The American origins of the Chinese takeout font
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- Опубликовано: 7 май 2024
- Chop suey fonts are a subcategory of so-called "ethnic" display fonts, and are a unique American invention with roots in the 170 year history of Chinese migrants in United States.
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Special thanks to Raven Mo for her contribution to the original research, title dividers and personal perspective shared in this video. ravenmo.info/
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0:00 This lettering will look familiar... unless you're from China.
1:06 What is a Chop Suey font?
1:35 Typographic Stereotypes from repeat usage
2:02 Typographic Stereotypes with design intent
3:04 How Chinese writing works, compared with Chop Suey fonts
4:44 Where it started, how it began
5:22 Some historical context
6:41 Chinatown's theatrical reinvention
7:21 How exclusion propelled Chinese restaurant expansion
9:16 Repetition trumps authenticity
10:05 Why Chinese restaurants perpetuated this trope
10:57 Can a font be racist?
11:17 The type equivalent of a fake foreign accent
12:16 Or... don't be a hack?
13:14 Where are things headed?
13:50 Chinese food is more than takeout food
15:11 Corporate high-end dining
15:42 Embassy restaurants
16:06 New-school Chinese American restaurants
16:45 An expression of Chinese identities
17:54 TienMin Liao's multi-script typography
19:02 How to support Chinatown's survival
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Sources and further resources:
• Writing Systems of the...
• The dark history of th...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Maî...
www.printmag.com/design-resou...
99percentinvisible.org/episod...
cup.columbia.edu/book/chop-su...
edition.cnn.com/style/article...
fontdata.com/american-typeface....
scholars.org/brief/untold-sto...
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
apebhconference.files.wordpre...
/ heres-what-chinese-tak...
www.imdb.com/title/tt3576038/
/ bilingual-lettering-2-...
typeji.com/MultiScript
Type 1 typographic sterotypes:
linedandunlined.com/archive/n...
firstamericanartmagazine.com/...
Plus:
• Why the US photographe...
www.vox.com/videos/2019/3/26/...
fortune.com/2020/06/21/chines...
www.mocanyc.org/
margaretcho.com/2012/03/21/ch...
exhibits.lapl.org/chinatown/
Images:
menus.nypl.org/menus
www.foodanddrink.amdigital.co...
digitalcollections.nypl.org/c...
tessa.lapl.org/cdm/search/col...
www.loc.gov/collections/genthe/
hdl.huntington.org/digital/
californiarevealed.org/
🛒My RUclips Gear kit.co/timesnewboman/youtube-...
🛒Amazing AI Upscaling topazlabs.com/ref/1205/
Music from Artlist and Epidemic Sound
www.epidemicsound.com/referra...
As a Chinese designer living in Melbourne, I often use the Chop suey fonts on products to quickly separate Western made 'chinese' products from authentic Chinese product - since this font was never made and used in China.
@@radiobiologist Hahahaha this is surprisingly correct.
@@radiobiologist or that weird serif font that's probably the default when the Chinese font doesn't have Latin characters
the vibe really is 'single Chinese restaurant in a country town, its lace curtains and round window frozen in amber' huh
@@kreuner11 I'm pretty sure most Chinese fonts have Latin characters as it's a comparatively small addition when you're already making hundreds to thousands of glyphs anyways. Though I remember hearing that those aren't always great, especially in older fonts.
So it might just be the Latin characters from whatever font is the default on Windows in China.
@@kreuner11 Actually when we are writting in English we just choose the typeface that were built for Latin characters, the situation you said only happens when writting in Chinese but there are just a little bit of Latin characters in the whole thing, and I think the weird Latin characters are just from some old typefaces like 宋体 and 楷体
The real situation I faced is when the whole article is in English, but there are some Chinese or Japenese characters, bacause Latin typefaces like Arial dosen't supports there characters, it will be replaced with a weird typeface just like what happend when writting Latin characters in 宋体 😂I need to replace those specific words with another typeface that supports that fits in.
But yeah I cannot blame it, since Han Zi (include Japenese and Korean Kanzi) typefaces is a ENORMOUS work cuz each and every character is it's own thing (as can be seen in unicode, each character has its own code, it's near 100,000 codes for just Han Zi, and that database still haven't include all of it), at the point that most Chinese typeface also dosen't support all of it (the characters that are not supported are characters that are overly rarely used that 99% Chinese cannot even pronounce it, just like the 鹓 in my name lol (maybe we should make a game about pronouncing the rarely used Han Zi, that's definitely 99% people cannot pass😂😂😂))
Actually the work isn't "that heavy" as you though, a lot of Han Zi are combined by parts like stacking logo pieces, something like "pine+apple=pineapple"，“氵(water)+由(providing the pronounce)=油(oil)”, "钅(gold)+由(providing pronounce agian)=铀(Uranium)", "鼠(mouse)+由(yes, pronounce again)=鼬(Mustelidae). But still, the "parts" are still freakingly a lot so it's still HEAVY
I think another reason Chinese restaurants tend to avoid using the chop suey font is that nowadays it would be associated with "cheap" commercialized Asian food products like instant ramen. So it kinda became a caricature of itself.
Edit: By "cheap" commercialized Asian food products I'm not referring to actual Asian products, but rather European or American products that want to "feel" Asian but in an inauthentic way like "We know this isn't traditional but y'know... *gong sound and stereotypical jingle *🇨🇳🧧🀄"
It looks cool as hell though.
Not just that, the font itself reminds them the Chinese's stereotype.
"chop suey font is that nowadays it would be associated with "cheap" commercialized Asian food"
I see what you mean. Cheap fast food, Chinese food made to the American taste buds. McDonald's in a different font.
