens. The queues at each vendor were ridiculous, and often poorly managed, and a commenter on the Good Food webpage mentioned that it closed at 9pm, which is hardly late at all given sunset is currently 20:16.

The punters were heavily on the asian-side, which isn't a surprise: we love our night markets (a generalisation by which I will stand). The servers at a number of the venues were not-Asian, though, and this is not an article on authenticity (which is why I haven't really talked about the food) but it does serve to support the idea that this is a Night Noodle Market that doesn't really meet Our Asian Needs: it's got some familiar elements, but it's not exactly what we want, the cheapness, the accessibility, the speediness, the convenience. 

This failure and disappointment was inevitable, given the lack of a real pasar malam. A part of a night market is, in its way, its accessibility and familiarity. A pasar malam should not be an Event - it should just be a thing. Perhaps the real answer is not a Good Food Month night market which runs (poorly) for two weeks out of the year, but a year-round (or summer round) under cover pasar malam, with actual prices (not show prices - Hayley, my companion in this adventure, noted that Wonderbao had increased its prices approximately $1 per item for the market). It leads to the question, then: at whom is Good Food Month aimed, if the Good Food Month Night Noodle Market met none of the assumed criteria. What defines good food? Surely the very definition of good food as presented here, with Chin-Chin and Longrain right here before us, cannot include hawker food. Perhaps the actual real answer is not a year-round pasar malam: perhaps the answer is that Melbourne can't support a real pasar malam, because costs are too high and there's no established history of it and who is going to establish it and keep it running? I'd like to say it'll be me, but it really won't. 

Actual Night Market food, it seems, and an actual night market, is not good enough for Good Food Month. 

And there was a detestable lack of noodles. 

The Night Noodle Markets are held at Alexandria Gardens from now until November 30th. Entry is free. Don't go. 

eight treasures rice and vegan compromises

Being a vegan in China can be hard, and sometimes you try your hardest and you still can't be sure. I've been having a lot of problems lately, judging myself and worrying about being judged. I went to a Greenpeace event a few weeks back, where a (white, British) vegan scolded me for going to non-vego restaurants with my non-vego friends. The first vegan I met here, on my first day, came with us all to a restaurant and then didn't eat a thing. She told me she never eats at non-vego restaurants, and I thought at first, that's a bit hardcore. But having been here five weeks now, I realise it's what she has to do to be totally confident that she's living animal-free.

The only time I'm confident that my meal has no animal products is when I'm in my house and I'm cooking for myself, and when I visit the vegan restaurant down the road (and most of the time I'm confident about the vego restaurants, too, if I ask the right questions). The term vegetarian food (素菜) here is generally understood as 'there's no meat as a main ingredient', and it sometimes means I get a bit of a mince garnish on my beans, a little pork in my eggplant. Today at lunch I asked 'does this have meat?' The chef looked at me and was like 'why?', as if it was a ridiculous question to ask. I once asked 'does this have egg?' and got the answer, 'it doesn't have egg, it's sweet!'; but I'm pretty sure it had an egg-wash. I giggled and ate it anyway, because it was a friend's grandmother and she'd gone to so much effort to get vego treats for me.

I'm making these compromises or having these questions at least a couple of days a week. I try my hardest to stay vegan, but even speaking Mandarin I can never be quite sure, and I worry about what people would think, if they knew that today I picked the egg out of my meal and kept eating rather than having to miss lunch.

This is part of the reason why reviews have dropped off. I've eaten a lot of amazing meals since I've arrived here, and my friends in Beijing, every one of them a meat eater, let me pick almost every dish when we go out for food. I've discovered some delicious local dishes, filled with unexpected combinations (cabbage + glass noodles, I don't know how to describe this wonder). I'm for the most part content with the decisions I'm making, but I feel like I cannot with confidence recommend these places to people, for fear that I'm wrong. I've made my peace with knowing I lose my vegan powers intermittently during my time here, but I don't want to put other vegos and vegans unknowingly at risk. I'm thinking about starting to review the places I go to, but adding caveats about how hard it was to be confident it was vegan and other things like that.

Anyway, this eight treasures pudding on a stick. I thought it was vegan but in hindsight I don't think it was, which pisses me off because it was delicious and in a way serves me right for being too intimidated by the Jinan accent to ask. Steamed in a bamboo stem and served on a stick and filled with fruits, what genius! Also genius: the eggs on a stick. Cracked into moulds and fried on to the stick. Obviously not vegan but interesting to look at.

me at peril

belated (i just moved countries!), but i have an article up at peril magazine: Care and Feeding: Comfort Food for Chinese-Australian Vegans.

potluck 2: comfort food

Oh dear patient friends, I apologise for the delay in getting this carnival up. But I promise, though it is small and slightly delayed, that it is still a good read. This time the theme was comfort food, and all of these posts are about comfort food! Delicious, comforting food.

