Bibliopath #23: In which you best believe I have some thoughts about Crazy Rich Asians
Dear reader,
A slightly different letter today, but I saw Crazy Rich Asians last night and I have some thoughts:
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Of course they make dumplings.
Despite being rich enough to hire helicopters and throw lavish parties to view rare flowers, the titular family in Crazy Rich Asians make their own dumplings. They make them by hand, rolling out the dough, putting in the mixture, and folding the pleats of the dough together, one, two, three, four.
“The baby goes in the basket,” says boyfriend Nick, as he teaches his girlfriend Rachel how to spoon the mixture in.
“Or as my aunty taught me, the botox goes in the face,” jibes Oliver, the cousin.
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Dumplings are my favourite food. Specifically pot stickers, or wor tip. There is the aesthetic of them, the golden fried bottoms contrasting with the whiteness of the dough. The pleats of a well folded dumpling like the curves of a pagoda roof.
Whenever you sit down to a plate of fresh dumplings, know that someone has made them. There are no shortcuts. There is, as yet, no Thermomix attachment that automates the process.
Someone has taken the time to sit and make each one.
In short, dumplings exemplify sacrifice.
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At some point, my wife and I started doing an ironic fist bump when we’d see an Asian on whatever we were watching.
Besides cooking shows, our options were:
- lab tech (fist bump),
- computer specialist (fist bump),
- gang member (fist bump) and usually the first to die when the white hero gets going.
The first to be erased from the story.
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My children make dumplings.
My daughter started when she was about five. Because children always want to do what they see their parents doing. Because I was happy to be able to pass this one thing down, when, growing up in Australia, I’ve lost so much of my cultural story.
Some of the portions of meat in the dumpling are terribly paltry. The pleats look like miniature fists. But I find it difficult to care because my child is making dumplings.
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It’s difficult to describe as a child of the Asian diaspora, what seeing Crazy Rich Asians means. It’s like seeing films again for the first time only in a world where I’m allowed to exist.
The film is fun and joyous and so filled with small touches that remind me my story is worth telling: mahjong and ‘kwai tian’ and street market vendors and that Asians are allowed to be funny and sexy and powerful and cruel. And that our family is folded into who we are like pleats in a dumpling. And that we’re allowed to have a happy ending.
And a Chinese grandmother telling her grandson that he needs to eat more because he’s gotten too thin. And that he’s spent too much time away from home.
And that maybe they should make some dumplings together.
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My favourite sentence this week was from Amanda Yeo’s beautifully written take on Crazy Rich Asians:
“I’d never had anything tell me it’s OK to exist as I am.”
Planning to tell my story,
Guan