Still you gotta love it for what it is, that why it will always do well. It's just good, especially the buffet style. Best bang for the buck that's hard to refuse. Only place that beats it might be Mexican places where one plate is big enough for four people.
yes for sure
@@strawberries217 are you sure? 🌈
0:08 We were showing friends from Hong Kong around, young men in their 20s, and took them to a local Chinese restaurant. What made the biggest impression on them was _not_ the food (which to them was perfectly “okay”) but the stacks of Chinese takeout boxes (technically, “oyster pails”), with the stereotypical red chop suey font, that were piled high on top of the beverage fridge. They had never seen them in real-life before, only in US television shows or movies-in fact, they might have doubted that those existed anywhere _other than_ in films and TV-and that, to them, were quintessentially “American.”
You don't even find those in European Chinese fast food / takeout places. Locally I've seen either disposable reusable Tupperware style plastic containers, the kind you can reheat in a microwave oven, or aluminium body, laminated cardboard top ones with the most generic branding on them, same as you'd get for fried chicken and fries in.
I reuse the plastic ones, they are great for lunch prepping and storing in the fridge, since they stack nicely.
The aluminium ones you'd think are the most environmentally conscious but they almost always end up in a landfill.
@@Fridelain I think I've seen them used here in Germany but it's been a few years since I last had Chinese so I might be misremembering it or they stopped doing it.
@@cameron7374 I have indeed seen them in Germany as well.
I live in Scotland with relatives in America and when I visited them one of the most exciting objects I spotted that lived in my cultural subcoincious were those oyster pails! I had the exact same feeling seeing something that had previously only existed in films and television!
@@JenSell1626 yt is racist
"When fighting for basic human rights, authentic cultural expression is a luxury." Such an eloquent and insightful analysis. I really appreciate the inclusion of Raven's perspective; so many creators don't realize that producing content about cultures you might not be familiar with can be a great chance to introduce and amplify otherwise marginalized voices. Off to read about TienMin Liao's work now!
While recycling the same process of knowledge production in the same old Orientalist fashion
Assimilationist concessions
@@nehcooahnait7827 Exactly. I'm sick and tired of them recycling orientalist bs calling it cultural expression. I'd rather see full-western design without pretending to be something else.
Coming from a country that also has tons of weaponised diaspora in the West, all I hear is "You can be racist towards us, just change the regime already"
@@nehcooahnait7827 what does this even mean?
So fascinating. I would love you to explore the ethnic stereotype in fonts you hinted at near the start, if you want! Was really interesting hearing the backstory to chop suey font and some basics of Chinese writing. My experience of this is the faux Hindi you showed. I do not read Hindi naturally (ie slowly and deliberately - Bengali (mother tongue) looks different, without that horizontal line that gives the fake & real Hindi its characteristic look), so I just see the English words easily. But as a kid I bought an album by a British Indian artist and was confused why my uncle was just staring at the cover for ages trying to figure out what it meant. He was a native Hindi speaker and was stumped by this weird Hindi script. So it did what you often talk about, it failed its most basic requirement, to be legible.
I speak/read Hebrew and Yiddish, and know well the feeling of looking at that faux-Hebrew font and doing a double take as I realize it's actually in English! Interestingly, that faux-Hebrew font has been embraced or reclaimed by Jews and we use it a lot in a kind of ironic, kitschy way. I would love to learn more about the fake Hindi and fake Sanskrit fonts too.
I never expected to see you here! I'm glad you have an appreciation for graphic design too!
I'd love to see a series on the "faux-ethnic" fonts. This video really peaked my interest!
Being a subscriber to medlife is probably one of the reasons RUclips recommended this video to me lol
The cyrillic font is the one that really gets me tbh. Since every single faux cyrilic is a different level of faux cyrillic. Some of them are like 'Oh backwards Rs and some letters in a distinctly cyrilic style' but others are like, seemingly random letters substituted in a incomprehensible fashion.
Like, if you're just making your R's Yas (The backwrds R is a ''ya' sound) its easy enough. But sometimes you see nearly every letter substituted, including ones that are identical to their english counterparts. I.E. Using a Д instead of an A, when the cyrillic A... is an A.
Its not accented, its like a insane mishmash until nothing makes sense, often removing all latin characters and substituting various forms of cyrillic characters into an incoherent mess.
I'm not sure when this started either, as the historical 'look its Russian' fonts usually just made your R's Яs and your W's Шs, but nothing as frankly bizarre as the modern ones.
as a chinese and a desigmer that sometimes design with chinese letters, this font haunts me whenever im trying to find fonts for chinese letters (all i get from google are cliche display font for latin alphabets)
If you don’t mind me asking, from a Chinese perspective, what are the popular fonts used to write in English within China?
I feel you.
@@Meimoons I mean I'm not a designer, but from my everyday experience we just use regular English fonts like Times New Roman, Calibri, Helvetica, etc.
THIS. this is so relatable, how many times have I searched 'font' for Chinese characters only for this font to pop up or another variant like this, it still nerves me until this day too.
Have you seen tattoo 功夫体
I'll tell you where the Chop Suey font is alive and well: rural America. It's still at all the little places scattered around where I live in West Virginia. I love Asian American cuisine, and these places are like the train car diners of the region I live in, little satellites that still reflect a time capsule version of a different era. It's a fascinating phenomenon, if not one still tangled up together with a complex history
Almost every city in west texas has one of these places as well, a few from the 60's still survive
also in Mexico
It's beautiful, as are all the families that own those businesses. It's insulting to trash a diaspora's history, and pretend it's a noble pursuit.
