Malaysia is a multi-racial country and this is the place where the different culture mixes and finally, making it our very own Malaysia culture.
This is the same with cooking, where each race has different styles of cooking and a slightly different flavour, despite using the same ingredients. Nonetheless, this is not a problem for most, if you know what you are ordering it.
However, this appeared to be a huge problem for some and they wanted the food to be labeled differently.
Recently, a netizen had started a fight about “char kuey teow” on Twitter and this particular netizen believed that Malay style char kuey teow should be termed “kuey teow basah”. According to him, “char kuey teow” refers to the dish cooked Chinese style.
Local food blogger Ceddy Ang (@ceddyornot) notice this tweet yesterday (16 January) and call it out. He argued that the name does not actually matter as the word “char” in Hokkien means fried. So, it’s not a big deal if kuey teow basah is called “char” koey teow because they also fry it.
However, the netizen does not accept his critic and replied “If you want to eat Chinese fried kuey teow, go back to China!”
Ceddy then reprimanded the netizen and called him out for being a racist.
“And the funny thing is people who defended the usage of “Char Koey Teow” are mostly Non-Chinese.” he said.
“You told people to respect other cultures, but a few disagreements and you respond with “go back to China”, who’s the stupid one now?” he blasted at the netizen. Ceddy also requested the netizen to keep his racism as “it’s already 2022″.
The netizen has since deleted his tweet and the matter was put to a stop there.
Meanwhile, other netizens pointed out that there were many Chinese born in Malaysia and they are as Malaysians as the other Malaysians, with the only difference being the skin colour and culture.
In addition, char kuey teow is a dish created in Malaysia by the Chinese. Hence, it is a dish that only exists in Malaysia, though it is gaining popularity among other cultures.
Having said that, it is important for Malaysians to learn about cultures other than their own and understand the differences, instead of just throwing racist comments when there’s a disagreement.
What do you think about this? Share your thoughts!
