You’ve probably seen this style of font before but didn't know what it was called.
Probably at a restaurant that sells food like this, in containers like these, with cookies
like this.
But if you grew up in China, these would be completely foreign.
After all, everything I just listed was invented in the USA.
To help me explore this topic I spoke with Raven Mo, a talented graphic and type designer
from China, now based in Chicago.
Raven: I remember my reaction when I first saw this font in Chinatown and
I was really shocked!
So there I was looking for a connection to home, and these letters were just so alien
to me.
But as I looked further into the history, I found a fascinating story behind it.
Our stereotypes often reveal a lot about our own culture and history.
So in this video, I’ll be analysing the chop suey font – an iconic design cliché
that’s a unique product America's relationship with China, its people and its cuisine.
Let's unpack that history, deconstruct the design, and talk about the impact of this
lettering style.
♪♪
Also known as wonton or chopstick lettering,
chop suey fonts are a subgenre of so-called "exotic" or "ethnic" display fonts.
Display meaning for visual flair for applications such as signage, advertising, or headlines,
rather than typesetting an article or book.
They're certainly not the only type design based on national or ethnic stereotypes.
Excluding fonts that have become associated by historical use by that group.
These stereotypes can be broken down into two categories.
First we have fonts that were designed without any explicit cultural association, but became
linked over time due to complex cultural factors, including race and class.
So-called “African” fonts like Neuland and Lithos are a clear example, but this also
applies to some type clichés of Mexico as well as native and indigenous people.
It’s a huge topic unto itself, which is outside the focus of this video, but check the description
for links on the subject.
On the other hand, we have fonts specifically designed with the goal of evoking a cultural
or national association.
You can think of these as sitting on a spectrum, based on how similar our Latin alphabet is
to the writing system in question.
On one end we have faux Greek and Cyrillic, which are like cousins to our own alphabet.
These fonts will substitute visually similar letterforms from the other alphabet, and the
styling is based on real type or lettering from that culture.
On the other hand we have the languages that are furthest from our own, both typographically
and geographically.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean use writing systems that function completely differently from
our 26 letter alphabet.
And so these pseudo-ethnic fonts are the most divorced from the actual writing they’re
trying to invoke.
While all these Asian languages have been visually stereotyped, the chop suey font is
where the cliché began.
You can tell a chop suey font by the distinctive style of wedge-like shapes, supposed to invoke
Chinese calligraphy.
But I wanted to understand how it looks to someone who knows the nuances of real Chinese.
Raven: Our writing system is called Hanzi.
For each character, there's a very specific order in which it should be written.
If a character is made up of five strokes, you must write them.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, usually left to right top to bottom.
There are no such rules within the Latin alphabet.
Take a capital E. You can draw the stem first, followed by the three bars, or the bars first,
followed by the stem.
It makes no difference.
In Chinese the order determines the style to be used.
There are eight strokes in Chinese calligraphy.
The character 永 (yǒng) is often used for learning calligraphy because it contains all
eight:
Diǎn.
Héng.
Shù.
Gōu.
Tí.
Wān.
Piě.
And Nà.
With chop suey, you only get the impression of two strokes: Nà, (捺, a forceful stroke)
and Tí, (提, a raised stroke).
The designer has arranged these shapes in a way that makes no sense to a Chinese reader.
TienMin Liao, a designer who specialises in multi-script typography, points out that the
Latin alphabet has many letters that are built from circular shapes - O, B, D, etcetera.
Whereas we don't draw circles in Hanzi at all.
The most curved stroke is the Gōu, (鉤) "Hook" stroke, and it's only very slightly
bent, so there's a fundamental difference in structure that doesn't naturally translate.
As a result, the round letters in chop suey look almost shattered somehow.
The first known example, eventually titled Mandarin, was patented in 1883 by the Cleveland
Type Foundry.
This became the model for all subsequent chop suey fonts, all variations on the same formula.
The Beggarstaffs, pioneering poster designers, used Mandarin in 1899 for a poster titled
"A Trip to Chinatown."
