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In tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, the newspaper covers the story: “Starbucks, PepsiCo Bring ‘Subopera’ to Shanghai“:
“A feel-good film about a girl from the Chinese countryside who moves to the big city to discover love, blogging and Starbucks will premier this month in an unusual venue: Shanghai’s subway. “A Sunny Day,” is scheduled to play exclusively on thousands of high-tech flat screen monitors on Shanghai’s subway cars and station platforms. Tailored for an audience of 2.2 million who
cram onto China’s biggest underground railway each day, the full-length feature film will be shown in daily segments of a few minutes each over 40 weekdays, soap-opera style. Subtitles in Chinese will help commuters follow the dialogue over the subway noise, and multiple daily rebroadcasts and tie-ins on the Internet are designed to ensure no one misses any of the cliffhangers.” Instead of an ordinary film, the so-called “subopera” is a blend of drama and advertising. A venture between Starbucks Coffee Co. and PepsiCo Inc. financed and helped produce the drama as part of a campaign that kicks off today in Shanghai to introduce bottled frappuccino drinks to the Chinese market.”
If you haven’t been to Shanghai (or Beijing for that matter) lately, you will notice that there are Starbucks everywhere - at the same kind of U.S. prices (which can be up to a day’s wage for a lot of Chinese). I wonder why something like this hasn’t happened already in major U.S. cities with a lot of commuters - like in New York City, Washington, D.C., etc… ?
No Comments | Posted in: Current Events, Entertainment, Observations
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This LA Times article about the Korean-American communities rethinking of achievement strikes me in a funny sort of way…and not good funny. The article asserts that, in the shadow of a few very public f-ups by a handful of Korean-Americans, the community is rethinking whether the stress generated by the struggle for academic and financial achievement is worth the toll it takes on individual members of the community.
“Other parents told me I am not a good parent — many, many times,” said Chang, 51. His perceived sin: not putting his daughter through a regimen of cram school and tutoring aimed at gaining admission to a prestigious university. But in two decades of teaching, Chang said he has seen too many kids become withdrawn or depressed because they could not meet their parents’ lofty expectations.
I don’t have a problem with the premise of the question being posed in the article, per say, but I do find fault with the journalist’s use of Seung-Hui Cho (of Virginia Tech mass murder fame) as an emblem for the extreme negative consequences of cultural pressure.
Ummm… No. Seung-Hui Cho’s actions were NOT a consequence of Korean-American pressure. His actions were a result of mental illness. Untreated mental illness.
The journalist then goes on to cite Confucius as the reason Korean-American kids are passive and aren’t willing to speak up.
“If you are passive,” he continued, “getting A’s doesn’t mean anything.” What matters is articulating thoughts, taking the risk to communicate them, he said. “Silence is not a virtue.” Still, hardly any response — at least not in front of Chang. He had an explanation for their reticence.“It’s your Confucian upbringing,” he said.
Okay, while there may be some validity in this last statement it really seems rather ambitious to blame Confucius for all the ills of an entire sub-group of people. Basically, the journalist and the sociologist are asserting that Confucius has more impact on Korean-American kids then MTV, their friends, and American culture at large.
That’s like me blaming Confucius for my bum knee because he once said self-mastery was a virtue and all that marathon training was my way of achieving self-mastery. Hmmmm… actually that’s not half bad. That’s much more interesting than telling people I blew out my knee over-training.
What do you think? Does this article ring true for you or is it way to much of an overstatement?
(Photo credit: gluemoon)
10 Comments | Posted in: Discrimination, WTF
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How the heck did karaoke (ka-ra-oh-kaykeh) get pronounced carry-okie? Or is it carrie-okie?
I can understand if one or two people just screwed it up, but how did the wrong pronunciation gain popular acceptance?
I used to correct people — or rather help people how to say a word they are struggling with. But at some point I stopped trying.
I can kind of understand the “okie” part, but as for the “carry?” No way, no how, nuh uh.
What other mispronunciations really annoy you?
20 Comments | Posted in: Observations
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that white psychologist chick Cynthia Watros from Season 2, and now Daniel Dae Kim, otherwise known as Jin-Soo Kwon. It’s like they have a tight schedule: 10am-7pm: filming, 7:15pm-2am: drinking, 2am-3am: drive erratically across Hawaii until you get arrested.
Kim has gone above and beyond his drunk former co-stars however, by issuing a public statement apologizing for his behavior.
South Korean-born Daniel Dae Kim said in a statement issued through his publicist in California that he was “deeply ashamed and embarrassed” and will fully co-operate with police.
