"Sauce Dog": The Situation of Overseas Chinese in Korea and the Politics of Jajangmyeon

I was really excited to see the news that the movie "Sauce Dog" was released.

The "Overseas Chinese" mentioned in this film is actually the motif of my master's thesis, and the geopolitical and epochal significance of "Korean Jajang Noodles" is also a topic that I have always been concerned about.

The so-called "sauce dog" (짱깨) refers to a derogatory name given by Koreans to overseas Chinese in South Korea in the early days. It has two etymologies.

First of all, under the restrictions of the Korean government, many Chinese do not have many job opportunities, so they can only make a living by opening restaurants, among which "jajang noodles" is the most representative dish. However, the smell of fried sauce is very strong, causing many Chinese people to have a "sauce" lingering on them. In addition, because many Chinese are also deeply rooted in the image of "restaurant owner", Koreans have changed the pronunciation of "shopkeeper" (장궤) to "짱깨", which implies "sauce dog".

However, many years ago, I once wrote an article about Korean jajang noodles in Corner International ; at that time, a Korean reader privately messaged me, thinking that the word "Janggou" is not necessarily in the Korean language used by modern Koreans. It really has the derogatory meaning of "sauce dog", and it is even a word that is no longer used.

But no matter what the facts are, the existence of the "sauce dog" theory does reflect the history of overseas Chinese in South Korea who were excluded from the mainstream society in South Korea during the Cold War and thus attached to the history of the "Republic of China".

The official synopsis for the film is this:

Before the issuance of Taiwan's new passport, the old passport took the lead in arriving in Japan with the national film "Sauce Dog" in October to speak for Taiwan. On September 29, the Tokyo International Film Festival announced the shortlist. The scenery of the national film "Sauce Dog" was shortlisted in Tokyo. The TOKYO PREMIERES film unit, despite the impact of the epidemic, will have its world premiere in Japan.

Mentoring Jin Guo's film "Sauce Dog" runs through the whole film with a "Republic of China passport without household registration" issued by Taiwan, telling the growing plight of Hanhua mixed-race children who are treated as outsiders wherever they go. "Jiangou" means "shopkeeper" in Korean, which is a term that discriminates against Chinese. Although the protagonist was born and raised in Seoul and speaks fluent Korean, he was still ridiculed as a "sauce dog". The "national curse" between Taiwan and South Korea communicated in the film, which was full of gunpowder. At the beginning, the crew searched almost all over Korea and even the United States in order to find actors who could speak Korean and have the nationality of the Republic of China. The director revealed: "We choose the actors to look at the passport first, and we must confirm that they have the nationality of the Republic of China, just to meet the guidelines for tutoring money!" And this passport is even more special, called "passport without household registration", also known as "empty shell" passport".

"Sauce Dog" won the TOKYO FILMeX Film Festival Planning and Development Subsidy Award, and the recognition of the National Film Guidance Fund, and won the shooting subsidy from the Seoul Film Commission. It is supported by Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. It is produced by Taiwan Xiangying Film Co., Ltd. The company "Taiwan and South Korea", assembled the potential new star He Yewen of "The Queen's Character", the Chinese actor Yu Zewei of "Is the Secret Service OK", the Korean actress Li Hengna of "Happy No. Taiwanese-Korean mixed-race director Zhang Zhiwei's first self-written and directed feature film is expected to meet Taiwanese audiences in early 2021.

I have always felt that the overseas Chinese in South Korea are very similar to the solitary Thai and Burmese soldiers in "Exotic". They were all once "remainders of the Republic of China" and also held a hidden version of the "Republic of China passport without household registration", but they received far less attention. than the latter.

I am really happy to see this film come out at a time when Taiwanese are redefining the "borders of the Republic of China" and viewing the collective memory of "The Republic of China in Taiwan"!

The following is what I wrote in "Corner International", "What to eat "Jiajiang noodles"? The full text of "Noodle Landscape and Politics in South Korea", and you are also welcome to pay attention to this movie about Hanhua's situation: "Sauce Dog".

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When I was working near Chang'an East Road in Taipei, there was a restaurant next to my office called "Master Xing Family". The owner of the Xing family is an overseas Chinese from South Korea , and his specialty is rolling noodles and pancakes; when he holds the steel bowl with both hands, he will shout angrily, "Jiajiang noodles are here!"

The signature dish of the Xing family is Jajangmyeon (짜장면, Jajangmyeon), just like you would see in an ordinary restaurant in Korea. The dark soy sauce is bright, sweet and fragrant, and the yellow noodles with a full-flavoured taste seem to be fresh from the pot. I don't know how to stay safe, and I will jump in my mouth in the bowl.

In South Korea, these jajang noodles can only be found in "Chinese restaurants" or cheap fast food restaurants; so the Xing family's owner in Taiwan is not selling any Korean symbols, nor does he intend to catch a Hallyu train. Selling jajang noodles is what many overseas Chinese in Korea do every day. Therefore, "Xing Family Dashao" never intended to advertise itself as a "Korean restaurant"; put Shandong roast chicken, leek box, and "Korean" fried noodles (짬뽕, Jjamppong) on the menu together with the fried sauce noodles Here, he sells righteously.

