I’m a big fan of National Public Radio (NPR), and heard this piece in the car while driving home tonight: “Pot ‘Grow Houses’ Flourish in Pacific Northwest” which discussed the growing trend of “grow houses” – growing marijuana indoors, found in neighborhoods around the country, but becoming especially common in the Pacific Northwest — particularly in the suburbs of Seattle.
The most interesting part of this story relevant to 8Asians is:
“Largely Run by Vietnamese Immigrants – Peter Truong is a community service officer for the sheriff’s department in Seattle. He speaks Chinese and Vietnamese — also spoken by most of the people busted in grow houses around Seattle. Truong is constantly being called in by local police departments for help questioning the people arrested in the grow houses. “A couple of weeks ago, I turn my cell phone off, my home phone off, because I got so tired,” Truong says. Truong immigrated to the United States in 1975 and has worked with the sheriff’s department for 20 years. He says the people who live in grow houses tend to come from Vietnamese communities in other places — often Massachusetts and Vancouver, Canada. They’re recruited by the grow operation owners to tend the plants, and they’re told to keep a low profile in the suburban neighborhoods where the houses are located. “They live normal life,” Troung says, adding, “Really polite. You never know what inside.” Truong says the only tell-tale sign he’s noticed is the rash that people get when they tend the plants. He guesses it’s caused by the chemicals, or some other side effect of living in close quarters with hundreds of marijuana plants.”
I wonder how well rooted in fact this reporting is….As I had posted last week, there is a large Vietnamese-American population in San Jose. I wonder if the trend is similar in the Bay Area?
Subscribe to our mailing list
Get the day's stories from 8Asians.com, delivered to your inbox every evening at 6:00pm PST.
The winter holidays are coming. This means lots of holiday jingles, gift shopping, and family reunions (like this past Thursday). For many, it also means stress, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and even suicide.
There’s already been a fair amount written on the topic of Asian American mental health issues, so I won’t go into how and why these issues are so prevalent (a list of Asian American mental health articles is listed at the end of the post). Instead, I’d like to talk about how you can find help.
So far, I’ve come up with three main sources of help: friends & family, mental health professionals, and online forums. Mental health professionals are the best source, though they are the most expensive of the three. But if you can manage to find a good mental health professional, it will be well worth it.
Whichever path you choose, that first step is the most important one. Once you take it, you’ll be that much closer to removing those awful feelings. Good luck!
Friends and Family
Friends and family can be a source of help. Having a strong and trusted circle of friends is healthy, as they can provide emotional and social support.
Unfortunately for some people, these sources aren’t always reliable. You may not have many friends you feel you can turn to, or your family may be the foundation of your frustrations. They also aren’t trained professionals and their advice can be misleading or even damaging. If that’s the case for you, consider experienced mental health professionals instead.
Mental Health Professionals
Finding the right mental health professional can be a daunting endeavor. For Asian Americans, there are cultural and language considerations, in addition to the financial considerations. Cultural considerations include needing a professional who understand one’s own culture (both from an immigrant and an American-born standpoint) and fighting the stigma of discussing family & personal issues with a stranger. The language considerations are obvious. Financial considerations can be especially difficult for immigrants without health insurance.
Most of the mental health programs and professionals I’ve found are located in coastal metropolitans such as New York City and the California Bay Area. Services do exist within the rest of the US as well, though information on them is a little sparse.
Many mental health professionals accept HMO and private insurance. You can also pay out of pocket. The fees typically range anywhere from $50 – $200/session, though many offer sliding fees that can be adjusted based on your income.
If you know of other good sources, please let me know!
- Asian-American Mental Health Directory
-
This service provides listings of mental health professionals in the California Bay Area. It allows you to search by the type of service and by language preferred. Then it displays the professional’s contact info and typical fees, though many seem to be flexible with their prices.
- NY Coalition for Asian American Mental Health
-
This is a list of mental health professionals and programs in New York City. Many of the private practice providers listed (the pychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers) offer sliding fees to adjust to your financial situation; many accept HMO and private insurance also. Languages spoken are also provided.
- Asian LifeNet
-
This is a free telephone hotline available 24/7 to individuals in the New York City area. The number is 1-877-990-8585 and they can help with a wide range of issues, including family difficulties; depression, anxiety, bipolar, & panic disorders; and drug & alcohol abuse.
- National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association
-
This service provides a listing of mental health professionals across the US, though its search interface isn’t as easy to use as the others. On the Search Listing page, you can just enter in the information you need and leave the rest blank. Basic contact info and languages spoken are provided for each professional; they don’t list their fees unfortunately.