“It saddens me to know that I jeopardised the welfare of the kind people of Hawaii, a community that I love and call my home,” the statement said.
Police arrested Kim early on Thursday after an officer saw him driving erratically. He was released after posting bail. He had a blood-alcohol level of 0.168 - twice the legal limit. Kim is set to appear in court on November 23.
“To my friends, family, colleagues and fans, thank you for your kind words of support.” Kim, 39, said. “To those I have disappointed I can only ask that you accept my heartfelt apologies. I am truly, truly sorry.”
Why the public statement? Maybe it’s because right after Rodriguez and Watros got arrested for DUI, their characters were coincidentally killed off in one of Lost’s frequent cliffhanger episodes. Shot in the stomach, no less. Maybe he’s covering his ass so he doesn’t read a script to find his character shot in the face by The Others or starved to death or some other way beautiful people die on a mysterious island.
7 Comments | Posted in: Entertainment, WTF
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National past times are going international. The NFL has a Dolphins/Giants game on today being played in London. The NBA is playing a few preseason (aka practice) games overseas. Of key interest is China. People paid upwards of $550 per ticket. To put it in perspective, that can buy you 551 bootleg dvds.
["King" Lebron James and Billy "the soldier"]
$550 for a preseason game. Wow. It goes to show you the NBA’s popularity. And with over a billion people strong, that’s a huge fan base. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future, an Asian offshoot league forms and the winner of that league plays the winner of our pro league here in the States. Sort of akin to the current “conferences”. A logistical nightmare, I’m sure. But never underestimate the power and motivation of money.
Of course from a country that gives us Gushi jeans, Lenny Vuitton handbags and Starbox coffee, referring to this new league as part of the NBA (National Basketball Associaiton) would be in poor taste. They’d have to call it the National Basket-Ball Association, or something. The NBBA. The extra “B” is good luck because B’s look like 8’s. Perfect.
Post script - The funniest thing is the young fan in the article who calls himself “MC Hotdog“. I’m guessing he said it in Chinese and then it was translated to English. The closest thing I can think of to hotdogs are Chinese sausages. ‘MC Chinese Sausage’. (If you said it in Chinese, it’s funny.)
3 Comments | Posted in: Sports
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Mike posted about presidential candidate Obama having a profile page on Asian Avenue, which now goes by Asian Ave, and that prompted me to sign up for an account. Not because I support Obama as President, but because I used to have an Asian Avenue account in high school and wanted to see how the site may or may not have evolved in 10 years. So I register with the alias I always use when I go undercover: Paroxya. (I suppose now I have to think up a new alias…) I debated whether to post a profile photo of my cat or me, and went with an overexposed photo of me where you can’t see my face.
After an hour of checking out hot Asian chics (I would have checked out hot Asian dudes, but there weren’t any), I tired of the site and logged out. That was the end of that, I thought.
10 Comments | Posted in: Entertainment, Lifestyles, Observations
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If you haven’t picked up a print newspaper in the last few months, or read Asian American Village, then, like me, you probably haven’t heard of Secret Asian Man either. But soon, newspaper-reading people across the US will know of it.
Written and drawn by cartoonist Tak Toyoshima, in May 2007 Secret Asian Man became the first comic strip featuring an Asian American leading character to become nationally syndicated in the US. Way to go Tak!
(Continued)
2 Comments | Posted in: Entertainment
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James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix shape and probably one of the most well known figures in modern science, announced today that he would be resigning from his position as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and from its board. This follows after some comments he made earlier this week questioning the intelligence of people of African descent. Here are some choice quotes:
[I'm] “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really…people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.
And
“there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.
There is a lot that can be (and has been) said about his comments but one thing missing from the dialogue is the the difference (if any) of his obviously negative stereotypes about people of African descent and the (presumed) positive stereotypes of people of Asian descent. We’re all familiar with the ‘Asian’s are better at math & science’, ‘Asian’s are more analytical’ shtick. How are these stereotypes any less harmful than what Watson said about Africans? Don’t they both distill an entire racial group into a two dimensional caricature? Yet you don’t see scientific leaders or captains of industry resigning from their posts when they make statements qualifying Asian intelligence.
Of course, varying degrees of outrage is an all too familiar story in the world of racial politics. Asian-American’s are lucky if we see a single media mention when some radio DJ or television show decides we’re fair game. I don’t assume this chasm of racial outrage will be assuaged any time soon…but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.
4 Comments | Posted in: Uncategorized
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