Sometimes gender isn’t revealed at birth. Ryan was born intersex. Growing up, he was called by a name traditionally given to girls. But he adopted his name because he felt he possessed “a girl body and a boy brain.” He never performed activities expected of a girl, which made him an outcast in his social circles. Sports became an important outlet for self-expression, especially softball. In 2014, after decades of struggling with his gender identity, he legally changed his name to Ryan and transitioned to male. Ryan’s story shows how checking boxes as male or female is incredibly limited. Those boxes could never fully capture the complex realities of one’s gender and sexuality.
This umpire's mask is made of gray powder coated ferrous metal (probably steel), aluminum, chrome plated ferrous metal screws and brackets, chrome plated non ferrous metal springs, black cloth straps, black Velcro, a black, silver and red Logo patch, black vinyl covered face pads and small plastic logo parts.
This is a roll of first generation AFC stickers. It has the first generation AFC logo, which is a red outlined oval with the letters “AFC” and an image of two pieces of sushi inside. Underneath the logo reads “AFC Corp. 19205 S. Laurel Park Rd. Rancho Dominiguez, CA 90220” and “For most enjoyment eat on day of purchase” written in both English and French.
These stickers are used to seal the prepackaged sushi and mark them as AFC products. The suggestive phrase, “for most enjoyment eat on day of purchase” reminds the customer to consume the product on the day of purchase to ensure freshness, and avoid cases of food poisoning that develop from eating old raw products.
Original cup from The Mandarin, in San Francisco, California, a restaurant owned by Cecilia Chiang. The cup is white with a handle and features the restaurant’s original logo of a Chinese woman in Qing dynasty regalia framed within a circular design. The logo is blue in color.
Cups can tell you a lot about the Chinese restaurant. In our collection for Cecilia Chiang’s The Mandarin Restaurant, we have two kinds: one white teacup and one green tiki cup. The white teacup suggests that Mrs. Chiang served tea, a typical Chinese hot beverage, at her original restaurant on Polk Street, San Francisco. Although a Drinks section did not appear on her original menu in her Polk Street restaurant, tea is a traditional beverage that comes alongside any Chinese meal. A drinks section of coffee and tea did appear later in the Beverly Hills location.
A gold first generation AFC badge that belonged to Saori Minota, a member of the Special Projects Department at the AFC Corp. headquarters. On the left side of her name is the first generation AFC logo, which is an oval that contains the letters “AFC” and an image of two pieces of nigiri sushi. Below her name reads “Special project department”, indicating the department to which she belonged, and underneath, “The Premier Sushi Company” is printed in reference to the quality of AFC’s products.
AFC employees were required to wear name tags while on duty. The first generation AFC logo reveals that this badge was used sometime before 2003, which was when the “Southern Tsunami” trademark replaced the original AFC logo. The badge was a means to identify the employee and the department they worked under, as well as a means to advertise their business.
Established in 1984, the Chaya Brasserie has been critically acclaimed as a premium Euro-Asian fusion upscale restaurant. Initially opening in Beverley Hills, Chaya restaurants have followed in Venice (1990), San Francisco (2000), and downtown L.A. (2009). (http://spoonwest.com/shigefumi-tachibe-2/)
Chaya’s logo and its characteristic typography is stamped diagonally across the napkin. The napkin itself is folded two times into a square.
The I Made My Own Fortune Cookies: Fortune Factory is a stove top fortune cookie specialized pan with four circled grooves. The “Fortune Factory” letters are printed with the stereotypical “chop suey” font. Embossed on top of the pan are the letters “Fortune Factory” with an Asian styled palace. A figure in a conical hat and a shirt with oversized sleeves and a mandarin collar stands off to the side smiling, his eyes and eyebrows expressed with lines. To the right are these Chinese characters: 祝你幸運, meaning “good luck to you.”
The dorsal side of the box features a photograph of an East Asian man giving the universal OK sign in tacit approval of a smiling Caucasian woman holding the pan in one hand and a fortune cookie in the other.
Included with the pan is a sheet of paper detailing the recipe, warranty, and fortune writing advice. A panel features the same Asian man on the box in midst of fortune cookie creation, while the opposite panel features a cartoon of two presumably Caucasian male and female in formalwear delighting in reading fortunes.
Although fortune cookies are an American phenomenon, there is nonetheless a disparity between how both ethnicities are presented in the illustrated form. The biggest telltale is the expression of the embossed Asian man on the pan. Although the Asian man’s facial features are devoid of geometry and are absent of a nose, the illustrations of the Caucasian countenance (to whom this product would have been marketed to) are presented with clarity. The eyes are either circles or lines overlapped instead of a single linear line; the nose is expressed in a protruding manner from the bridge to the snout. The Asian man’s clothing consists of an exotic conical hat and an oriental shirt with ostentatious buttons. The Caucasians’ clothing is composed of Western formal wear: earrings and a black dress for the lady, and a turtleneck and a blazer for the gentleman. It is clear that fortune cookies were thought of as being extensively foreign and exotic, often attributed to characteristics that are representative of non-American origins.
Known as “sembei kata” in Japanese, this baking mold is used to bake the cookie wafer to be folded into the fortune cookie shape that we know today. Engraved on the object is an illustration of Mount Fuji and the Japanese letters for “Japan tea.” It was donated to the Smithsonian by Gary T. Ono in honor of the Suyeichi and Owai Okamura Family and the Benkyodo Company.
Commissioned by Makoto Hagiwara of Golden Gate Park’s Japanese Tea Garden, the Benkyodo Company produced the first modern fortune cookie in the early 1900s.