Sweet and Sour: Issue Two by Sweet and Sour

Issue Two, November 2020

Nourishment

Acknowledgement of country In the spirit of reconciliation Sweet and Sour acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reading our zine.

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Like our lungs need air and our minds need knowledge, humans need nourishment. Through 2020, we are continuously reminded of the importance to stay nourished and grounded – to take care of yourself, those around you and pay attention to what your body needs.

Aside from food, nourishment also comes in a plethora of other forms. For Issue Two, we encouraged our contributors to think about the things which help them stay nourished. For those of us who are raised by Asian parents, the phrases “I love you” and “I’m proud of you’ are few and far between. After years of polite reticence When choosing the theme of Issue Two, from parents, you become proficient the Sweet and Sour team pondered at understanding cryptic emotional over the meaning of nourishment. cues which substitute the affirmations To most of us, nourishment elicits of love. At a certain point, you begin imageries of food – whether it’s home to appreciate and realise that the love cooked meals or delicious boxes of provided to you is tangible in other takeaway. As Asians living in Australia, ways such as your mother refusing to food is one of the most accessible ways let you do the dishes when you offer for us to remain connected with our or your father surprising you with heritage. When we thought about the copious amounts of your favorite snack. foods that nourished us, the answers Nourishment comes from connections varied, but for most it involved flavours to family and from the ways in which that brought back memories of home. they show love. Our mouths watered as we thought about tender 红烧肉 (red braised pork Each contribution within this issue of belly) and carefully wrapped dumplings Sweet and Sour encourages you to to homecooked steamed oysters think deeper about what nourishment and Jollibee; these foods nourish us means to you. Whether that’s absorbing deeply and are forever ingrained on our sunlight by the lake, cleaning and tongues. Food is an integral part of our organizing your space, taking some lives and operates as an expression time off social media or reading this of cultural identity. Food allows us to zine, we hope you take the time to stay continue to preserve our culture, even nourished. when we’re far away from home.

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2 1 My Oriental

Fingers by Matthew Pitt The Chinese Restaurant in Kingscliff... by Renee Ng

17 Photography by Aruna Anderson

Crazy Rich Asian-French Pastries by Michael Yee

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Nourishment is mothers bathing their children by Dani Ruasol

Nourishment by Chetan Kharbanda

Spring Onion Pancake by Lisa Zhu

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Illustrations by Gwenda Shim

Photography by Isabella Chan

Upwards by Olivia Mo

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Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just my type by Aleyn Silva

Not this ABG by Mary Lai Quarantine 2.0 Series by Annette Liu

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Ramen Houses by Helena Liu

Acrylic paintings by Yin Lu

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Mixed Race Female by Makeda Duong

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56 Which potato are you? by Cham Zhi Yi

Credits Carrying a little home in us by Suhaib Ahmed Kawish

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The Chinese Restaurant in By Renee Ng Stories of people and place nourish me almost as well as a bowl of my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s noodle soup. Here, I dig deep into the story of my parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chinese restaurant and how we have come to be where we are.

The legacy of Chinese restaurants has grown deep roots into the Australian food landscape. The business of owning and running a Chinese restaurant has typically been a family practice. My parents, who have a similar story, have run Chinese restaurants in Australia for over 30 years. I start our story in the present, in a coastal northern NSW town called Kingscliff. My parents and I moved here in 1999 when I was eight-months old. Here, they took a commercial lease on a space that was already a Chinese restaurant built in the 1970s and before that, a pharmacy. In Kingscliff, I grew up being a hybrid coastal and restaurant girl. I was as equally connected to the water, salty air and sand, as I was to the restaurant; the kitchen, the diners, the staff and the delicious aromas wafting off sizzling plates being carried swiftly from the kitchen to the dining room. Summertime was

Issue 2 - Nourishment all about the Kingscliff (Cudgen) Creek, the cool green and blue saltwater moving gracefully around the annual summer sandbank, snorkelling during king tides, and exploring around the rocks that bordered the creek after dinner. Nights at the restaurant involved climbing up on the counter to sit and watch the staff answer takeaway calls, take orders and scurry between the kitchen and the dining room. Occasionally, I was allowed to play or draw (I loved making stick figures with blu-tack and toothpicks or drawing pictures with the waitresses). Mostly, I was trained to stay out of the way and pay attention to my surroundings. Training in the hospitality industry starts early when you are a child of restaurant-running parents.

Being in the Chinese restaurant industry for my parents, like many others, wasn’t about expressing a love for hospitality or cooking. It was a means of living and it was how my parents made money to live and support our family. Both my parents are from the New Territories in Hong Kong and were raised in large families. They grew up knowing the value of hard work deep in their core.

