Transforming SPAM
November 25, 2005
In South Korea last month, Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving, was celebrated with SPAM. Nope not the bane of e-mailers, but that tinned luncheon meat panned by culinary snobs in the United States. To Koreans, eight million cans of SPAM being exchanged were considered a luxury item.
SPAM –– worth only dollars here –– somehow was transformed into a gift of intangible value by the Korean holiday and giving spirit.
That same Thanksgiving spirit was present last week in three San Francisco neighborhoods for more than 3,500 mostly Chinese American senior, disabled and low-income families. They each received a grocery bag including a delicacy called Lop Cheung, or Chinese sausage, along with various donated foodstuffs like noodles and tea worth about $25.
However, the value of the bags was enriched by 100 volunteers pitching into the all-afternoon food drive. Among the volunteers were 30 recent immigrants attending Newcomer High School. Outside of their studies, they serve their community as “Leos,” or junior members of the Chinatown Lions Club who bagged the 3,500 food packages.
The “Leos” had the same spirit as Vietnamese American volunteers in Texas during Hurricane Katrina. They rallied and directed Gulf Coast refugees to places like Hong Kong City Mall in Houston, where a social net of Vietnamese American religious groups and volunteers waited to help them.
That same spirit was present last spring for last December’s victims of the Asian tsunami. Just in California alone, it was estimated that Asian Americans gave more than $250 million to relief.
They say that the original Thanksgiving was held between the first Europeans and Native Americans. Now adding the spirit of our Asian heritage to this celebration makes it an even more uniquely American creation.
Thanksgiving celebrates the bounty of the harvest at the end of the season. That bag of goods given in San Francisco means much more than what we will serve on Thanksgiving tables –– whether it be SPAM, Lop Cheung or turkey. We will be celebrating the bounty of an Asian Pacific American spirit inside all of us that binds families, friends and strangers together.
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