If you are one of my usual vegan readers, please note that not all posts linked to today are vegan, but they don't really talk about food specifics and you should read the posts anyway, because they are important and amazing and good.


Oddcellist talks about comfort food:

When I talk about the things I can cook, I tend not to talk about Chinese food—because I don't cook the way my mother does, even though I hear her voice every time I cook (fry the ginger until its flavor blooms, use day-old rice to make fried rice, people here like things too sweet), because I remain incredibly recipe-bound.

Vi writes (and draws!)about small comforts: tāng yuán.

Azuire writes ٹیڑھی کھی, about comfort food that's monolingual (and not):

What I felt when I discovered that اچار was not called that by others (and I know it was اچار because I'd had an argument about it) was shock. Pure and simple. The English names of food-things that had previously existed only hypothetically were now widely accepted as the only names for things. It felt incomplete, inaccurate.

In comfort fooding, Glass_Icarus maps a history of her comfort food.

I've realized that I don't so much rely on specific foods for comfort as I do on cooking and eating with specific groups of people. 火鍋 with my immediate family is different from 火鍋 with my relatives in Taiwan is different from hotpot with all the different permutations of my "usual suspects," friends from ballroom/undergrad. Dim sum with my "American grandma" is different from dim sum with my Chinese family friends (where there's never any explanation involved but the check-grabbing fights remain the same).

Sam Miskiv writes on disordered eating and veganism (and, in a way, comfort food).

Ephemere talks Hapag-kainan, dibdib: My language is one that eats and is eaten. If one is to speak to me of comfort and discomfort -- speak to me of food. And of rice.

Linstar writes about what makes comfort food:

I’ve often been asked what my favourite food is and I have very usually replied with something along the lines of my mum’s laksa or my mum’s spring rolls or something to that effect. My mum’s cooking. It wasn’t until recently when I was sitting down talking to a work colleague that I actually realised some of my favourite comfort foods aren’t necessarily my mum’s cooking at all, but my mum’s cooking brings an association of love and comfort. I’ve actually come to realise my favourite comfort foods are anything that can be shared, and that it’s the company more than anything which makes comfort food comforting.

And a little aside: Counter Culture, a book which collected food histories from the kids that Lifting Voices works with. Their funding deadline is past but the book looks great!


And now, with my spoon in one hand and my chopsticks in the other, I am off to eat my own comfort food, though I failed to blog about it. Thank you for reading Potluck 2! Potluck is intended to be an occasional carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights, and cultural and racial issues. If you are interested in hosting the next Potluck, please drop myself or glass icarus a line!

last call for submissions: comfort food!

Just a reminder that submissions for potluck 2: the comfort foodening are due on the 31st of May! I know, I know, I haven't even written anything yet. TOMORROW. NO SERIOUSLY. I'm going to be talking about pandan.

Get your submission on!

reminder for potluck 2

Just a reminder that submissions for Potluck 2: Comfort Food are due in about a week! (The 15th) You do not have to be vegan to participate, posts from all types of eaters are totally cool, so long as you are talking about food and intersectionality!

Guidelines are available at the original post! Please submit something!

I should write something too, whoops.

call for submissions: potluck #2: comfort food

Do you remember Potluck #1? Of course you do, it was super exciting, and all about holidays. I am pleased to announce that I am hosting Potluck #2: Comfort Food. Submissions can cover anything you like, and you do not have to stick to the theme! but please remember that we are trying to talk about intersections. Potluck is, after all, intended to be a carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights, and cultural and racial issues. How many times have you gone to eat your comfort food, only to be told it's gross and weird and disgusting? How many times has advertising told you that your comfort food is wrong and terrible?

Submissions are open until May 15th, giving you a comfortable six weeks to get something in. You can leave submissions in this post (please note that comments are moderated but will eventually appear!). Please feel free to submit links to your own posts or to someone else's. You may submit multiple links. Links will be included at the discretion of the host.

Please note that this is not just for vegans! It is just here because this is where my food stuff, and also I am pretty sure glass icarus is not vegan. :o)

Also we are looking for the next host, so if you are interested feel free to get in contact.

announcing: potluck (a food carnival of intersectionality)

I love talking about food. And reading about food, and people's experiences with food. So Glass_Icarus and I, inspired by some recent posts (including but not limited to gross, weird, inedible (redux) by vi, Doodh se Dhuli by deepad, and seven things by troisroyaumes), have decided to start an ongoing food carnival, looking at multicultural and intersectional discussions of food.

There are no real limits on theme; however, the focus of the carnival is on thoughts and experiences around food through various topics that you might see around the social justice blogosphere, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights and of course cultural and racial issues. We welcome you to share your recipes as well as your thoughts and experiences, but we ask that you do not submit posts with recipes only.

