Chinese-American restaurants often use placemats, dishes, and decor that freely sample from the heritage and history of traditional Chinese art. This intentionally Orientalist identity conveys a general sense of the culture with little regard to the motifs' origin and meaning. This decor acts as an obstacle—a distorted simulacrum of Chinese culture standing in for the real thing—that reduces the identity of a culture into stereotypical symbols such as the chop suey font, pagodas, and dragons. My thesis aims to inject meaning back into cultural motifs, as well as provide a possibility of an aesthetic identity that lives beyond existing stereotypes.