West Virginia ha always been living 40 years in the past.
This has quickly become one of my favorite channels. Another great video!
hello, the god of video essays, nice to see you here
Agreed 😄
Absolutely. This is such great work
great to see you here Jacob
Makes sense to see you here
Thank you for not going super hard on ragging on Chinese American food. I know it's not "authentic", but these days no food is. Food transforms when it meets new places and people and ingredients. Sure, sugary chicken in cardboard isn't high class dining or made from scratch soul food, but sometimes it's the only thing that will hit the spot for me.
At least most of the stuff were invented by actual immigrants, so it has that going for it at least.
Technically the most authentic food is raw meat but nobody is gonna eat that.
@@FelipeJaquez smoked meat is much more authentic, and anyone can do it. Just dangle some raw meat above a fire so the smoke makes it edible.
@@TheYeetedMeat but if you use wood from a tree that didn't exist in your area back in those days, is it still authentic? 🤔
@@adenkyramud5005 who says use wood? Smoke your hands as you hold the meat and eat them too!
Actually, fortune cookies weren't born in the US. In fact they're not even Chinese related either. They were brought over by *Japanese* immigrants
Originating in Edo-period Japan, cookies very similar to the modern fortune cookie were made called the 辻占煎餅/tsujiura senbei. They were made with miso and sesame, different than the modern ones. But like the modern ones, it had fortunes inside called tsujiura or omikuji. These cookies are still sold in Japan today. It switched to a Chinese-American staple during WWII because of Japanese internment
Ohh make sense
no wonder as a chinese (but i’m from singapore) i never knew about fortune cookies until i watched american movies & tv shows
You can still get them in Japan, but only in specific regions. It is no where near as popular here as it is in the US.
>Edo-period
Of course
Do they still make it with miso and sesame?
The part where you discussed how chinese writing system works and how its elements were implemented to these fonts was great and essential! Because at this point it clicked for me and i think I "got" the message. I really don't like slav-english fonts when they use Д instead of A when there's actually А in Cyrillic.
It stands out and shows that its authentic slav or Russian rather than some bland drink.
@@HamguyBacon alright then, but there's a letter D in vodka as well. Why not use cyrillic Д instead?
@@MultiMicals because its promoted to English readers.
It’s actually funny because Vodka in Russian is Водка… So to Americanize it it would look better as Vодка since this swaps the Cyrillic B for V, which both have the same sound. Sadly it only works in very few cases. I’ll see Яussiа or Яцssiа because you can’t really Americanize Россия. Same thing with anything containing an И. И in Russian is ‘and’ and makes a long e sound. If I say Ио I’m saying ‘eeyo’. Which sounds stupid. That’s what makes the fake fonts that use real characters pretty idiotic is that it makes no sense once you pick it apart.
As a native Russian speaker, reading these fonts feels like my brain is short-circuiting. Like, the Latin and Cyrillic characters mix in my head and it takes me a moment to figure out what I'm reading.
I had no idea I could so intimately relate my own Chinese-American immigrant experience to something so abstract as font design trends. Mirroring the history, I feel this video recognizes my pride in my past scrapiness and the optimism that I can realize a more coherent and comprehensive self-identity. This understanding feels so rare in any media that I feel so touched whenever I see it. Thanks Linus and Happy Lunar New Year.
This was a great video! Despite me being a _huge_ font nerd, and knowing how to read and write 漢字, I never really thought about the "Chop Suey" font. It's a really interesting history.
It's also great to see authentic Chinese (actually Taiwanese) restaurants like Din Tai Fung coming to North America and not trying to anglicize their name. One of the few things I miss about living in Toronto are the Asian restaurants which cater to an Asian population and serve real food from their regions. This can only happen if there are enough people from that region to know what the food is actually supposed to taste like, and to be big enough to sustain these restaurants.
That being said, I also grew up in the whitest of white Canadian suburbia, so I sometimes get a craving for the "Chinese" food of my youth: chop suey with sweet and sour chicken balls and an egg roll. And for that I subconsciously seek out the chop suey font.
Chicken balls are also a typical Chinese dish in Ireland, I'm surprised to hear it exists in Canada
@Daniel Gallagher the world ain't ready for spicebags yet !
NJB! You are an inspiration to many, glad to see you here!
Taiwanese = more Chinese than China don't @ me
@@RayGwah I'm from the north and only heard of spice bag within the last few years when I moved to Enniskillen, probably cuz it closer to the boarder.
Was funny to hear it talked about like a local delicacy "ye have to try spice bag" I was like wtf is that drugs?
Mickey Rooney, over the years, stated many times, for the record, that he heavily regretted that role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, calling it a stain on his acting career that he rather would not have done, if he had his way. From my understanding, he didn’t actually want to take on the role and would have preferred the studio hire an actual Japanese actor to play the part (in a way less stereotypical way, of course), but he was under a contract and wasn’t allowed to back out of the project (nor did the studio care, I’m sure, about the offensive caricature being so problematic). Whether he was strong armed into the role or not, hopefully it is comforting to know that in the following years, he grew from the mistake and did become more reverent of other people and their cultures. I know that was only a brief mention in the video, but it just seemed relevant as an example of learning from history’s mistakes and learning to do better with these things. Didn’t mean to type a whole paragraph, sorry. 😅
Don’t apologize for sharing information in detail that is so interesting!
“… and would have preferred the studio hire an actual Chinese actor to play the part (in a way less stereotypical way, of course)…”
The character, Mr Yunioshi, was supposed to be Japanese so why would Rooney have preferred someone Chinese?