Wow, how much stuff did I forget to include in that list? Heaps! This is what happens when you write a blog thing when your headspace is somewhere else (writing learner guides for courses on education for sustainability). Sorry! There are many more various topics that should have been included on that list! And I want to write about them all! Well, I want someone to write about them. I probably can't write about food + being trans, or food + religion, or food + disability. FOR EXAMPLE.

The theme for the first potluck is holidays. Submissions can encompass anything you like, including holidays you might be celebrating nowish (Christmas, Hannukah), or recently (Eid al-Adha), or soon (Lunar New Year), or ages ago. Any holiday or festival.

You can submit in the original announcement post, or via email to glass_icarus AT dreamwidth DOT org, who will be hosting the first edition.

Please feel free to submit links to your own posts or to someone else's. You may submit multiple links. Links will be included at the discretion of the host. We welcome anyone to participate from any blogging platforms. The deadline for submissions for the first edition of Potluck is JANUARY 21, 2011.

This is totally relevant to you, vegans and vegetarians who read my blog! Write about intersectionality and food. DO IT.

me + usacentrism + monday morning links

I saw Frente yesterday! Everything else that happened over the weekend pales in comparison. Even the odd election (did you get to vote? I know people who couldn't get to any voting points because of the flooding!).

I realised that, two weeks after the fact, I had yet to post a link in my other blog about my intersectionality talk being up at The Scavenger, so I just did that, and took the opportunity to ramble a bit about the USA-centricity of AR (and other social justice topics) online. If you wanted to come over and weigh in, or give me your thoughts, that would be great! intersectionality 101: addressing racism and classism in animal rights activism (a talk) + USA-centrism.


This slightly odd article has been doing the rounds: The Rise of the Power Vegans. It's an interesting enough read, but I found it odd and I'm not sure why.

Unsurprising but interesting to have in a study: Animal-welfare news sways meat consumers:

News coverage of animal-welfare issues causes U.S. consumers to cut back on meat purchases and spend their money instead on non-meat items, a study indicated.

Cows, Goats Escape from Slaughterhouse, Only to be Forced Back In

I meant to link this a few weeks ago, but: Poultry producer's workers claim intimidation. Miscellaneous worker intimidation might not seem that relevant, though it is in a chook production facility, but I've started collecting these sorts of articles in Australia. One of the barriers to effective AR in Australia (I've found) is that all our information for back up comes from the USA or from Europe, so I think it's important to document the patterns (whether they are similar to those famously documented overseas or not) in order to have solid evidence.

One of the things that frustrates me about working in the environmental/climate change sector, as a vegan, is the fact that people are often really invested in not being vegetarian. This article frustrates me: Eco Friendly Fur or No Such Thing? Not necessarily because I'm like 'no fur no fur!' (though I am): but because an argument that starts with 'but they're a rodent! and they're doing environmental damage!' ignores the suffering aspects. Here is my confession: I totally prioritise reducing environmental damage. And I am very critical of introduced species. But humans, you know, did the introducing! So maybe it is our responsibility to not kill them in the usual painful methods used for getting fur. I'm there for reducing their damage on the environment, but pain is not really the answer.

intersectionality 101: addressing racism and classism in animal rights activism (a talk)

As you may remember I went to the Gold Coast for a couple of days to present at the Animal Activists Forum. I presented, with Katrina Fox on intersectionality in animal rights. It was mostly a primer, a basic introduction to intersectionality. Going in, I assumed that it would all or mostly be new concepts for people, which is why I made it really basic and really casual, lots of chatty examples and things. No jokes, because I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

If you're interested, the text of my talk is up at The Scavenger: Addressing racism and classism in animal rights activism.

Overall I was quite happy with it. It was very condensed, as we only had thirty minutes between the two of us, so there were lots of leaps and gaps and so much covered, but still, I understand it's the first time this sort of topic has been brought up at the forum, and lots of talking came out of it, and I hope that it's a conversation that can filter through AR in Australia and keep moving, because I find that intersectionality is severely lacking in Australian AR.

[book review] thanking the monkey

I came to Thanking the Monkey with some skepticism. Karen Dawn was recently in Melbourne giving a talk as a fundraiser for Edgar's Mission, and at the last minute I decided to go, prompted by some enthusiasm from J. I liked the talk well enough; I wasn't blown away by it, but I decided to pick up a copy anyway (all the profits for the copies sold on the night went to Edgar's Mission, too!).

I like to think I know a lot about animal issues, but some of the stuff I was reading totally astounded me. I had to start bookmarking, and now my copy is filled with post it notes and little sticky bits (which I'm going to remove as I type this, so I can lend the book out).

Dawn has an interesting, conversational writing style. She talks up her book as an accessible gift book, and certainly it is very accessible. The book is illustrated with pictures and comics, on the premise that even if you give the book to someone who can't bring themselves to read it, they might flip through and see some of the comics, and take away at least a part of the message.

