Karate, Wonton, Chow Fun: The end of 'chop suey' fonts

There's a good chance you pictured letters made from the swingy, wedge-shaped strokes you've seen on restaurant signs, menus, take-away boxes and kung-fu movie posters. These "chop suey fonts," as American historian Paul Shaw calls them, have been a typographical shortcut for "Asianness" for decades.

Shaw traces the fonts' origins to the Cleveland Type Foundry which obtained a patent for a calligraphy-style printing type, later named Mandarin, in 1883. It is perhaps no surprise that this Eastern-inspired lettering emerged in the late 19th century, an era when Orientalism coursed feverishly through the West.

"Mandarin, originally known as Chinese, is the granddaddy of 'chop suey' types," Shaw wrote in the design magazine, Print. "Neither the food nor the fonts bear any real relation to true Chinese cuisine or calligraphy. But this has not prevented the proliferation of chop suey lettering and its close identification with Chinese culture outside of China."

Type designers in the West have since cooked up many of their own versions of chop suey. Variations on the font are commercially distributed as Wonton, Peking, Buddha, Ginko, Jing Jing, Kanban, Shanghai, China Doll, Fantan, Martial Arts, Rice Bowl, Sunamy, Karate, Chow Fun, Chu Ching San JNL, Ching Chang and Chang Chang.

It's hard not to cringe at the Chinese stereotypes bundled up with each font package -- especially when seen through the lens of today's heightened vigilance toward discrimination and systemic racism. Critics believe that using chop suey typefaces is downright racist, particularly when deployed by non-Asian creators.

White politicians, meanwhile, have been using chop suey fonts to stoke xenophobia for over a century. In her book, "This is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot," Cooper Union professor Alicia Cheng draws attention to the "chopsticks font," as she calls it, used by San Francisco politician Dr. C. C. O'Donnell on a 1876 ballot, as he vowed to deport all Chinese immigrants if he was elected into office.

More contemporary examples include Pete Hoekstra, the former US ambassador to the Netherlands, who -- during his run for Senate in 2012 -- was criticized for campaigning with an ad featuring a caricature of a Chinese woman and a website with chop suey lettering. And in 2018, The New Jersey Republican State Committee used a version of the all-too-familiar font in a mailer attacking Korean American Democrat Andy Kim. The incendiary headline read, "There's something REAL FISHY about Andy Kim."

Hoekstra's press team and the New Jersey Republican State Committee did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

Companies and advertisers have also looked to exploit stereotypes associated with the typefaces. During World War II, oil giant Texaco produced a series of posters featuring chop suey fonts next to a buck-toothed caricature in order to vilify the "Yellow Peril."

When asked to comment on the historical posters, a spokesperson for Chevron Corporation, now Texaco's parent company, told CNN: "Texaco's World War II posters are regrettable and inconsistent with Chevron's values."

Similarly, online grocer Fresh Direct, clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch and the game developers behind "Cyberpunk 2077," CD Projekt, are among the many companies criticized for using culturally appropriative fonts in the last two decades.

A spokesperson for FreshDirect told CNN that the company "unequivocally" denounces racism and discrimination and regrets using a controversial typeface on advertising and packaging for its "stir fry kits," adding that no-one involved in the 2012 decision is still at the organization. A spokesperson for Abercrombie & Fitch, meanwhile, said in an email that T-shirts featuring caricatures and stereotypical fonts from 2002 "were inexcusable 19 years ago when they were released, and they do not reflect A&F Co.'s values today." The spokesperson added that the company encourages a "culture of belonging" and is "committed to doing better in the future."

CD Projekt, which used stereotypical Asian fonts in game graphics last year, did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

In 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic ushering a new tide of Sinophobia, Canadian apparel brand Lululemon fired its art director after he seemingly endorsed a "Bat Fried Rice" T-shirt design bearing the words "No Thank You," by posting it to his Instagram. The design featured a chop suey font on a take-out box with bat wings, alluding to the purported origins of the coronavirus. While the shirt wasn't his creation, the art director told various media outlets, "It is something I deeply regret, and my eyes have been opened to the profound ripple effect that this mistake has had." Lululemon quickly distanced itself from its art director emphasizing that the brand had not produced the "inappropriate and inexcusable" shirt.

Racist undertones

For an older generation of Asian Americans, spotting the faux brushstroke lettering can trigger past traumas.

"I think of words in anti-Asian or anti-Japanese signs," wrote Japanese American journalist Gil Asakawa, who began his career during a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment or "Nipponophobia" in the 1980s. "I see (the font) Wonton and I see the words 'Jap,' 'nip,' 'chink,' 'gook,' 'slope.' I can't help it. In my experience, the font has been associated too often with racism aimed at me."

But can a font, in itself, truly be racist?

In 19th-century Germany, using a calligraphic blackletter typeface called Fraktur was considered as an expression of nationalism. German books were printed in this gothic-style font, despite being hard to read. The Nazi party then embraced Fraktur -- it was even used on the cover of Adolf Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf" -- before suddenly banning the font in 1941 and categorizing it as Judenlettern ("Jewish letters").

Yet, there are also examples of fonts harmlessly evoking national or regional pride. Take the distinctive Euskara lettering, used throughout the seven provinces of the Basque County, and deployed on everything from monuments to restaurant menus. The "large-footed, big-eyed, Roman-styled characters," as a 19th-century chronicler of the region's monuments once described them, emerged during the pinnacle of Basque nationalism in the late 1800s.

It's worth noting that, in 1930s America, some Chinese immigrants themselves used chop suey fonts on their restaurant signs, menus, and advertisements, as a way to heighten the exotic appeal of their establishments.

And "Oriental simulation fonts" (or letterforms designed with aesthetic markers of a particular culture) didn't just approximate Chinese calligraphy. Decorative fonts like El Dorado or Taco Salad were designed to represent Mexico. The same goes for the Pad Thai font, which borrows strokes from the Thai script. Similarly, there are a host of crude, hand-drawn fonts purporting to capture the aesthetic of the entire African continent.

Shaw said that the persistence of ethnic types, as offensive as they appear to some, lies in their graphic efficiency. They survive "for the simple reason that stereotypes, though crude, serve a commercial purpose," he wrote. "They are shortcuts, visual mnemonic devices. There is no room for cultural nuance or academic accuracy in a shop's fascia."

For Yong Chen, a historian at the University of California, Irvine, it is not the font, per se, that's the issue -- but how it's used. His 2014 book "Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America," even features the typeface on its cover. "The font issue never came up during discussions of the cover design," Yong said in an email. Problems only arise, he said, when the font is deliberately used to "depict Chinese Americans and Chinese food as the Oriental other."

Chris Wu, a scholar of Chinese typography and co-founder of the New York-based design studio Wkshps, echoed Young's tempered view. "I am not offended by those typefaces, rather intrigued by them," he explained in an email. "I am glad to see the discussions and criticism about the ethnic fonts today -- it reflects a much well-informed visual culture and the sensibilities to respect minorities. However, I'd be careful about over simplifying the stories and the sentiment of embracing authenticity."