This poster was published alongside other now-iconic Belle Epoque works in the influential
Parisian art publication "The Masters of the Poster," which helped spread its visual cachet.
However, it wasn’t the Art world that popularised the lettering style.
It was the unlikely rise of Chinese restaurants in America.
♪♪
Chinese migrants first arrived in the United
States in the mid-1800s – I can't hope to be comprehensive here, so I'll leave more
resources linked below, and we'll just take a quick tour of the context needed to understand
the design.
Anti-Chinese sentiment and violence escalated in the 1870s after the completion of the transcontinental
railroad and people began to see cheap immigrant labour as a threat during an economic downturn.
This led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which effectively prohibited all Chinese immigration
to the United States and prevented Chinese migrants from becoming citizens - the only
major law in US history to target migrants exclusively from one country.
The act was repealed 60 years later, when China allied with the US against Japan in
World War Two.
Of course, Japanese-Americans were subjected to similar xenophobic discrimination also.
During the Exclusion years, Chinatown played an important role as a community sanctuary,
becoming more concentrated as many Chinese businesses and smaller settlements were targeted,
burned down, or forced to relocate.
At the turn of the twentieth century Chinatown reinvented itself to attract more
outside business.
After the 1906 earthquake destroyed San Francisco's Chinatown, it had to be rebuilt from the ground
up.
For the redesign, an architect and an engineer were hired who had never visited China.
They built exaggerated Chinese architecture that referenced temples from the Song Dynasty,
a period in Chinese history that occurred during the middle ages.
The result?
Chinatown became an architectural theme park, like an Asian Mediaeval Times.
Commercially it was a huge success, attracting middle-class American visitors to Chinatown,
and the look spread to Chinatowns across the country and around the world.
Where the dragon gates and pagoda roofs went, the chop suey font was sure to follow.
In an ironic twist, the Chinese Exclusion Act ended up propelling the spread of Chinese
restaurants across the US.
In 1915, a loophole opened that allowed some business owners, including restaurateurs,
to travel and bring foreign employees back to the States.
This resulted in an explosion of new Chinese restaurants across the country.
Within a decade, the number in some cities increased four fold.
By 1929, almost all of the fifty most populous cities in the US had Chinese restaurants.
Spreading chop suey - a dish created to appeal to the American diner - and its typographic
counterpart far and wide.
By the end of World War Two, chop suey had become both a fast food staple and a recognisable
visual trope not only in America, but throughout the Western world.
In the documentary "The Search for General Tso" they explain how traditional networks,
like district associations, helped new migrants establish their own restaurants.
They were like franchise models, assisting new arrivals in finding a location where they
wouldn't compete with another Chinese restaurant, and helping them to develop a menu by teaching
them how to cook the most popular dishes.
A de facto standard Chinese-American takeout menu developed as a result.
After years of exclusion, the community was keen to share knowledge internally and boost
everyone’s chances of success.
These networks likely also spread the standard menu and signage design of these restaurants
too, including the typography.
Raven: As I learned the history behind chop suey fonts, I also learned how these fonts
helped Chinese immigrants and their businesses thrive.
It's a part of the turbulent, but triumphant history of Chinese immigrants in the United
States.
While the lettering will never appeal to me personally, I can appreciate chop suey fonts
as a product of their unique environment.
Design history is not just about aesthetics, but also the issues and stories behind them.
And I think that's worth exploring.
♪♪
In 2018, Irmi Wachendorff, a design researcher,
conducted a study using the "Stroop-test" method.
She had the participants sort cards with meals and restaurant names written on them into
groups based on their national cuisines.
Using stereotypical fonts (like chop suey for Chinese) resulted in roughly the same
reaction time as using Helvetica, a more readable, neutral font.
However, changing the fonts on the labels, so that Cairo Lounge was set in chop suey
and Shanghai Bar was set in Fraktur, slowed reactions by nearly 30%.
This is representative of how visual tropes work in design.
