Jasmine Huaimin Yeh

Growing up as a Taiwanese immigrant in America, one of the most immediate conflicts between Eastern culture and the Western world was reconciling traditions dictated by the lunar calendar and their incompatibility with the Gregorian calendar. My people's moon-worship is a bald mark of Otherness. By attempting to participate in my family's traditions, I am involuntarily rendering myself unrelatable to my white peers.

The making of mooncakes, a Chinese pastry traditionally eaten to celebrate the mid-autumn harvest moon, is a nearly-forgotten art being lost to factory production due to its labor intensive process. Although I long to learn the recipes of my heritage, in the landscape of the assimilation and The American Dream, I am teacherless and equipped with the wrong ingredients. Even as I return to Taiwan, my home country, I am yet still haunted by McDonald's imperialism, their insidious cultural globalization, and the literal manifestation of the Big Mac Index.