In Korea, jajang noodles, which used to be a "Chinese cuisine", are like Taiwan's "Sichuan beef noodles" and Germany's "Döner kebab". "Diaspora cuisine" brought by immigrants.

Looking back at the ethnic history of overseas Chinese in South Korea, the fried noodles from Shandong Lu cuisine have always been closely related to the living conditions of overseas Chinese in South Korea.

At the end of the 19th century, the Qing government obtained a concession and extraterritorial rights next to the Incheon Port. Most of the overseas Chinese who came to live here were from Shandong. In addition to traders, there were also many "coolies" who unloaded goods at the wharf; Noodles, in addition to feeding many coolies, are gradually accepted by Koreans and become one of the choices of Korean daily diet.

In 1948, Wang Songshan, an overseas Chinese from Shandong, established the "Yonghua Soy Sauce" food company. In order to cater to Koreans who like sweetness, he heated white sugar to make a sticky caramel, and added it to "chunjang" (jajang made from black beans), which has won many praises. After the emergence of standardized production of Chunjian, the formula and appearance of Jajangmyeon gradually took shape, and developed a different taste and appearance from the Jajangmyeon in Shandong's original hometown, becoming "Korean-style Jajangmyeon".

In addition to the origin of the origin of jajangmyeon, people always associate overseas Chinese with jajangmyeon, as well as the international balance of power during the Cold War and the policy trend of the Korean government towards overseas Chinese. After the Korean War, South Korea, as an outpost of the United States' containment of the communist policy, received a lot of economic aid from the United States; among them, flour was the bulk of the food aid program.

In order to cope with the huge population pressure brought to South Korea by the post-war baby boom and maintain the food supply, the South Korean government launched the "Rice Festival Movement" (절미운동, Jeolmi-undong) in the 1960s and 1970s, in an attempt to diversify the sources of Koreans' staple food. When the employees of some companies bring bento to work, there is even a rule that "the staple food in the bento must not only be white rice, but also bread or noodles."

This policy has also affected the restaurant business of overseas Chinese. After Bu Zhengxi, who was not friendly to overseas Chinese, came to power, in addition to restricting the rights of overseas Chinese to hold real estate and education, he also banned restaurants run by overseas Chinese from selling "meals made with rice", and at the same time controlled the price of fried noodles.

These policies, coupled with a large amount of imported US-aided flour, have gradually narrowed the items that overseas Chinese in South Korea can operate, and even the dishes sold in restaurants have been restricted, and the fried noodles sold in Chinese restaurants has become the cheapest option for take-out. In other words, discriminatory economic policies based on "ethnic differences" have created cheap jjajang noodles, which are like profits from the exploitation of overseas Chinese to subsidize the entire Korean society.

These discriminatory policies have caused a large number of overseas Chinese to leave South Korea, and gradually caused the hollowing out of Incheon 's Chinatown. Recently, some scholars even pointed out that South Korea may be "one of the few countries in the world that does not have a Chinatown." The Incheon Chinatown that today's tourists follow a guidebook to is actually the result of the South Korean government-led reconstruction in 2004.

At the end of the last century, South Korea was devastated by the Asian financial turmoil, and immediately underwent a restructuring with international aid, which kicked off a neoliberal economic policy and a more open trade environment. The unique historical space of Korea China Town and the restaurants selling Jajang noodles have become a powerful tool for attracting tourists and stimulating consumption in the context of globalization, connected with the cultural tourism boom.

In addition, under the background that multiculturalism is gradually being discussed by the academic circles and spread to the governance policy, globalization and openness have begun to be positively regarded in the national development strategy. "Negative image" of "high homogeneity", in order to achieve political correctness in the era of globalization, and then truly become a "progressive country".

Now, in addition to sporadic Chinese handicraft shops, eye-catching duty-free shops and museums, Incheon Chinatown is almost nothing but Chinese restaurants. These Chinese restaurants all use "jajangmyeon" as their signature meal; "jajangmian street" is almost synonymous with Incheon Chinatown.

Therefore, these restaurants opened by overseas Chinese, as well as the special "jajang noodles scene" in Incheon Chinatown, are the result of structural factors such as the international situation, global political and economic trends, the Korean government's policy toward overseas Chinese, and Korean society's attitude toward overseas Chinese. At the same time, it further strengthens the stereotype that Korean society treats overseas Chinese. The imagery of "jajang noodles", "restaurant" and overseas Chinese is highly overlapped, and even manifested in Koreans' contempt for overseas Chinese: "짱깨" (Jjang-ggae), which means "sauce dog", in addition to satirizing selling fried fried rice In addition to the smell of the overseas Chinese in the sauce noodles, it is also homophonic with the restaurant's "shopkeeper" (장궤, Jang-gwe).

However, it is precisely because of this stereotype that Jajang Noodle House has become the most shining sign in the rebuilt Incheon Chinatown today. As soon as you step out of Incheon Station, you can see a sightseeing map that guides travelers. In some versions of the map, even the image of the fried noodles is directly transferred to the Chinatown block on the map, which is clear at a glance. In order to attract tourists, the Korean government even set up a museum for Jajangmyeon, which is located on the old site of the old-fashioned Jajangmyeon "Gonghechun".

