DailyDirt: Hmm.That's Not Really Chinese

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Sep 4th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The Chinese get credit for a lot of things: fireworks, the printing press, bird flu (do not want).... But some things that everyone thinks are Chinese, aren't really Chinese. Here are just a few examples.

There's a nine-note melody that immediately signals a Chinese (or generic Asian) stereotype, but where did it come from? Prof Charles Hiroshi Garrett and other curious internet detectives try to track down the origins of this oriental riff, finding that it's not actually Chinese and could be heard in 1847 in a show called The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp. [url]
Chinese food in the US frequently comes with a fortune cookie, but those little desserts actually originated in 19th-century Japan. Fortune cookies were once sold in Japanese confectionery shops in San Francisco before WWII, but then, uh, Japanese Americans were taken away and Chinese businesses took over the fortune cookie industry. [url]
The common knowledge is that iPhones are made in China, but technically, the devices are mostly just assembled there. Of the estimated $178.96 wholesale cost of an iPhone, only about 3.6%, or $6.50 of assembly is done in China. The iPhone is obviously sold (and designed) by an entirely US company, and its components are made in several different Asian and European countries. [url]

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Filed Under: asian, chinese, chinese food, fake, fortune cookies, iphone, japanese, melody, oriental riff, stereotype

13 Comments

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Soy Sauce

Another one: 90% of the world's Soy Sauce is made in tiny Walworth, Wisconsin.

—Joel Coehoorn

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Mason Wheeler (profile), 4 Sep 2014 @ 5:10pm

[The oriental riff is] not actually Chinese and could be heard in 1847 in a show called The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp.

1847? That's early enough that it's in the public domain now. And see how it's been enriching our culture ever since? ;)
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- Mason Wheeler (profile), 4 Sep 2014 @ 5:12pm
  
  Re:
  Oh, and speaking of Aladdin, in the Disney version, right at the beginning, at the intro to the first song, they play a similarly-stereotyped "Arabian riff". You know the one. Nine notes on an oboe, going up, then down, stretching out the last note.
  
  Anyone know the origins of that bit?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - James Jensen (profile), 4 Sep 2014 @ 9:36pm
    
    Re: Re:
    From what I've been able to find, that sounds a little like the Hijaz scale played partway up and back down. It's a common scale in Turkish music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKZYlFrgub8
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Mason Wheeler, 5 Sep 2014 @ 4:44am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Interesting. So that one really is Arabian?
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  - michael, 5 Sep 2014 @ 11:48am
    
    Re: Re:
    "Oh, and speaking of Aladdin, in the Disney version, right at the beginning, at the intro to the first song, they play a similarly-stereotyped "Arabian riff". You know the one. Nine notes on an oboe, going up, then down, stretching out the last note.
    
    Anyone know the origins of that bit?"
    
    Read "Devil in the White City" -- the origin of that melody is recounted there (and is very interesting!)
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
That One Guy (profile), 4 Sep 2014 @ 5:19pm

Fortune cookies were once sold in Japanese confectionery shops in San Francisco before WWII, but then, uh, Japanese Americans were taken away and Chinese businesses took over the fortune cookie industry.

There's no need to sugar-coat it, and good reasons not to, just state the truth: they were ordered to abandon their homes and businesses and thrown into internment camps.
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Andy, 4 Sep 2014 @ 5:51pm

Apple
Is Apple really an entirely American company when they are headquartered overseas for tax purposes?
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- John Fenderson (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 11:15am
  
  Re: Apple
  No.
  
  Apple is a multinational just like all the others. It can't really be called an "American" company.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
got_runs? (profile), 4 Sep 2014 @ 8:10pm

Found a new iPhone setting on the sidewalk two weeks ago. I picked it up and through it in the garbage bin.
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- Rudolph Bledsoe, 4 Sep 2014 @ 8:36pm
  
  Re:
  thats so awesome. thanks for doing your part!!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Richard (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 5:13am

iPhone
The iPhone is obviously sold (and designed) by an entirely US company,

Err no - the design is also sourced from across the world. The processors and graphics system are based on designs from two British companies ARM and Imagination Technologies.
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Joel Coehoorn, 5 Sep 2014 @ 6:31am

Soy Sauce
Another one: 90% of the world's Soy Sauce is made in tiny Walworth, Wisconsin.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Richard (profile), 6 Sep 2014 @ 1:35pm
  
  Re: Soy Sauce
  I doubt it.
  
  True Kikkoman has a factory there - to serve the US market - but I severely doubt that 90% of the worlds production is there.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]