8 Asians

By Niniane

In recent years, there has been a good deal of talk about the rising importance of the Chinese market. Companies hold seminars on how to conduct business in China. Many of my American friends took Mandarin classes. Given the attention, I am surprised at the relative lack of web sites made in Silicon Valley focusing around the Chinese market; the blogosphere proliferates with coverage on US-centric products.

Recently my college friend and I made a web site to accumulate user reviews and photos of Chinese hotels. In going through this process, I came up with a few thoughts on the pros and cons of making a software project focused on the Chinese market.

A couple of the benefits:

1. If you base your engineering in China, talent is cheaper to recruit. From salary numbers that I’ve heard, I estimate that it is six times cheaper to hire an engineer in China vs. the US. This means you can stretch out an angel round for a year or two. Although we did not take advantage of this perk, many of our friends have talked about it.
2. The potential market is large. The number of Chinese internet users rose 42% in 2008 and now surpasses the size of the American internet population. This number is also growing more quickly in China than the global average, especially in rural areas.

A few thoughts on the challenges:

1. CPM from AdSense and other sponsored ads are often lower on Chinese-language sites. This is a common way for smaller sites to generate income, so it can be a hurdle. However, other methods of income (virtual goods, lead generation) are as viable in the Chinese market. Our site employs both Adsense and lead generation.
2. The best products are made by people who understand the customer. Some developers have voiced a concern that they lack this intuitive knowledge of what draws a Chinese user to the site. The most visible manifestation centers around how Chinese web sites appear cluttered with links compared to most American web 2.0 sites.

There are other perks and obstacles that I haven’t addressed. If you have thoughts on this subject, please chime in on the comments!

Niniane is the co-creator of hotelfoo.com. Previously she worked as an engineering manager at Microsoft and Google. She resides in Mountain View, California.

You may have read a few weeks ago that Current.TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling (sister of Lisa Ling), were detained in North Korea, as their guide reportedly lead the two across the border into North Korea accidentally while Lee and Ling were reporting on North Korean defectors crossing the border into China. The incident has now escalated: Lee and Ling have been imprisoned and interrogated the past few weeks and now being charged by the North Korean government, according to reports:

“Two American journalists detained in North Korea will be indicted and tried on charges of perpetrating “hostile acts” against the Communist state, a crime punishable by years in a labor camp, the North’s state-run news agency reported on Tuesday. Pyongyang’s decision to put Laura Ling and Euna Lee on trial signaled that the regime has no intention of freeing them soon.”

I’ve always been fascinated by North Korea, and it’s easy to make fun of Kim Jung Il, but its incidents like this that continue to reinforce in my mind that North Korea is one of the most dangerous and unpredictable governments and regimes in the world. North Korea has always been, in my mind, a more dangerous threat to stability than Iraq and Iran and have demonstrated that since the detonation of a nuclear weapon back in 2006. Since the United States doesn’t have direct diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the U.S. is going through Sweden, which does have an embassy in Pyongyang, to resolve this issue. I’m not sure what we as Americans can do to help in the release of Lee and Ling, but my prayers are certainly with them and their families and their hopeful safe and quick return.

This past weekend, Korean Hip-Hop group Epik High independently released their new book/album Map the Soul via their website.  Similar to Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows which was released on their website and allowed each fan to pay as little or as much as they want, the release of Map the Soul is a celebration of their fans, the freedom of independent music, and the arts.  It’s quickly been heralded as a success for those very reasons; the loyalty these guys show to their fans is ridiculous. They remain true to their art despite their success and it’s very admirable.

Even though I don’t personally understand or speak Korean, Epik High remains one of my favorite groups because their music translates beyond the barriers of language.  You can hear the emotion and dedication they put into the work just by listening to the way they rap or their rhymes.

So to say that I was a bit disappointed when I heard this is sort of an understatement. Warning: There is explicit language in the following clip.

It addresses a similar issue addressing racial satire posted by Yan and begs the question: when does racially motivated humor — or any humor involving race, sexual orientation, gender, and so on — stop being funny and become offensive?  I personally find Carlos Mencia to be offensive, but I find Russell Peters and Dave Chappelle to be funny due to the way they present their material, but if you don’t buy that, Thea Lim at Racialicious posts on why she thinks Russell Peters stopped being funny and became offensive in his newest act, and I buy it. Thea claims that when the “jokes” lack a certain punchline, they become inappropriate and inadequate blows at certain behavior and stereotypes of a certain group of people; the joke isn’t the refusal to help the man with his t-shirt order — that wouldn’t be very funny and would be quite mean — but in the man’s accent and their interpretation and play off that man’s accent. I think this skit is inherently offensive and not funny. It is a “joke” without a punchline.

