Shameful Brits Out To Ruin Chinese Businesses

Three recent press stories concerning malicious attempts at ruining Chinese catering businesses. 

Cat Meat Rumour Ruins Restaurant Business 

Newspaper Source (Full Article): Salisbury Journal

Xu Qiau Wu and Cai Ming have run The Dragon Chinese restaurant in Fisherton Street, Salisbury, for the past 11 years, employing six staff, the couple have been left devastated and unsure of the future after a rumour that a dead cat was found in their freezer. 

Mrs Wu said: “My son heard this first at school, we have no idea where it came from. The past few years have been hard and we were struggling already but surviving, then this started happening and takings dropped by a third. It is completely untrue.”

Wiltshire Council’s Environmental Health Officers carried out a full inspection of the premises in March, looking into supply chains, traceability, storage and hygiene practices. Food safety standards and management was found to be good and all meat is purchased from reputable suppliers. The business was awarded three stars under the council’s Food Hygiene Star Rating Scheme.

A spokesman for the council said: “The allegation was completely unfounded.” 

Mrs Wu said: “People come in and make cat noises at us which may be funny to them but to us it’s our business and it’s not just about our family but also the people we employ.”

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Chav Scam's Takeaway Cockroach Story - (6/5/2011)

Newspaper Source (Full Article): Coventry Telegraph

Sophie Russell, 18-year-old mum-to-be, discovered a dead oriental cockroach lurking at the bottom of the bag of prawn crackers.

Sophie, who is four months pregnant, is a beauty therapy student at Henley College, said...

"Even if I’m drunk and desperate, I wouldn’t go near a takeaway"

Suzanne, Sophie and Lauren Russell, 13, ordered the meal from the Golden Parlour takeaway in Far Gosford Street, Coventry on Sunday.

They finished off the meal but only had a few prawn crackers, so the following day Sophie, went back for more, that’s when she made her gruesome discovery. Restaurant manager Jimmy Fan  immediately gave them a full refund.

Mr Fan said: "My restaurant is very clean. We’ve been open for four years and I’ve never had a complaint, cleanliness is my top priority and my full time job."

Suzanne has alerted the city council’s food safety team and is planning to drop the cockroach into their offices this week.

Coventry Telegraph - Follow Up Report - (18/5/2011)

Newspaper Source (Full Article): Coventry Telegraph

"Teams from the council’s environmental health department have conducted an extensive search of the restaurant and have discovered no evidence of the pests."


Officers praised the Golden Parlour’s “clean, tidy and orderly kitchen”.

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On the Brink of Ruin - (6/6/2011)

Newspaper Source (Full Article): Pontefract & Castleford Express

Wai Wing Lee, manager of Eastern Court Cantonese Restaurant in Glass Houghton, claims hundreds of diners have been driven away by false reports that a dentist recovered a chip  between a diner’s teeth when he complained of toothache after eating at the Oriental buffet.

Mr Lee revealed the business had made a loss for the last three weeks and had lost two-thirds of its trade – as the rumours continue to spread on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter.

“I’ve heard from people from as far away as Barnsley and Doncaster who’ve heard the rumour.  I’ve not spoken to a single person who hasn’t heard it. It’s destroying our business. We’ve had to get money from elsewhere just to keep our business afloat."
  
Mr Lee has contacted the Wakefield council’s environmental health department. A council spokesman confirmed there were no current investigations in relation to food hygiene matters at the restaurant.

He said: “We have had no complaints related to the restaurant and have no evidence to support what appear to be malicious rumours.

“The premises has a three-star rating under the Scores on the Doors scheme and continues to be subject to the standard routine food hygiene inspections required by the Food Standards Agency."

2011 Todmorden Carnival Racism

This coming Sunday 19th June 2011, Manchester City Centre is hosting the Manchester Day Parade 2011 - a 40,000 strong multi-cultural street carnival with a Chinese contingent represented in the parade. However, multi-cultural themed carnivals are not always organised in good taste, just 19 miles north of Manchester, lies another carnival  in  the  little known sleepy town of Todmorden. 

Todmorden rings of an inbred small farming community straight out of the David Pinner's novel 'The Ritual' AKA 'The Wicker Man,' this antediluvian West Yorkshire town is not only privy to the bucolic delights of 'Pig Racing,' but last weekend held its annual Todmorden Carnival.

This years unfortunate carnival theme...was 'oriental' - cue the bonging cymbal.

A resident of East Asian descent describes what he saw in a letter to Todmorden News. Andrew Kim writes...

"To represent the theme of the “Far East,” people dressed up [as Asian caricatures] with pigtails and ‘slant-eye’ make up, or in Chinese takeaway container costumes, I can’t understand how a teacher or a youth group leader can think it was okay to dress an entire group of children like this.