When my father was 15 years old, he and his family (market farmers) migrated to Australia. My dad, a young fifteen-year-old, moved to Corowa in 1985 where he washed dishes at the RSL club, then to Albury in 1986 doing the same at the Country Golf Club, to Cobram and then to Shepparton in 1991. Sometime during that period, my father (the youngest of seven children) and his brothers learnt to cook and became chefs. Dad is shy about these details but I suspect it was through kitchen mischief and brotherly comradery that they learnt to cook. Between 1991 and 1996, my grandmother, dad and two uncles moved to Leeton to work at the Leeton Soldier’s Club. My mother and father met during this period in downtown Yuen Long (my father’s hometown), Hong Kong, having yum cha with mutual friends in 1995. Lucky for Dad, Mum was interested enough to take a “working holiday” in Leeton, Australia for about 6 months. Needless to say, there wasn’t much holidaying involved. She remembers her time there feeling bored and trapped as she was living with my dad, his two brothers, his mother and the staff they employed in the kitchen. However, Mum liked Australia,

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it was beautiful and although she was exceptionally separated from her family (plus, it was expensive to make international phone calls in those days), she decided to get married and stay in Australia. After a wedding in Leeton, the newly-weds (mum - the bride, the restaurant – the groom) moved to Glen Innes in 1996 to run the restaurant at the local bowls club. After two years, they moved to Lismore to do the same but this time, in a golf club. I was born in December that year, after which they moved to Kingscliff in 1999. In many ways, people like my parents, my uncles and my aunties who run Chinese restaurants or Chinese-style restaurants in classic Australiana settings (bowls clubs, RSLs, golf clubs) were taking guardianship of the Chinese restaurant “franchise”. The business model of a Chinese restaurant in Australia is so old it is practically set in gold. If you notice, Chinese restaurants are almost as ubiquitous as McDonald’s in most Australian towns. And by the way, our Chinese restaurant was in town way before McDonald’s came to join the local food scene. This leads me to my question; does Chinese fare (and by this I mean the dishes that are authentically Australian, not authentically Chinese) need to evolve for future generations (customers and cooks alike), or is it as classic as a meat pie that it would almost be offensive to even try to change it? And if it were to change, how should it?

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Chinese restaurants are almost as ubiquitous as McDonald's in most Australian towns. From my perspective, I feel that it should do both. The food should evolve to reflect the love for Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incredible land that has brought and kept people, like my dad and my mum, in Australia. I mean, if we faded out chop suey in Australia then surely, we can aim higher! However, I could not imagine how sweet and sour pork could be any better than it already is in its translucent sunrise-red oozy and crunchy goodness (this is a dish classic to Aussie-Chinese and Cantonese-Chinese â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no need to feel guilty for loving it). The place should be equally nostalgic, fun and tokenistic in its true AustralianChinese form. The people who fill it should appreciate the legacy of Chinese restaurants in all its glory. We need to drive this forward into our stories, to nourish future generations of customers and guardians to come. So that it does not quietly disappear into history like the many families who retire from their Chinese restaurants have. The special family-community ties fostered by a Chinese restaurant in any town, big or small, are precious.

So is the connection between Chinese restaurants, Australian food culture and Australian people. I hope reading this nourishes you with as many thoughts and feelings as it does for me. Or, maybe it will make you hungry for some sweet and sour pork!

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Matthew Pitt, Oriental Fingers (2020), 3 plate linoprint printed on Somerset Satin paper, 20x14cm

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Crazy Rich

Asian-French Pastries Michael Yee It’s a Sunday afternoon session in a packed-out cinema, full of grown adults looking to take the edge off their weekends with some heartracing suspense and senseless violence. The movie runs for over two hours and usually my brain is already plotting what to eat afterwards. However, not even thirty minutes into the film’s runtime and my body is having a whole different reaction – I begin to experience pangs of pain in my muscles, my blood already struggling to circulate through my legs. I become nauseous, my temple pulsing and my mouth gasping for air. For the first time in my life I’m experiencing symptoms of withdrawal. Illustration by Destiny Harding

The remaining sips of my Mount Franklin water won’t save me. For another ninety minutes, I ride a roller coaster of jitters, microsleeps and dry eyes. Much like Moses wandering through the desert and never seeing paradise himself, I went to the mountain top of confectionery highs. But instead of coming back with a couple holy tablets, I came crashing down with intense insulin shock. In the end, the movie was very ok. Context is everything – on the drive home, I find my inner voice of reason admitting defeat, “I can’t do this anymore.” For the past

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five weeks leading up to this day I’d been preparing for an amateur boxing match where a key part of the battle is won not in the ring, but by stepping on the scales and making weight first. That means a pristine diet consisting of a calorie deficit of at least an entire meal, and where your best friends are green tea and black coffee (appetite suppressants). In short, during this period, I’m hungry all the time.

from mixing loads of butter and refined sugar. For over-caffeinated Sydneysiders though, the allure of baked treats is one that comes with a functional predisposition. From labour-workers rolling out at the crack of dawn, to end of day shoppers looking for an affordable after dinner dessert or some marked down bread rolls, the neighbourhood bakery is an all-purpose cornerstone of any Sydney suburb.