Thanking the Monkey was written as an all-around animal rights book: at some times it's an introduction, covering the basics, and at other times it's quite in depth and confronting.

There are lots of suggestions of other books to read, as well as video and other online links. The book is heavily (though inconsistently) referenced, which I always enjoy. It's also very easy to pick up and put down, as it's filled with lots of separate sections. This means I felt comfortable putting it down for a week and a half and then coming back to it again.

The chapters are set out in a nice way, too: there's an introductory chapter, one on pets, animal entertainment, clothing, as food, animal testing, green/conservation groups, and 'compassion in action.'

One big thing for me was that, it led to me revising my opinion on zoos. I've always struggled with zoos, not liking the voyeristic/trapped components of it for animals, but recognising the need for conservation. Halfway through the section on zoos, I changed my mind. I'm still there for the conservation efforts, but why do we need zoos to fit in to urban areas? Anyway, me and zoos are definitely over.

The book does have some problems. Like many vegan / animal rights texts, there's some fatphobia. At some points there's an undertone of cultural cluelessness. There's also a sort of something, for certain people. "And some human mothers will hand over a baby for a vial of crack," (pg 254) for example, is a statement that I would like to challenge. The book frequently uses terms like 'normal,' which regular readers of this blog will know I dislike, as it positions some of us as not-normal.

However, I learnt a lot of things that I didn't know. I don't know if it was naiveness or overlooking or what, but as the book went on I was blown away by how much I was bookmarking. A small sampling:

• "...unlike other mammals, dolphins are not automatic breathers; every breath is a conscious choice, and when life becomes unbearable they can choose to take no more. They commit suicide. He says that much of the early mortality rate of dolphins in captivity is a result of suicide: "We literally bore them to death."" (pg 84)
• There's type of fur (from lambs - not sure why it's not wool), where the baby lambs are killed at a few days of age, and sometimes even the skin of unborn lambs is used. I'm not sure why unborn lambs horrifies me more than born lambs - maybe because the mother has to be killed too? (pg 107) In the USA (not sure if this extends beyond the USA) coats with less than $150 worth of fur don't have to be labelled as having fur (pg 110).
• Farmed salmon requires about 2.5 times the same amount of wild fish as food.
• The WWF, as a conservation society, sometimes positions itself squarely against animal rights (pg 295) - this was cool to read because then, when I was talking to the Wilderness Society people at World Vegan Day, I was able to ask so many questions I'd never previously have considered.

Another thing: Stephen Colbert has an adopted turtle daughter: her name is Stephanie Colburtle. Adorable name!

One final benefit of reading the book, for me, was being able to quote from it for my recent talk at the Animals Australia Forum. I gave a talk on intersectionality, and I had wanted to give examples of why intersectionality is needed in AR. Advised against this, I went the other way: I used Dawn's 2005 article ' Best Friends Need Shelter Too,' reproduced in the book, as an example of how intersectionality takes things in to account. So that was nice.

I recommend the book. It's an interesting read, and I learnt a lot, but I recommend reading it with caution. I'm not sure I would give it as a gift book to people who weren't already interested in AR/AW.

exclusionary language; or, we're not all coming from the same place

Being an outrageous vegan, I am against the slaughter of animals. I am hip to all those rallies and I am all there for signing your petition. I am already boycotting those shitty animal products, and I am talking about the crappy things done to animals. But I can't get behind the language that is frequently and commonly used, that is exclusionary, sensationalist and othering. Sometimes it's subtle, and sometimes it's overt, but it is always totally unnecessary, and demonstrates just how easy it is for single issue vegans to gloss over the fact that there is diversity amongst us.

For example, this petition currently up at change.org: The Australian Government Must Ban Brutal Ritual Slaughter Right Now. I can ignore the odd and slightly unprofessional presentation of this petition, because to expect perfect grammar from everyone would be for me to assume that everyone has the same level of education as me, which is classist (for example); or to assume that nobody can be ESL or be unfamiliar with my dialect of English.

What I cannot ignore is language like this: NO, instead it allows this abhorrently cruel ritual slaughter to continue, a practice that should never have been accepted in Australia in the first place. When this language is used in a discussion of religion, particularly in discussion of a religion that is currently being maligned, marginalised and attacked in the media and constructed as a religion of foreign otherness, it creates the suggestion that the religion itself doesn't belong here. More directly, it ties the act (barbaric slaughter) to the religion (Islam), and finishes with the phrase 'should never have been accepted in Australia in the first place.' You can claim all you like that it clearly talks about the practice, but the reality is that it is an othering, unnecessary addition to the petition, and it assumes that all in AR are coming from the same place.

In addition, it ties this practice with 'foreign' in a way that is not necessarily correct - there have been some pretty shitty slaughtering practices in Australia, unrelated to slaughtering for halal, and to claim these practices only exist in Australia because of those dirty filthy foreigners is presumptious.

