Designer | Researcher
Project
Menu
Experimental Video｜Conceptual Photography
Personal Perject
Role：Designer | Photographer
(2023. London)
In the research on London's Chinatown, food has become a starting point for getting to know Chinese culture, which attracts a large number of people to Chinatown, where Chinese people come in an attempt to find the flavour of their homeland, and non-Chinese people are full of curiosity about Eastern culture. In the context of a non-mainstream culture, Chinatown seems to have taken on the important role of connecting different cultures and spreading Chinese culture.
However, in recent years, the decreasing flow of people and the poor reviews of Chinatown from Chinese people show that this river seems to have some problems.
The merchants, made up mostly of immigrants from the last century, were supposed to receive new Chinese food and culture from Chinese customers in a timely manner, and then spread the excitement to foreigners coming to Chinatown. It should be like a river, a vibrant base station for Chinese culture in a foreign land, but at the moment it is like a stagnant pool of water.
After the research about London's Chinatown (see Project 3 for details), the study gradually contracted to the "menu", which became a very interesting vehicle in the context of Chinatown, providing different menus for different groups of people in the restaurant, and more intuitively, standing in the form of a big signboard. People even stood in long queues outside the shop to spend a long time looking at the menu, which became almost the sole and key factor in deciding whether to walk into a restaurant or not. However, the display of these menus often makes foreigners suspicious. Meanwhile, on the inside, operators want to make a profit as quickly as possible in order to pay high rents, so they cater to the preferences of foreign customers from different backgrounds, and they prepare different menus for different customers. This inadvertently leads to potential conflicts, such as foreign customers "rightfully" being deprived of some choices, and Chinese customers feeling that the dishes are single and expensive, and that the attitude is not good. This is not conducive to the sustainable development and exchange of Chinese culture in the long run.
（ The Poster ）
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