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

Here's a thought experiment: Close your eyes and imagine the font you'd use to depict the word "Chinese".

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.

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.

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").

As diverse and modern as Asia is, its prevailing typographic representations remain stuck in a bygone era. So, can we ever escape chop suey font?
"In light of the tensions in the US around race and racial stereotypes in 2020, (these fonts are) not the kind of thing I would want to be developing today", said Tom Rickner, creative director at Monotype, a 134-year old digital foundry with several chop suey fonts in its catalog.

Newer News
Disney World will allow parkgoers to take outdoor photos without masks on

Older News
Florida law would bar university and college officials from limiting speech that "may be uncomfortable, disagreeable or offensive"

Privacy

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

So what else is racist? Today - letter F: fonts.