If the theme was Africa, would we see groups of children “blacked up” with spears in their hands? By the looks of this, I dare say we would. The fault is not only with the group leaders, but the carnival organisers who put forward a theme which opens itself to such embarrassing stereotypes.

Last month I attended the Cultural Fusion event at Todmorden High School and “Taking Flight”, a performance at the Todmorden Unitarian Church about immigration. How can these two events exist in the same town as a carnival which reduces one of the most dominant cultures of the world to Fu Manchu moustaches? Two steps forward, one stumble back.

I know some will dismiss it as being “politically correct” but the reason these stereotypes are no longer acceptable in our society is not a function of political fashion but because most have realised that lazily reducing people to stereotypes and marking them as “exotic” robs them of their individuality and their humanity.

I’m not upset because Todmorden is putting out naïve out-of-date images of Asian people but because the action of adults validating these ideas directly affects the way people, especially children, will relate to me in my own home town."

Local Primary School girls in yellowface 'orientalist' racial drag.

British State schools can equally match their counterparts - independent schools such as Hemdean House School's performance of Mulan (reported last month) in actively encouraging institutional racism.

Coolie hats are the order of the day in Todmorden

 

Next year's carnival theme is the 2012 Olympics, organisers should avoid a 'paralympic' theme, one shudders to imagine how 'disabilities' could be represented.

Should Chinese Boycott Kung Fu Panda 2?

Westfield London hosted the UK Kung Fu Panda 2 Premiere with  the  top stars failing to show, except Jack Black. 

ITN reports  "We found the perfect recipe for a great Kung Fu Panda 2 Premiere - a Chinese dragon and some Chinese drummers." Chinese drummers? @ 0:15 - 0:22, the drummers are all Caucasian, no 'Chinese' Kung Fu martial arts troupe were hired for the premiere, in fact there does not appear to be any Chinese at the premiere bar  the cycle rickshaw cyclist. A cycle rickshaw? How original, mislaid the matching coolie hat perchance?

Whilst Kung Fu Panda 2 in the USA is under selling the original 2008 movie, Kung Fu Panda 2  broke box office records for an international release in Mainland China last weekend. The film has courted controversy with dissenting Chinese critics and scholars voicing their criticism of Kung Fu Panda 2 as akin to a 'cultural invasion.' Hollywood is culturally appropriating, skewing Chinese symbolic icons and fables and reselling it back to the Chinese market.

Zhao Bandi, an avant garde artist, previously attempted to sue the original Kung Fu Panda (2008), is urging fans to boycott Kung Fu Panda 2 the sequel. Kong Qingdong, a language professor at Beijing University, argues Chinese elements have become advertising products to advocate American culture.

Central character 'Po Panda' is an American creation (a representation of Jack Black), in many respects resembling the typical behaviour of  a laowai in China, regurgitating the theme of a White Knight saving the helpless Chinese, but this time stealthily disguised in the form of an animated Panda.

Indeed, Kung Fu Panda (2008) arguably was an animated rehash of the 'Karate Kid' - an   American sought authentic martial arts training by an East Asian master, it used Carl Douglas 'Kung Fu Fighting' as the soundtrack, do Chinese need reminding of Simon Ledger's arrest for  racial harassment?

Cast and crew of Kung Fu Panda 2

Not content with purloining  Asian babies from Vietnam, Angelina Jolie purloins Asian roles from Asian actors too. For live action films, non-Asians (Jack Black, Angelina Jolie etc) would not be permitted to play Asian roles, yet the principle is not applied to animated films. There are ethnic representational disparities, of the 32 main characters in Kung Fu Panda 2, only 6 are voiced by Chinese actors, is this example any different from Yellowface in denying roles to Chinese actors when the animated characters are supposedly  Chinese?

Six Chinese voice overs include...

Lucy Liu - White man's favourite Chinese American doll, James Hong - best remembered for the racially stereotypical  - 'Big Trouble in Little China,' perhaps both only surpassed by Lauren Tom, ex - Joy Luck Club, if there's one defining  film that single handedly turned an entire generation of Chinese American women against Chinese American men, it would be Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.

Kung Fu Panda 2 Crew
The 4 producers are non-Chinese, the music writers are non-Chinese, the 6 senior production managers are non-Chinese, 10 senior art department artists are non-Chinese, 19 members of the sound department are non-Chinese, the director is non-Chinese etc etc. The few Chinese associated with the making of Kung Fu Panda 2 are largely limited to visual effects.

That aside, whilst Kung Fu Panda (2008) was arguably a monstrosity manufactured from  non-Chinese spectacles for a non-Chinese audience, the sequel Kung Fu Panda 2, does at least have more of an aesthetic Chinese feel to it.

Kung Fu Panda 2 release date UK - 10 June 2011. Should Chinese boycott Kung Fu Panda 2?  Watch the Kung Fu Panda 2 Full Movie free below - and decide for yourselves.