8 Asians

My 4th of July* is usually associated with fireworks, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, concerts, baseball games, and various other events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the good ol’ US of A. If I hadn’t already made plans to be with family this July 4th, then I’d definitely be at the Ford Amphitheatre. Why?

This 4th of July marks the first US performance by South Korean pop legend Shin Hae Chul and his band N.EX.T. at the Ford.

One of Korea’s most famous celebrities, Shin Hae Chul is regarded as a “genius” of Korean music who, along with his younger cousin Seo Taiji, transformed the Korean music industry in 1992, paving the way for the contemporary K-Pop genre. Shin Hae Chul is known for his musical experimentation, artistic excellence, controversy, and has often been compared to John Lennon.

His progressive stance on social and politic issues, including the legalization of marijuana, government control of the school system, and North Korea, has made the “Prince of Darkness” a liberal icon in South Korea, a radical voice representing a significant portion of the population. N.EX.T. (New Experimental Team) is widely acknowledged as Korea’s greatest and most exciting live rock band, known for the ability to switch through a multitude of genres.

Presented by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and Asiatic Empire, Shin Hae Chul and N.E.X.T. will appear at the historic Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, on Saturday, July 4, 2009 for one night only.

Out of respect for the recent death of former South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun, who had a close relationship with Shin Hae Chul, N.EX.T. canceled all of its shows in Korea. So the only chance to see N.EX.T. this summer is actually at this performance.

Los Angeles is the first stop of these artists’ Awakening World Tour, but expect a solid turn-out as L.A. has the largest Korean community outside of Korea. I know from personal experience in attending concerts and performances of Korean artists that the community does come out to support. Regardless, this show is not just for the Korean community but for anyone who appreciates world music and wants to enjoy the rare treat of one of the best international rock bands that has never played in America.

If you’re curious about the music of the band, below you can access the mp3s of the songs they will be performing on July 4. Anyone can access the songlist and the mp3 soundfiles to the songs by:
1. Go to www.webhard.co.kr
2. Log in by typing in => id: humanent, pass: hm1021501
3. The directory to the info is => home/guest folder/20090704 N.EX.T in L.A.

Our friends at Asiatic Empire have kindly offered up a pair of tickets to this one-night-only event!

What you could win: a pair of free tickets to the one-night only performance of Shin Hae Chul and N.EX.T.
Saturday, 7/4/09, 7:30PM PDT
Ford Amphitheatre
Los Angeles, CA, USA

How do you enter?
Simply leave a short comment stating why you’d like to see this show. (Be sure to use the email address you’d like to be contacted at if you’re the winner.)

Hurry, the deadline to enter is: Thursday, July 2 at 11:59 pm
One lucky winner will be randomly selected and contacted on Friday morning.

Rules for entering:
1) Please be in the Los Angeles area (or willing to travel to LA on your own dime) and serious about using these tickets; if you’re too busy to use these, please don’t take them away from someone who will!
2) Tickets are non-transferrable; they are good for you and a guest.
3) Contributors to 8Asians and their immediate family members are not eligible to win.

Prize courtesy of: Asiatic Empire

*Happy Canada Day on July 1, Canadian friends!

By Vannie

A couple of years ago back in high school, I attended the National Association of Independent Schools/Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Miami. The purpose of this three to four day conference was to reinforce our racial identities through participating in “privilege” activities and brainstorming ways on how to improve diversity at our schools. Four of us represented our upper-class white school — but by some strange stroke of chance, we came to evenly distribute each race: One black, one Latina, one white, and me. We were divided into different groups; first randomly, then by race. Of course, I had no crisis figuring out where to go. In our Asian caucus, we divvied up charts taped throughout the room for us freely to scribble on stereotypes associated with the names: “Asian dating,” “Asian parents,” and one that stood out to me: “East Coast vs. West Coast Asian-Americans”.

As I was baffled on what that meant, I skipped that poster. At the end when all permanent markers dried out from our verbal rants, I saw that the majority of the comments described East Coast Asians as “ghetto” and poor, who “don’t spend our parents’ money,” while West Coast Asians were materialistic and rich, and “more Americanized”. Since I was born a NYC’er (which I guess automatically makes me a hardcore East Coast Asian-American), I replayed visually the few times I visited Los Angeles and San Francisco; I remembered noticing that many Asian girls on the street did carry Gucci and Prada purses, and the boys were mostly nicely dressed with gelled hair.

