White Man’s Rum

“He turned to observe the rubbish heap of destruction that was his shop… aerated water, white rum, boxes of clothes peg, hairpin, button, phensic…” pg. 18

Lowe is staring at the burned heat that is still somewhat discernable but definitely gone. The shop which was owned by Cecil but run by Lowe is completely gone and with it so is Lowe’s capturer. This moment has so much significance because the white protagonist in this novel is dead and the inclusion of white rum incorporates a history of Caribbean slavery. Rum’s first origins are in the West Indies, with names such as “rumbullion” or “kill-devil.” Its history is centralized in the Caribbean because it is made from molasses which comes from sugarcane. The slave trade prompted the distribution of rum African slaves would be traded to the island for molasses, which would then be used to make rum in New England, and then traded back to Africa for more slaves.

This makes me think of Lowe and how he was essentially taken into slavery when he boarded that slave ship from China to Jamaica. The entire course of his life was primarily dictated by Cecil who perished in the fire alongside the white rum. There is a parallel to be made between Cecil and the rum because both are defined by their whiteness and their involvement in slavery in the Caribbean.

“Rum.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/rum-liquor.

Powell, Patricia. The Pagoda: a Novel. Harcourt, Inc., 1999.

CUPB Event: “Cooking and Conversations with Antoni from Queer Eye”

Although I know there’s been a bit of a controversy over how Queer Eye’s Fab Five has approached certain topics in their show (*cough* the episodes in Japan *cough*), they’re still pretty big names in the LGBTQ+ community. Jonathan Van Ness spoke at our school a few years ago, but I was wondering if y’all knew that the Cornell University Program Board is doing another event this Thursday featuring Antoni Porowski. I got recently an email about this, and since it looks like it has a cooking demo similar to the ones we’ve had in our class from guest lectures, I thought I’d share in case any of you were interested 🙂

Here are the details:

Cornell University Program Board (CUPB) is excited to present “Cooking and Conversation with Antoni Porowski”, star of Netflix’s hit series Queer Eye for a conversation about his life, comedy, and food all while doing a cooking demonstration!  Antoni will be coming virtually to Cornell on Thursday, December 3rd at 7 PM EST.

Antoni Porowski is a New York Times Bestselling Author and star of Netflix’s hit series Queer Eye. As the show’s food and wine expert, the self-taught cook brings with him a lifelong passion for food first cultivated through television, where he was captivated by culinary giants like Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and Anthony Bourdain, and later honed in restaurants from Montreal to New York and under mentor Ted Allen, original Fab Five food and wine expert. Antoni’s first cookbook, Antoni in the Kitchen, was released in Fall 2019, debuting at #2 on the New York Times’ Best Seller List. Born in Canada to Polish emigrants, Antoni is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights everywhere, especially his family’s native Poland.

You can go here to register: https://cornell.campusgroups.com/CUPB/rsvp_boot?id=894698

Sound (and Eat) the Conch

At the end of chapter one, Lowe described the shrill sounding of the conch as the morning sun rises after the fire and death of Cecil. I found this symbol quite striking with its emotional stakes in the chapter, “how years ago it used to ignite the Negro people to rise up and fight…” (19). It creates this literary double-standard where Lowe recognizes its symbolic strength in the Black struggle yet realizes how this unity doesn’t exist for him as he runs through the anti-Chinese sentiment of his community: a possible cause for the fire.

I couldn’t help but think of conch, specifically conch meat as a common dish eaten where this book takes place. Conch is indigenous to the Bahamas and in the West Indies, it is served commonly served in curries and stews. All parts of the meat are edible and in the Turks and Caicos Islands, there’s even a Conch Festival where local chefs compete for the most unique conch dishes like conch wontons and conch empanadas. Yet, the conch is also popular in East Asian cuisine like in Chinese stir-fry and in Italian cuisine as it is often included in the Italian-American Christmas celebration of the “Feast of the Seven Fishes.”

Conchs also bear many spiritual and cultural meanings. Like in the novel, it is often involved in funeral ceremonies in many Afro-Carribean traditions. In Hindu mythology, warriors blew conchs to announce battle and the sound is believed to drive evil spirits away. Its sound is believed to correspond to “higher frequency universal sounds associated with music of the spheres,” which is “an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies…not thought to be audible, but rather a harmonic, mathematical or religious concept.”

“Conch.” 2020. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conch&oldid=983549533.
“Musica Universalis.” 2020. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Musica_universalis&oldid=976719528.
“Turks and Caicos Conch Festival.” 2013. Welcome to the Turks and Caicos Islands (blog). December 21, 2013. https://turksandcaicostourism.com/turks-and-caicos-conch-festival/.

11/ 30 Itinerary Afro-Asia

3:00-3:05 [ welcome / updates]

3:05- 3:13 [ debrief chat ]

3:15- 3:30 [ Oral History ]

3:30 -3:55  Lecture – Contours of Afro-Asia ]

3:55-4:10 [ self evaluation ] self grading, performance in the class till now, goals for rest of term, send as an email to me

4:10- 4:15 [group work (plan for wednesday – lab period) ]

kill-devil

“You know how much weevil me find in the cornmeal. And that bad rum him sell. Mix with water,” (15).

