Huang He Quotes & Sayings

Good food makes me want to hit a punching bag like, Dat's right motherfucker. You done did it there. — Eddie Huang

Everything comes clear and you see exactly how you're goonna win the game: by doing you....I found my voice and no one was going to take it from me. (124) — Eddie Huang

I wanted to inspire people not to work under a bamboo ceiling. Whatever you are - yellow, black, white, brown - you don't have to allow your skin to define who you are or how you operate your business. There's not one face to anything. — Eddie Huang

I don't want to get burned when I'm cooking. To avoid getting hit when pan-frying, I stand far away and use chopsticks that are almost two feet long. I learned it from my mom, who does the same thing. — Eddie Huang

These same ABCs couldn't speak Chinese and didn't care---but you don't have shit without your native tongue. African slaves were forced by threat of physical punishment to abandon their native languages, but a lot of us just gave ours up with a shrug---these Uncle Chans convinced us to assimilate, shut the fuck up, and play the part. What they didn't understand is that after your have the money and degrees, you can't buy your identity back. I wasn't worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots. Even if I hated what it meant to be an Asian in t he American wilderness, i respected the Chinese home I was raised in. Usually I wasn't so vocal about Asian identity, but without my parents around, I felt a sudden duty to say something myself. It's funny how annoying I thought my mom was, but as soon as she wasn't around, i carried the torch for her. — Eddie Huang

I want to prove you don't need to have academic syntax to be intelligent. — Eddie Huang

I choose to be American, I choose to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I choose to have Puerto Rican/Jewish neighbors, and I choose to maintain my Chinese identity. — Eddie Huang

Money had them under a spell. Once they spent the money on a problem, they never thought about it again. — Eddie Huang

I don't think people in America understand race, and how deep the hooks of whiteness there are in our consciousness. — Eddie Huang

I have collected all the writings of the Empire and burnt those which were of no use. — Qin Shi Huang

BaoHaus is idiosyncratic, creative, and artistic. My restaurant doesn't look like a Taiwanese restaurant. — Eddie Huang

I like a walking culture; I need to be in a city where you can walk everywhere. — Eddie Huang

The best part about beef noodle soup is that there are no rules. It just has to have beef, noodle, and soup. There are people that do clear broth beef noodle soup. Beef noodle soup with dairy. Beef noodle soup with pig's blood. It would suck if you looked at my recipe and never made your own, 'cause everyone has a beef noodle soup in them. Show it to me. — Eddie Huang

Landlords in New York are generally the scum of the earth. They're beneficiaries of the worst kind of nepotism, eating off the good business decisions of their parents. They have no compassion because they've never had to work for shit to know how it feels to need a fucking break. (256-257) — Eddie Huang

Figure it out!" We always had to figure it out, so you can, too! We didn't have the luxury of people explaining why I couldn't use my left hand or why his family had no money. We just figured it out. But love is a funny thing. — Eddie Huang

I don't believe you need to shout out the farm, the name of the chicken, or all that other bullshit on the menu because it should simply be the standard that we serve all-natural meat. — Eddie Huang

Real success or victory is measured by the quality of that very process of attention and mindful involvement, practice, and commitment. — Chungliang Al Huang

Rice in Taiwan, unlike America, doesn't always come out soggy and limp. — Eddie Huang

A cook's job in my opinion is to be creative and push the boundaries of their cuisine and never stop experimenting. — Ching He Huang

I barely took a moment to appreciate nature. Come to think of it, the
only time I did it was when I was so upset I wanted to commit suicide in the
Huang Pu river. — Vann Chow

When you wake up in the morning, you must really wake up totally-physically and mentally. Otherwise, don't bother with the day. — Chungliang Al Huang

Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant. — Gene Luen Yang

Consider the sunlight. You may see it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away and, lo, you will see it just before your eyes. Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it. From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things and, henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things. — Huang Po

don't pick on people who were already being picked on. — Eddie Huang

We had to have white people front like the chef and owners. It was not OK for my dad to sell steak, but white people cooking Asian get more attention than the people in Chinatown who actually know what the fuck they're doing. — Eddie Huang

When we talked about "A Modest Proposal" I felt like I was running circles around everybody. I understood that shit better than the professor 'cause he was just a fan. I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at the Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity onto me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness. — Eddie Huang

No matter the border, the Mekong has been an indiscriminate giver and taker of life in Southeast Asia for thousands of years. It's a paradox like civilization's other great rivers - be it the Nile, Indus, Euphrates, Ganges or China's Sorrow the Huang He - for without its waters life is a daily struggle for survival; yet with its waters life is a daily bet that natural disasters and diseases will visit someone else's village, because it's not if, but when it's going to happen that's the relevant question. — Tucker Elliot

When words fail music speaks. — Irena Huang

Patience, attention, and restraint are the keys to good cooking. — Eddie Huang

Mr. Huang's nickname was Old Yellow, because that is what his name literally meant and he was the senior person in the office. — Theresa MacPhail