At a certain point, the more frequently a cliché is used, the faster the public recognises
the meaning.
Making it more effective and thus more popular.
It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Those of us who grew up with this stereotype are practically hardwired to recognize this
lettering as "Chinese" or "Asian."
It's a trope that can be found not only on restaurant signs and menus, but also in cookbooks
and on supermarket shelves.
Sadly, it also has an equally long history of being used to mock and otherize people
of Asian descent.
While Chinese migrants spread the use of Chop suey fonts, this font was never created by
them.
It was part of an outsider-created makeover that helped their economic survival during
a time when they were the targets of suspicion and discrimination.
Typographic caricature was one minor insult among many for first-wave migrants.
When fighting for basic human rights, authentic cultural expression is a luxury.
More important was success in business, even if it meant changing the way your food and
culture were marketed.
♪♪
I’ve been very deliberate, to avoid using the word "racist".
Because whether a font can be racist is not a black and white issue - there must be room
for nuance.
My goal isn't to tell you what to believe.
But I want to share some ways of framing the question.
It’s been said that typography is the visual equivalent of an audible voice.
Just as it would be jarring to use the same voice for an action movie trailer and a children's
cartoon, you wouldn't use the same font on the cover of a crime novel and a book on scrapbooking.
Unless you’re targeting a *very* niche readership.
If typography is a voice, what is this type but a fake foreign accent?
Any fake accent is by definition, not nuanced, it’s reductive.
Identifying and cartoonishly overdoing a certain idiosyncrasy that stands out to your untrained
ear. For example, difficulty with ls and rs.
Which, by the way, I strongly recommend Joss Fong's video on Asian accents here.
Putting on that accent, that voice is, at best disrespectful and obnoxious.
In the worst-case scenario, it's Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
"In thiry seconds I going to call the porice!"
A second, more forgiving approach is to look at it through the lens of comedy.
In comedy, there is also debate about what distinguishes jokes about race from racist jokes.
However, almost all comedians agree that being a hack is a bad thing.
Stealing someone else's jokes.
Repeating tired, worn out premises with predictable, cliched punchlines.
Being unoriginal and boring.
My intention with this video is not to get chop suey fonts "cancelled".
Because of the drive and resilience of Chinese migrants, they have become a part not only
of American, but global visual history - and we should not erase history, but neither should
we repeat it.
I'd like to make a request of my fellow designers.
Don't be a hack.
We don't need a fresh retelling of a tired cliché.
There are far better ways to invoke Chinese food and culture, and this lettering has no
place being weaponized against an entire race of people.
♪♪
So we’ve looked at the past, to finish, let’s see what trends are emerging.
The Chinese restaurant has definitely evolved visually, and may surprise you with how much
has changed.
When it comes to newer established Chinese restaurants in major US cities like New York,
Los Angeles, and San Francisco, almost none use chop suey lettering.
Whereas previously it was visual shorthand that helped draw in new customers, it now
seems to evoke a rigid idea of what Chinese food meant - frozen in time decades ago.
The Chinese-American takeout restaurant is not going anywhere, but its golden age has passed.
Consumer habits, generational shifts and demographic shifts all play a role.
Millennial and Gen-Z diners are generally more adventurous eaters than prior generations.
We grew up in a post-Anthony Bourdain food culture.
Where we're more likely to seek out authentic, regional cuisine as opposed to "Americanized"
dishes.
Second and third generation Chinese-Americans want to create food that expresses their unique
cultural identity.
This means new ideas and perspectives about what Chinese food is, and what it means to
be part of the Chinese diaspora.
Finally, many of these restaurants' primary diners are no longer Americans.
Especially prior to the pandemic, international students from China and across Asia want an
authentic taste of home and have the financial means to support businesses that only cater
to them.
This has allowed a number of Chinese franchises to open multiple locations in the US.
That is the story in the States, but it’s similar in cities like Toronto, London, and
Sydney.
The Chinese diaspora today looks very different than it did in the heyday of chop suey joints
in the 20th century.
