Bonus #250 - Simu Liu: Defender of the Sacred Bubble Tea (Extra Dose)
Added 2024-11-05 17:00:09 +0000 UTCVIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/zXrMYVS7fhk
Hey everyone, it's Bonus Dose Day, and... well, I imagine some of you could use a little funny distraction to ease the tension of Election Day, so... enjoy a laugh at the expense of the other guy from the Barbie movie!
A look at Marvel & Barbie star Simu Liu's recent viral moment in which he accused a company that sells "Boba" or Bubble Tea of "Cultural Appropriation". Are we still doing this when it comes to food? And IS Bubble Tea "so dear to [Simu Liu's] heritage?" Buckley the historian tells you just how old and sacred the drink that became popular in the US in the 2000s really is.
Comments
Italians also DON'T complain about that. Closest I've ever heard of something similar was when a mexican co-worker visited a "mexican themed" restaurant and even then it was disapointment that they didn't actually have food that would have alleviated home sicness during dark nordic winter. Maybe Europe in general is more tolerant with food culture... I mean we have English cusine(don't know why it has bad reputation), swedes puting Kiwi and baana on a pizza, northern European spicy is practically spiceless to any one else, etc.
Tomi Tuomisto
2024-11-11 11:40:42 +0000 UTCNo, I understand that, but I also don't think there's a problem with pizza pockets or like... Frozen dinner Butter Chicken meals, or Taco Bell, or any other hybrid of it. Food and drinks aren't sacred culture, they're meant to be shared, eventually bastardized, and sold as cheap as possible or whatever. He wanted there to be basically a history lesson on the can or something, and like... No. I don't need Pizza Pops to tell me the history of pizza from Italy (which isn't even really Italian either, they ripped it off).
Adam Buckley
2024-11-10 06:38:00 +0000 UTCt be a fat white guy and his ugly wife?
TheNibba That Likes Chong
2024-11-09 17:20:57 +0000 UTCSo only Taiwanese people from the 80's hold a global monopoly on the buying/selling/distribution of all boba right? It can'
TheNibba That Likes Chong
2024-11-09 17:20:40 +0000 UTCugh, sorry Buckley, but it kinda seems like you're missing the nuance here. Simu Liu wasn't saying that non-chinese people can't make Boba Tea. He's saying that the product they are trying to sell isn't authentic and feels like someone trying to capitalize on the popularity with a generic fake version rather than a truly authentic version. Sorta like an italian complaining that microwave pizza pockets aren't real pizza.
Snooder87
2024-11-07 21:03:55 +0000 UTCso cringe I had to lower the volume
Chris Sahagun
2024-11-07 00:43:33 +0000 UTCGeez, what a crybaby… Liu needs to get over himself and pick his battles.
Ash Archer
2024-11-06 02:49:14 +0000 UTCI think the whole debate is designed to bury the lead. Profit is created by the actual workers who grow the cassava and make the tea and all that shit, but instead the debate gets twisted into some idea that profit comes from culture as an abstract idea, like outside groups are profiting from Taiwanese culture. Naah, the profit comes from the 18-year-old kid who made the drink and the farmers, not "culture". Without them there would be no product in the first place. It's like a leech calling a different leech a bloodsucker.
Username User
2024-11-06 00:24:29 +0000 UTCBuckley you might not have heard about this, there's an ongoing conflict between Germany and Turkey over the ownership of döner kebab with both sides claiming it originates from there. Unlike the Belgian-French fries war (which is, of course a stuid conflict fries are and always have been Belgian) this conflict has stakes as it ails to prove independence of the Turkish diaspora outside the motherland. As for Taiwan, the cliffnotes version. In 1895 the newly formed Japanese Empire wiped the floor with China and got the island from China. The original inhabitants are Hakkanese who have been sinofied and who have Pacific Islander, not East Asian roots much like the ainu and the Okinawans. After the civil war the "cool China" moved in and kept a military dictatorship until the peaceful transition in the 1990s. If under Chinese you understand a Han supremacy, practically the only thing communists and the Kuomintang ever agreed on then Taiwan is bona fide Chinese. The so called Pan Green Alliance is unique in Taiwan because at least in slogans and representation they do give a voice the aboriginal Hakkanese many of whom were massacred in Februrary 1947.
Powell to the people
2024-11-05 22:57:53 +0000 UTCThat depends, though. Imagine if you grew up with something that you hold over then you move across the world and not only are people making food under the name you grew up with, and not only is it something entirely different. When you mention it not being the genuine article, they correct you that you know it wrong.
Powell to the people
2024-11-05 22:47:34 +0000 UTCGetting upset about food appropriation is so like "college freshman who took one sociology class and think they've figured everything out". Boba tea is a bit too ubiquitous to be worrying about if the hard what poured belonged to a Chinese person.
Petty Officer No Class
2024-11-05 19:47:35 +0000 UTCThose are eight dashes...
Pim
2024-11-05 19:37:29 +0000 UTCIt was slightly cropped out, but there’s a boba shop in London that took over a defunct Wendy’s. I inexplicably get a little queasy thinking about savouring some bubble tea while sat in the untouched 90’s sunroom lol
Bryn Mich
2024-11-05 17:22:38 +0000 UTCThis sounds a bit like us (UK) getting gate keepy about tea when we got it from China 🤣
Elizabeth Coates
2024-11-05 17:10:44 +0000 UTC