It is hardly the first AR campaign to do so, and it is unlikely to be the last. There was the PETA 'Save the Whales' campaign, that clearly came from a place of assuming that no veg*ns are fat, and that fat is shameful.

Veganism and the AR movement are often seen as white/Anglo-saxon, middle-class movements, and stuff like this just contributes to it.

After all, there's a reason why I use 'single issue vegan' as an insult.

SOME READERINGS:
s.e. smith wrote a blog post a while ago, I Used to be That Annoying Vegan, that talks about the baseline assumption that everyone has the same access to things, and the same social class, and the same privileges.

On ableism, there was some discussion in the comments of this post at VoC that really highlights it - lots of people basically erasing the experiences of people with disabilities by saying 'well you were doing it wrong,' rather than acknowledging that not everyone is operating from the same base level.

Royce posted at VoC on resisting invocations of coloniality, on the way in which the AR movement often approaches indigenous groups re: treatment of animals; ie, in a really shitty way.

One of the earliest posts on this blog was about the exotification of non-Anglo cultures in the vegan movement, and the othering use of language.

isms in our vegan

Vegans of Colour summarised the Morrissey thing really well, but in case you missed it, Morrissey declared Chinese people to be a subspecies, on account of the way they* treat animals, which I guess he thinks is much better than the way, say, the UK or the USA treats their animals? I don't know, I'm just guessing. He could be thinking anything. And I'm Chinese, so I probably beat my penguins. Or something.

I always enjoy reading about hypocritical people! It totally makes my day!

Here is my pull quote from the VOC article:

Probably my two biggest gripes about these near-sighted race politic expressions of animal rights are that:

1) they really perpetuate, particularly amongst people of color, the misnomer that veganism can only be narrowly defined as a white, middle-class subculture and that;

2) vegans of color are further marginalized within the discourse of animal rights whether or not we cry foul at the egregious white-supremacist twists on these representations of animal rights politics.

As with Morrissey as well as the rest of the white animal rights crowd, here’s a itsy-bitsy tip when attempting to articulate a discourse about animal rights: a little nuance goes a long way in figuring out where the root of the problem lies and where the solution can begin. The intersection of race and ethnicity between veganism is much more complex than you might make it out to be.

The comments to the VOC post include a charmer about how China should be wiped from the earth is...well, that's lovely, but until you wipe every other country from the earth I'm just going to sit here and try to dull my hatred of hypocrisy, you know?

I'm working on a post about classism in the veganism and ethical food movements (I know you can't wait, you're just lucky I've been sick), but in the meantime, here are some tumblr and other links that you might be interested in reading:

• more vegans of colour: Veganism and the Class War
• seaponies' original post, on privilege and veganism, and two responses (interesting for what they bring up; I do not necessarily endorse their points): the discussions a lot of (white) vegans are having aren't good enough for me... by faketrain; and by meanibeani.
• some comments by thingsmreading and radeicallyhottoff on classism and racism in veganism

GOOD TIMES!

Leave exciting linkies in the comments.




*WE HELLO

hear me roar: a forum to consider the parallels and intersections between equal rights and animal rights and society and law (a talk)

Last week I attended a lecture at Victoria University, organised by Lawyers for Animals and Victorian Women Lawyers. Entitled 'Hear Me Roar: A forum to consider the parallels and intersections between equal rights and animal rights in society and law,' I was interested but cautious. The speakers were Moira Rayner ('Freelance writer, lawyer, academic and Executive Member, Lawyers for Animals') and Dr Siobhan O'Sullivan ('Research fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne; Member, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics; and Member, Secretariat of Barristers' Animal Welfare Panel').

O'Sullivan spoke to the topic 'Animal Invisibility and Animal Suffering: what can feminism and refugee rights teach us about insidious animal suffering?' I am always cautious about talks/topics that seek to compare one issue to another, just because this so often results in the further marginalisation of one of those groups, or some form of oppression olympics (or, my favourite, 'XX is the last acceptable oppression.'). Appropriation is also often a big part of it. Anyway, that's why I was cautious but interested going in.

O'Sullivan highlighted the way, in the animal protection movement, it is often women who do the work, but men who right books and speak. She noted Adams as an exception to this,* and as someone who drew the link between commodities.

Animals as commodities, women as commodities. This is part of the idea of public and private, and why she uses the term 'invisible suffering.' This is where women's and refugee rights come in to it - these two groups have previously had to deal with invisible suffering.

She also talked about liberal democracy, and how it works on a group functionality - therefore as an individual it is problematic to complain.

The idea of the public/private divide can be seen in how laws around animals have progressed: the first laws were for beasts of burden, because these were the animals on the street, these were the animals one could see abused. It was not for many years afterwards until laws were extended to companion animals, and O'Sullivan's contention is that this is because companion animals were in private.