The fight is over quicker than the time it takes to make a soy cappuccino. As I step off the ring apron and walk to the dressing room, I have but one focus in mind – replenishing all that lost weight. My real prize comes by way of drowning my sore self in pretty much the most instantly gratifying and simultaneously worst stuff for you on the planet. Muffins, brownies, croissants, doughnuts – anything you can think of that comes

If your local bakery is surrounded by café options, and they’re still doing a roaring trade, then there’s likely a relationship forged with the community that’s both irreplaceable and unconditional. You wouldn’t know from looking at a lot of these “bakehouses” on the surface – the assortment of odd eclairs, rustic rock cakes and bread rolls lacking any uniformity, potentially catching the eye but not necessarily what one would consider appetising. There is an element of no frills, ‘out-of-necessity’ baking style that really speaks to the fiercely loyal communal mentality of the Sydney Suburbanites. For instance, the almond croissant is a unique one – slightly crunchy (not crispy), slightly squidgy, very fluffy and full of eggy custard, like a runnier version of

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an egg tart filling, but for two thirds the price of any artisanal or more authentic version. A byproduct of the Franco-influence on Vietnamese dining, pastries like this, or iconic breads such as the famous Mantova roll, have become hallmarks of Sydney’s longstanding Vietnamese bakery lineage. Most people in this city born in the 80s and onwards likely grew up with a lamington (“lammo”), cinnamon doughnut or “finger bun”. These Australian delicacies of the baked kind experienced a boom in the 90s, correlating with a period in this country’s multicultural history where East and South East Asian immigration was seeing a considerable influx and key suburban ethnic groups were comprised of second generation Vietnamese, Chinese and Koreans, many of which took to owning and operating local businesses. With this, Australians, especially those living in the metropolitan hubs, were introduced to new cuisines that were supported by the fusion of migrant traditions such as the practice of cooking with everything as to not be wasteful, with ingredients and flavours that were both accessible to the general Australian public, as well as economic.

Although the identity of modern Australian gastronomy bears lineal ties to its European heritage, the influence of Asian practicality has created a subtle backbone of accessibility and commonplaceness to many of these food items. This, in turn, led to grass roots businesses opening up in Australia, serving hybrid, low-brow fare such Chinese barbeque pork sliced and stuffed into a crispy baguette with pâté, butter and slew of salad and herbs (“banh-mi” now one of Sydney’s most popular go-to eats).

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I was born Australian, of Chinese Fijian descent, my mother and father having lived in Sydney since their high school years. What I learnt from being raised by my parents in this city, is that, for your buck, the accessibility to a wide array of different cuisines â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the hybrids, bastardisations and brainchildren of the immigrant cultures that have become instantly identifiable with modern Sydney is simply put, incomparable. The appropriation of French baking techniques and recipes dates to as early as the 1950s, with European military

occupation during both the Korea and Vietnam Wars. Not only has this fusion and complexity of culture penetrated Australian society from a business and product perspective but is also reflected in the consumers of these food items. Where else in the world can a naĂŻve and gluttonous, mixed-race man-child live with the inclusion of enough international baked items in his life and diet, to attempt to intellectualise their consumption and relate that back to his own sense of cultural identity and upbringing? Sure, there may have been a slight downside in almost dying after having scoffed down five almond croissants, coming off a weight cut. But the knowledge by way of a cultural binge far outweighs the pain of a self-indulgent one.

Aruna Anderson

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Nourishment meant going back home.

It meant re-teaching myself how to write in my mother tongue. It meant learning the new location of the best bakso on my street; halfway through the market, past the old woman selling jamu who still pinches my cheeks like she did when I was 5. It meant apologising to all the people I’d forgotten the names of but who’d remembered mine as if I’d never left.

Nourishment meant reaffirming to myself that despite how much I’d changed and how much I’d forgotten, my place back home had been held for me and the arms of the people forever open, ready to welcome me back.

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Nourishment is mothers bathing their children Dani Ruasol I remember being about 6 or 7 years I remember her holding a seemingly old and visiting my lola’s home in heavy silver kettle of water and the Philippines for the second time. passing it to my mum, who in return would reply melodically, Every night, my mum would bathe “salamaaat.” me and my two younger sisters in a plastic bin (or timba) and rinse us I suppose I should have just with a tabo. Like many older homes been fine with bathing in cold in the Philippines, there was no hot water, but even at a young age I’d running water. grown accustomed to the sort of “comforts” that I experienced in The water would be heated up by Australia. This bathroom was hot, a helper; she would go downstairs humid and cramped and the tiles to the back kitchen and boil a felt uncomfortably wet and would kettle on a stove. She would go squelch beneath my feet. There back and forth between the kitchen were cockroaches and lizards the and our room in order to deliver size of my hand, lurking underneath us a constant supply of hot water. the cracks in the sink.

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Bathing children is not particularly exciting. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard. You feel the strain on your arms and your back (this I would know years later bathing young children as a childcare educator).

