Interview & Results

Interview Questions

1. What is your cultural background?

2. What are your thoughts in preserving your cultural background? Why?

3. Discuss what the most important aspects of your culture are.

4. Are there any stories linked to your cultural heritage?

5. How important is food as an aspect of your culture?

6. Are there any instance where you believe your food from your culture is misrepresented in other countries?

7. What are your thoughts on a product that allows users to submit a request for a traditional recipe showing the food’s origins, while additionally showing its variations and adaptations made by other countries.

8. What do you think if this product allows you to share recipes as a family? This means the recipe shared by users will become part of their own family recipes and be seen by other users as a family’s recipe. Users’ family recipes will be documented and users can visit them through a timeline or something that shows the history.**

** This question was added after initial interviews were made.

Interview Results

Interview 1

1. Half English half Australian

2. Big in football, have youth players develop more in English clubs rather than bringing in foreign players, because it would help to sustain this side of the culture.

3. Football/ sport in general, food (real big on bacon and eggs for breakfast, and cottage pie)

4. Family was born in England and came to Australia when twelve.

5. Not hugely important compared to other countries because we focus on other aspects of the culture (I.e sports)

6. Not sure if people misrepresent cottage pie (as example) in Australia however I don’t think it’s as good here as in England.

7. I think that’s a good idea as this helps to show how recipes from traditional countries are represented in non-traditional countries. It’s also good that the stories behind the recipes exist in order to compare the traditional to the adaptation, and how those who had to adapt to making such recipe (I.e lack of original ingredients).

Interview 2:

1. Italian

2. Preserving my culture is of high importance to me. It is vital that my family heritage is shared with my family even though I don’t live there anymore.

3. The most important aspects of my culture are family, cooking and food.

4. I was very poor growing up and there was not much variety on our dinner table at night, unlike now. Once memory that remains with me from when I was very little was having to pick corn and potatoes for my parents in the fields.

5. Food is a top priority for me in my culture. It symbolises pride and my ethnicity of Italian heritage. I enjoy making homemade pasta, bread, biscuits and Italian delicacies. Nothing makes me happier than cooking and sharing these with family and friends. It is vital for me that recipes are passed down to other members of my family so this amazing food lives on with more generations to come.

6. Are there any instances where you believe your food from your culture is misrepresented in other countries?

7. I don’t agree with the second part of this question as I think the original traditional recipe is authentic and should not be adapted. Once flavours from other countries are mixed it loses its identity. I do however agree with the first part of this question, I think the sharing of recipes is wonderful.

Interview 3

1. Chinese. Specifically, Cantonese.

2. I want to preserve especially our language, which is Cantonese, as well as tea culture. Because these are the symbol of thousands of years of history of Guangdong. Now dialects are disappearing in China, which makes me realize the importance of protecting Cantonese.

3. Food. Most of people’s first impression on Guangdong is the delicious local food. Cantonese is well known for eating a variety of things, as if they can make anything into food. Cantonese really pay attention to food. They would spend a lot of time on cooking, an example of this is their soup.

4. There is a kind of famous food in Guangdong which is congee with lean pork, liver and kidney. In Ming dynasty hundreds of years ago, a guy was very poor and his neighbour helped him by giving him a bowl of congee every day. Later, the guy got champion in the imperial examination and named the congee as Jidi Congee, where Jidi means to win the imperial examination.

5. As I mentioned before, food is pretty important as the representative of Cantonese culture. When speaking of Cantonese culture, people tend to think of morning tea and dim sum instantly. Food has been embedded into local customs and shaped people’s eating habits.

6. In Australia, dim sum is somewhat mistaken with the food in Hong Kong tea restaurants and Malaysian food. I saw a dish of dim sum which is Satay pork belly in Australia. However, authentic dim sum does not contain Satay and this dish was made up just to cater for the preference of local people. This is not right and I am not happy with this.

7. Well, I don’t think I would use it since if I want to find recipes I will go to more relevant websites, or if I want to read stories I will go to story websites as well. Instagram can also suit my needs in this case. But it would be interesting if this system can show the trend of food in history. It would be also good if it makes use of map and helps me with finding delicious food. For example, pop up recommended places to eat when I go to a new area.

Interview 4

1. Chinese. My hometown is Hunan, which is located in south China.

2. Actually, I didn’t pay attention to it normally. I get annoyed only when our cultural heritage is offended.

3. Maybe food. As a Chinese saying goes, people take food for the day. Even within Hunan, featured dishes vary over regions. Changsha has Stinky tofu and Crayfish, while Xiangtan has areca and Yongzhou has blood duck.

4. This question reminds me of Qu Yuan, who sacrificed himself for his country, and Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional festival in memory of him. People eat rice dumpling to celebrate this festival.

5. Hunan possesses a special recipe for making peppers. Hunan people like pure hot taste and will chop peppers into small pieces in order to enjoy the original hot tastes as much as possible. The taste of pepper is unique in Hunan.

6. Some places have food stalls that sell Stinky tofu, but it tastes not as good as in Hunan because it is adapted to cater for the tastes of locals. Another example is Juewei, a chain food store selling duck necks in China, which tastes different in Hunan and Guangzhou.

7. It sounds good. To learn about the story of food is also a process of getting to know about the history of a particular place. And people usually associate regions with food. For this system, I would prefer a feature that enables me to navigate through the entry of food, which displays the characteristics of the food, its recipe and origin, and guides me to know about the culture and history of the place where the food comes from.

