洋葱

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I marry onions. I really do. While others might be celebrating Pride Month this month, I’m celebrating Onion Pride: There’s nothing better than a crispy, juicy (I know I sound weird) onion displaying itself in my Chinese twice-cooked stir-fried pork belly. My onions are my natural sugars, and I literally swear the antioxidants and all the good stuff doesn’t just end on face value: In Chinese history, there’s also some juicy, crispy (don’t know why I’m saying it again) legacy behind these two words 洋葱.

The first character — 洋 — means foreign. Any word that has this character is like giving flashlights saying: “I’m foreign, and I mean foreign!” The word 葱 means scallions. So foreign scallions. Sounds about right for the word onion.

Eww….that last paragraph was so bland and dull. Says who? The average white American during the 1900s. During that time, Chinese immigrants were like the coakroaches: Everything and anything that could be blamed would be blamed on them. Call me biased whatever, but when I, a person whose skin color is exactly the same as those Chinese immigrants in San Francisco or Los Angeles, hear people such as a San Francisco landlord say that the “smell of fried onions and strange oil” of the Chinese was unclean, you really can’t help it but bite your teeth.

Italians are known to use fried onions and garlic. Based on this San Francisco landlord’s logic, shouldn’t they also be ridiculed as inferior? Ok, fine, they also were ridiculed. But nowadays, nobody says anything about Italians as separate from Americans, but when people bring up Chinese Americans, it’s like a bomb exploded. Everyone gets agitated. Sometimes living in a country where, according to recent reports, 25% of your fellow citizens, those where my parents’ tax dollars fund their welfare and other benefits, personally believe that they are a threat to “national security,” you can’t help but to laugh. Laugh at how hard-earned tax dollars are going to those people who believe you are painted in the colors of “national-security-threat.”

Hope these people, the 25% of Americans, enjoy my parents’ tax dollars and hope they buy a sweet, crunchy and juicy onion for their potato salad. Oh, yes, I completely forgot: These onions were decried as “uncivilized smells.”

Anyways, enjoy my parents’ tax dollars!

Sources:

Hsu, Hsuan. “Olfactory Racism in the United States Has a Very Old Stench.” PBS SoCal, 26 Feb. 2021, www.pbssocal.org/news-community/coronavirus/americas-anti-chinese-bigotry-has-a-very-old-stench?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 04 June 2025.

“Over 25% of People in the U.S. Say Chinese Americans Are a Threat.” NBCNews.Com, NBCUniversal News Group, 2 May 2025, www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/25-percent-americans-say-chinese-americans-threat-rcna204442. Accessed 04 June 2025.