There’s a new school of restaurateurs who are ready to cater to these new kinds of diners.
They can be split into three camps, each with different visual markers...
First, corporate high-end. As the profile of Chinese cuisine has grown, it has expanded to cover
the full spectrum of dining price points.
Restaurant groups have been quick to pick up the opportunity, and have launched a range
of upscale “restaurant concepts” fit for a corporate power lunch or an expensive dinner.
Visually and graphically however, these are only Chinese in the subtlest of ways and they
speak more to the trends of the restaurant industry and retail design, with very little
to say about any Chinese visual identity.
Second, embassy restaurants. A piece of home airlifted and dropped into another country.
There exists a whole class of restaurants that have no desire to adapt to the American
market.
Din Tai Fung is an excellent example; the name is not even translated; it is simply
the pin-yin romanisation of the Chinese name.
These restaurants are more influenced by Asian design trends than by Western ones.
Finally, there are the new-wave Chinese-American restaurants.
Second and third generation kids who grew up in the United States but also have strong
ties to their culture and community.
They want to express their own distinct identity through their restaurants, not just by diverging
from the dishes served by their parents or grandparents, but also charting a new path
visually.
You can usually tell them apart by the names and colour schemes that don't fit traditional expectations.
Usually these designs are playful, even witty.
Perhaps a little nostalgic, maybe a little ironic, maybe a nod to traditional motifs
while following a current trend - but what distinguishes these aesthetically from old-school
Chinese takeout joints is that they are an expression of identity from the inside out.
They don’t reflect an outsider's idea of what Chineseness should be.
They draw from a wide range of aesthetics, but they are all genuine expressions of Chinese
identities.
Will they settle on a shared set of visual signifiers that replace the old clichés?
Probably not.
The Chinese diaspora is not a monolith.
These individual takes on these cultural themes reflect the multiplicity of hybrid identities
and experiences within the Chinese diaspora.
And that variety is evoked through a vibrant and diverse visual expression.
Like an overused punchline, we've reached the point of diminishing returns with the fake accent
of chop suey.
Personally I’d love to see that reflected in font-selling websites!
Right now, if you search for Chinese or Asian, you'll see a mix of fonts for the Chinese
writing system alongside chop suey.
We’re overdue to at least make the distinction, separating "ethnic stereotypes" from "non-latin
scripts."
I believe TienMin Liao's work in multi-script design points the way forward.
Chop suey is the Latin alphabet dressed in a cheap Halloween costume.
By contrast, her work is the Latin alphabet and Hanzi arriving at the party in perfectly
tailored, matching outfits.
TienMin sets a high standard.
Stereotypes are lazy.
Elegant and clever design is hard work.
But as more enterprises, not just restaurants, spread across both East and West, maintaining
a cohesive identity across scripts is quickly becoming a necessity.
And work like TienMin's demonstrates that, even if languages are worlds apart, it is
feasible to speak them both with the same voice.
I hope this video has given you a better understanding of the chop suey font and its
tangled history in America and China.
Raven Mo deserves a special thanks for contributing her research and viewpoint to the creation
of this video.
You can find her at ravenmo.info, or ravenmodesign on socials, which I've linked to below, as
well as all the sources and related material for those who are interested in diving deeper.
If you wish to support the amazing work they're doing, I've also included links to the non-profit
"Welcome to Chinatown," which is helping sustain small businesses in Manhattan Chinatown affected
by the pandemic.
Check out their Instagram for both excellent community stories and a wonderfully designed
visual celebration of all things Chinatown, without a chop suey font in sight.
This video has been a larger project than most on my channel, but if you’d like to
hear more design tales, please leave a like, check out some other videos - like the one
in the card - and consider subscribing.
Thank you so much to all of my patrons for making this all possible, and finally
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone celebrating, especially those of you who were unable to travel to
see your family this year - you are not alone.
I hope this year brings you some unexpected joy.
My name is Linus. Thank you for watching,
and I'll see you next time.