DailyDirt: Hmm.That's Not Really Chinese

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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