“What’s for dinner?”, father Bart asks his wife Ilse as she walks into the kitchen. She sets down a big blue shopping bag on the table, “Asian”. As if by magic, the blinds come down and a flaming wok, neon lights and a golden maneki-neko appear in the kitchen. “Lekker Aziatisch, lekker thuis” (which means ‘tasty Asian, right at home’), says the voice-over.
Bart and Ilse are the regular white couple in the Albert Heijn TV commercials and are in this case promoting the ‘Lekker Aziatisch’ campaign which started at the end of March. New products were added to the supermarket’s offerings and others were highlighted or discounted. The campaign contained no explicitly racist images, and the slogan ‘Lekker Aziatisch’ sounds positive initially. Yet this campaign is more hurtful than one might think.
First of all the term ‘Asian’. Are we talking about products from all over Asia? That is quite a large number of countries! Are there also special offers for Turkmen and Kazakh products? On the Albert Heijn website, the marketing team gets a little more specific by stating ‘’From Japan to Korea’’, without realising that these countries are neighbours. From Japan to Korea, that is only Japan and Korea.
The special offers were after all mostly focused on Korean and Japanese inspired products, for instance tteokbokki and teriyaki sauce (from the Dutch Conimex brand). Scrolling further down through the ‘Asian favourites’, you might encounter Thai microwave meals and Indonesian spice mixes. You can imagine the sweat rolling down the marketing employees’ foreheads; having just come up with a Korean and Japanese theme, the boss asks them to include even more products. The theme thus becomes overall ‘Asian’, ‘Lekker Aziatisch’.
Screenshot of the campaign’s website
The website offers more ‘Asian’ recipes, among which is the ‘Asian sauerkraut’. If you expect a recipe for Korean kimchi or pickled Chinese vegetables, you will be disappointed; it is sauerkraut with white wine and mushrooms. A splash of soy sauce is supposed to qualify it as ‘Asian’. A whole continent is reduced to a vague sentiment correlated to chili, ginger and soy sauce.
In a second TV commercial, Ilse is playing a game with her son, who is making her guess what ‘Asian’ products from “Chinese cuisine” he bought at the supermarket. She guesses spring rolls, soy sauce and chili sauce. The right answer turns out to be gyoza, after which Ilse exclaims that gyoza is Japanese.
Was this the joke? That none of the products mentioned were Chinese? No, that is probably too much to ask of the marketing team. Just like the family in the commercial, the average viewer will classify all of these products as ‘Chinese’, after which they might pat themselves on the back for their extra knowledge about Japanese cuisine. Because what does it matter? It’s all Asian anyway.
It turns out that Albert Heijn’s Asia only referred to a very specific part of Asia, mainly East Asian countries. The supermarket is not the only one who lumps together all these different countries while ignoring Central and South Asian countries. We should consider ourselves lucky for the fact that adjectives like ‘exotic’ and ‘oriental’ are no longer commonplace, but the idea behind them remains: Asia is a mysterious land far away, defined by soft lighting, the sound of gongs and a dash of soy sauce.
It is also representation of people’s disinterest. People are not familiar with the differences between these countries and they are also not interested in learning, which leads them to call everything Chinese. But the stereotyping of these countries extends beyond the kitchen. People in the Netherlands with East or Southeast Asian features are consistently thought of as Chinese, whether they are Vietnamese, Japanese or Taiwanese. Just like Ilse and her family, people hardly consider the huge diversity across the continent.
The campaign of course extended beyond TV into Albert Heijn stores. Large signs saying ‘Lekker Aziatisch’ in neon letters were put up in stores and at the entrance, customers were greeted by signs saying ‘Ni hao’. Again, “Asian-ness” was reduced to Chinese (Mandarin), but written in the Latin alphabet. Because this greeting was of course not meant to welcome Chinese customers, but to convey to customers that stereotypical atmosphere they project onto the idea of “Asia”.
‘Ni hao’ might mean ‘hello’, but in the Netherlands the phrase is most notorious for being hurled at people of East and Southeast Asian descent on the street. It is not a friendly greeting, but a not-so-subtle reminder that the person it is targeted at is seen as someone who doesn’t belong here. This makes for the ironic fact that the ‘Ni hao’ signs make East and Southeast Asian customers feel less at home in the supermarket.
