If the word “tofu” is Japanese, it’s derived from the Chinese word “dou-fu.” Since “tofu” is a reasonable Romanization of the word “dou-fu,” it doesn’t bother me that Chinese restaurants use the word “tofu” on their menus.

How do you feel about getting different food/menus in Chinese restaurants if you appear Asian? At some more authentic Chinese restaurants, when I sit down, I get a little bowl of Chinese pickles instead of the fried (probably non-vegan) crunchy noodles w/duck sauce that is served to the non-Asian patrons. And at the very authentic restaurants, I get a menu that is written entirely in Chinese, that is almost completely different from the English-language menu that other customers get. Since I can’t read Chinese, if I get a written menu that is entirely in Chinese, I usually order by speaking to the staff and asking questions in a combination of English and my really bad Mandarin. My Mandarin is so bad, I would order entirely in English if there weren’t some Mandarin words that don’t have an easy English translation.

I’m Chinese American and I have yet to eat a General Tso dish or chop suey. I’ve always wondered what the hell was that stuff?
I’m not really knowledgeable about Chinese cuisine but I know enough that those dishes are NOT authentic.

In the TED video Jennifer 8. Lee makes a couple of points that I think are worth noting. For instance, the connection between poisoning rats and poisoning Chinese, who were portrayed as eating the rats. She also discusses a document titled “Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion: Meat vs. Rice: American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism: Which Shall Survive?”

The document links a meat-centered diet, Whites/European-Americans, and manhood as superior. At the same time this nationalist heteropatriarchal anthropocentric White supremacy is contrasting with a plant-based diet, Asians, and exploited laborers, all seen as inferior. Thus a combination of speciesism, nationalism, Orientalism, sexism, racism, and classism is used in concert as the reasons for the xenophobic exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the U.S. I think we can still find combinations of these oppressive ideologies in the North American and European campaigns that target Chinese and other Asians regarding cats and dogs.