Mental Health Online Forums
Online forums can also be helpful if there aren’t any Asian American mental health programs or professionals in your area. None targeted specifically for the Asian American community, however.
Like friends and family, online forums can only provide so much help; the respondents aren’t trained professionals and their advice can be misleading. Still, they are a good alternative since they can provide a network of support. But as soon as you feel a particular forum is becoming unhelpful or even abusive, leave it immediately.
If you know of other good forums, please let me know!
- TakeThisLife.com
- Depression Forums
- Beating The Beast
- Mixed Nuts
- Anxiety Forum
- AnxietyZone.com
- Anxiety and Stress Forum
Mental Health News Articles
General
- Asian-American mental health from the American Psychological Association
- Asian-Americans and the Mental Illness Stigma from 8Asians.com
Children
- Depression and Suicidal Ideation among Young Asian Americans from Yellowworld.org
- Assessment of Anxiety and Depression in Asian American Youth from the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
- Depression in APIA Adolescents from the University of Michigan, School of Public Health
- Anxiety Disorders in APIA Adolescents from the University of Michigan, School of Public Health
Women
- The Deafening Silence: Depression Among Asian American Women from Asiance Magazine
- Asian American Women and Depression from womenshealth.gov
- Push to achieve tied to suicide in Asian-American women from 8Asians.com
Elderly
- Depression and anxiety among asian american elders from ScienceDirect
- Depressive disorders in Asian American adults from the Western Journal of Medicine
- Mental Health Status of Japanese American Elders from Columbia University
Shopping With GASP!
Angry Asian Man blurbed a CBC article about the trend of the angry Asian man. (The article is about the emerging image of the angry Asian man, not about Phil Yu’s site which is coincidentally but not irrelevantly named Angry Asian Man.) The news article cites a variety of evidences, including Seung-Hui Cho, Shortcomings, and Harold and Kumar.
Much of this would be more accurately named discontent or something else, but for dramatic purposes, ‘anger’ suffices. And movements are more powerful when grouped together to make a trend. Here’s another to add to the collection, though it comes from Japan rather than the US — that angry look in much of Yoshitomo Nara’s art. The character depicted in his paintings also convey the feeling of the child- being a small person or just someone who is viewed as relatively powerless, yet who has internal potential and thoughts roiling in their head.
Nara’s art takes into account this other side – niceness, congeniality, emphasis on providing goodwill. I think the anger is the backlash to some broken or frustrated aspect of this circulating generosity. And though no one would write articles about him, there’s also the too-nice Asian man. The closest I’ve come to seeing it is travel articles about how nice the Thai family was to take them in even though they hardly knew them. There is one in the current issue of the New Yorker, “Wheels of Fortune,” in which the author gets in a lot of car accidents and doesn’t pay for any of them because the car rental man smiles and says it’s okay.
I read in The San Jose Mercury News online today in “UC adopts ‘Count Me In’ application proposal” that:
“The University of California will revamp its undergraduate application to find out more about the Pacific Rim students who have become UC’s dominant face. Next year’s application will expand the number of Asian-American and Pacific
Islander categories to 23 – a nearly threefold increase from the current eight categories. The ethnic identification will continue to be optional and will not figure into admissions decisions, administrators said…The effort will help the university track groups that have not been adequately studied, such as Hmong and Samoan students, he said…Studies have shown that students from several southeast Asian countries 1/3 including Laos and Cambodia – are not as likely to attend college as those from Asian countries with more developed higher-education systems….”
That’s the challenge and irony of trying to unite under the category of “Asian-American” (and Pacific Islander) – for any ethnic group to have a voice, one needs numbers. Yet, those united numbers can also mask the differences in an uber-group.
What really struck me from the article was this statistic though:
“The number of Asian-Americans has surpassed white students in the UC system. On some campuses, such as Berkeley and Irvine, the numbers are overwhelming. Irvine has about twice as many Asian-American undergraduates as white students, and hundreds more Asian-American students than whites attend UC Berkeley.”
As someone who grew up in Western Massachusetts and as one of a handful of Asian-Americans amongst a mostly Caucasian student body, and an undergraduate university in upstate New York where Asian-Americans made up 15% of the students, the thought of Asian-Americans outnumbering Caucasian students (or any ethnicity for that matter) is sort of mind blowing. As I have said before, only in California…(and of course, Hawaii)
Okay, it’s not Friday, but the day before Thanksgiving counts as a Friday in my work world. After flipping through radio stations, I came across “I fell in love with the dj” by Malaysian born Australian artist Che’nelle. This raggaeton song is familiar to me because while I was in Tokyo a month or two ago, it was getting major promotion and was #4 on the charts in Japan:
Hella catchy beat (and some four-to-the-floor dance remixes) aside, she hasn’t been made much of a dent in the U.S. Billboard charts. According to a PR Release, Adrienne Lau’s “Magic Tricks” was technically the first Chinese American to enter the Billboard Hot Singles chart, but besides her MySpace page, I don’t have much information about her. Her official website reveals that she’ll be singing the Pop version of the Beijing Olympics theme song. (No wikipedia entry or video on YouTube? Really? Seriously?)