Quite amazing how determined kings and emperors have been to destroy books. But civilization is built on such desecrations, is it not? Justinian the Great burned all of the Greek scrolls in Constantinople after he codified the Roman law and drove the Ostrogoths from Italy. And Shih Huang Ti, the first Emperor of China, the man who unified the five kingdoms and built the Great Wall, decreed that every book written before he was born should be destroyed. — Ross King

work? Answer: Because he left it off the hook! What's — James Huang

Mon, they said they were going to 'fuck me up'!"
"No, we didn't, he fucked himself up."
"No one is fucking anyone! Who taught you to fuck people up? ... — Eddie Huang

Your father? What he do? He no plumber, is he? I no trust plumbers. Or Disney World. Working with mice, very shameful. — Ana Huang

I want everybody to run at the same speed as me. But some people are more conscientious, they think more and they plan more. And they're more careful. — Eddie Huang

Asians don't use the oven for anything but holding Jordans. — Eddie Huang

For years, I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me. All my life people would call me a chink or a chigger. I couldn't listen to hip-hop and be myself without people questioning my authenticity. Chinese people questioned my yellowness because I was born in America. The white people questioned my identity as an American because I was yellow.
No black or Spanish person ever called me chigger, but hustling all of a sudden got white people off my back. I was the same dude with a different job, but now I was finally "authentic" to white people, and it made me realized it's all a trap. We can't fucking win. If I follow the rules and play the model minority, I'm a lapdog under a bamboo ceiling. If I like hip-hop because I see solidarity, I'm aping. But, if I throw it all away, shit on my parents, sell weed, pills, and strike fear into unsuspecting white boys with stunt Glocks, now I's authentic? Fuck you, America. (171) — Eddie Huang

I saw an opportunity to use a restaurant to identify a lot of my issues and concerns with being an immigrant in America, and Asian in America, and a young person in America. — Eddie Huang

The show is easy when there aren't real feelings behind it. — Eddie Huang

My parents always insulted each other. Mom was a good student and thought school was important. Dad agreed even though he had a chip on his shoulder because he never got good grades. He learned most things from running around on the street, but in a funny way, my dad was smarter. My mom never remembered what she learned in school because she just memorized stuff for tests; it was my dad, who had bad grades, that actually remembered everything he learned. — Eddie Huang

The Sun Tzu School Ping-fa Directive.
Be strong and continually aware. Manage your strength and that of others. When essential, engage on your terms. Be observant, adaptive, and subtle. Do not lose control. Act decisively. Conclude quickly. Don't Fight! — David G. Jones

Suburban or not, something most definitely went wrong and we're still trying to figure it out. But if you ask me, Pac and that dickhead at Debate Club had a lot to do with it. We never tried to join a club, after-school activity, or anything productive, for that matter, ever again. The Honor Roll wasn't something we wanted to be part of. We gave up on doing it their way, we wanted to get free. — Eddie Huang

When I met white kids' parents, they always asked me bullshit questions about race, where our family was "from," and used words like Oriental. I was like a toy in their house, but Joey's parents were Asian so it felt like family. I never felt like I had to carry the burden of the whole Chinese diaspora, or that everything I did was a statement about my people and where we're from. (84) — Eddie Huang

Tai chi does not mean oriental wisdom or something exotic. It is the wisdom of your own senses, your own mind and body together as one process. — Chungliang Al Huang

What we did do was got to Chinese school. Whether you lived in D.C., Ann Arbor, New York, or Orlando, if there were Chinese people, there were Chinese schools where you went every Sunday to take Chinese Language and cultural classes. Chinese people would drive hours from every direction to take their kids to school. All teachers were volunteers and the parents chipped in to keep it going. While the rest of America went to church, we learned how to read right to left. — Eddie Huang

I will allow only my Lord to possess my sacred lotus pond, and every night you can make blossom in me flowers of fire. — Huang E

If my mom was made, you'd hear wild and crazy Chinese. If it was my dad, he got his white man voice on. — Eddie Huang

New York felt to me like what America should be - a representation of the world in this small pocket. — Eddie Huang

Revenge is always expensive, but you get what you pay for. — Eddie Huang

Why leave a country when you're on top? Whether it was another communist scare or the even greener pastures in America, no one ever gives me a straight answer. (The only thing anyone can agree on is that they still miss the island.) — Eddie Huang

The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena. — Huang Po

I get so disenfranchised reading the news, because global borders and lines we've created are completely unnecessary. That's just another person on the other side, and it's his bad luck that he was born there and it's my good fortune that I was born here. It's all kind of illogical. — Eddie Huang

Many people treat their bodies as if they were rented from Hertz - something they are using to get around in but nothing they genuinely care about understanding. — Chungliang Al Huang

For true peace of mind we must acknowledge whatever fault we live upon, whatever time bomb ticks in our closet, and enjoy our Shangri-la nonetheless. It isn't the absence of the problem; it is how one lives in its presence that matters. — Chungliang Al Huang

My slender waist and thighs are exhausted and weak from a night of cloud dancing ... — Huang E

You can't convince yourself! You either believe or you don't believe." (28)

"She say you ask weird questions, but I say you're student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you're lazy, if student ask, you answer!"
"Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adan and Eve!"
"Bullshit! But hey, Ciao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe."
"But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn't believe and told me to ask God into my heart!"
""Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something soo good to help you. Whatever. You know it's lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don't be stupid and fight them, you'll lose." (30) — Eddie Huang