This reaffirms two beliefs for me: that the line between humor and offensiveness is ridiculously gray and is dependent upon very vague and unspecific guidelines of both race and humor, and that the term “Asian American” is way too broad.  We don’t notice it when Russell Peters does it because we categorize South Asians differently from East Asians. (And let’s be honest, not many people do.) But here, it’s a conflict between Koreans/Korean Americans and Chinese/Chinese Americans, and while we have many cultural similarities, there are also countless cultural and lingual barriers. Tanzila Ahmed, AngryAsianMan’s reader of the week criticizes those “Folks doing APIA work that doesn’t include South Asian or Pacific Islander groups, but still [claim] that they are pan-APIA.”  I don’t make that claim, but I should and am going to start to be more aware (the first step was to visit a community blog she is a part of, Sepia Mutiny).

But does this mean we should start independent struggles and fights for social justice? No, but there should be a greater awareness of the cultural differences between the sub-categories of “Asian American.”  Does that mean I hate Epik High or, like Tommy Brothers — responsible for the Dartmouth mishap — think that they are “hateful” or “racist?” No, Epik High has great music, and the average citizen of the world probably couldn’t care less and would probably scoff at this post, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong.

Supporters of Proposition 8 in California argued that it didn’t take away any rights from same sex couples, and couples could still get domestic partnerships. This was of course little comfort to the 18,000+ couples that already married in California after the California Supreme Court made same sex marriages legal in 2008. While same sex marriage in California didn’t provide the ability for same sex partners to sponsor a spouse for immigration to the United States, there was hope it would bring that possibility one step closer to reality. This week that hope faded for one California Bay Area couple. Jay Mercado and her partner Shirley Tan were informed that Shirley would be deported on April 3, separating her from her partner of 23 years and their 12 year old twin boys. It wasn’t due to lack of trying on their part. The couple had started petitioning for Shirley, a citizen of the Philippines, to stay in the U.S. in 1995, and had married under California’s short-lived summer of marriage, but without same sex marriage recognition under federal law, the U.S. government ordered Shirley’s deportation.

It’s tragic enough a couple of 23 years is going to be split apart, but I can’t even imagine how it’s affecting their 12 year old twin boys who have known Jay and Shirley as their two parents for their entire lives. Congress is considering changing immigration laws to allow “permanent partners” apply for residency, but it’s too late for this couple, and it still faces an uphill battle before it becomes law.

If you can’t tell, I’m an avid supporter of same sex marriage, and not only because of immigration rights. I’m in a same sex marriage with my partner of seven years and we have a daughter that we brought into the world together who is fast approaching four years of age. Our own status is in limbo with Proposition 8, but even without it, I have plenty to worry about.

Every time my partner goes on a trip with our daughter, I wonder if they’ll get harassed at the airport, if they’ll even be able to get on the airplane together. We have yet to take our daughter on an international trip, but already I wonder if we’ll be able to make it back into the United States. In an attempt to reduce travel hassles, I make them travel with a copy of our daughter’s birth certificate, which lists me as the father, and my partner Lars as the mother (in California, surrogacy allows same sex parents to be the “parents of record” on the birth certificate, but unfortunately the certificate itself is a bit outdated).

Under current U.S. law, you cannot take a minor outside the U.S. without the consent of both parents. International travel is actually easier if only one of us travels with our daughter, as that parent can carry a notarized page from the other stating it was okay for the two to travel outside the U.S. I know of another gay couple who are both legally the parents of their kids, and on coming into the U.S. from Mexico were repeatedly harassed by the immigration personnel asking the two women, where the “father” of the children was. In the end they got back in the U.S., but you have to wonder what their kids thought through the entire ordeal. Because of harassment like this, I’ve even heard it recommended that if you travel as a family, that you go through customs separately, one parent with a notarized letter with the child/children, and the other parent by themselves.

Updated immigration laws to recognize same sex relationships wouldn’t solve these problems by itself, but it would help establish equal recognition, and perhaps reduce cases like Shirley and Jay’s, where no one has argued, it’s the children who have suffered the most from outdated laws.

My friend works for OASES (Oakland Asian Students Educational Services), a non-profit org geared towards empowering youth who have limited resources, particularly those in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities of Oakland through providing educational services and social support. Help support their 1-week fundraising drive which ends this Tuesday.

OASES is out to win the Razoo March Goodness Contest, where you can donate to OASES and help secure a $10,000 grant for their youth.

With your support, your simple $10 dollar donation to OASES could potentially be turned into $10,000 dollars! Their goal is to have over 500 supporters before the March 31 deadline; go to www.oases.org and click on the “March Goodness” donate now button.

Please share this cause with friends and family. OASES thanks you for your support!