Which leads me to the following question – will there ever be a major Asian or Asian-American artist on mainstream Top 40 radio? The last single I could remember on radio was CoCo Lee’s 1999 hit, “Do You Want My Love” – other attempts by Hikaru Utada didn’t do so well. I mean, it’s not for a lack of talent: R&B A Capella group At Last made the finals of America’s Got Talent, and J-Pop artist Crystal Kay has a mighty fine song called Kirakuni, although never released in the U.S. So what’s the deal? Bad marketing? Wrong A&R? Or is there just no market for Asians in the United States?
As you may or may not know, San Jose, California has one of the largest Vietnamese-American populations in the United States (approximately 100,000 Vietnamese-Americans -around 10% of San Jose’s population). There has been a brewing debate within the Vietnemes-American community to designate a section of San Jose “Saigon Business District” vs. “Little Saigon”, as reported in The San Jose Mercury article: “ ‘Saigon Business District’ wins – San Jose Council’s Name for Retail District Angers ‘Little Saigon’ Advocate“:
“ In a dynamic and dramatic scene before one of the largest crowds to ever gather at City Hall, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday designated a busy hub of Vietnamese-owned businesses “Saigon Business District,” enraging
several hundred people who stormed City Hall demanding the name “Little Saigon.”…The proposal, which might seem innocuous to non-Vietnamese-Americans, set off a firestorm of controversy within the Vietnamese community here and around the country. [San Jose city council member Madison] Nguyen, who fled Vietnam in 1979 with her family, has been bombarded with criticism for her unwillingness to support the “Little Saigon” name. Nguyen said the area should have its own identity – separate from other Little Saigons. And business owners prefer that the name have “business district” in it. “Little Saigon” is opposed by the Story Road Business Association and the San Jose Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which has members in the area. “Little Saigon” supporters have accused Nguyen of turning her back on her constituents in order to appease the business community.”
Personally, with very little knowledge of this whole controversy, “Saigon Business District” sounds a bit stodgy to me. I mean, I’ve heard of Little Taipei, Little Italy, Chinatown, Koreatown, Japantown, etc… but a moniker with “Business District” sounds very sterile to me. I wonder if this issue alone will cause San Jose council member Madison Nguyen to lose re-election in the future…? In November 2005, Nguyen won a historic race to fill a vacated San Jose council seat in a special election, running against another Vietnamese-American woman, Linda Nguyen.
Lust, Caution has been out for awhile. However, it deserves another review because it isn’t nearly as bad as the reviews make it seem. It’s actually pretty good. And it’s still playing here and there (it wasn’t widely released in the first place) so this weekend might be the last chance for some people to see it.
The film sounds like a suspense-thriller- a dangerous assassination plot, a backdrop of Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation in Shanghai during World War II- but with screenwriters James Schamus and Wang Hui Ling and director Ang Lee, the film is more meditatively paced, and constructed around Wong Chia Chi’s (Tan Wei) relationship to Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), rather than the plot to kill the high-ranking official of the Kuomintang.
The reviews and the NC-17 rating have you bracing for the pornographic scenes, which do occur, but not until well into the film, and which aren’t that graphic. Or maybe I’m just inured by the other horrors I saw in film class way back in college. It’s all about expectations and reference points. There’s a sexless version that can only be seen in China, and the film could be just as good without the porn breaks. That’s what they felt like sometimes. Just pornographic interludes. I think there is some symbolic story development through the sex, as well as the mah jong games that the women play throughout the film, but a viewer can understand the film well enough without it.
Overall, it’s a solid film. It’s predominantly dark and suspenseful, with a few other textures of love and even humor. The attempted assassins are a group of theater kids and their bungling participation in the serious world of murder has its moments. It makes one want to learn Mandarin and mah jong, and read Eileen Chang’s story for comparison. Native Chinese speakers tell me that the dialects in Lust, Caution are much better done than those in Crouching Tiger. And Tang Wei, with baby cheeks and full lips, is really cute.
Over the weekend, the NY Times reported on a new Census Bureau analysis of the most common surnames in the US. For the first time, two Hispanic surnames – Garcia and Rodriguez – made the top 10 most common in the nation. Martinez nearly cracked the top 10, coming in just after Wilson at number 11.