_EDIT:_ I appreciate the edit of the comment. ☺️👍
@@jeff__w sorry, that was my mistake, I’ll fix it.
@@therealCrazyJake Oh, great. 👍🏻 Sorry, I didn't see your reply till just now. 😳
@@jeff__w you’re good, mate. RUclips doesn’t notify me about replies, so I’m just now seeing your reply. Hope you are having a blessed day. 🙂
I’m glad you covered the element of capitalism in it. Fonts and ‘the Chinese look’ tended to do better commercially and the development of the chop suey font attracted more customers. I don’t think it has that much of a racist element in it nowadays, this style and typography is more about American culture than Chinese culture.
Yeah, as a Chinese American, Ilook at it and see it as integral to Chinese American history, warts and all. Ive grown quite fond of it and I hope it doesn't go away
@@dunnowy123 Yeah, stuff like this is very kitschy and there can be an element of fondness when looking at stuff like that.
i see your comments everywhere
I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated at age 5. Perhaps my perspective is different because I learned the basic strokes in Chinese. I'm pretty much Americanized now and illiterate in Chinese. But I find the "chop suey" font racist, derogatory and deeply offensive. I understand why past generations accept and even capitalize on it and I want the history of it maintained, but I don't want it to be used ever again.
@@dunnowy123 Honestly I assume it'll probably go away as newer Chinese migrants dislike it deeply, and frankly are likely to outpopulate and dominate the older culture of historical Chinese Americans.
This happened with the pre-soviet Ukrainian Diaspora I'm part of, all of our cultural ideas and concepts that we held onto are having difficulty existing in the still-incoming crowd of post-soviets. Our language, fonts, cultural traditions etc are just kind of exterminated in the wave brought in.
The anglicized 'Pepperivka' and kapusta-keilbasa give way to blin and vodka. Most of us migrated as peasants over a century ago, fleeing ethnic purges. Those now fled cultural collapse. There's little relation.
18:10 as a font nerd, i LOVE good looking multi-lingual fonts that have the same style for all the characters not just some fallback letters, i can’t tell what they say but they look cool and it’s awesome to see the same bits of design applied to a very different base form
My parents owned and managed a Chinese restaurant from 1980-1996 in West Springfield, MA, so I definitely have a relationship with this font. It was just sort of there, as a kid. I think I even used the font. I didn't think about it too much until I was an adult. I'm glad to see things changing, though.
@@valentingartner3793 did you reply to the wrong comment or something? Because op didn't seem particularly upset.
@@valentingartner3793 What is your issue?
Happy Lunar New Year! 🐅
(Edit) 📝 Also, see below some footnotes and clarification:
1. Stoke order in Hànzì vs Latin - this was a necessary simplification for the context of the video - since it is an entire rabbit hole unto itself. Stroke order varies by region across CJK countries. It has more visible effect on cursive and semi-cursive calligraphy than the standard form shown in this example. It also goes beyond the visual, some digital input methods (handwriting recognition) are reliant on stroke order as part of how gestures are interpreted.
The Latin alphabet has conventions which are taught to children in school, but generally it has almost no bearing on the function of writing. Also, different calligraphic styles may use quite different strokes to create the same shapes (compare an lowercase "s" which may be made in 1 stroke in ballpoint printing, 2 in cursive, or 3, 4 or 5 strokes in blackletter calligraphy using a broad-edge nib). There is no "official" stroke order in the same meaningful sense, because our alphabet is more focused on the resulting shapes than method of production.
2. Din Tai Fung is romanised, but not using Mainland pinyin (since Din Tai Fung is from Taiwan). There are debates in the comments about what system is used (which I won't Wade-Giles into)!
3. The examples shown of dual-script logos from 18:20 are necessarily TienMin Liao's wortk. I should have added a note to say these are examples drawn from multiple sources to illustrate the increasing trend and need for multi-lingual branding.
祝你新年快乐!
Thanks
Lies lol
新年快乐~
great video as always
As a Chinese and student of anthropology, I really appreciate the length you go to to embed the font in its historical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. Amazing video!
Chop Suey font to me seems synonymous of like 1950s to 1970s old school take-out. Today it seems tacky or cheesy but it's very effective at conveying exactly what it is and what you could expect- something in Chinese style or mimicking something with Chinese/Oriental origins. Although I'm sure many have weaponized it to mock, I think it should be retained as a tool of nostalgia, older Chinese-American culture which brings back positive memories of how Chinese-American businesses flourished and under this flagship font.
This video was amazing! To me that font has a lot of baggage, but its also deeply nostalgic. I cant speak on America, but in Australia it feels like all the most authentic restaurants were the grimy back alley places with the kitschy fonts, so for me it feel less divorced from Chinese culture than perhaps it is in America, if that makes sense. I remember staring at those giant tanks of lobsters as a kid, and the chop suey font is part of that 'genre' of memory for me lol. Thank you for the video, it was so interesting and gave me a lot to think about! Happy lunar new year!
Oh, that’s definitely how it is in my area of America! The most authentic places in my region are exactly as you describe.
wdym a lot of baggage? im also in australia
@@lemonstrangler Personally it also conjures a lot of bad associations/memories of stuff like that stupid gong sound effect, that oriental riff, people making fun of Chinese accents or appearances, yellow peril, that sort of thing. Like Linus says in the video, its not necessarily that it is wholly racist in itself, just that it comes with and is a part of a larger racist history.