She points out that there is a similar ish problem in refugee rights - it is very difficult to hear refugees speak, and it can be very difficult to gain access to refugees and see/'believe' their treatment, as they are housed away from the mainstream community. Do they really need to be housed away from the community, on Christmas Island? Or is it just so that we can't see them, and therefore can't understand what's going on?

Rayner spoke without a powerpoint (!!), and talked less about the idea of gender and more about the idea of power. She emphasised that Australians are very uncomfortable with talk about rights unless it is in regard to self rights. Rayner took a very large over-reaching approach, talking about many countries around the world, and many issues, especially regarding dependency relationships (such as children, animals, disabled persons), and linked these relationships all to power. She also included a bit of a rights history, talking about how the giving of rights was first to animals, then to children, and then to women, and then to racism and religious persecution.

Rayner circled around with some action points for animal rights activism, that have clearly drawn from other forms of rights activism, and also that I think can be a good reminder in other forms of rights activism:

• change language leads to a change in perspective - therefore use language carefully
• advocate for rights
• appeal for feminists who stand up for rights of women, dependents, and other marginalised groups to extend to animals

O'Sullivan talked around some interesting topics, but didn't really go in to them in depth. Rayner talked quite a specific topic and also circled it around (which is hard to demostrate in my notes), and was quite thought provoking. The talks were brief, which can make it difficult to talk in depth, I acknowledge this, but I felt like in some regards they were just a bit too surface-y.

My concerns regarding appropriation and eyebrow raising were not unfounded but there were no sirens going off, and my notes only include three uses of the red pen, which was good. This is mostly, though, because it was a lot about what feminism can do for animal rights/the lessons learned, rather than anything else.

In many ways it was clear that this talk was to a generalised, nebulous feminist/ medium-engagement woman (the white, middle-class, western-world sort), and kind of a low-level discussion (nothing too heavy or controversial, unless you think animal rights are controversial) but the discussions of intersectionality and links between oppressions were at least there, which I always appreciate.

There are some things I would have liked to see discussed, or things that could be discussed subsequently. I would have liked to talk more about the intersections - there was some talk about domestic abuse, and I thought that the points about public/private were very interesting, but I would have liked to talk about the intersections more. I definitely want to talk more about power and how that translates to a lack of power and privilege for certain groups. I would also like to talk about the economic and cultural assumptions surrounding a lot of the talk of animal rights - I know we were talking from an Australian legal basis, but there were lots of examples from other countries and they were all of a certain type of culture and yes.

Flowing on from that, and unrelated to animal rights, I want to talk about the racism in refugee rights and how that relates to the public/private, but that is for another time. :o)







*please note that I have issues with Adams, which are touched on here and here.

the ability to make choices

In the post Elitism and the Movement, Prof Susurro discusses the idea that veganism as a movement has played a role in perpetuating a classist discource. She interrogates this idea, which was a riff off a post at Vegans of Colour asking does second-hand figure into your ethics equation. Prof Susurro's point was that questions that position 'choice' as the key element imply that all vegans have this choice, ie, can afford to/have the ability to make this choice. Framing it in this way erases vegans who don't fit into a middle/upper class position.

Prof Susurro's entire post is very interesting, as are the comments on both posts. The comments especially really interrogate a lot of intersections with veganism, including transphobia and feminism and racism. I know that when I write my blog, my assumption is that my audience are middle-upper class, well-educated, and (based on who comments) primarily white. And for the most part, vegan or vegetarian. I tend to assume that we are all operating from certain privileges regarding free time and class and available cash, but I acknowledge that whilst that is my reader base, that is not the reality of all vegans or vegetarians (or people who would like to be vegans or vegetarians but cannot make that choice).*

A lot of what I read around the blogosphere is about people making 'wrong' choices, and about how veganism is cheaper than other, animal-exploitative options, but statements whose base message is that fail to recognise that for some people, there is no option in there to choose.

Anyway, Prof Susurro's post really got me thinking about the ways that I can a) enable people less privileged than me to be able to make a vegan choice if they want to, and b) make veganism more accessible. It's also got me thinking about the assumptions that I make, and how judge-y I can be as a vegan sometimes. Lots of thinking. It's an interesting post! I really recommend reading it, and the comments (though some of the comments get very deraily and defensive). And if you've never encountered intersections before, it's not a bad post in which to get an introduction.




*an aside: I mostly know Malaysian and Chinese non-vegans! So if you have any Malaysian or Chinese vego buddies, please feel free to hook me up.

asian women blog carnival

So one of the reasons why I started this blog was to explore vegan food through my lens as Chinese Australian, and reconcile OMG NO MEAT with a lot of the things I used to take for granted. I have posted a little about it directly, but mostly I just try to find a lot of food that meets my requirements as Chinese and vegan and delicious.

