For a White Audience?

While walking along Stockton Street towards San Francisco Chinatown, Victor pointed to a store display at Macys which showed a Chinese woman dressed in the traditional Chinese Cheong Sum with a large rabbit resting on her lap. She looked much like the stereotypical demure Chinese lady that most people would portray, only, her legs were slanted to one side. An image which you wouldn't normally see in most of the old chinese photos depicting the traditional Chinese lady. Victor also pointed out to caption on the display which said ‘Lucky number 6 – 六’. 六 when pronounced in Cantonese ('lok'), sounds like ‘luck’ in the English language. But of course, in actual Chinese tradition, six is not the lucky number, but rather eight (八). Such is the cross cultural influence that one can find even outside the main Chinatown area.


The display at Macy's at the intersection of Stockton and Post.



Janice and I went into the store to try the fragrance and take a snapshot of the display.

More tongue-in-cheek billboards which showed the East-West cross culture was the TsingTao Beer Commercial Advertisement. The caption on the billboard chide at the inability of non-Chinese speakers and the difficulty they have in reading and pronouncing Chinese characters.