Ancillary #7: The Exotic Nature of Congee

While some may say that the rice porridge dish congee is widely accepted by many Americans because of its flavorful impact using only simple yet palatable/universal ingredients, I argue that this Chinese staple is only seemingly enjoyed because of our society’s need to fusionize “exotic” food, which only exacerbates the cultural distance between the global north and the rest of the world, and portrays an underlying message of Western cultural dominance.

By calling food “exotic” or “foreign,” you automatically associate that style of cuisine as other than, and in the case of Americans, less than. We can look at someone like Karen Taylor, a white woman who declared herself the”Queen of Congee” for modernizing the dish to make it more delectable for the American tongue. This implies that the dish at face value is not up to par with American standards and implies that it needed to be up to par in the first place.

We also can see that Eurocentric cuisine isn’t labeled “oriental” or foreign in comparison to East-Asian food, elucidating that Western influence and dominance is still very much present. This unspoken understanding of the status quo in society is why cuisine that mixes, modernizes, or “fusionizes” with other cultures and Western-known ingredients are more popular than their traditional-presenting counterparts. Fusion cuisine makes it easier for Americans to eat other foods, giving the illusion that they are stepping out of their comfort zone or becoming more cultured all while maintaining their status at the top of the food chain by tampering with the original recipe.

Extending on this, I think it is important to reiterate that such a dish like congee is only well received by Americans because of American input. The authenticity and cultural significance is lost in translation, only giving people like Karen Taylor more permission to take ownership and control over other cultures, which isn’t such a clear message on the surface. The issue/greater implication of American acceptance of congee isn’t when a couple ingredients are changed in a “foreign dish;” it’s when the global North feels a responsibility to better another culture they didn’t grow up with rather than appreciate and respect it for what it is.