People that go to Yale University live in another Universe. While most students at other school are clearly content with beating their own pledges (or killing the pledges at other fraternities), undergrads at Yale join weird fucking societies with skulls on them, and the rest join a capella groups. The Mixed Company of Yale is one such singing group, and a recently released “parody video” of Beyonce’s Single Ladies — called Single Asians — surfaced to the general WTFness of the Internet. Moye posted the link to the e-mail list, where it received the following response:

Moye: Is this old? I’ve never seen it before. It’s like the unfunniest thing ever.
Joz: I give it 9 lame points on a scale of 6.
John: Ha ha ha… I think this is hilarious. The women aren’t great dancers, but I like the concept and give an A for effort… even if the execution isn’t so great.
Christine: WOW, why do I feel like I’ve just been thrown back to early 90’s HK pop? And we ALL know how bad that is. Unfortunately, I don’t even find it clever enough to label it parody. I’m with Joz, what was the point of this anyway?
Andy: “We from Beijing, we dry cleaning, and practice viorin” I think I’m in luv.
Moye: Don’t you mean “ruv?”
Andy: lulz.

My $0.02: never mind the fact that I’m the editor of a blog about Asian American issues; you meet me in person and I’m probably one of the most politically incorrect people you’ve ever met. Of course, context has to be applied for when stuff is or isn’t appropriate, but my general rule is that if it’s really funny, a lot can slide me without being offensive. And guess what? This isn’t funny at all; it’s cringe-worthy and doesn’t pull off the irony and sarcasm of other parody videos. And the girl on the left is totally off.

PS: Also, black prom dresses? Really? Do they not have Bedazzlers in New Haven?

Those who talk to me on a regular basis know that I’ve spent far too much time sequestered at home satisfying my obsessive interest in culinary adventures by watching a crapload of Food TV.

And then you’ll hear me talk shit about Bobby Flay.

My husband thinks I dislike him because he wears a gold watch. He might be right.

Bobby Flay must have it in his contract that he’s not allowed to lose any notable battles of Iron Chef America but thankfully loses the occasional Throwdown. My bias against Bobby Flay comes from a long term resentment-filled grudge of seeing him on an episode of Iron Chef Japan where at the end of the battle he jumps up on his cutting board with his shoes on and was dressed down by Morimoto for being a shithead that doesn’t properly respect the sacred nature of his tools and profession as chef. Yo Morimoto, you and me, looking eye to eye.

So during Iron Chef America, I endlessly roll my eyes at Bobby Flay and overlay Alton Brown’s commentary with me shouting at the television:

“Ooh, let me create a tamale with that and… ummm, put mango salsa on that.”
“Let me guess: put a fucking chipotle ragu of some fucksauce on top of that.”
“Oh shit, let me guess — you’re going to put some fucking avocado cilantro aioli on that. Again.”

I’m so not a fan of him.

But I do admit that I enjoy watching him in Throwdown!. Why? Because the show exemplifies his douchiness. The concept of the show is this: Bobby Flay travels the country to try and show up regional experts in their various dishes of expertise. And it’s not like he even does the research or work by himself but instead has two kitchen techs/recipe testers effectively look up and do all the legwork for him. And his cocky ass then goes up and issues a throwdown.

How delighted am I when he gets his ass served.

Favorite episodes seen recently where Bobby Flay loses?

• Dumpling Throwdown (Winner: The adorable pink cheeked Sohui Kim)
• Sushi Throwdown (Winner: Philip Yi. Flay fucks up the rice. Badly. After Getting tips from Morimoto.)
• Pad Thai Throwdown (Winner: Nongkran Dak)
• Chocolate Bread Pudding Throwdown (Winners: Jerome Chang and Chris Chen)

Do I enjoy these episodes more because it’s Asian American cooks beating his ass down? Quite possibly, because you can’t put a fucking tamale into Asian cuisine. (Okay, the bread pudding is clearly not of Asian cooking tradition, but that was still hella fun to watch.)

When I was growing up, I always wondered where the Asian American superheroes were. I wasn’t a comic book junkie, but I was a fan of Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday comics, and the occasional comic book. In college I discovered and fell in love with the Watchmen comic book series and later discovered X-Men. But even then I didn’t find the Asian superhero I was looking for. So, it was a delight to read about the upcoming Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology.

The anthology includes contributions from Greg Pak, Bernard Chang, Gene Yang and Christine Norrie. Greg Pak is no stranger to Marvel Comics having worked on previous titles including Ironman and The Incredible Hulk. Bernard Chang has also worked on titles such as X-Men and Wonder Woman. Gene Yang previously published a graphic novel titled American Born Chinese. Christine Norrie is the creator of the graphic novel Cheat.

Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology is scheduled to release on April 15th. I fully expect to have my copy in hand soon after. Now if I only had some superhero power to go with it.