Meetings with famous meats

Sooner or later in the making of a new Chinese acquaintance, I will have to start a conversation about Kentucky Fried Chicken.

This is not an option for me; I have to do it. Not because I must express my fervent love for all eleven of their herbs and spices, and not because I'm being compensated for word-of-mouth advertising; it's because inevitably my new Chinese friend will ask the following question:

"Where in America are you from?"

I will then reply that I am from Kentucky. Kentaji.

Nine times out of 10, this is not enough. I don't blame him/her for not knowing, by the way. Most Americans would probably think Zhejiang is a cymbal manufacturer.

"Maybe you've heard of KFC?" Kendeji. I only need to change one syllable in the name, yet the difference is huge. Everyone from taxi drivers to college professors knows the man in the white suit with the white hair and the white beard on the big red sign. "Oh! KFC! Your home is the home of KFC!"

Though I happen to be indifferent on the subject, I think many Kentuckians would be a little disappointed to learn that a greasy paper bucket of chicken parts is our only notable export to a fifth of the human population.

"What about the Kentucky Derby, the world's premier horse racing event?" some might object.

"What about our seven-time national championship winning college basketball team?" sports fans would protest.

"What about that one time our governor's plane caused an evacuation of the Capitol building because the transponder failed and everyone on the ground thought it was a terrorist attack?" people like me would say. "Wasn't that hilarious?"

"I'm sorry," interrupt the 2 million daily Chinese consumers of KFC food products. "Were you talking just now? I couldn't hear you over the sound of all these chicken sandwiches we're eating. What's the name of your state again?"

It's hard to argue with success. In China, KFC is actually growing faster than McDonald's, still the reigning champion of fast food in the States. One factor may be the wide variety of KFC products catering to the Chinese palate: congee, youtiao, egg tarts, to name a few. Or perhaps the real decider, the meat of the issue (if you will), is the meat. Despite the fact that you can eat chicken at McDonald's and beef at KFC, maybe the mental association with the vice-versa configuration is too strong. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat chicken, and in China, chicken beats beef.

Or could it be thanks to the comforting omnipresence of Colonel Harland Sanders, the man who started it all? I'm willing to believe that the Colonel's cross-cultural success was in the bag once his hair started turning gray. Respect for one's elders has long been a tenet of traditional Chinese values and I wouldn't be surprised if that plays a significant role in the popularity of KFC's official mascot/spokesperson, at least compared to Ronald McDonald. I haven't finished the Analects yet, but I'm pretty sure that clowns rank lower than grandfathers in Confucian hierarchy.

So where does that leave me? Until my kindly old ghost haunts 900 locations across China, I'll continue to live in the Colonel's shadow. And until China suddenly develops a taste for thoroughbred horse breeding or bluegrass music, it looks like my fellow Kentuckians and I will continue to live in the same place German expats from Hamburg have been living since McDonald's first landed on Chinese shores: in the shadow of a giant slab of meat.