But is there really a sub-culture I’m not aware of? If there is, is it due to oh, maybe the siren-inducing obsession with celebrity in plastic Hollywood? I know these are stereotypes, but all stem from some truth. I mean, I can safely assume that there are more Japanese in Los Angeles than New York. Right? What do you think?

About Vannie: I’m a 20-year old Taiwanese-American female residing in New York City. I like to call myself an AAA (Aspiring Asian-American Activist.)

“Maybe we can see Kevjumba!”

The Daughter was excited about that possibility of meeting the YouTube star Kevin Wu as we neared U.C. Davis.    I had a meeting there with a graduate student who I collaborate with on research, and since the Daughter was thinking about our fearless leader’s Alma mater as a prospective college, I brought her along.  She was disappointed when I told her that the possibility of meeting Kevjumba would be zero, because as he points out in this video, he’s back home for the summer.  What’s interesting about that video is that it isn’t in his usual channel kevjumba, but it’s in a new channel called the JumbaFund where all of his YouTube proceeds for that channel go to a charity of the viewers’ choice.

We talked before about the lack of Asians in the mainstream media and stereotyping of those who are there.  We have also talked about young Asian-Americans are using social media and sites like YouTube that enable them to create works that include and speak to them.  The results from the JumbaFund channel show that this new generation is really making some headway and getting some clout, at least financially.  Kevjumba is making some serious money for a college student.  May proceeds for the JumbaFund channel were $1708.  Given that his regular channel (kevjumba) has almost 3 times the number of subscribers, if you extrapolate the number of subscribers to income as a guestimate, he is pulling in $5K a month.  There are other estimates that says he is making even more than that.  It’s great to see him share some of his wealth with charity.  The charity that got the most votes in May was St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  College students didn’t make that kind of money or engage in philanthropy on that scale when I was an undergrad.

The Daughter liked U.C. Davis and is seriously considering it.  As you can see in the Jumba fund video embedded above, U.C. Davis has Asian American Studies classes, with guest lecturers like Kevjumba.  I wish my university had Asian American studies courses when I was an undergrad.  Sadly, it still doesn’t, more than 20 years after I graduated.  As you can see at 2:52, U.C. Davis has girls getting freaky in class.  My university never had that when I was an undergrad!

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend a fundraiser for Garrett Yee, Candidate for California State Assembly, District 20 (which encompasses Fremont, Newark, Union City, Milpitas, parts of Hayward, Castro Valley, Pleasanton and San Jose). The current Assembly member, Alberto Torrico, will be termed out at the end of 2012.

Yee has served the community in a variety of elected and non-elected capacities; he has been involved in the Army Reserves since 1987, and was deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It’s not often you see Asian Americans involved in the armed forces, and in keeping in touch with Otto Lee — a former Mayor of Sunnyvale currently staying in Iraq — I’ve come to appreciate what the great sacrifice that those in the military have to make while those serving in harms way.

Best of luck to Garrett! I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about him as the November 2010 elections are just around the corner.

For many students, June is a month that signifies the end of the school year and the beginning of summer. In the case of graduating students, the end of the school year means the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one. Unfortunately, the lives of two Caltech students were recently cut short as they were both victims of suicide shortly before the end of the term.

Sadly, senior Jackson Ho-Leung Wang, a mechanical engineering student from Hong Kong, died in his dorm room less than 48 hours before he was to receive his diploma, according to the article from the LA Times. His suicide followed that of junior Brian Go, a computer science and applied and computational mathematics major from Maryland who died just three weeks earlier.

A little about the two students, taken directly from other sites on the internet:
Jackson Wang [via HKSA, presumably written by himself in third person]:

Jackson (or Jack, take your pick) is just a regular Caltech student going about his normal business. During the year, half of his time is spent on pointless computations of stresses and strains. To cope with depression from inability to carry out these computations, he is known to escape to his favorite retreat, at the piano, to play 20th and 21st century classical music for hours on end, so at any given moment chances are he will be found there. He has also been observed to drown himself with boxes of Vitasoy. For a bit of trivia, insiders’ information has shown that he is prone to making random statements in French. If you are in the mood to please, a dish of authentic Kung Pao chicken has been shown to suffice, although in the case that all you have is the fake, you would be well advised to hold back.

