The notion of "rice and potato" rests on the foundation of ethnic stereotypes, what Laurence Wai-Teng Leong identifies as instances "of specialist tastes among gay men seeking other gay men of a particular ethnic stock." (2) The "potato queen" is an Asian gay man who dates white men exclusively, while the "rice queen" is his white counterpart who prefers only Asian men. To begin my analysis of the films, I find it necessary first to map out briefly the contours of this interracial dynamic in order to arrive at the narrative and representational motivations that underpin these works. (1) This phenomenon also creates a sense of cultural anxiety that is urgent enough for many of these films to want to confront, assuage, or even consciously circumvent. Here, I pay specific attention to gay diasporic Chinese films that carry this theme, many of which also happen to be English-language films.
It is this rhetoric that haunts my attempt to examine, in this essay, contemporary cinematic representations of gay Asian-Caucasian relationships and desire, what some would rather derogatorily call the "rice and potato" phenomenon. Any attempt to discuss the question of gay Asian-Caucasian interracial relationships, particularly within gay Asian and Asian diasporic communities, will produce a polarized debate framed by an us Asians-versus-them Caucasian rhetoric.
Interracial relationships often raise a complex set of cultural issues, and gay versions of these relationships are no exception.