Tom Jenson, a columnist for The Chapel Hill Herald who labels himself “a local political activist,” has decided on his very own that people who start Chinese restaurants don’t know how to name them:
It started one day two falls ago when my best friend and I were driving down US-29 from Charlottesville to Danville on the way back to Chapel Hill from a brief vacation. As we drove through the rural Virginia countryside every 20 miles or so we would see a Chinese restaurant: Forbidden Garden, Red China, Shanghai Dragon, Peking Panda, and the list goes on and on.
He is advocating a boycott of any Chinese restaurant that carries the odious terms “panda, dragon, wall or garden” or that is named “Shanghai or Peking” or has “the color of gold or red in the title.” He says he’s doing this because he’s culturally sensitive. It’s the Chinese families running those restaurants who are culturally insensitive, presumably.
He goes on to fantasize about what ghastly names would be used for African, German or Saudi restaurants, but I notice that he never mentions the many existing Mexican restaurants. Why doesn’t he rant about El Rodeo, Torero’s, La Hacienda, Amigos, La Bamba or El Dorado? What makes the culturally insensitive Mexican restaurant owners exempt from Jensen’s wrath? Why pick on the Chinese?