In my Real Life as an occasional anti-racism blogger, I'm hosting the 5th Asian Women Blog Carnival. Posts are welcome from both Asian women and allies. The theme is Who I Am When I'm (not) With You. The full explanation post can be found here, and it contains all the details regarding submissions and guidelines.

I know that there are some people lurking in this blog that would be interested in that, so please, you know, check it out, or consider posting something for the carnival! Submissions are due a few days before CNY.

some links and outrage

I may or may not be back with a food post today, but briefly:

Kekovich takes Australia Day lamb campaign global

After five years of campaigning against ‘unAustralian’ behaviour across the nation and urging us to unite over a lamb chop on Australia Day, Sam Kekovich is set to take his cause global.Convinced that mankind is facing a pandemic that threatens its very existence - unAustralianism - Sam will ask the United Nations to declare 26 January ‘International Australia Day’ in his 2010 Address.

OH GOOD because nothing makes me feel better about being a Chinese-Australian vegan than being told I have to kill lambs in order to count as an actual Australian.

Some other links for the morning:

On meat consumption, equity and human rights by Sarah at the Vegan Benefits Blog

Why vegans were right all along at the Guardian.

As a meat-eater, I've long found it convenient to categorise veganism as a response to animal suffering or a health fad. But, faced with these figures, it now seems plain that it's the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue. We stuff ourselves, and the poor get stuffed.

I regularly read vegan.com because Erik Marcus is always talking about and linking to interesting stuff, and he has written The Year in Meat 2009, a really interesting read on animal agribusiness and vegarianism (mostly US-centric) in 2009.

movie: the age of stupid

This post is not about food! Well, in a round about way it is, but not really.

One of the reasons why I became a dedicated and passionate eater of no meat was because of my work in and concern about sustainability and climate change. I can link to figures and facts if you like (just ask),* but I'm sure most people reading this blog already know them, or know of them. The contribution of the meat production process to climate change is so significant, in its disproportionate water use, energy use and land use, that it's just so important to consider in personal change.

Anyway, there's this movie that just came out in Australia yesterday. It was filmed on the tiniest budget, the crew earned literally survival wages, and they've no budget for advertising or anything. I thought it was only screening for two days, but it appears to be screening for a week in some places (certainly in Carousel and Garden City in Perth it's screening until next week), so I'd like to take this opportunity to briefly pimp it here.

The Age of Stupid is a movie/documentary/post-apocalyptic thing featuring Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, looking back on documentary footage of 2008 and wondering why we didn't stop climate change when we had a chance. It touches on less meat for about half a second, and is more focused on bigger things, community groups and corporations, but I still think it is worth the watch. I've been feeling complacent, lately, in my little bubble. I mean, sustainability and climate change is what I do. So I'm doing enough, right? But this was a well-timed push up the bum, just as I'm about to start a new job.

The trailer can be watched on youtube.

Go see it! After Australia I understand it will be moving on to other countries, so you can see it even if you're not in Australia. Or, if you have seen it, let me know what you thought!








*here are my favourites:
* To produce one kilogram of oven dry wheat grain, it takes 715 – 750 litres of water
* For 1 kg maize, 540 – 630 litres
* For 1 kg soybeans, 1650 – 2200 litres
* For 1 kg paddy rice, 1550 litres
* For 1 kg beef, 50,000 – 100,000 litres
* For 1 kg clean wool, 170,000 litres
from the CSIRO

the disconnect of veganism; continuous othering

There's an interesting post at Vegans of Colour on how veganism may disconnect a vegan from their culture: Veganism and Cultures of Origin. In the first year or so, I felt very distanced from the sharing/togetherness of festivals. Getting used to fake-meat products as substitution has definitely helped decrease that distance, particularly as due to their original purpose (as substitute at religious festivals where no meat is eaten) they are tasty and easy to substitute, so often now at festivals we don't have "this is the meat version, this is the veggie version;" instead we have "here are all the dishes," and D and I get to share in the passing of food around the table, in the sharing and the complimenting and the fighting over the last piece. And we get to share in the superstition, the fish for abundance and the duck for prosperity and so on, and these are some of the most important elements of how we propagate our traditions.

Being vegan now highlights and emphasises the difference - as mixed-race, particularly as someone who spent her formative years in Australia, I'm often considered not Chinese enough. Now that I don't eat meat (and don't eat egg tarts), I'm frequently considered not-Chinese enough, and though I've spent years working hard to define my own identity, to be as Chinese and as Anglo and as Australian as I want to be, sometimes being told I'm 'completely westernised' by someone is incredibly demoralising.

I've blogged before about how vegetarianism/veganism is often spoken of as an "ethnic" thing, Asian or African or something "exotic." You can be vegan or not, regardless of your ethnicity, regardless of your cultural background, but it's approached, particularly in Western media and blogging circles, as something that only "ethnic" food lends itself to (and oh, how I hate that word in this context). So it was particularly galling to read an article that was both homophobic as well as othering to the food I grew up with as Chinese, and that I eat a lot of now as vegan, the article is Soy is making kids 'gay.' It's hardly from a reputable source, but galling and othering all the same.