@@weiyin8046 oh thats true
@@mason4354 LOL no it's not like when I read about the White Australia Policy the oriental riff starts playing in my head, I guess it's similar to word association? It's really hard to explain in words. Like how sewing, thread, sewing machine, thimble, stitches, spindle, darning, embroidery are all different things but are in the same scope. Its the best way I can describe it, sorry! I'm not a sociologist so I don't have the jargon, but I find the study interesting :)
There's a bit in Kill Bill where a Japanese character write's Bill's name in English but with his normal, Japanese handwriting - it's very noticeable when he dots the I - and I've always wondered why that isn't a font. Latin Alphabet but in a natural Asian "handwriting" style.
Calls into question how natural that writing style was in the fictional movie, doesn't it? Do Japanese people actually naturally write in such a "Japanese handwriting" style when writing English letters? Or did they just do it in the movie because it looks cool?
The weird thing is that you take a movie as the basis for how a japanese person normally write in english.
@@EricChien95 I never said that.
@@EricChien95 he's not saying that - he's raising an interesting question about how native Japanese speakers write in English, and whether their handwriting has identifiable traits. And if so, how we can use that to design culturally-authentic Latin fonts.
I get what you’re saying, I work with a few ladies from Korea and when I look at their handwriting you can tell that they’re used to certain strokes and it reflects. Just like when I went to learn Japanese in highschool, my hiragana looked like crap at first because I was writing with my english tendencies and I totally neglected to consider the stroke order, lol.
This wasn’t the main point of the video, but I enjoyed learning about the history of US Chinatown architecture
I seem to recall, from past research into the topic, that the "theme park" tourist-drawing architecture for San Francisco's Chinatown, while crafted by non-Chinese talent (at a guess because Chinese weren't allowed to be registered as architects) was sought *by the community* during the rebuilding, to counter concerted efforts post-quake to forcibly relocate the Chinese out of the very central real estate they were on.
I think that multi-script fonts are very interesting, they are showing that you can make multiple scripts blend together without having to use cliché (and often just bad) faux-fonts. I'm amazed at how well some designer can "translate" a font to another script while keeping the same visual language, it is really some beautiful work.
And just for how important it is, one unexpected example is, Doom Eternal, a game that sets in a hellish theme, would use what's considered a 综艺体 (reality show title font) in its Chinese localization, probably because they want something more stylish yet still look like 黑体 (black type, sans-serif equivelent for Chinese) to match the stylish font the original English text uses. Although it might look nothing wrong to non-Chinese readers, such font is actually considered "cute" in Chinese for its association with cute-sie reality shows and thus it became kinda a meme.
@@FlameRat_YehLon "actually considered "cute" in Chinese for its association with cute-sie reality shows and thus it became kinda a meme." Well Doom X Animal Crossing is a thing so it works. I wonder did that Isabelle and Doomguy meme spawn from the Chinese cute-sie meme?
I have never seen a more empathetic, patient, in-depth and nuanced exploration of a fraught topic. It actually made me stop and think about how my own personal biases might affect how I see Chinese people and their culture, and how I might slip into prejudices and caricatures without even thinking about it. Honestly, this is one of the most valuable things I've ever watched. Thank you.
Great video. As a Hongkonger who had just left my home to live in the USA last month, this video explained a lot of confusing fonts and stereotypes restaurants here have
Hell yeah! I concur! Btw the stuff you make is amazing!
My family moved from Europe to Beijing when I was a kid, and I remember noticing fortune cookies, takeout boxes, and dishes that were depicted as distinctly Chinese in American culture, but were nowhere to be found in the country I lived in for four years. But I don't think the font had caught my eye like that in the past, despite falling in the same category. So thanks for this thoughtful and informative video.
Yet another thing about the world that I never thought to be curious about. This channel is wonderful for learning some things I never thought I would
I definitely agree that the chop sui font is disappearing, nowadays you see much more native lettering to distinguish what kind of food is there.
You don't see "Sushi Bar" in chop sui, you see "Sushi Bar" in a neutral font followed by お寿司", or "고기구이 Barbecue"
In the bigger, more diverse cities, the general american is generally aware of the difference between a Chinese letter and a Korean one nowdays
Edit: 15:51 Ah, that's exactly what I meant there. Chinese characters front and center, then BBQ in english for us.
2:28 I have to say, most of the faux ethnic fonts shown do a really good job of capturing the look of the writing they're trying to mimick while staying legible. The chop suey letters fall off in comparison.
I wonder if one couldn't do a better job, despite the problems with circles in the Latin alphabet.
That legibility applies in full only to readers who can't read the original script, in my experience. In some cases it's mostly fine (faux Greek is often Latinised enough that you don't really confuse the two), in others it makes reading quite a bit harder. Faux Cyrillic is particularly bad at this - it often uses actual Cyrillic characters (instead of "cyrillicised" Latin ones), like the Д in the video. And I always take a moment longer to parse the characters as Latin ones.
@@varana true, I was mainly thinking about the ones towards the right of the spectrum and the ones shown afterwards. I can see how using Σ as E, Д as A or א as X could be very confusing.
@@varana BTW, as a native German speaker, I sometimes see a related curiosity, when people not familiar with the German script use β or B instead of ß. Not as a font choice but as a character choice. Very confusing and hard to read.
It wouldn't be that hard. just replace all the circles with squares, and make it a smallcaps font, since Chinese doesn't have capital or lower case letters. For example, O can be played by 口, a Chinese character that means mouth. I study Japanese, not Chinese, so there's things I take for granted, like the character 〇 (circle, pronounced maru). 〇 is used to mean either blank space, or to write years, 二〇〇四 as 2004, for example. It'd be best to ask someone actually fluent in both languages.
imo the issue is, the designer didn't know how Chinese calligraphy work at all, there's no way to actually write the font with Chinese writing tools.
some modern designs like Harukaze and Ninja Strike seems good enough, they considered the direction of the strokes.