In fact, Jajangmyeon is more than just a graphic symbol on a map to guide tourists. There is a map in the Jajang Noodles Museum with the theme of "Overseas Chinese History and Jajang Noodles", which expresses the relationship between the Shandong Peninsula and the Korean Peninsula with concise images. The "practice from China", "the localization of taste", and the US-aided flour mentioned in the exhibition have also become the components of the fried sauce noodles.

In other words, as a symbol, Jajang Noodles itself is already a “representation” that is related to discrete geography and carries spatial meaning. In this "representation", Jajangmyeon has pieced together the geopolitics among China, South Korea, and the United States, as well as the identity relationship between different ethnic groups.

Following this, the reconstruction of China Town partially captures the location and image of the Zha Jiang Noodle restaurant: it was originally a cheap daily food, but today it has been given a positive connotation, and it has even been put into a museum as a kind of " Myth”, which actually involves the state’s appropriation and incorporation of the culture of the overseas Chinese. In this appropriation, we can see the country's imagination of the "development blueprint" and the Korean people's imagination of the overseas Chinese community.

However, the pre-reconstruction Incheon Chinatown originally carried many spatial meanings that Korean mainstream society could not (or were unwilling to) explore. It was a place where overseas Chinese residents lived down-to-earth in the fringes and crevices of mainstream society; their choice of nationality They move between them, maintaining their self-identity amid government discrimination and social exclusion.

However, we may be able to see from a small story how the overseas Chinese who are the "oppressed" respond to and even resist the logic of the dominant order, so that the space and memory of the overseas Chinese can avoid the fate of being continuously incorporated and misappropriated by the authorities.

When the Jajang Noodles Museum opened, a space was left in the museum to invite Gong Hechun to “return to the old site” to sell Jajang Noodles. In addition to responding to the historical significance of the space, it can also increase selling points and commercial income. However, the descendants of Gonghechun declined the invitation, and hoped that the commercial space originally reserved for Gonghechun could display the stories of the overseas Chinese families who founded Gonghechun; when interviewed by reporters, the descendants of Gonghechun said: "It's not a matter of doing so. Profit, but to remember our past and traditions.”

After all, these places are either everyday or magical, like fried noodles and other kinds of food, which have always been the lifeblood of human beings. While serving South Korea’s economic development strategies in different periods, Incheon Chinatown is still a space for people to interact, make a living, and live. Some of them meet here for a short time, and some stay here for a long time, whether they are overseas Chinese or Koreans.

Even if the Incheon Chinatown rebuilt by the government today looks a bit fake, and even more like an amusement park for tourists, it cannot stop residents and tourists from using the real life narrative of the face and the collective memory of the ethnic group to create , enriches the meaning of space, and is destined to continue.

This is also the revelation of Jade Sauce Noodles to me. These foods carry the migration history of discrete ethnic groups and record the story line and collective memory of how they integrated into the local community; in addition to being passive cultural retention, they also play an active role in the process of ethnic construction identity or integration into the mainstream community. The active role of the food is not just a simple "exotic cuisine".

The cultural symbols on the surface and the social meaning on the inside of food are fluid, organic, and sometimes appropriated by individuals at will. Therefore, the black bean paste of jajang noodles, which summoned the nostalgia of overseas Chinese, for me, it nourished my desire for eating out for lunch when I first entered the society.

Once I went to Xing's house for dinner at noon and ordered ten dumplings as usual. After ordering the dumplings, the daughter of the Xing family, who came back from the United States and helped her father make the dumplings in the store, looked at me and said, "Are you enough to eat ten? No more." She was slender, her tone unceremonious.

Occasionally, the small shop will be full of strong Shandong accents, some are familiar to the boss, and some are Korean overseas Chinese who come here to find the old taste after listening to friends. When meeting fellow villagers, the boss always sees off guests in Korean. Some of these overseas Chinese who grew up in South Korea have crossed the sea to the island of Taiwan, and some have traveled across the ocean to the new continent of the United States. Accent and appetite are perhaps their most obvious common marks.

Another time, an old woman walked into the store and stood in front of piles of leek boxes to order food in Taiwanese. The daughter of the Xing family slipped out of her mouth to respond in fluent Taiwanese, albeit with an accent.

Another day at noon, I was sitting in front of the glass window facing the street, and a Tamil-looking Indian girl passed by. She looked at the yellow noodles on my chopsticks, smiled at me, and walked into the store. After negotiating with the father and daughter of the Xing family in English, I only heard the daughter of the Xing family say in English with a strong local accent, "Sorry, no vegetarian!" ("Sorry, we don't sell vegetarian food!"). Taiwanese, as well as the English accents common in the North American Chinese community, are so sexy. It is a kind of sexy that the sea breeze and the mountains are intertwined and misty.

It's a pity that the young master of the Xing family closed the shop and moved back to Tianmu's hometown to continue the business. It is hard to find such cheap and authentic "Korean fried noodles" in downtown Taipei, and I have never gone back to work as an office worker. .