What would my mum rather be doing instead of bathing three young children whilst on holiday? What about the helper? Was she hauling hot water up and down the house in between her dinner?

Looking back on this memory as an adult, I come to recognise the weight of sacrifice that the simple act of bathing a child entails.

Yet itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one of many sacrifices that unknowingly to little me, was soulnourishing. Nourishment borne out of unconditional love and tiring work.

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My grandma's invited you for lunch Chetan Kharbanda

Illustration by Destiny Harding

Nourishment! The word evokes a fee — wait let me google it first. My analytical alter ego kicks in, hungry for evidence — a structured way of thinking about nourishment. I started with a dictionary definition: nourishment /ˈnʌrɪʃm(ə)nt/ noun 1. the food necessary for growth, health, and good condition. And ended up on a completely different tangent:

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But wait, all that doesn’t seem complete! When I think about nourishment the first thing that comes to mind is my grandma. My Nani (नानी / ਨਾਨੀ) loves food like one loves breathing. To put it more precisely, my Nani gets immense joy from feeding people and knowing that someone enjoyed the fruit of her five hour stint in the kitchen makes her feel fulfilled. There’s something about Nani’s food — the flavours feel earthy, and warm not just in sensation but also emotion.

you a story about the dish from their childhood and makes sure that you get the best experience by telling you the order in which you should have the relishes with the food. You tell the chef the food was scrumptious, their face brightens up and they ask you with a spark in their eyes if you want more. “I think I’m good, this looks like a lot,” you say and regret it 10 minutes later when your plate is empty and the kitchen is closed. The chef is about to get on with their own meal when you ask, “Is there more?” with a Imagine how you’d feel if you go to a puppy face. The chef smiles ear to restaurant where the chef invents a ear like they’ve just won Masterchef special recipe based on your taste, and start all over again. That’s my brings it straight to your table and Nani for you. serves a well-garnished delicacy on your plate. Then, the chef tells

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I can’t forget the experience when I rocked up to my Nani’s house with six friends from Australia. If you asked my friends they’d describe being at the breakfast table as a pleasant military drill. We were all soldiers but the only exercise was eating a delicately crafted chickpea curry i.e. choley with bhature (imagine a thin fried naan). Hard to dodge, food would keep appearing magically on our plate until we went into a food coma.

You’d finish your food, look the other side for a second and then there’d be another bhatura on your plate waiting to be eaten. The last person to join the table became the focus, he was already full when Nani saw his plate empty. Nani took this opportunity to bestow him with another bhatura, “Thank you Nani I already had some food,” to which Nani goes like, “Arrey, I never saw you eating though,” as she places a bhatura on his plate. “Another one is coming your way.” Well that’s what you call OG nourishment.

It’s 3:23 a.m, I’m writing this while sipping on remnants of a spiritual escapade captured in an aquula. Believe me when I say that empiricism feels quite sure, don’t we all feel at least something after all?

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Matsida

Gwenda Shim

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Spring Onion Pancake

Zhu

Lisa

What’s more nourishing than nostalgic food?

葱油饼 Spring onion pancake

This is one of those dishes when I come home at 10pm after a dinner with mates and suddenly my headache is cured, I’m starving again, and I’m brought back to the smells and memories of delicious Chinese street foods.

A classic in my family. I don’t use much oil in mine (compared to street vendor style) but still crispy and so yummy when fresh! The last few I added cumin powder and black pepper. Legit just:

Maybe it’s partly because of the fact that mum is still in the kitchen at that time, but I can always manage to fit in a few (or five) slices of fresh crispy dough.

✦ flour⁣ ✦ cold water ✦ oil ✦ spring onion ✦ salt

Since moving out of home for uni I’ve made it a handful of times, but nothing beats it when mum makes it for you and forces you to try it just so she can reap a few compliments.

Knead the dough, let it rest 20-30mins. Roll thin and flat, cover with oil, salt, spring onion. Roll it up tight like a rug (this gives it layers) then into snail shape and flatten. Lightly pan fry both sides, cut, and consume.

Here’s the basics of how I make it.

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Upwards Olivia Mo

The words have always stuck with me. My father with all compassion and sincerity says down the phone, “It’s okay, in our own ways, we are all just trying to lift our eyes to heaven”. For many years, these were words my father would use to bridge the

philosophical gap between the Christianity he adopted and the old Buddhist-influenced ways of family and culture. His words had a simple peaceful resolve. I felt that it gave me permission to be different and has helped me to navigate tensions of race, religion, difference and misunderstandings.