So, where do we Asians fall into the mix? The highest ranking Asian surname was none other than Lee, coming in as #22. I suspect, however, that Lee’s ranking is bolstered by individuals of both Asian and Scottish descent. Here’s a sampling of other Asian surnames:
No. 57 – Nguyen (up 172 spots)
No. 109 – Kim (up 124 spots)
No. 172 – Patel (up 419 spots)
No. 188 – Tran (up 219 spots)
No. 260 – Chen
No. 277 – Wong
No. 343 – Park
No. 368 – Le
No. 397 – Singh
I’m very surprised by the relatively low rankings of Chen and Wong. With such a sizable Chinese-American population, I’d have bet money that they would have cracked the top 200. I also wonder what impact the Filipino community had on the rankings of Hispanic surnames.
This month’s issue of Gourmet magazine features a fusion Thanksgiving menu inspired by the flavors of “the east” aka Japan, China, and India. Traditional turkey day eats are updated and become Pumpkin, Corn, and Lemongrass Soup, Roasted Japanese Sweet Potatoes with Scallion Butter, and Indian Spiced Pickled Vegtables among others. Gourmet’s rock-staresque editor, Ruth Reichl, explains the inspiration for this menu by stating:
“In our test kitchen we have one…Asian woman, and [she] started telling us about dishes [she was] going to be serving at [her] Thanksgivings, which are truly cross-cultural affairs. A lot of them sounded great, so we just went with them.”
The fusion menu got me to thinking about my own family’s Thanksgiving traditions and also those of other immigrant and multi-cultural households. As a first generation clan, my family never took to most American holidays. The Fourth of July was just another day working in the family shoe store. But Thanksgiving was different. My parents understood Thanksgiving. As first gen immigrants and survivors of the Korean War, they immediately took to the ideas of thankfulness, bounty, and family. As far back as I can remember, my parents actually closed up shop on Thanksgiving and spent the day with the family. This from people who opened their shoe store on Christmas Day in hopes that they’ll catch a few of the truly last minute shoppers.
Our first few Thanksgivings were spent in the basement cafeteria of our Korean church eating lukewarm turkey and stuffing with the other families who couldn’t be bothered to spend the morning cooking. Finally, in the fall of 1981 my sisters and I harangued our mother until she finally agreed to forgo church and instead make our own Thanksgiving dinner. That first holiday will forever live on as the night of the burnt/raw turkey and ketchup stuffing. My mother, a most superior Korean cook, didn’t realize you had to thaw out the turkey and remove the bag of giblets from inside the bird. She also decided that ketchup and raisins belonged in stuffing. It was almost enough to derail the whole holiday forever.
The following Thanksgiving, remembering the traumas of her first attempt, my mother gave my sisters and I an ultimatum. Either you cook Thanksgiving or we’re going to church. At the ripe old ages of seven (me), nine, and 11, my sisters and I looked at each other and immediately accepted the deal. We somehow managed to roast a chicken and make mashed potatoes from scratch. Everything else came either from a box (Stove Top stuffing and frozen pumpkin pie), can (biscuits and Reddi Whip topping), jar (gravy), or bag (frozen corn). It was the BEST Thanksgiving ever.
Thanksgiving still lives on in my family. Each Thanksgiving now consists of an entirely from scratch traditional spread and also a huge traditional Korean menu courtesy of my mother. My (white) partner is always beside himself trying to decide what to eat first – can there be such a thing as too much food? We’ve never tried mingling Korean influences into the American dishes or vice versa. No kimchee stuffing thank you very much.
So, how does this experience compare with other Asians out there? Do you celebrate Thanksgiving? And if you do, what does your table consist of?
For no other reason than to post this for Ben (who may or may not have seen it already), Japanese rocker Gackt recently performed at the Mnet KM Festival Awards in Korea. He won the Best Foreign Artist award and refused to accept the award because his only reason to go to Korea was to meet the fans. (*shrugs)
The expressionless faces of some of the Korean celebs in attendance are rather hilarious, in particular Super Junior member HeeChul in a mixture of awe and confusion.
There is a lot to be said about the Great Firewall of China. Also known as the Golden Shield Project, this baby has been intact since 2003, but has been in design since as early as 98. The goal of this is to restrict any information that might jeopardize their control over the current media mediums. The easiest of this is by blacklists, but there are other items such as keyword blocks and selective routing.
DNS poisoning anyone? Funny that many of the so-called features were and are tactics for simplistic network hacking and misdirection. All of which is done at the router level.
