#pineapple bun

Firstly, this story was initially inspired by @laurentidal's oft-professed love for Chinese food. Coincidentally, I found myself in San Francisco Chinatown recently, and both the layout - it's the most densely-populated space west of Manhattan - and the sensory assault cemented the location for this story. (As an autistic kid, I never really appreciated it because the smells are overwhelming.) I'm not sure what got me onto dim sum - it's not my favorite, but it is what I mostly closely associate with my trips to Chinatown. Lastly, I think my brain tapped into the Seinfeld episode where the Cuban people who make cigars for Kramer are repeatedly described as if they are cigars.

Initially, I wanted to write about the Chinese buffet, but this story evolved away from it, for the better. That said, I have a really stupid and funny pun around buffets that begs to become an absurd story of its own.

I had one goal with this story: avoid stereotypes. If you are going to tell a story set in Chinatown that features Asian women and contains sex crime, you are wading into a mine field. So while I definitely sexualized, well, the process of making food, and there is a sex auction in an area where there historically was prostitution, I hope I avoided harmful Orientalist and "dragon lady" sexualization of Asian femmes.

A reminder: the word 'Oriental,' short of being a slur, is offensive to many Asians and Asian-Americans, as it was used 'other' immigrants for centuries. You can call a rug Oriental, but not me.

I don't care for seafood, which makes most dim sum kind of a hard sell. I have eaten in some really fancy, expensive dim sum restaurants, and some really homey, family-run ones. As introverts, when we just want the taste of it, we usually go to a deli and take it home. But it's best enjoyed as a light social meal and tea with family or good friends, like tapas...

… or brunch. Recently, my dad saw a Din Tai Fung, the trendy Taiwanese dim sum chain, in a mall in Los Angeles. Confused, he asked me why people were eating dim sum at night.

Pro tip: get a couple noodle or rice dishes to stretch out the cost of the pricey steamer baskets. I recommend Hong Kong-style pan fried chow mein. If it looks healthy in any way, send it back. It should be oily and covered in gravy. You should see your reflection off that glossy corn starch shine!

Siu mai was the cutest name I thought people might recognize but it's not the cutest dim sum. That's probably har gow, which is not a very cute feminine name. The cutest dim sum name is siopao, which is a Filipino char siu bao.

My favorite dim sum item isn't a dumpling, it's a baked good: the bo lo bao, or pineapple bun. There's no pineapple in it, it has a crunchy, slightly sugary topping that is etched like a pineapple. The Japanese equivalent is melon pan (also no melon). In addition to being fucking delicious, I choose to believe this origin story: Chinese immigrants, driven out of America as thanks for building the goddamn Transcontinental Railroad, migrated to Mexico to work there, where they were also forced out back to Guangdong, Macau, and Hong Kong. With them, they brought with them knowledge of the concha. So the pineapple bun is a marriage of Mexican and Chinese cultures, much like yours truly. And this warms my Chinese-Mexican-American heart.

Getting back to SF Chinatown: as a kid, it was kind of annoyance. It was far, we had Chinese food at home, it stunk, I couldn't understand what anyone was saying. As an adult, and having learned the history of Asian-Americans, I have rediscovered it. It's still not my favorite destination, but I'm fascinated about a district in a major American city that is both a tourist trap and a 150-year-old ethnic neighborhood where many residents still don't speak English.

You cannot understand Chinatown without considering its 19th-century history: the Gold Rush. The Trancontinental Railroad. The race riots. The Chinese Exclusion Act. The bubonic plague quarantine. Angel Island. This is sadly the experience of many immigrant people in America: first welcomed, then exploited, then scapegoated. Chinatown burned in the Great Fire in 1906, and of course, they tried to ship Chinatown out to Hunter's Point to reclaim the prime real estate, but there were racist laws on the books all over the city that wouldn't allow Chinese people to live there, so Chinatown was rebuilt in the same location. Surprise, bitches.

(When you think of that famous photo of the golden spike being driven connecting the Transcontinental Railroad, ask yourself who is not in that photo.)

Don't be fooled by model minority bullshit. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act changed immigration into the United States for the better, but it meant many post-1965 immigrants (many who were from Asia) were professionals. Their descendants aren't more successful because Asians have better work ethic than Blacks or Latinos - many of them started with a huge leg up on the socioeconomic ladder. It's a ploy to put a wedge between Asians and other marginalized communities, and often a successful one. There are still a lot of broke-ass Asian-Americans who are the descendants of pre-1965 Asian immigrants. A third of Chinatown's population lives in poverty.

I kind of misremembered details about the dance hall setting in the story. While it's possible a place like that existed as a space for Asian laborers as Derek imagines, that was more like the experience for, say, Filipino farm laborers in the Central Valley or Mexican Zoot Suiters in Los Angeles. It's important to remember that some of the exclusionary immigrant laws allowed men because, hey, exploit the cheap laborers, but disallowed most women, because the stereotype was they were diseased whores.

The nightclub scene of San Francisco Chinatown was more like the finale of the story: Asian-American performers performing a curated Chinese experience for Western patrons and tourists. One such club was the Forbidden City, the inspiration for Flower Drum Song.

Shidaiqu/Shanghai Jazz was a real genre of the 1940s, combining traditional Chinese folk music and Western jazz. Unfortunately, it had a short shelf life with the emergence of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.

I watched a lot of videos about dim sum making, |this is my favorite. And as cool as it is to see him wrap the dumpling, my favorite part is around 2:40 when he uses the cleaver to flatten a piece of dough into a round wrapper. That little circle he makes with his hand first on the bare cutting board is a little hypnotic on its own.