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I think of how quickly the weekly lunches took over the church hall after the last “Amen” was sang with a slight rushed solemnity. Filling the space were curious grandmas, a grand pot luck of over 80 families, and 26 types of soy chicken. I think of the food that people brought along to pay tribute to my great grandmother’s grave. Memories and incense flooding the humid air, settling somewhere between beautifully round oranges, paper money, and crispy roast pork. There’s the day of my baptism where my mother hugged me, and said that she would love me as not only a daughter, but as a friend and sister – and in that brief moment, putting aside a millennia of filial tradition. And the day my mother-in-law took me to her temple to show me a golden plaque inscribed with her son’s and my Chinese names, to let me know I was part of the family. For many, the topic of religion is plagued with oh-too-forceful relatives or overbearing superstitions. For me, the more tangible and everyday moments

of spirituality have meant the coming together of people. For lunch, for memories, for prayer, for acceptance, for family and for soy chicken wings. And in these moments, no one person more sure than the other, no person more pious or holier than another. Each just trying to lift their eyes to heaven. The wisdom of my father has helped me to see others more clearly. Whether your “heaven” is the pursuit of peace, success, justice or to an almighty deity, your eyes are lifted above the limitations of the present toward eternity. It is in this that I find my rest.

✦✦✦✦

He has made ever⁣ything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human hear⁣t. Ecclesiastes 3:11 ✦✦✦✦

In Bao We Trâ Łust

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Gwenda Shim

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Questions, Demands

Answers

Bulletproof

Bonds

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Nourishment. Another oxymoron of life. Knowing one thing, by consequence of the contrary. Do we only know nourishment when weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been starved?

Monday

Hong Kong. Riled with democratic demise, 7.5 million divised. Protests, pandemic. Punch, strip, slap. A double whammy. So how are we feeding our minds? On what do we feast our eyes? Isabella Chan

Tuesday

Wednesday

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Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

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‘She’s just my type’ The Racial Fetishisation of Women of Colour⁣ Aleyn Silva If you were a kind of candy, you would be milk chocolate!

yelled one of my classmates from across the room. I smiled weakly despite the strong discomfort I felt.

A few years later, while visiting my hometown, I was told by a random boy If you were a stripper, your name would be Cinnamon before he slapped my ass and walked away.

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I remember that these experiences made me feel objectified and hyperaware of my race—but the Anglo Australian people who had made these jokes about my racial identity seemed to think it was funny, and even a compliment on some level. It was only four years later that I learnt the term racial fetishisation. Racial fetishisation is an intersection of sexism and racism, concerning the preferencing of specific ethnic identities. This includes selectively choosing members of that race as partners on the basis of whether they conform towards certain stereotypes or excluding members of other races. It reflects racist stereotypes, as well as historical colonial mentalities of undermining and objectifying coloured women. Racial fetishisation is often disguised as a preference or having a ‘type’. It is often represented by Anglo people as inoffensive and well-meaning—but the fetishisation of people of colour (POC) is racism masquerading as a compliment. For people of colour, racial fetishisation is a norm that occurs both in the dating world and day-to-day interaction. Most women I talk to know at least one man who

claims not to be racist, but confidently states “Asian girls are just my type!” To better understand racial fetishisation, I talked to a number of East Asian women about their own experiences. Alison finds that men often label her as “exotic.” “I hate the term,” she says. When she tells them it makes her feel uncomfortable, they often state, “But it’s not a bad thing? I don’t mean it as an insult, I just think Asian girls are pretty.” For Alison, the fetishisation of POC has “so many layers of disgusting that I can’t begin to explain [what the problem is] if you see nothing wrong with it.” Furthermore, she believes that the world of online dating acts as the perfect medium for people

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with yellow fever to profile women. Yellow fever not only includes selecting women based on their race, but involves the application and perpetuation of underlying social assumptions. Asian women, for instance, have historically been perceived as submissive and passive— and as a result, many racial fetishists target these women because they believe they can be dominated and controlled. “It’s never overtly in a Tinder bio— ‘I’m into Asian girls,’” Alison tells me. Often, the first red flag is the question ‘What are you?’. Alison says that racial fetishisation makes sexual experiences confusing: “Is it because he thinks I’m hot or because I’m Asian that he thinks I’m hot? All of a sudden, you’re not just you, you’re an Asian woman. It’s very depersonalising. It means I’m an Anonymous Asian Person no. 3642, not Alison.” In these situations, she often feels seen “purely as an Asian woman, and no more than that.” I asked Alison how these experiences made her feel. She told me, “So uncomfortable, also so conscious of myself

dating white people in general. With people of colour, I know they’ve gone through similar overt fetishisation. It makes you hyper-aware of how your race has to do [with] how people are attracted to you. I feel like white people don’t know how that feels.” Similarly, Mia has been labelled ‘exotic’ by men. As a third culture kid, Mia finds that men view her as ‘the best of both worlds’;— perceiving that she has an Asian appearance without the Asian culture. Thus, her racial identity is often only considered valuable by men in a sexual sense. While dehumanising, she tells me that the fetishisation can occasionally be flattering on some level because of the prior discrimination that she has experienced. Since women of colour are not often considered the ‘normative’ preference for men, it feels good to be desired. However, it is only validating on a surface level. When Mia thinks deeper about the fetishisation, she wonders: “Is he with me because he’s attracted to me and values me, or is it just because I’m Asian?”. Mia finds that even her friends engage in—and even normalise— racial fetishisation by joking about