I used to do cleaning and typesetting for fan translations "scanlations" of Japanese manga. Within the community we passed around entire folders of faux foreign, vaguely "asian" fonts, depending on which group I typeset for each would have their preferred or standard set of fonts and as a fan I began associating specific fonts with specific groups. I just wanted to share this anecdote with you because this video reminded me of my overly large collection of fake-"asian" fonts.
thank u for ur service
Thanks for your service! I read these scans SO MUCH growing up.
🫡
I remember the days of having quick scanlations followed by cleaned-up ones ½~2 weeks later.
I really love how you framed the font not only in historical and societal context but also in post modernist usages. Plus you linked to many resources to learn more about specific trains of thought during the video. It kept the narrative focused but easily explorable
👑 Content creator king shit, my dude
What baffles me about that font is that the Chinese Hànzì actually contain rectangles if the characters have evolved from symbols that contain circles. Because the rectangle was the next best way to draw a circle when the writing evolved to separate, straight strokes. For example in the characters 口 (mouth; opening) or 日 (sun; day). So in a sense, rectangles are literally how circular shapes are formed in the Chinese writing system. Why not just use those rectangles instead of oddly rotated and bent strokes in letters like O or B? Maybe it didn't look very well or maybe it wasn't recognized is typically Chinese but I have a feeling that the creators of the font were simple not really familiar with the Chinese language.
Trivia: the Chinese character for 'old' (旧 Jiù) is formed by putting the number '1' in front of the character '日' ('day' in Chinese), to convey that the item you're referring to is already 1 day old
By contrast the video's creator thinks it's OK to disparage an aesthetic that has helped to build middle class Chinese families, to imply that they are wrong for finding a way to invoke their people's culture anywhere in the west to a western audience.
Repetition legitimizes
Repetition legitimizes
Repetition legitimizes
- Adam Neely
Seriously, this is *so* good, this could be a Netflix series. Learned so much in 20 minutes!
One of your best videos Linus. As you have shown, there are multiple examples of "etnic" or stereotyped fonts. One of them is faux hebrew which was used in antisemitic posters, as well as signage for jewish businesses in the first half of the 20th century. Btw, as a native hebrew reader, reading faux hebrew latin is really challenging, because my mind has trouble interpreting the letters. I think that as a designer i wouldn't use fonts that make people uneasy, bexause fonts contain memories of social context. (By the way, i dont feel uneasy with faux hebrew, it's just a far away thing that doesn't really relate to the day to day lives in israel).
However as an artist i wouldn't want something to be "off limits". Just like i can still enjoy the beauty of fonts created by german people from the nazi era. Its not off limit to me, even though it might have a bad historical context. I might even suggest that chop suey letters may be further developed in some way we cant forsee, maybe as a student project, because these letters still contain some form of quality or wisdom.
Interesting that you brought up the Nazi era, because around that era a fake blackletter font became popular (fraktur grotesk).
@@oO_ox_O can you give me some examples please?
Some of the Mecedes-Benz posters deserve careful study.
18:09 It’s so weird to say, but these are some sexy ass fonts!! Like, is that weird? TienMin Liao is so fucking talented, because I’ve literally just spent 10 minutes analyzing each of these fonts and their little unique curves and differences. They’re just so alluring, and they’re just fucking letters! The captivating power of good design is so insane!
I still haven’t fully grasped the fact that I “wasted” ten minutes of my life looking at letters, lol
Happy Lunar New Year! Having moved to the UK when I was 18 those stereotypes you mentioned were extremely jarring, and whenever I saw Hollywood movies depicting China with the takeaway boxes I was like... what on earth were they?!
PS TienMin Liao's fonts are GORGEOUS :O
I am HERE for content like this. Totally underrated channel.
I've actually always wondered what that font was called, being Chinese and having seen it used so ubiquitously in the US… imagine how far back my eyes rolled when I learnt it was called Chop Suey!! 😂😭😭😭
I literally facepalmed. While I'm not Chinese I've always known this font style wasn't developed by Chinese people. It's too different from Chinese writing plus I've known about the racism towards your culture for a while now. It just felt like white people coming up with white people things. Btw is that your art in your pfp? It's a really great style.
@@ZiddersRooFurry Uh totally not racist of you...
@@ZiddersRooFurry"...White people coming up with white people things."
You mean like video, the internet and RUclips?
I once tried to build my own chop suey font using caligraphy with actual chinese lettering principle. Always thought something missing when looking at them.
Until I know a design need nuance in order to solidify. A random write for fun does not compare with struggle of American Chinese looking for livelihood using that font.
I appreciate how sensitively you handled this! Quality video!
shoutout to this year-old video for single-handedly making me fall in love with graphic design all over again
Wow, 1883! I had no idea that it was so old! Super fascinating video, thanks
Digging your new style! This is a great topic and you cover every great little detail including things I would never have considered like architecture and brush strokes. I think you handled these topics exceptionally sensitively and educationally. Thanks for the great video!
I looked into it an there's a Chinese-based English font called 'Real Chinese' that is based on the strokes used in Chinese writing. It looks much more accurate to the language its imitating than the chop suey font, which just makes me think of food.
You right, I just googled it and I have definitely seen it being used at Chinese shops
What an incredibly insightful and interesting video; I can't believe I never thought to question these fonts!
