Right after posting this video, news came out that Hawker Chan lost his Michelin star. 🙁 

https://mothership.sg/2021/09/michelin-guide-spore-star-revelation/

I was in Singapore for the summer of 2017, but never got to try Hawker Chan's stall.  That's still a regret I have, but the lines were always crazy long.

I posted a lot on a previous week about the glocalization of globalization of "Western" and "Eastern" fast food restaurants such as Mos, Lotteria, McDonald's and more. As much as food is universal each takes their own interpretation due to local ingredients/tastes and more. 

I wonder if there's a Bibigo in Staples Center. 

Can you believe that when I first started traveling abroad, I purposefully did not go to McDonald's because my thought was--"I can have that at home.  Then once, on a particularly long trip, I was a bit homesick, and I went to McD's to get some Coke with ice.  What I discovered was McDonald's really has many things to offer which are different from home--sometimes, very different.  

I started using the corporate site to teach about cultural diffusion.  The students absolutely loved using the site to find foods they thought were "crazy" from other counties.  We had some in-depth discussions about why different dishes were available in different countries.  For example, my students often highlight one that was also highlighted in the video--the offering of very little beef in India.  But they also find many other interesting cultural connections. 

When I was watching the video, I wondered aloud to my wife that I thought I pretty much knew all there is to know about Raman, but it turned out I did learn some things.  I particularly enjoyed the video on "How to Eat Raman."  I have seen some before, but there were some new details on this one.  I did not know that picking up the bowl to finish the broth was a sign of respect.  I think my mother would not have been happy with me if I did that at the table growing up. 

Additionally, I was really interested as I make Raman somewhat regularly.  I really enjoy the whole, long process. 

I think instant noodles, raman, and western style fast food made some of these dishes more available to the masses, so they grew in reach and acceptance.  Even those who may prefer a more high quality food choice, will sometimes looked to these foods for convenience.  Eventually nostalgia takes over, enduring such foods to us even more.  

I just read an article by anthropologist Adam Liebman that was in the Spring 2021 issue of Education About Asia (Vol. 26, No. 1) called “Waste Politics in Asia and Global Repercussions,” which I thought was particularly relevant to the topic of fast food. Liebman documents a new turn in the environmental movement in the Philippines, led by Froilan Grate, to shift the narrative on food packaging waste. For years, the United States, Canada, and European countries have been shipping their waste to Asian countries. In China there has been an industry around plastics recycling, but as Liebman points out, garbage is regularly mixed in with plastic recycling streams, and the unregulated processing of plastic has exploited poverty-stricken people and devastated the environment. The entire recycling industry, according to Liebman, is premised on exploitation because countries find it too expensive to recycle when they have to follow environmental regulations calling for non-pollution and pay workers fair wages.

When wealthy countries ship their waste to less wealthy countries, those on the receiving end are then more likely to be framed as polluters when plastics shipped to their countries drift into waterways. For example, in 2016, The Ocean Conservancy published a report stating that 60% of the oceans’ plastic pollution was caused by China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Another study found that 95% of ocean plastic pollution came from eight Asian rivers and two African rivers. What some Asian environmental activists, forming the coalition Break Free from Plastic (BFFP), have started to do, though, is to identify the names of the brands that have washed into the oceans and to publicize the waste produced by these brands. In so doing, the activists have effectively intercepted the media blame aimed at end consumers and placed it squarely on the original corporate producers of food packaging and other single-use plastic. BFFP has now grown into 11,000 organizations and individual members around the world, and as a result of their global brand audits, unwanted attention has been directed at Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Unilever, Mondelez international, Mars Inc., Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris International, and Colgate-Palmolive. In addition to placing pressure on corporations to reduce their plastic waste and pay for the waste streams they create, BFFP led a campaign that resulted in amending the international treaty that regulates transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal so that countries like the U.S. can’t just use the world as our dumping ground.

I think these issues of packaging and waste are critical for the food industry to consider as the world reckons with the devastating effects of global warming. The inconsistent regulation of waste streams, enabling plastics to fill the world’s oceans, relates to the inconsistency in fishing laws that is resulting in the threat of fishing population collapses around the globe. It is a global and micro-local issue that asks each of us what we will sacrifice and how we will re-organize our eating and other daily habits in order to care for the other people, plants, and animals with which we’re interdependent.

Jennifer, thanks for including so many video clips this week. They really helped paint a picture of various fast food chains’ presence in different countries, and they’re great footage for students. I like your idea, Jennifer Smith, about analyzing ads and/or examining changes in their narrative structure over time. My students tend to be low income and hardly ever travel, so they tend to think of chains in American-centric terms. That’s why I’d like to use the interview with James Watson in class.

I think he does a great job of showing how children have taken on a driving role in terms of consumption and how the local conditions, cultural priorities, and uses of public space in different countries have forced what many U.S. students perceive as immovable behemoths like McDonald’s to reshape themselves. I also really like Watson’s point that anthropologists have to “live where people live,…do what people do, and…go where people go” (p. 7) and his observation about the unfounded assertions of academics who draw baseless conclusions about phenomena like fast food chains because they remain sheltered in their elite circles. His story of being forced by his godchildren to pay attention to shifting conditions in Hong Kong was powerful. And it was so interesting to read about how high school students in Hong Kong transformed McDonald’s restaurants into after-school social clubs, which influenced McDonald’s to consider new ways of marketing their restaurants as safe, clean, gang-free, and alcohol-free afternoon clubs for teenagers, influencing parents to encourage their teenagers to hang out there and give them additional money for meals. I thought Watson’s argument that “consumers have appropriated corporate property and converted it into public space” (p. 8) was an important counter to the usual assumption that chains like McDonald’s are in full control of their customers.

I also appreciated Watson’s examples of how McDonald’s exerted influence on other businesses in Hong Kong by providing clean bathrooms and air conditioning, thus raising standards for customer treatment, and Sanmee Bak’s illustration of how McDonald’s has acted as an example to other businesses of social responsibility (p. 141). Bak’s discussion of how McDonald’s adjusted to Koreans’ thinking that something that is inexpensive lacks quality by focusing on the term alch’an, which reframes value as something good packed in a protective shell is another great illustration of the constant negotiation that takes place as large chains land in different countries. Bak also shows how local values have influenced McDonald’s to adjust its supply chains in Korea to local suppliers in order to counter anti-American sentiment (p. 153).

Solt’s illustration of how ramen was used to remake the image of Japan as both hip and unthreatening showed food as an ambassador, something that can jump references – from anime to movies to fashion – and invite consumers into a kind of international pop culture world. All of these articles showed the dialectical relationships, the constant on-the-ground negotiations, and the creation of new roles and new definitions of public/social space that fast food chains have enabled.