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yellow fever. “I might hook up with someone at a nightclub and my friends will joke that it’s because he has yellow fever,” she tells me. “It makes me feel like they’re saying he’s only attracted to me because I’m Asian”. Comparably, my friend Sara told me that racial fetishisation “feels like you’re being tokenised”. To Sara, being fetishised makes her feel “replaceable” and like she could be “any other Asian Australian girl”. Feeling interchangeable makes it seem “almost like you’re in competition with other Asian girls”. Sara discusses how, when she confronts individuals for racial fetishisation. men tend to use the excuse, “I just so happened to have dated Asian women”. She tells me she often wonders, “How much convincing, how many statistics, how many different narratives do I have to… bring up to convince you that it’s a thing?” Sara believes that these men arguing that they have a preference for Asian women is a “politically correct way of saying you have a fetish - because saying you have a [racial] fetish is admitting it’s a problem. If you’re framing it as

a preference, it’s not a problem.” Sara suggests that these men “should examine their dating patterns in conjunction with background and culture”. She tells me in a frustrated tone that unpacking relationship biases and patterns “is the shit people go to therapy to talk about. But when you put race in people are like, ‘no, it’s not a problem.’” I’ve found that these women exist in a state of constantly having to monitor and assess social interactions with white boys to work out if they have yellow fever. Racial fetishisation is covert sexualised racism. When you are viewed as a racial fetish, it isn’t a compliment. You’re left questioning your own desirability and value to others. These women are more than their racial identities. They are not your ‘exotic prizes’ and they are so much more than ‘just’ your type.

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2.0 2.0 2.0 QUARANTiNE 2.0 SERiES ANNETTE AN-JEN LiU 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020

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Not thisABG ABG

by Mary Lai 赖美铃

graphics by Judy Kuo

I have a confession to make. I’m not an ABG and I don’t like boba. I mean, it might have something to do with a history of irritable bowel syndrome and my very likely intolerance to lactose, but there’s something about a syrupy milky drink with sunken dark balls of tapioca that gives me the shits.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be Asian these days and how boba relates to me growing up, trying to blend in and be likeable; an accommodative, sweet and cool Asian. I just feel like I’m more of an

Asian Bitter melon Girl. I like the grounding earthy bitterness of wavy wrinkly slices of fu gua chao dan 苦瓜炒蛋. Then there’s the pinky purple leaves of hin choy 苋菜 cooked with century egg. Pei dan 皮蛋 - now that’s a family classic. And where do I begin with soups, and with giving detail and heartfelt gratitude to my grandma’s slow cooked broths that have fed me and kept me well.

From winter melon, to chicken and coconut pieces in a clear broth, and to the sweet and flavourful papaya soups! For Cantonese and Chinese families, soups are tonics, nutrition, culture and shared experiences, and the histories of healing traditional medicine make their way, simmering and warmed, into everyday meals. Sometimes I might find gogi berries 枸杞, huái shān 淮山 or hóng zǎo 红枣 floating around in my soup, and I scoop them up carefully into my spoon and observe them.

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They’re tasty and I feel good, I want to learn all the recipes that are nourishing to my lungs, spleen, kidneys and liver. I have much to learn, and I want my future family and friends to feel and enjoy what care, healing, and food means to me. Yet, this brings me back to why I feel such dissonance with boba. It has become some sort of commodified cultural identity that’s pretty basic and palatable to a westernised audience.

Why do so many of us East-Asians over identify with bubble milk tea? Maybe because it’s pretty and perfectly sealed up, contained in a ready to go plastic cup for an instagrammable object of self projection. It’s neither stinky, smelly, foreign or bitter. It’s easily and superficially relatable, a graspable fun consumable notion of Asian identity. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be Asian these days and how boba relates to me growing up, trying to blend in and be likeable; an accommodative, sweet and cool Asian.

In junior school I had begged my parents for Nutella sandwiches, Tiny Teddies and juice boxes, which I got. Sometimes my mum would pack me a carton of Yeo’s Chrysanthemum Tea instead of a juice popper, and one time someone called it crystal meth tea, and I laughed if off coolly. I remember watching an episode of MasterChef where Po made century egg porridge, and I was so excited and secretly angry when the judges tentatively said something about it being an acquired taste.

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These days, I care less about being a cool Asian or a model minority, and understand my experiences with food and identity are framed within a very meat pie colonial society. I’ve learnt that European agriculture is both part of inflicting genocide and ecocide, and continues to wreck havoc and cause bush fire prone landscapes. There’s something incredibly arrogant and destructive about importing techniques from Britain where there’s high rainfall to the other side of the world, and thinking it’s better than Indigenous cultures and techniques that have sustained and nourished for hundreds of thousands of years. With this context, I care more about understanding what foods and what communities nourish me and how I can nourish people and places in return, especially as I think of food access and climate change.