I feel kind of bad that "Damn I want some Chinese food now" is as high as it is on my takeaways from this video (no pun intended).
this video is really interesting to me as a (northern) brit. ive never had chop suey because chinese restaurants here have never sold it. ive very rarely even seen this font either, only in movies and tv shows.
northern britain is arguably less diverse than the south which would make you think that chinese restaurants here would want to appeal more to the majority but its quite the opposite. usually people eating at chinese restaurants (not incl takeaways) are just chinese people because the community here is very close knit.
anyways, very interesting video!!
would love an episode more about fonts related to race and stereotypes, great vid!
Such a great blend of topics ❤️
I love your videos. This channel is the Miranda Priestly "Sweater Monlogue" of graphic design and typography. Whenever I try to explain to people why graphic design is important, I point them to your channel. Thank you for the great stuff!
linus!! thank you for hitting so many points in this video! really varied & educational. you gave me tons of complex thoughts to chew on. the latter half about Chinese-American culture's succession into modernity really tied the whole thing together for me. genuinely one of the best mini-docs ive seen on youtube.
Your transition slides and music choice are beautiful, and your script-reading feels really natural. I commend your research! Bringing in experts and admitting when you are unable to provide full context goes a long way for me. I highly enjoyed this video!!
Came for a lesson in bad type choices and left with a greater appreciation for cultures and history ❤️
I'm not going to tell you how to think... proceeds to tell you exactly how to think. Good job buddy. Nailed it.
Such a great video Linus - I love how very articulate you are while accompanying your explanations with such crisp imagery and design.
This video was incredible. Eloquent, thoughtful, well-researched, well-produced, and informative!
It's not for Chinese speakers, it's for English speakers. It gives off a Chinese calligraphy "feel" in easily recognizable (to English speakers) Roman letters. It does kinda make sense, at least from a design perspective
I remember when I first saw this font as an elementary schooler, as a kid who was born in the US but whose first language was Mandarin, this font looked so foreign to me. Calligraphy is elegant and beautiful, and often the idea is to convey an image in as few strokes as possible (at least in calligraphy drawing). In contrast, the chop suey font required far more strokes to say a single message, which is why it didn’t feel right
I’m so glad this popped up in my recommended, and even more that I decided to click on it. This was so thoughtfully researched and presented, and I learned more than I expected to. Thank you!
I know as an Irishman, I would love for their to be more authentic Chinese restaurants here, there popping up more and more, I've heard of secret authentic Chinese menus on these restaurants, I would love to try some food off of that menu, you know expand my palette, get a taste of a different culture
15:58 Din Tai Fung is a romanization, but not actually Pinyin. Pinyin is a specific "official" romanization of Mainland Mandarin, but most of the international Chinese diaspora does not use it.
In this case, not using Pinyin and using traditional characters goes to show that Din Tai Fung was either romanized a long time ago, or it was made by people not associated with the current Chinese regime. Just saying that in this case, more interesting nuance can be inferred just from the way the restaurant chose to write their name!
Or, hear me out, Din Tai Fung might be from another country that don't use Pinyin 🇹🇼
I like his point on “cancelling” too. All too often do we see people trying to “cancel” pointless things, which just makes people complain about people trying to cancel everything which is just not true. Or people reducing topics which are being brought up for awareness as cancelling to dismiss it. We can’t just erase everything that’s bad, we need to remember it to make sure not to do it again. Cancelling doesn’t have bad intentions and the things it’s used again should be brought to awareness, but the last thing we need is for it to be taken out of history
Coming from someone who never really had much interest in the subject matter your videos cover prior to finding your channel - you make the subject a really fascinating one and tell a great story. Love it.
another stellar video. fantastic research and poignant storytelling. thanks so much to you and your contributors for all your hard work on this!
Wow Linus, this was so good! Incredible work as always, keep it up! Me and all my designer friends love these videos lol
Amazing video. Loved the analysis, as well as Raven’s beautiful Chinese-compatible fonts
wow! Thank you so much for this video! I can tell it must have been a labour of lové. Much appreciated- I really enjoyed it 🤓
Would love to see more of this type of video - the marriage of cultural history, usage & design is so fascinating to me!
Such an awesome video! I love how empathetically you approached this topic. Also, those typefaces by TienMin Liao at 18:09 are so stunningly stylish.
Not going to lie, that explains why there’s no East Asiatic (too broad a term for Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.?) restaurant that would use Blackletter, even if it’s more visually appealing when paired with traditional calligraphy and gives off a more high-class image. Well done on explaining the visual history and evolution of how Chinese/East Asiatic restaurants are now developing, both in gourmet and simple takeout. Also loving the unique typographic scripts at the end to illustrate the paired outfit method of typography!
This showed up on my feed and I am very glad. This was very informative and well made. Also, you have a great voice for narration.
Fascinating! I stumbled across this video out of nowhere but I’m very glad I did. I love the historical perspective alongside your design expertise and the fact that you don’t shy away from the point you’re making about this font style’s use.
This video was lovely! I appreciated the amount of detail and care you clearly put into it, as can be seen from the clear and easy to understand editing, the occasions you admitted certain things were outside the scope of this video while still directing people to more resources in the description, and all the information that is already jam-packed inside here.
But what I really appreciated was the amount of respect you showed in discussing the font's history and Chinese culture-it actually brought a tear to my eye, as a Canadian-born-Chinese. It felt validating and exciting, to hear about the way young American-Chinese restaurant owners are now expressing themselves in a different way from the Chinese restaurants of the past, with a stronger focus on hybridity and authenticity. It was just really nice.
Great work on the video, and happy Lunar New Year! Wishing you luck in the year of the tiger~
Thanks for giving me a really good joke for graphic design geeks that are also metalheads (as small as that Venn diagram may be):
What do System Of A Down and Chinese restaurants in America have in common?
