Made by Asians for Asians, these shirts are based on the premise that the aesthetics and the marketability of a foreign language trump the indecipherability of the message. Basically, anything English is hip, even if it means having “Flash Back Tune Sexy Daddy Fat Why & Why” in green across your chest.

Not that Americans don’t do the same damn thing. In America, a shirt (or, more likely, a tattoo) in a foreign language implies identification with another culture, but who are we kidding? It simply looks cool. Ask any trustafarian with “brave and noble warrior” Sanskritted on his shoulder if he’d sport the same sentiment in English. Indeed, is there anything more unmistakably American than a pro basketball player plastered in Chinese characters?

 

 

 

 

As I discovered on my last trip to Asia, when I bought these shirts in the markets of Thailand and the Philippines, the true culture of a country is not what’s displayed for my perusal but what’s devoid of irony, endearing in its pure earnestness to please. These shirts may not depict stereotypical temples and rice fields, but in the polyglot 21st century, there may not be anything more authentically Asian.