These widespread fires, food deserts, chronic illnesses and susceptible health due to diet do not have to be the norm. I know through my grandparents' and parents' passed down food practices, that healing is intertwined with culture. The Indigenous people of these lands have histories of food, culture, healing and agriculture appropriate to these ecologies and lands, and that their leadership and land management is crucial to our collective nourishment. The type of nourishment I need isn’t boba and it isn’t instagrammable. It is truly both personal, inter-personal, intersectional, decolonial and decommodifed. I hope to be the kind of Asian Beloved Grandmother one day that passes knowledge, care, and medical safe keeping through meal making and eating, to sustain many generations to come.

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Sweet and Sour

(previous) The Lotus Blossom (2020), Acrylic on Canvas, 91.4 x 91.4cm Yin Lu

Yearn (2020), Acrylic on Canvas, 76.2 x 76.2 cm Yin Lu

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Bloom from Within (2020), Acrylic on Canvas, 76.2 x 76.2 cm Yin Lu

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Ramen Houses (2020) Watercolour on paper Helena Liu

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Ramen Houses (2020) Watercolour on paper Helena Liu

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Makeda Duong: Mixed Race Female Graduating in 2013 from the South Australian School of Art, with a Bachelor of Visual Arts specialising in textiles, Makeda Duong is a South Australian artist specialising in embroidery and textile work. Creating intricate and conceptual pieces, Duong explores race, femininity, sexuality, and mental health in her work. In her latest collection, ‘Mixed Race Female’, Duong explores her Vietnamese-Australian heritage. “With this artwork I wanted to find a way to articulate the complex and multilayered experience of being a mixed race person living in Australia; having a unique racial appearance often provokes curiosity in those

unaccustomed to mixing with others of different races and cultures. Into the sweater, [I] have knitted various questions and comments I have received from strangers about my racial appearance.”

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Mixed Race Sweater, Hand Knitted Merino, 2020

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Mixed Race Sweater, Hand Knitted Merino, 2020

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Mixed Race Female, Cross stitch, wool pompoms, 30.5cm x 23cm, 2017

Bipolar Disorder, indigo dyed cotton embroidery on linen, 49.5cm x 32.4cm, 2020

Sweet and Sour

which potato are you? tells me i am a verysadtato i don’t disagree but i’m not sure i needed the filter to tell me anyway being a tato in and of itself is sad who wants to be a plain flavourless chunk covered in dirt if i were a food i want to be..... 梅菜扣肉 lol but also potatoes are so great because they can take many forms i can be anyone i want to be i can be a comforting mash on rainy days

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i can be a baked potato dressed in melted cheese fragranced w chives i can be a cold blanched potato drizzled in chilli oil carrier for heat humming the lips quivering i can be a whole raw potato fresh from the earth i can be a canned potato soaked in chalky brine on verysadtato days i can be

alright

Sweet and Sour

Carrying a Little Home in Us Suhaib Ahmed Kawish The other day, I walked into my home, which smelt like Indian spices… spices which I only remember from mom’s kitchen. My housemate had ordered Indian food. Without a doubt, we associate ‘nourishment’ with food, but it’s more than that. Don’t get me wrong, I am as much of a ‘foodie’ as anyone can get, but the events of this year have led me to believe that there is more to ‘nourishment’ than food. The isolation, social distancing, closed borders and lack of jobs have all contributed to an absence of energy in my soul. So, let me take this opportunity to tell you about the little things that nourish my soul. If you are away from home and reading this, chances are you might be nodding at those little things as well.

a premium store back in my hometown that sells sandalwood products. My dad is particularly fond of the sandalwood soap, and the premium box comes with six soaps, each a different colour. If you are a friend of my dad, chances are he has gifted you one of those sandalwood premium soap boxes.

Let me begin with the craziest one yet. I bought a packet of sandalwood incense sticks from a store I found in Canberra. It was pricey, but it reminded me of home. There is

Secondly, road trips. Let me paint a picture with words. It is half-past two in the night. After realizing there isn’t much we can do in the city, my friend and I decide to hit the road.

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Sweet and Sour

There is a 24-hour café that has good music and nice finger food. On the way to the café, we listen to some trashy music (which only we enjoy) and there are petty shops we stop by for some chai-sutta (tea and cigarettes). This was what road trips were all about, costing next to nothing…besides sleep, obviously. I spent the whole night on the road. Australia might have nicer roads and better cars, but it simply isn’t the same.

