Would That Be Real Chinese Food?

So, what is real Chinese food? That was the question around our dinner table last night, a question generated by yesterday's post about religious poetry written by an atheist (what is real religious poetry?).

Several factors exist for determining the authenticity of any cuisine. Recipes. Ingredients. Techniques. Utensils. Cooking methods. Cooks. Geography.

For purists, surely real Chinese food could only be had in China, with Chinese ingredients, prepared by Chinese cooks (are ethnic Chinese from Vietnam authentic Chinese cooks, or authentic Vietnamese cooks? or both? or neither?), using Chinese techniques and equipment.

Are all prepared dishes fake Chinese that fall short of that exact combination of factors ? At what point is a dish not Chinese? How many factors must be absent and to what degree?

Discussions about authenticity - authentic patriots, authentic believers, authentic men, authentic women, authentic religious poems, authentic cuisines - are all fraught with similar questions about absences, presences, variations, and combinations.

A discussion about the fake and the real should also include blogs and bloggers, especially on a blog! I was rightly reminded of this by my fellow blogger lifeshighway, who commented that in the blogging world fakery abounds: "fact and fiction are blurred to the point of the fantastical." Readers can become emotionally involved with a persona who is not the real writer. And I'm sure people are hurt as well.

One of my points from yesterday's post applies here. Blogging, indeed anything interactive on the internet, has no tradition as yet. Some expectations carry over from other areas - news is news, fiction is fiction, fraud is fraud. But with interactive forms, our expectations about levels of authenticity have not had decades or longer to take shape and help shape these new genres.

The possibility for harm with the religious poem by an atheist seems negligible - a reader enjoys (or dislikes) a poem in a publication, and that's probably the end of it. Same thing with fiction and memoir. But  interaction between people directly (IM, email, texting) or indirectly (blogs) opens up more opportunities for engagement and thus many kinds of harm, from minor hurt feelings to life-changing situations. Perhaps we expect certitude, when, with time, the expectation will be to expect fantasy. We might do well to presume fantasy as a provisional stance.

We make the distinction between what is fake and what is authentic all the time and about extremely serious and extremely trivial issues. It's worth thinking about.

I'm reminded of an old TV ad for video cassette tape.   "Is it real or is it Memorex?"

Faux or No?

When I was a grad student, one of my colleagues wrote spiritual/religious poetry. She sold much of it to the official publications of various denominations and to small magazines and newsletters of individual churches all over the English-speaking world. For at least a couple of years, she made about $2000 - $3000 a year, a very nice addition to her meager student income!

My colleague was an atheist - staunch, loud, and pushy about it, too - but she could sure write poetry that was popular with devout religious people.

I always share this story with my writing classes as a point of discussion about distinguishing between the writer and the written, the truth and the creation. It generates much heated discussion. The question  is about what exactly writers are selling - their authentic experience and beliefs or words on a page -  and when and why it does and doesn't matter.

The answer depends on the genre and its traditions, which shape the expectations of reader and writer.

In news, we expect the truth, and writers, editors, and producers can be rightly fired for faking it. With news, including "soft" news, the facts are the focus. We often know little about the reporter, and sometimes have no byline at all.  Notwithstanding theoretical discussions about truth or about bias, news traditionally is factual.

At the other end of the spectrum is fiction. Novels and short stories may tell us a truth about human existence; but no one expects them to be the literal truth, nor do we expect the writer to have experienced everything in the work, and we do not expect knowledge about the author.

Other genres are less clear cut and can create problems because of lack of knowledge of the tradition or because of readers' expectations, and in some cases, manipulation by writer and/or publisher - memoir, creative non-fiction, even poetry, in the case of my colleague.

I wrote previously about the fiasco over James Frey's book "A Million Little Pieces." My take on his book is that it is memoir and has a narrator who is different from the living, breathing author. That suggests a certain shifting ratio between fact and fiction, which is the tradition of memoir.

I also think that people were justly outraged because the living breathing author appeared on the Oprah show, claiming that he and his narrator were identical with identical experiences.

So, what about my fellow grad student's religious poetry? No one ever asked about her religious beliefs or about any religious affiliation. Everyone accepted the poetry she offered, the words on the page. Several bought her poetry more than once, saying that their readers had especially liked it. One publication asked her to submit more.

I think that people made assumptions about her and about her beliefs and would not have published her poetry if they had known that she was an atheist. But they also proved a point about certain genres and expectations for fact and for knowledge about the writer. The poems she submitted said what they said; they were true as written expression of certain religious sentiment. They were not true expressions of her belief, and she never offered them as such.

Faux, or no? What do you think?