Category — DTai

When I first moved into my building about 15 years ago, my condo building was rather empty and dull. Cultured is hardly the word I would use to describe my family; Chinese is a better word because that’s the only type of people my parents would ever talk to. But as time soon passed we heard different languages throughout my condo as different families began moving in. My mom was bewildered and wondered why she could not understand them and failed to realize that they were not speaking her native language. Soon enough as weeks passed no language was easily deciphered as we heard many different languages being spoken at once when we stepped outside of our condo building. With time my mother became accustomed to these “outsiders” as she would call them due to the fact that there were hospitable “outsiders” contrary to her beliefs. Our neighbors would come down to our home and bring in fruits and other delicacies. As my mom attempted to communicate to them she resorted to speaking her native tongue and our neighbor also resorted to their native tongue as well. So we ended up with my mother speaking Chinese and my neighbor speaking what I believe was Korean. The end result is a screaming and laughing contest with one person trying to speak over the other person. It is interesting how language works, even though neither party understands a word that is being said, they continue screaming as if they did understand. Perhaps it was the fact that they did not understand each other that kept them going or maybe it was this desire to understand more about each other through laughter and basic facial expressions. The language in my condo varies greatly and everyone picked up on basic vocabulary. I found that my mother was speaking words of Korean to me instead of saying it in Chinese. Language is contagious.

Food is a lifestyle; it is the way cultures interact. Food is a language; it is a way tongue speaks without words. Too many times my family would eat a typical Chinese dinner: rice, meat, fish, vegetables, and the occasional soup. This is our culture and this is how we set up our meals; however, the problem is that eating has become a chore! The meat lost its tenderness, the vegetables lost its buoyancy, and the fish grew a poor habit of staring at me. My dinner grew to become something like a haunted house. Luckily a bulldozer came along and destroyed that house. That bulldozer was the flavor of Korean cuisine. Since our neighbors were Korean it was inevitable that my mother would speak to them. Eventually they began exchanging cultural secrets. Witnessing two Asian mothers teaching one another how to cook in broken English and finger pointing was one of the most amusing things I had ever seen. However, the taste itself is a language and they were able to communicate through flavor. I was blissful with this interaction as my buds on tongue rejoiced with a party. The taste of different Korean spices, meats, and vegetables was exhilarating. This cultural mutualism was beneficial and resulted in something new, the taste of “Chorea”.

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