Restaurant offends with takeaway bags
The owner of a Christchurch dumpling restaurant says he has stopped an order for takeaway bags with the words ‘‘Dump Rings’’ on them.
‘‘I do not want to be offending anyone, so I cancelled the order,’’ Jason Dodd said.
The Christchurch businessman took over the Pot Sticker Dumpling Bar from Sam and Sally Hooper about a year ago.
Dodd said after one customer complained he asked Chinese staff in the restaurant’s kitchen if they found it offensive. ‘‘They all just laughed.’’
He decided to cancel the order for the bags anyway.
Dodd said existing stock would continue to be used until they were all gone.
Hooper said he and partner Sally Hooper spent months researching dumplings in China before launching the restaurant and hired Chinese staff.
The staff were involved in a brainstorming session to find words for the bags that would be ‘‘a bit tongue in cheek’’, ‘‘slightly controversial’’ and stand out.
When ‘‘Dump Rings’’ was
suggested, he asked the chefs if they would take offence.
‘‘They said no, we think it’s amusing.’’
Hooper said their response was his ‘‘litmus test’’ and he approved the wording for the bags on that basis.
‘‘It was nothing to do with any kind of offence.’’
He said customers would often ring up to place an order and the phrase was a play on words.
During the time the Hoopers owned the business they did not have one complaint about the wording, he said.
‘‘I have a bunch of Chinese friends and they just looked at it and said ‘classic’.’’
Other suggestions were disregarded immediately as too offensive, Hooper said.
However, Christchurch woman Gabby Lowe, who is of Chinese descent, said the wording on the bags was ‘‘disheartening’’ especially in the light of publicity about Asian fusion restaurant Bamboozle earlier in the year.
The Christchurch restaurant owned by Phillip Kraal drew international condemnation with the wording on its menu earlier this year.
‘‘When someone is co-opting a culture and doesn’t take time to think about how they can respect that culture it’s very disheartening.’’
Lowe complained about the bags in a post on the restaurant’s Facebook page in March.
‘‘Where does the buck stop with the appropriation of Asian people’s culture? Where is the
line between respecting it and reviling it? It seems your restaurant doesn’t know the answer to these questions either.’’
Lowe told The Press that Dodd contacted her after the post and they had a ‘‘respectful’’ conversation.
Knowing the Chinese chefs were happy with the wording did not ‘‘sway’’ her view.
She said asking ‘‘a handful of people from mainland China’’ did not justify using the phrase.
Lowe said many young, educated people of Chinese descent who had grown up in New Zealand would find the bags offensive. Auckland university business student, former Christchurch resident and Chinese citizen Hui Gong said she considered the wording ‘‘very rude’’.
Chinese chefs new to New Zealand would not realise the wording was racist, she said. ‘‘Chinese chefs, they don’t know New Zealand is a racist place.’’
Christchurch web design student Jeremy Sim said the Pot Sticker Dumpling bags were offensive and ‘‘triggering’’.
‘‘They are obviously trying to make fun of the Asian accent.’’
Sim was born in New Zealand to parents of Malaysian-Chinese and Vietnamese-Chinese heritage and had experienced racism over the years. ‘‘Yeah, of course, name calling and saying ‘go back to your own home’.’’
Many Kiwis, including the Pot Sticker Dumpling owners, didn’t realise the effect of these sorts of phrases. Younger ‘‘westernised Asians’’ were more confident to express their views on racism compared to their parents’ generation and new immigrants, Sim said.
University of Canterbury associate professor of marketing Ekant Veer said mimicry of a language or accent was ‘‘a dangerous game to play’’ but the bags would probably not harm Pot Sticker Dumpling’s business. ‘‘They seem to have an identity that goes beyond that and they seem to be well integrated with the Asian community in Christchurch.’’
New Zealand China Friendship Society president Dave Bromwich applauded the decision by Dodd to stop using the bags. He said the bags would be culturally offensive and the wording was immature. ‘‘It’s something we might have done in the 1960s, in school, not what we’re looking for in a mature society.’’