Hui-Hui Pan, member of Pan Asian Collective, decided to confront Albert Heijn about the campaign. Her complaint was taken seriously and management immediately instructed all stores to remove the ‘Ni hao’ and ‘Lekker Aziatisch’ signs. Although a number of stores did remove the ‘Ni hao’ signs, many still left them up. But the ‘Lekker Aziatisch’ signs remained up everywhere and the stereotypical TV commercials were still aired.
And that’s not all. In its free magazine available in over 2 million copies, Allerhande wrote ‘Laat Azië je smaken’, (which more or less means ‘enjoy your Asia’, Asia being the meal). It is subtle, but imagine it had said ‘Laat Amerika (America) je smaken’. Despite the fame of hamburgers and cola, it sounds more like you are offered a bite of Trump with a bowl of Hollywood. The Allerhande headline says a lot about how much Asia and Asian countries are associated with food in the West, more so than any other region.
And it gets even worse, because the headline suggests a passive interaction; the Asian continent is equated with the food that is being offered. It does not say, ‘Enjoy Asian cuisine’ or ‘Cook yourself a nice Asian meal’, but it is phrased as a passive ‘Let Asia pleasure your tastebuds’. In other words, ‘Here, have my culture on a serving tray, ready to be consumed’.
A month after Albert Heijn’s campaign their competitor Aldi launched their own Asian themed deals. During ‘The week of Asia’, they highlighted products from their own ‘Asia’ product line-up. Although, again, all Asian countries were lumped together, the commercials on Instagram did not include a single chopstick. Several products were shown to the camera, accompanied by the text ‘Aren’t all the best dishes from Asia?’. Selling Asian food without stereotyping is possible after all.
Offering people, countries and cultures as objects of consumption has extreme consequences. East and Southeast Asian women especially suffer from the stereotype of the submissive Asian woman. Think of clichés about the Japanese geisha or Thai masseuse. Women without personalities who only exist to serve and ‘be consumed’. East and Southeast Asian women often have to deal with sexist comments which reduce them to a tasty treat. ‘Lekker Aziatisch’ then leaves a bitter taste.
The connection between racism and food is a common occurrence. We can see it for example in the comments of racist online trolls. These comments are surprisingly often about… food! Also, the comments under Asian Raisins posts often contain the notorious ‘Sambal bij?’ (‘Would you like sambal with that?’, an expression used to ridicule the Dutch of Chinese-Indonesian restaurant staff) as well as references to Chinese and Indonesian foods.
The fact that anti-Asian racists are quick to make connections with food is of course not accidental. A lot of people in the Netherlands first encountered Asian culture in Chinese-Indonesian restaurants. There they found, besides tasty dishes, friendly staff who never got angry over racist ‘jokes’. Of course they wouldn’t, they won’t risk scaring customers away. These guests would continue to make racist jokes unhindered, thinking that nobody had been offended.
Holland’s Got Talent jury member Gordon too could not think of anything besides a Chinese takeaway restaurant, when in 2013 the Chinese-Dutch singer Xiao Wang appeared on stage. Out of nowhere, he called out, ‘What song (‘nummer’ in Dutch, which also translated to ‘number’) are you going to sing? Number 39 with rice?’. To Gordon, there was only one kind of Chinese person: restaurant staff.
His conviction was so strong that even after the numerous criticisms, he never showed awareness of how insulting this comment was to Xiao Wang and Chinese people in general. To this day, he has refused to apologise. This association with restaurants reinforces the stereotype of the submissive Asian and explains the comments left by racists on Asian Raisins’ Instagram page. By calling out dishes as if they are placing an order, these people are saying, ‘Return to your role of submissive server’.
Sadly, these are only a few examples of how the strong association with food and restaurants can have direct negative effects in daily life. Although Albert Heijn’s intention was only to promote their products, with their lazy ‘Asian’ theme, they reinforced existing stereotypes and racist ideas. Ideas about the continent, about individual countries and their cuisines, and about people. Ideas that contribute to racist behaviour.
A small bright spot is that Albert Heijn took Pan Asian Collective’s complaint seriously. However, this sadly did not lead to the problematic signs being removed from all of their stores, and it did not change other parts of the campaign. For a brand that specialises in food, it is sad how little knowledge the marketing department seems to have about the strong connection between racism and food cultures.
Report racism and discrimination via our website. Reporting works!
Comments are closed