Pride and prejudice

Are those crackers made in China or Taiwan?"

I held the package of Chinatown "GOOD_VITA Natural Oat Cracker" in stunned silence. China? Taiwan? What difference did it make? The crackers were from Chinatown.

Earlier that day, my friend asked me to buy her a package of crackers from Chinatown. Her personal supply of breakfast foods had run out before the end of first quarter, and she couldn't stand going without breakfast any longer. So during my trip to Chinatown, I visited a grocery store covered in large Asian characters. As I stepped inside, a wave of chlorine and dead fish smells engulfed me. I quickly grabbed the most garish package of crackers I could find and left.

Upon return, instead of being greeted by hearty thanks from a starving college student, I was greeted with a rather bizarre question. Are those crackers made in China or Taiwan?

The bright orange plaid package with silver lettering screamed Asian, but did not differentiate between regions or countries. They're certainly not American, I shrugged.

With an exasperated sigh, my friend grabbed the package from my hands and began scanning the size four font in the back. Her face fell. Oh, they're from China. I can't eat them.

I burst out laughing, but when my friend did not chime in, I stopped. What difference does it make, I asked, if the crackers are from China or Taiwan?

Since birth, my friend's parents had raised her to believe that whenever offered the choice between Chinese and Taiwanese foodstuffs, she should always select the Taiwanese food. Neither the brand nor the content mattered. The fact that these crackers had been processed and sealed into plastic bags in China instead of Taiwan made them inedible.

Crackers from China probably taste just like crackers from Taiwan, I pointed out. The packaging might be different, but who eats the packaging?

Unperturbed, my friend pressed her case. Chinese food vendors often reuse chopsticks or pick out ones from the trash for future customer use, transmitting much disease and filth in the process, she said. The Chinese are less hygienic than the Taiwanese, and this can be reflected in their processed foods, she said.

But I haven't died yet, and I ate nothing but dirty street vendor food for ten weeks in China, I argued. People in America repeatedly eat processed foods from China and don't note a difference.

Well, whenever I can avoid eating stuff made in China, I do, she replied.

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I am loath to label my friend's reaction as racist. I have never seen how she acts around people of Chinese citizenship. Perhaps her parents actually have a more refined palate than most, and Taiwanese processed foods do taste better than Chinese processed foods. But perhaps I hesitate simply because she is my friend.

The Taiwanese and Chinese have always shared a rather tenuous relationship. China's Qing dynasty ceded the entire island of Taiwan to the Japanese after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. While the Japanese brought certain modernizations to the island, they treated its residents as secondand third-class citizens. In 1949, the Koumingtang (KMT) or Nationalist Party fled the Communists in China and landed in Taiwan. Both groups claimed to be the government for all of China and Taiwan. Current Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's recent clamoring for formal independence from China has only further strained relations between the two countries.

On a more micro level, the relationship is more ambiguous. A significant number of Chinese businessmen live in Taiwan, and vice versa. Most Taiwanese are originally from China, and many refer to themselves as Chinese. But there exist Taiwanese who believe in the inherent superiority of the Taiwanese and find it offensive to even be called Chinese. They do not necessarily explicitly label the Chinese as a lesser people, but their words and actions reflect this belief. Some scathingly call simplified Mandarin Communist Chinese (as opposed to traditional Mandarin used in Taiwan), even though this is the form of Mandarin being taught at most Ivy League schools. Others routinely vacation in various Asian countries and regions but pointedly avoid China at all costs. And some, like my friend, find other means to assert the supposed superiority of the Taiwanese.

Exhibiting strong pride in Taiwan is not a sin. But asserting the superiority of Taiwan over China by looking down on the Chinese is questionable. If anything, it lowers the level of the Taiwanese. Anna Huang is an ORFE major from Westlake, Ohio. She can be reached at ajh@princeton.edu.