So the big question however on everyone’s mind is… is 8Asians influential enough to even gain a block from the Golden Shield? So far, I’ve heard mixed reviews so I decided to put it to the test. Other 8A authors have said that it indeed is blocked. Yet John Kennedy from Global Voices, tested the link from Beijing University and had no issues getting through.
So which was it?
The Great Firewall of China test site came back with a block. Yet Website Pulse’s China test site came back from their servers in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai all with flying colors. The partial block straight out would mean that we are probably not blacklisted. In fact, it could only be a localized or separate blacklist provision since you would think that any type of routing that is blocked by Golden Shield would be blocked regardless of where the servers are due to how the main routing tables are set up in China.
One day perhaps we’ll actually see that 8Asians has risen to the top of the block list. But for now, we’re still getting through.
Photo Credit: (Isaac Mao)
Two months ago, Samantha wrote about Goh Nakamura’s newest video, “Embarcadero Blues.” Turns out that wasn’t the final cut – the following video is the finished work. And on top of that, the video was linked off of YouTube’s front page, giving the video over a QUARTER MILLION views and giving Goh official status as an internet celebrity. As someone who’s met Goh, I can honestly say that I couldn’t be any happier for the guy.
We also blogged about voting for Kayla, the Asian Baby for the YoBaby Yogurt Cover Baby Contest. Thanks to your votes (you did vote, right?) Kayla was one of two contest winners! Kayla and family get to spend a fully expensed trip for four to San Francisco, California! Except they live in Fremont, a twenty minute drive away. Oh well.
We also never properly introduced our newest writer, Lily. That makes me a horrible website administrator, and a million apologies for that. Her bio is as follows: Lily Huang is a writer of Taiwanese descent, who lives on the East coast. She grew up in suburbia completely oblivious to Asian culture, and is making up for it now. Give her a warm welcome.
Finally, You might have noticed the slew of ads that have come up. I’ve made no secrets that it would be nice if 8Asians.com made a little bit of cash on the side, but we always want everyone to not rip their hair out viewing the site and participating, so if you have any question or have feedback, let us know. And seriously, fill out our survey. It helps me figure out who’s checking the site out – we can cater the site better for you guys that way, and maybe you’ll win a bumper sticker or a t-shirt or something cool like that. The survey closes December 1st.
Custom Search
Recent Posts
- Asian American Commercial Watch: May Is Blooming At JCP
- Suicide Prompts Chinese To Reconsider Coming To U.S.
- Winner Of The 2012 “B A Hero” Hepatitis B PSA Video Contest
- Manny Pacquiao, Filipino Homophobia And Masculinity
- The Mindy Project Makes Mindy Kaling Even More Hilarious
- Yes, We’re Open Review & Interview From LAAPFF 2012
- President Obama At Asian Pacific American Institute For Congressional Studies Annual Gala
Recent Comments
- : The referenced article interviews and talks with Chinese citizens who say they are reconsidering jobs in the U.S., and that's actually the point of the... – Suicide Prompts Chinese To Reconsider Coming To U.S.
- : I'm not sure if mr. wang's suicide has any correlation to chinese people in general being more cautious in coming to the US for jobs. wang picked his engineering... – Suicide Prompts Chinese To Reconsider Coming To U.S.
- : I usually think really hard when I decide on who to vote for at each presidential election, but this year is turning out more and... – President Obama At Asian Pacific American Institute For Congressional Studies Annual Gala
- : What about Jerry Sandusky? THAT OLD WHITE GUY IS FUCKING SICK! – Manny Pacquiao, Filipino Homophobia And Masculinity
- : Yeah I have the same feeling. However, I'll watch the first few episodes and hope I can be made into a believer. – The Mindy Project Makes Mindy Kaling Even More Hilarious
APA Events
Oct 14: (Seattle, WA) From Fields to Family: Asian Pacific Americans and Food
Mar 1: (Atlanta, GA) The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946
Apr 26: (New York, NY) June 4, 1989: Media and Mobilization Beyond Tiananmen Square
Apr 26: (New York, NY) America through a Chinese Lens
Apr 27: (Seattle, WA) SEX IN SEATTLE 20: HAPPILY EVER AFTER. . . (the series finale!)
May 16: (Seattle, WA) May SpamORama
May 24: (San Jose, CA) Sake San Jose
May 24: (New York, NY) A Conversation with artists Arthur Ou, Hai Zhang, and Julie Quon in Conjunction with America through a Chinese Lens
Staff and Contributors
- Editors
Moye Ishimoto
Co-Editor, Editorial
Jocelyn "Joz" Wang
Co-Editor, PR & APA Outreach
- Founder
Ernie Hsiung
Founder