Rum is first mentioned in 1650 in records from Barbados. The drink was originally called called “kill-devil” or “rumbullion”, and by 1670s the name had been shortened to rum. The first “distillation of rum in the Caribbean took place on the sugarcane plantations there in the 17th century” (Wikipedia). Enslaved people at the plantation realized that molasses could be fermented into alcohol, and with distillation and purification, the first modern rums were created. Rum’s history is rooted in the American colonies’ slave trade. Enslaved people were taken “from Africa and traded to the West Indies for molasses; the molasses was made into rum in New England; and the rum was then traded to Africa” for more enslaved people (Britannica). The heavy, oldest type of rum is produced in Jamaica, Barbados, and Guyana, and produced from molasses.

Watering down alcohol is a common practice to increase the volume of drinks, but watered down rum actually has a name: grog. Merriam-Webster describes grog as a “liquor (such as rum) cut with water and now often served hot with lemon juice and sugar sometimes added.” It actually originated in the 18th century when an English admiral, who wore a cloak made of grogran fabric, ordered that the sailors in the Royal Navy be served diluted rum instead for their daily ration of rum (“Grog”).

“Grog.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grog.

“Rum.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/rum-liquor.

“Rum.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum.

White Alcohol

“At each table was stationed an usher who poured Wo Ka Pi, an imported Chinese whiskey, the best a Chinese could expect. The usher belonging to Wong Wan-Lee’s table raised his cup and said : ‘Kan I Pi!’–‘Bottoms up!’ All drank but Wong Wan-Lee” (Tsiang 79). 

I had no luck searching for Wo Ka Pi in either Mandarin or Cantonese, so here I rely on the clue of “Chinese whiskey.” I would love to know exactly what brand or alcohol type Wong Wan-Lee was drinking, but baijiu (baak zou in Canto), or white alcohol, will have to suffice as a substitute (“白酒”).

Baijiu is an ancient Chinese drink whose production was first recorded in the 2nd century BCE. Contrary to other staple liquors like whiskey, beer, or vodka, baijiu uses a combination of multiple grains in its fermentation process. Rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, etc. each use a different fermentation catalyzers, from bacteria to various species of fungi (these micro-organisms break down the grains, producing sugar and ethanol, or lactic acid) (Zheng). Each fermentation ingredient produces a unique alcoholic flavor. Baijiu is commonly divided into three categories: light-flavored, strong-flavor and sauce flavor. While the first two categories are comparable to high proof alcohols like vodka, the last category shares more in common with condiments like soy sauce or miso, bringing that umami flavor to the table (Zheng).

Drinking baijiu has cultural and economic significance. Baijiu is often a celebratory drink, and is the most-drank alcohol in the world. Given baijiu’s above-60 proof alcoholic content and tequila-rivaling flavor, the drink is taken in shots with the cheer 干杯 ganbei, meaning dry cup (dry your cup!), just as Wong Wan-Lee observes.

During this passage, Wong Wan-Lee is taking Pearl Chang to a Chinese New Year celebration dinner in Chinatown. They see a lion dance, boxing, drink and eat Chinese food. To Wong Wan-Lee, it’s the perfect cultural immersion night for Pearl who so wants to see the authentic Chinese in America. Yet Wong Wan-Lee abstains from drinking until he is forced, and the night ends for him in solitude. This dinner raises questions of how one consumes culture, literally and figuratively. As a tourist, as a local? Moreover, the role of Chinatowns as an othered space in American metropolises is clearly brought to light through Wong Wan-Lee’s eyes as he sees crowds of “Mo-Nos” walking the streets for something good, something real.

*This is a catch-up post for And China Has Hands

“白酒.” CC-Canto, cantonese.org, 2015. https://cantonese.org/search.php?q=%E7%99%BD%E9%85%92

Zheng, Xiao-Wei and Han, Bei-Zhong. “Baijiu白酒, Chinese liquor: History, classification and manufacture.” Journal of Ethnic Foods, 3.1, March 2016, pp 19-25. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352618116300087 

Gunia, Amy. “The World’s Most Consumed Alcohol is One You Might not Have Tried. But It’s Coming to a Bar Near You.” Time Magazine, time.com, 23 May 2019. https://time.com/5586388/baijiu-liquor-china-alcohol-exports-popular-market/ 

Tsiang, H.T. And China Has Hands. Kaya Press, Los Angeles, 1937.

Cornmeal in the Americas

In Chapter 1 of the Pagoda, we find that Lowe’s shop has been set on fire. The local community comes to help douse out the flames. The community discusses whether the shop was important to them or not. One person mentions that the products at the shop were of poor quality, specifically the rum and the cornmeal (15).

Cornmeal is an ingredient with strong origins to Mesoamerican, African, and Native American cultures. The “meal” indicates that is it a ground, dried form of the corn. Records estimate that maize was domesticated by Indigenous tribes in the current continental US during 5000 BC. Originally, the Indigenous people would ground the corn and mix it with water and salt. Over time, colonists and future American families would modify this technique to create different dishes. Cornmeal is most recognizably used in baking cornbread, johnnycakes, and puddings, which are American classics. It is a staple in Southern cooking, and it is predictable that cornmeal reached the Caribbean through globalization. In the novel, the local mentions finding weevils in his cornmeal. These are insect pests that live & reproduce inside the seeds or kernels of grain products. Weevils are often found in packaged foods that are not preserved in dry areas.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2019/03/07/cornmeal-is-baked-into-the-history-of-the-americas-and-its-time-to-dust-off-those-roots/

https://www.world-foodhistory.com/2011/02/cornmeal.html#:~:text=Cornmeal%20began%20as%20a%20Native%20American%20staple.%20It,central%20role%20in%20their%20nutrition%2C%20religion%20and%20ritual.

https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-a-weevil-2656439