Interview 5

1. My family comes from Pakistan. I lived there for most of life and moved to Australia about 15 years ago.

2. I think it's really important - in my family, keeping traditions is something that should always be done. In my case, ever since I moved overseas, it's become more difficult but I still think that preserving my culture is crucial, it would be kind of disrespectful to my family if I didn’t.

3. Personally I think it's maintaining a connection with my family as much as possible.

4. The one that comes to mind is the time I spent with my mother learning how to make food. I was one of 8 children and I was the only one really interested in cooking so that was something I bonded with my mother over. It's a really precious memory to me.

5. It’s hard to say. If you look at it from a religious standpoint then food can be pretty important. Like with the whole ‘Halal’ foods and such - but if it’s purely from a cultural perspective then food isn’t very important. I mean it obviously is to a degree, but not incredibly so.

6. Not at all. It would be difficult to try and change the way we make the food without changing the whole meal so I don't think there's any misrepresentation as far as I know.

7. I think it’s a great idea. Maintaining your cultural heritage is something I think is important and this is a good way of going about it. I think an interesting potential in something like this is how you could have your cultures original recipe but you see a comment and you want to try changing it to theirs and seeing how different it tastes.

Interview 5

1. Australian

2. Don’t think about it too much due to living in country

3. Sport, food and drinking

4. Not really

5. It is one of the main aspects I think

6. Not really

7. It would be good for people who wanna try something new

Interview 6

1. Shandong, China. Shandong is the origin of Confucianism.

2. I think it’s important for me. Confucianism has a thousand of years of history and has a strong influence on the values of Shandong people.

3. The tradition of respecting parents, loving sisters and brothers, being polite and sincere to others and regularly introspecting.

4. Taishan Mountain is an important site of Shandong culture. In ancient China, it was the place where the imperial family held the grand ceremony of announcing a new emperor. Today it has become a tourist attraction. Shandong people also enjoy climbing the mountain.

5. Shandong creates its own style of cooking which is Lu Cai. It is one of the eight most famous cooking systems of China.

6. In Shandong, some homemade dishes like scallion sea cucumber use different seasonings based on personal tastes, but they still belong to Lu Cai. However, in other regions, since seasonings are chosen based on local people’s preferences, those dishes are much different from the authentic ones.

7. It sounds good. It can help people know about stories behind food. And they can learn to make the dishes by following the steps shared by other users.

8. This is a good idea. It might take a long time to share so many things like experience and stories, and some people could skip steps if they don’t have that much time, but for those who value their family it would be really interesting. I think you can allow uploading videos to help users save time.

Interview 7

1. Italian

2. I believe the cultural aspects of our culture have to live on, generation after generation. My Italian culture lives and my children and grandchildren learn about our culture as they grow up.

3. The most important aspects of our Italian culture are definitely family and food.

4. The main stories are to do with my family and with food, since we have a large family/extended family (from Italy and from Perth) we tend to have a large dinner of some sort when gathering with relatives. We also just love making food such as pasta, pichio, pizza and the like whenever possible!

5. As I said earlier, we live our food in my culture, it helps to bring people together in the family.

6. Of course, however that’s not of a worry to me as I always make the traditional style of my culture. People will always make misrepresentations but that is just how the traditional style evolves for other cultures. That is all good for me as long it did not become the norm.

7. Like a recipe thing with stories attached to them? That sounds like a great idea in preserving my Italian culture or anyone’s culture.

8. I believe that if the product allowed you to share recipes as a family this would give away from the focus of stories of a specific recipe as a whole and would look towards a specific family's experience with the recipe. The idea of targeting families is good though as it highlights specific family traditions but could overload the product if there were so many families, so you would need to find a way to not let this happen. I like the idea of looking at a timeline of the specific family’s recipe history as well.

Interview 8

1. I was born and raised in Pakistan. Lived there for most of my life before moving here.

2. It's pretty damn important. If you don’t you'll forget your roots. If you forget your background, then the very point of being multicultural becomes pointless. If no one wants to preserve their background then no one can learn from other cultures.

3. I think the most important features of my culture is trying to maintain your humanity. Not only that though, I'd say family is probably just as important to my culture. After that, I'd say helping out your local communities. Not just the one from home thought, wherever you live, you should help your neighbor.

4. Well not really a story, more of a yearly event - Muharram. It's a period of mourning of religious significance that is a really big part of my culture. It’s a time in which all the most important values of my culture are bought up and its emphasized just how much we should value them.

5. In terms of my culture, foods not really all that significant. That being said, my culture does place quite a lot of importance on what the food we eat should consist of - one big example of this is Halal foods; we need to make sure that all the ingredients of the foods we eat are Halal, I guess stuff like that’s an important part of our culture.

6. Well if I go back to what I just talked about, I'd say halal foods have been misrepresented by other cultures many times. Especially the idea that it changes the meal in some way which it absolutely doesn't. So there's definitely some misrepresentation there.

7. I think it’s a great idea. One of my favourite meals from home, biryani, has a boatload of variations depending on where the meal was made. Being able to see all the different types of a meal that I know one variation of would be amazing and if it shows foods from around the world then I would be able to see some new recipes as well. At the very least it's an interesting idea.

8. Well that fits with your concept doesn't it? If it’s a families traditional, unique way of making a meal, then it makes sense that should be able to post it as a family. I think the idea of a family timeline might be a little excessive given the scale of what you’re trying to do but it might still be able to work.