Claire W. Zhang
I have been getting monthly shipments from Yami.com for three years now. They arrive in 16×12×12 cardboard boxes that my cat later uses as apartment extensions. Inside, there are usually prepackaged noodles, exotic seasonings, and, very occasionally, tampons, when I can’t make the fifty-dollar free-shipping minimum. I started ordering them when I finally came back to the United States after a visa suspension held me in China for an unexpectedly long time. “Come back to the US,” I say this to my American friends, just like how I say “come back to China” to my Chinese friends. I never say, “go to.” It suggests a future return to wherever it is I come from, and it gives me the same sour feeling as when people say, “why don’t you go back to where you’re from.” And despite how accusing I sound, it’s not just Americans who say this all the time.
But I’m off topic, ain’t I. I have a way of making everything about myself—my immigration status, what people have done wrong to me, and, if not to me, then to “my people.” Ironically, they are also the ones who decide who “my people” are: people who look like me. By that they mean my skin color and the shape of my eyes, not my average height or my extremely small hands or the oily scalp that forces me to wash my hair at least once a day. I sometimes think the world would make more sense if we grouped ourselves by the degree of oiliness of our scalps.
But again I’m off topic, ain’t I. It is Yami.com I was going to tell you about. Yami.com is a platform where I buy authentic Asian food and products. Without it I might have to reconsider living here. The name is brilliant too. On the surface it sounds like “yummy,” and in Chinese, Yami means “Asian rice.” Not so surprisingly, in that context, it does not sound offensive. Though, I’ve stopped ordering rice from Yami.com a while ago. Amazon is cheaper.
Things I frequently buy from Yami: Luosi Fen. Mala Tang. New Orleans seasoning. You might have questions about New Orleans seasoning. I’ll get there.
First, Luosifen. It’s a type of rice noodle soup with a broth made from snails. I had never had this delicacy when I was in China. I’m from the North. The dish comes from the South. It’s amazing how America brought us together. What a melting hot pot of people with supposedly different shapes of eyes. You do need to be careful cooking Luosi Fen around others. The fermented bamboo shoots smell like shit. I don’t mean bad. I mean literal. Some people swear by it. They compare it to durian. I wouldn’t know. Never had it. I’m more drawn to the snails. French people know what I mean. You have to be careful eating it, too. Just last week I accidentally poured an entire bowl over my MacBook. It was not easy to explain to the Apple geniuses that the incident happened in the kitchen, not the bathroom.
Mala Tang tastes more like home. Vermicelli, tofu skin, fish balls, veggie of your choice. But like everything else, there’s a difference between the South and the North. Abraham Lincoln knows what I mean. We northerners like it drowned in sesame sauce. Sesame sauce to Chinese northerners is like peanut butter to Americans. It goes with everything. I should also add that sesame sauce is kinder to your blood sugar. I watch mine these days. A first-world problem, as they say. For years the American government has tried to strip China of its “developing country” status, claiming China’s already rich. I say they should ask my mom, who’s a doctor for diabetes. If she’s not a millionaire by now, China’s not first world.
Now, New Orleans seasoning. You may wonder why I buy American seasoning from an Asian food website. It is not exactly Cajun, despite the name. This version of New Orleans flavor exists only in China. If I have to describe it, it tastes like Old Bay with half the salt and a lot of honey. It first appeared on Chinese dinner tables through KFC, a true revolutionary. Or maybe a reverse colonist, depending on how you look at it. Few institutions are better at taking the food of one culture, reinventing it beyond recognition, still calling it authentic, and then selling it to an entirely different culture. Think General Tso’s chicken.
I relate to the Chinese New Orleans seasoning more than I should. Not just in taste. When I tell Chinese publishers I’m Chinese, born and raised, yet I write my stories in English, they become very interested. The interest fades when I offer to translate the stories myself. “No,” they say. “If you want this to work, you must not translate yourself.”
I say, yeah. I get it. I’ve eaten KFC in China.
Every month the box still arrives. I cut through the tape like I’m crossing a border. My cat supervises. Twelve years ago, when I first arrived in this country, I painted myself a life in which I would eat French toast and avocado for breakfast and parsley-sprinkled spaghetti for dinner, in a big house bought with my American salary. Then I left and arrived again. Now I have three master’s degrees and no job, no salary. This morning I woke up craving pork buns. Tonight I will fall asleep thinking about pheasant mushroom stew. I am always hungry. So hungry that it aches. But people from home remind me that even when I ache, I am aching in the first world. The tracking number updates sometime after midnight.
Campaign: Paid Partnership with Yami.com
Content Type: Long-form Storytelling / Lifestyle
Deliverable: One written post
Reviewer Comment: Unable to identify a consistent brand message. Recommend narrowing the creator’s narrative to a single, relatable takeaway.
Status: REJECTED
Claire W. Zhang was born and raised on the border between China and North Korea. A short story writer now based on Long Island, NY, she has contributed to the Pinch, Hobart, Third Coast, Another Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction written in Chinese was a finalist for the RedNote Life Writing Award and appears in the anthology The World in a Day,sponsored by Colm Tóibín. She edits fiction at The Baltimore Review.