My mom holds it against me if I do not call her at least once a day. In the Quran, there is a sentence that translates to, “Paradise is under the feet of mothers”. Festivals are not the same away from home. My family only celebrates two festivals a year – Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha. These were spent with the extended family in my Grandma’s house in a small South Indian village. Something about those days just fills my heart but in the last three years I’ve spent the festivals at work or doing assignments here in Australia. I wrote a whole poem about spending Eid in the village,

which my dad still loves. My favourite part of the day is when we go to the graveyard to remember all our relatives who have passed away. It is the day of meeting family, getting money from the elders, eating food after a month-long of Ramzan fasting and walking the muddy streets of the village in white kurta. Lastly, how close are you with your mom? My mom holds it against me if I do not call her at least once a day. In the Quran, there is a sentence that translates to, ‘Paradise is under the feet of mothers’. This denotes the respect and love kids should show towards their mothers. For as long as I can remember I have been mom’s confidant. There have been days when neither of us had anything to say, so we just got on a video call and cooked. Looking and talking to mom revitalizes my soul. Every time I go back home, as soon as I see her my mom holds my face and kisses my forehead. For a moment… all my worries are gone. I can go on writing about of all the little things I miss about home, the things which I did not realize contributed to my everyday passive nourishment. Things like telling a lie to cover my brother’s

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mistakes, joining dad in his cooking experiments, fighting over the remote, sharing food with the neighbours and showing love to my friends without saying ‘I love you’. However, I will try and capture all this in a short Urdu poem. I will not kill the poem with a translation. However, the summary is – My body is away from home and yet my mind is back there. The streets, winds and people always

helped with my loneliness and shortcomings. I am searching for myself and the destination, but who knew my well-being was tied to that place.

I hope that with what little home we have brought with us here, in our culture and food, we can come together and nourish each other’s day.

Dil pe aaj marz ki lakeer hai dabbi-dabbi si roshni hai ghar se door jism hai par unhi yaadon mein khoya zehen hai

‫دﯾﻞ ﭘﮯ ﻣﺎرز ﮐﯽ ﻻﮐﮯےر ﮨﺎی‬ ‫داﺑﺒﯽ داﺑﺒﯽ ﺳﯽ روﺳﮩﻨﯽ ﮨﺎی‬ ‫ﮔﮩﺎر ﺳﮯ دور ﺟﯿﺴﻢ ﮨﺎی‬ ‫ﭘﺎر وﻧﮩﯽ ﯾﺂدون ﻣﮯ ﮐﮩﻮﯾﺎ زےﮨﮯن ﮨﺎی‬

kaise karun shikvey bayaan jab purani galiyaan waadiyan aur hastiyaan door kare meri berehem tanhaiyaan chupa leti thi who meri kamiyaan

‫ﮐﺎﯾﺴﮯ ﮐﺮون ﺳﮩﯿﮑﻮے ﺑﺎﯾﺎن‬ ‫ﺟﺐ ﭘﻮراﻧﯽ ﮔﺎﻟﯿﯿﺎن وادﯾﯿﺎن اور ﮨﺎﺳﺘﯿﺎن‬ ‫دور ﮐﺎرے ﻣﮯری ﺑﮯرےﮨﻢ ﺗﺎﻧﮩﺎﯾﺎن‬ ‫ﭼﮩﻮﭘﺎ ﻟﮯﺗﯽ ﻣﮯری ﮐﺎﻣﯿﯿﺎن‬

khoj khud ko khud ki hai aas toh manzil ki hai kisse pata tha apni sehat jagah se judi hai

‫ﮐﮩﻮج ﮐﮩﻮد ﮐﻮ ﮐﮩﻮد ﮐﯽ ﮨﺎی‬ ‫آس ﻣﻨﺰﯾﻞ ﮐﯽ ﮨﺎی‬ ‫ﮐﯿﺲ ﮐﻮ ﭘﺎﺗﺎ ﺗﮩﺎ‬ ‫اﭘﻨﯽ ﺳﮯﮨﺎت ﺟﺎﮔﺎہ ﺳﮯ ﺟﻮدی ﮨﺎی‬

Sweet and Sour

our team Chetan Kharbanda Eleanor Hsu Jacquie Meng James Yang Joanne Leong Malcolm Fortaleza Melodie Liu Sydney Farey Viv Wang Yvonne Yong

contributors Renee Ng Matthew Pitt Michael Yee Aruna Anderson Dani Ruasol

IG @reneengg IG @pittyprints IG @boywrestler, W http://boywrestles.world IG @aruna_anderson IG @daniruasol

Chetan Kharbanda Gwenda Shim:

IG @gw3nda or @gwendoodle

Lisa Zhu

IG @tenderdumpling

Olivia Mo

IG @livyandlife

Isabella Chan

IG @_isachan

Charmaine Kwok

IG @ahsylum

Aleyn Silva

IG @aleyn_1057

Annette Liu

IG @annetteliu

Mary Lai Yin Lu Helena Liu Makeda Duong Cham Zhi Yi Suhaib Ahmed Kawish

IG @marylychee IG @yinniebun_artzone IG @hliu.art IG @makedaduong IG @chamzhiyi IG @a.wandering.voice

Destiny Harding

IG @ jungefh

Judy Kuo

IG @ judyk__

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