Far East: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Part of the reason for this may derive from the 19th-century history of East Asia, during which only Japan, China, and Siam (now Thailand) successfully resisted colonization by and loss of national identity to Western (or, in the case of the Koreans and Taiwanese, Japanese) cultural hegemony. For slightly more than two generations, then, most Westerners were familiar only with the Japanese, Chinese, and Siamese cultures.

== Tabletop Games ==

 

* The ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' supplement ''Oriental Adventures'' (first edition) portrayed a setting with Japanese [[Role Playing Game Terms|character classes]] and Chinese kung fu styles (along with some Indonesian weaponry). The more recent edition was a bit better and made it relatively clear what elements came from which culture (and tells the reader flat-out that samurai don't belong in China or India -- hah), but still threw an entire continent together into one big mish-mash.

** Interestingly when [[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and Dragons]] published a ''[[Forgotten Realms (Tabletop Game)|Forgotten Realms]]'' campaign setting for medieval Asian themed fantasy (Kara-Tur) some of the complaints where that it didn't follow this trope ''enough'', choosing dry historcal cultural accuracy at the expense of a less straight, but arguably [[Rule of Cool|more entertaining]] setting. It might not have helped that the states added in Kara-Tur were so [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] that in one case, the Tibet-analogue, ''they had forgotten to change the name of the country from Tibet in several parts of the description''. Also, several people complained that, while not making a Far Eastern mish-mash was refreshing, it might have worked better if there had been more Fantasy and less Counterpart in the cultures, and the history of the cultures. Clearly for some this trope [[Tropes Are Not Bad|works.]]

* Many Asian-Americans work in restaurants based on countries they have no relation to - e.g. sushi restaurants staffed entirely by Chinese - relying on the average customer's inability to notice the difference.

** Better yet, the practice of restaurants offering a random variety of foods with varying or dubious Asian origins, especially in smaller towns. It's not uncommon, though somewhat jarring, to visit a Chinese buffet with sushi on the menu. Some places have the good sense to identify themselves as "Asian/Pan-Asian restaurants," but most do not.

*** In Europe, that happened/happens mostly when the local people already thought a certain dish was Chinese (because it was Asian) and the Chinese/Taiwanese immigrants who set up restaurants basically went 'Sure, why not?'. In the Netherlands for instance, most of the dishes they consider Chinese are actually Indonesian.

* An odd expansion of this trope can be found in the term "Pacific Rim," used (mostly in the western United States) as a sort of code for generic Asian. Thus a "Pacific Rim Festival" will offer foods, crafts, entertainment and whatnot from a wide range of Asian (and, to be fair, Polynesian) cultures, many of them quite far from the Pacific Ocean (one may well find Indian dishes being offered), while utterly ignoring the fact that the actual region also encompasses such places as eastern Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Columbia, El Salvador, Mexico and the western parts of Canada and the US.

[[Category:Hollywood Atlas]]

[[Category:Far East]]