It's like everywhere I turn, as a Chinese vegan, there is an opportunity for me to be categorised as other. It's not as awesome as you might think.

talking about things to eat

It's IBARW this week. I don't talk about racism in this blog, because this blog is just about food. However this blog is specifically about how being Chinese-Anglo by way of SEA and living in Australia impacts my veganism and vice versa, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about food, ethnicity and language.



talking about things to eat
(or: how the words people use to describe food make me feel like a freak)

Growing up as a child, I was familiar with roasts and pasta and pizza and sausage rolls and all sorts of different foods, but almost always when I went home we'd be eating the sorts of things my mother ate as a child, Malaysian and Chinese and Indian, for the most part. We used to eat noodles all the time, and I was ten before I found out not everyone ate rice several times a day. I used to go to the Chinese butcher where I'd peer at whole animals and feet and things, but I know that not everyone grew up this way. I know that this is cultural and it is social and yeah, it has a bit to do with being Chinese from Malaysia.

When we first went vegetarian, the problems this caused for my family and the problems it caused for D's family were quite different.



Feeding us at regular family dinners was not a problem for my mother. Chinese cuisine considers meat as just another ingredient, so altering noodles, curries, and other dishes was as simple as exchanging one ingredient for another. Our meals remained mostly the same. My mother didn't blink at the shift to veganism – about 90% of people of Asian descent are lactose intolerant, so we've never been big dairy consumers – though the loss of eggs threw her for a bit. The real intellectual problem came at holiday events, where dishes become less about tradition (which I tend to view as alterable) and more about superstition – I don't eat fish anymore, so how can I court abundance? I don't eat duck, so how can I show prosperity?

Compare this then to D's family, who eat mostly European/English dishes. For D's mother, feeding us was problematic. We were served a whole lot of dishes made primarily of cheese, and Christmas was a meal of boiled vegetables and cauliflower cheese (note to all who have dinner parties at Christmas: this does not count as a meal). The shift to veganism completely petrified D's grandmother, who literally couldn't think of a single dish to serve us that wasn't a garden salad. So this situation is impacting them differently, but they're trying to think outside what is familiar to them, outside their squares, and they're trying new recipes which I think is worrying them, these unfamiliar paths.



It's interesting, the ways in which we think of food. People have such different backgrounds, and such different habits and histories, but we get used to these things and that's reflected in the ways we think about food. Chinese cooking places so much emphasis on a tiny bit of this, a tiny bit of that, but all elements are essential, and so my mother said to me once, "How can you be Chinese if you don't eat meat?" just the same as I believe she would have asked how I could be Chinese if I didn't eat vegetables, or mushrooms, or rice. Over the years I've become more familiar with English/European food, but it seems so much more focused on the big hunks of things, and so D's family's reaction was (and for some of them, still is) more along the lines of, "But what can you eat?"

I read Jay Rayner's attempt at a week of veganism, where he suggests that "ethnic is the default position for the vegan." I bet he uses 'exotic' ingredients in his cooking, too. I have an ethnicity; we all have ethnicities: the fact that the food I grew up with is easier to veganise than the stuff he ate as a child doesn't make me 'ethnic,' it makes me Chinese. Using these words trivializes the decision I have made to be vegan, and it others my family and my whole freaking life, because using words like that aren't just saying that I'm 'different,' they're saying that I'm 'other.' And he is not alone in this, many people are guilty of this all the time. That you're trying something you've never before heard of doesn't make it 'exotic,' it makes it new to you. And you definitely don't get to describe it as exotic if you're talking about it on the internet - there's a good chance it's not new to your readers. Just because the things I did as a child are different doesn't make me special, and I certainly don't want to feel like a freak. And I realise it's just semantics but semantics are important, because they indicate attitudes - so really, it's not that I have a problem with the word 'exotic,' it's that I have a problem with the attitude that leads to its use, that the food I eat is 'not normal,' that it is other, that I am other.



A guy I know can't pronounce char kuay teow, he always calls it 'koi char' and he thinks that's hysterical. So he can't pronounce the name of a dish that I've been eating since I was little, growing up in the same country as he did, because it's made up of words he's never been bothered learning. Why is that funny? If anything, it's a little sad for him – I can pronounce everything that he eats. If it's anything else, it's a reflection of his privilege, and it's racist – it's different so it's funny. And it makes me feel like a freak, and it makes me hate him.

My food is not exotic because it's different from your food, it's just my food. And it's not ethnic because that doesn't mean what you think it means. I have enough trouble trying to work out how to incorporate the old food superstitions into my life as it is: I don't need to feel like some sort of foreign novelty whilst I'm doing it. So do me a favour and mind your language.


(With thanks to J + L for reviewing this for me)