*They’re both mostly associated with Chop Suey.*
(Oh, and Happy Lunar New Year as well!)
Not as small of a diagram as you may think
System Of a Down's "Chop Suey" has nothing to do with Chinese food.
Absolutely Terrific video Linus, as per usual.
Loved every second of it, you touched on so many things i would have never thought about & known. Great points & explorations.
Really well done. Production quality was top notch and the sensitivity needed was there!
Cool video really like how you tie up the parts and a bit of history lesson as well!
The quality of these videos is through the roof. Thanks Linus!
I am so glad this came up in my recommendation!! the way you structured this video was engaging, informative, and covers each aspect in a really considered manner. Linus, you have yourself a new loyal subscriber.
How cool! I wish we had discussed any of this in my graphic design classes in the 90's! Subscribed now and looking forward to watching more of your work and learning more about this topic. I LOVE the visual = accent. Very helpful context for me. Thank you
This is a very insightful video, Linus. Thank you for educating me in a topic that I had never thought I'd be interested in. Happy Lunar New Year!
really enjoyed how deep the dive went & into contemporary font designers -- happy lunar new year!
This video is so nuanced and professionally made, it's easy to overlook the time it must have taken. Such great stuff!!!
I like to imagine in a parallel universe chinese people would associate a comic sans type font with americans.
Wow, just wow, what a well made video! I expected to learn about a font, but I ended up learning a whole lot about Chinese history and how racism and stereotypes shaped our idea of Chinese culture and all of the things we have now, as well as learning some incredibly interesting things about how visual patterns and human perception of fonts works. Its incredibly sad how racial stereotypes can influence how a society of people views literal shapes over time, however it is also incredibly interesting. This video is incredibly well researched (ironically more so than a lot of political videos), and treats the material it covers with a lot of respect!
Another masterpiece.
Thank you and everyone involved in making this video.
another absolute hit, linus! tysm for your work
Wow Linus, I have been enthusiastically watching all your content for a few months now but this is definitely my favourite video so far! I think it is very important that designers and audiences become aware of the complex and problematic workings behind some of the designs, tools or products considered 'normal' or accepted in society. I could get angry or frustrated about racist/sexist/queerphobic undertones in design and communication all day, but your well-researched and well presented videos just do a so much better job at educating. Your channel is an inspiration!
This is such a well-made video. Nearing the end, I started to wonder how we can convey Chinese cultural anesthetics through western-style fonts, and right on cue you brought up TienMin Liao's beautiful work. There really is unlimited potential in good design.
Super interesting video with bite-sized info on the topic!
Didn‘t expect to learn about the history of the chopsuey font today, but I sure am glad to have clicked on the video
What a phenomenal video 👏 this is a beautiful exploration of how subtle yet powerful design is in our lives. Please keep these sort of short documentaries coming! ❤️
Hi Linus, great video and very informative. I did notice one little mistake at @15.58 which is probably quite important considering the subject matter of type and how languages that don't use Roman characters are presented in English speaking contexts. The romanisation system used for the sign of 鼎泰豐, Din Tai Fung, is not Hanyu Pinyin but is in fact the Wade-Giles romanisation system. The latter system was widely phased out in China in 1958 but is still used in Taiwan today for place names and other proper nouns, such as the fab restaurant chain, Din Tai Fung. Great Xiao Long Bao there by the way. 祝大家新年快樂。
this was an EXTREMELY good video! thank you so much for doing justice to the history and careful script writing and objective opinion. one type of restaurant that was bypassed a bit in this video (understandably given the script arc) is the Peter/Cecelia Chang style restaurant that moved Chinese food away from fast food and more towards higher class. with the plush velvet seats around huge circle tables.
I would be very interested to hear about the fonts in the middle of that spectrum of Latin - Asian fonts! I have seen fonts imitating Arabic script in the past as well, but not sure if there's a deeper history behind it
Absolutely blown away by the amount of research gone into this and how well presented all the ideas were. I found this channel from Phil Edwards and this was one of the easiest subscribes I've ever had. Thank you for putting out such high quality content!
Thank You, great video. I'm definitely going to explore more of the other videos that you suggested.
This is a great video! I think you succeeded in conveying the subtlety of your point in a very non-judgemental tone
17:21 - suddenly a picture from Demerit - Chinese Punk legends - 2016 Europe tour.
If you see this Linus I would be very interested to know what you googled to get that up, or if you know the band? I have already sent screenshots to the singer Spike, we would be interested to know.
Great video 😊
Yo the painting at 9:04 is amazing!!! So cool.!
Also- great video my man. You’re making me a fan of typography or rather bringing out the designer I’ve always kind of felt I had in my mind. Thanks!
That was a remarkable and enlightening video of a side of typography that I hadn't had the heart to dive into myself. Thank you, Linus.
I love that you covered the potential racism associated with such a font, and you did it in a good way! Keep up the great work
i dont see this as racism, this is just for their business
@@lemonstrangler in its current form no its not racism but that could change very fast. Its just a stereotype right now but that can be weaponized
@@coby9179 I agree in general sense, but today when I see something like 'thank you for showing me potential racism in it' I only hope it's not for the use of another silly twitter drama...
@@blinski1 that is true if this came a cross a virtue signaling i did not mean it to do so. Im genuinely glad that his covered it and didnt just scoot around the topic. Ofc there could be said a lot more about racism and me saying: "yay you covered racism" isnt going to fix any problem about racism.
@@coby9179 Of course, and I want to point out it was not personal, and I hope you didn't take it as such;) Have a great day.