Brian Go [via his own website]:

•I read Reddit, Reddit: Programming, and The Washington Post.
•I drive a 1974 Vespa 150 VBC Super.
•I listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Third Eye Blind, Angels and Airwaves, Maná, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Maroon 5, among others.
•I enjoy fencing and playing drums.
•My favorite books are For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Great Gatsby.
•I am an Eagle Scout from NCAC Boy Scout Troop 255.
•I am an avid player of the board game Diplomacy. My play record (all in-house games) is below.
-Aug 08 (Loss (England) to France, Germany, England).
-Jun 08 (Win: Austria, England, France),
-Mar 08 (Win: England, Russia, Austria, Turkey),
-Feb 08 (Win: Italy, England, Austria),
-Jan 08 (Win: Germany, Austria, France, Turkey),
-Dec 07 (Win: England, Austria, Turkey).

According to the L.A. Times:

In recent years, campus mental health problems have been rising nationally, a product of the growing stress of university life and the increasing number of students who arrive at college already under treatment for mental illness, university psychologists and officials say. Across the country, about 1,300 college students a year commit suicide, experts say.

Caltech has extensive counseling and suicide prevention services, and students seek help with problems ranging from mood and anxiety disorders to breakups.

Both of these suicides highlight the importance of an “institutional safety net” that schools should provide to for students in need of help. We may never know what motivated these two young men to take their own lives, but suicide is a recurring topic here on 8Asians because it is something that seems to afflict our community over and over again.

Condolences to the friends and loved ones of both Jackson and Brian; may they rest in peace.

h/t: Liz Fong

I’ve already written a couple posts about Lt. Dan Choi and his organization Knights Out that’s fighting the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that prohibits openly gay servicemen from serving their country.  Lt. Choi, a graduate of West Point that speaks fluent Arabic, was a translator (among other things) serving overseas.  He was discharged in May for violating the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and is heading into trial on Tuesday.  He is now asking for the public’s help in the form of a letter.  Please, please spend some time to hand-write a letter and e-mail it to Lt. Choi to show your support of his effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.  I know I am a bit behind and there are only a couple of days left before the trial, but every letter counts!

For more information: http://ltdanchoi.com/id4.html

Given yesterday’s news about Michael Jackson’s death, it only seems appropriate on this Friday afternoon to post Jane Lui’s tribute to the gloved one in the form of You Are Not Alone with an Ave Maria Gregorian Chant. She gives an absolutely haunting performance.

There’s a scene in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, where one of the moms is preparing a crab dinner with her daughter. There’s just enough crabs so that each person gets one, but one of the crabs is too small, and appears to have spoiled. The daughter notes that her Chinese friend and her Caucasian boyfriend take the largest crabs, while her mom, takes the small, spoiled one, but doesn’t touch it through out dinner. It’s a memorable scene for me, because that mom could have easily have been my mom. My mom would never really eat until she was sure everyone else had their share. She’d make everyone else take the best pieces of food, and only take the smaller less desirable pieces for herself.

I was taken down memory lane this week because of a cryptic blog post titled Asian People Only at Resist Racism. It was a blog post by an Asian who talked about how she recently had her mom over for dinner, and some unexpected dinner guests showed up. She whispered to her mom just before dinner, asking her to say she wasn’t hungry (and not eat) if it appeared there wouldn’t be enough food. This request probably seems benign and normal to anyone from an Asian household, but may seem strange or impolite to anyone else. But in most Asian families, asking a family member to make a sacrifice is perfectly acceptable.

This blogger wrote about her dinner party since she had seen a post over at My Mom is a FOB that was a picture of a piece of paper that an Asian auntie had left on everyone’s plate at a dinner party. For most people that paper was probably indecipherable, but interestingly enough quite a few of the Asian commenters knew exactly what it meant. It was request to dinner attendees (probably all family) to take no more than 3 pieces of fish each. That kind of request is certainly not uncommon between family members, and I remember my mom making this type of request to me when we’ve had guests over for dinner, to make sure our guests had their pick of the best food first.

These posts and stories reminded me how there aren’t as many boundaries in Asian families, and how acceptable it is to have family members make sacrifices for one another.