Asian-Nation.org, run by Professor C.N Le of UMass Amherst recently reprinted a statistical study of college campuses from 9 years ago regarding Asian/Asian American student population, splitting schools amongst “Top Universities” and “Top Liberal Arts Colleges.” The “best” university for Asian Americans is the University of Hawaii (which is unsurprising considering that Hawaiian natives are technically Pacific Islanders), and the “best” liberal arts college is Pomona College, its sister schools Claremont McKenna College and Scripps College aren’t far off at rank number 7 and 19, respectively.
As a college student, I can say with some confidence that these numbers tell less than half the story. While there may be a bunch of Asian American students at various campuses across America (especially on the West Coast), it does not mean that they are active in discussions about race or participate in Asian American clubs. I know from personal experience that a high number of Asian American students or Asian American clubs do not necessarily translate to dialogue or debate; in fact I attend a college on the top 15 list and felt very much ostracized because I didn’t think there was enough discussion about race. Another quick note is that Harvard, Dartmouth, and Tufts, the three college campuses that had some noticeable controversy involving Asian American in the past year, are not in the Top 25 for universities or liberal art colleges. However, take the information with a grain of salt as the statistics could have very much changed within the last 9 years.
Therefore, to update that list Angry Asian Man and the Asian Pacific Americans for Progress is calling out for nominations for the “best” college for Asian Americans. I share because I worry that race relations have taken a backseat on many college campuses and that more and more students are becoming apathetic about race when it is still a pressing issue. Therefore I request that all students who have the time and opportunity to nominate their school do so; if you feel like you are struggling to answer some of these questions, it’s because your college should be doing a lot more! I just submitted my school.. you should do the same!
(Flickr photo credit: Paul Keleher)
Subscribe to our mailing list
Get the day's stories from 8Asians.com, delivered to your inbox every evening at 6:00pm PST.
When you’re the parent of a toddler, there’s something you share with the parents of all the other young children out there in the world. You know who Dora the Explorer is, and you can probably name most of her extended family as well. Dora is an interesting cross-over phenomenon because every pre-schooler knows her, regardless of their race, ethnicity or primary language. It’s because of Dora, my daughter speaks more Spanish than she does Chinese. Given the widespread success of Dora, it was no surprise when Nickelodeon announced a new children’s cartoon, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan featuring a character who speaks Chinese (Mandarin) words sprinkled in with her English.
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan has been around since February of 2008, and has only recently started to gain in popularity. The show features a pre-school aged Chinese girl, named Kai-lan, her animal friends, and her grandfather, Ye-ye. The show not only sprinkles in Chinese words here and there, it also occasionally sings songs in Chinese. I’ve put the show on for my daughter since it aired, trying to get her to pick up more Chinese, but she still favors Dora to Kai-lan. The recent introduction of Kai-lan toys and clothes wear by Target has helped move her closer to the Kai-lan camp. (And my buying her those toys and clothes hasn’t hurt either.)
I’m hoping the introduction of a new episode, titled Kai-Lan’s Great Trip to China will move her even closer. My daughter’s started asking about going to China (since I’ve gotten her to self-identify as Chinese), and I think this episode will really interest her. Right now her favorite episode, features Ye-ye singing the Chinese nursery rhyme about two tigers (the one sung to the tune of Frère Jacques). She loves it because I sing that song to her, and it’s the only song I know in Chinese.
So if you got a little one, you can join Kai-lan as she travels across China to find presents for Baby Panda’s naming party, when it airs on August 14, 2009 at 10:00AM (ET/PT) on Nickelodeon.
Shopping With GASP!
We all rejoiced together when Euna Lee and Laura Ling were safely returned home. And I’m sure most of us wept and worried with their loved ones when we weren’t sure what would happen to our two journalists. A few weeks ago, Mallika Chopra of The Huffington Post wrote how Euna Lee’s captivity was affecting Euna Lee’s husband and his daughter. Chopra writes poignantly about the struggle Michael had in keeping things as normal as possible for his daughter. Even though we have seen the beginning of the happy-ending to this story, I thought this was a worthy read for us to be reminded of the lives that were affected by North Korea’s imprisonment of Euna Lee and Laura Ling and the long road ahead for their families to recover from the trauma.
Where do the little people of Philippines go when faced with discrimination and persecution on the streets of Manila? Why, they traipse over to Jim Turner’s bar, Hobbit House, where they can find equal employment and treatment as staff, waiters, bartenders and even new family members. Or so they say in this riveting LA Times piece about Turner’s decades old bar stylized after Tolkien’s popular Lord of the Rings trilogy with a devoted following among locals and tourists.
Before you jump to conclusions about Turner exploiting dwarves for late night entertainment and profit, many of his friends have vouched for his well intentions. A former Peace Corps member, Turner has continually protected and aided an often overlooked population in Manila,
[Jim Turner] has provided many of his workers with loans and housing and has paid tuitions. Several years ago, he gave them something perhaps even more precious: the Hobbit House itself.
He founded a corporation, naming seven of his employees the main stockholders. Now they make the decisions and call the shots. From his perch at the bar, Turner watches over the business as a consultant and takes only enough salary to pay his bills.
I, too, was first skeptical of Turner’s intentions towards little people, but my perception changed when I realized he had turned his successful Hobbit House over to his own employees, giving them an opportunity to control, decide and profit from their own hard work.
The only question I raise, then, is whether or not the premise of Hobbit House still counts as exploitation. The bar’s employees seem happy to use their own small stature as a form of entertainment and income, but where do you draw the line between making full use of your own body and allowing others to use your body as entertainment? Would I feel comfortable if I found refuge in a Japanese maid cafe and made money off by dressing up in a schoolgirl outfit? (Is that job available? Please forward all openings to me ASAP.)
I guess it’s hard to say, since I personally have never experienced life as a dwarf, especially one growing up in the Philippines. So I won’t critique their personal hardship and decision to work for Turner, and conclude that hey, if they’re happy, all is well. It’s great that this oft overlooked community is tied to such an awesomely historic dive bar. And as I like to say, when life throws you lemons, read J.R.R. Tolkien.
“Crazy Fucked Up Bitch” Official Uncut Version from People Pictures on Vimeo.
It probably goes without saying that this post and all related items may be NSFW, so consider yourself warned.
I know we’re not able to cover every single Asian American thing out there, but I’m shocked that we haven’t mentioned the upcoming feature film The People I’ve Slept With yet. I promise we will cover the film itself in more detail as screenings start to happen, but for now you should know that the movie is a modern sex comedy about a promiscuous woman whose motto is: “a slut is nothing more than a woman with the morals of a man.” Starring Karin Anna Cheung, Wilson Cruz, Archie Kao, Lynn Chen, and James Shigeta (with 8Asians favorite Randall Park as “Mr Nice But Boring”), I love the trailer and can’t wait to see the film.
In the meantime, a couple of music videos from the movie have been released, but the second one, “Crazy F*cked Up B*tch,” was recently banned by YouTube because it features singer/songwriter the Fabulous Miss Wendy and lead actress Karin Anna Cheung — who plays the character Angela Yang — engaging in simulated sex. (If that doesn’t get people to click on the video above, I don’t know what will!) According to YouTube, the video was “removed due to terms of use violation.”
Stanley Yung, the producer of the film, admits that “it was a little risqué but there was no frontal nudity and nothing you couldn’t see on TV.” He believes the issue is bigger than just this video. “We are not only upset by the unjustified deletion but also appalled that our freedom of speech and creative expression has been censored.” He wonders what other videos get regularly deleted. The filmmakers are asking that their video be allowed to play on YouTube again.
The filmmakers of The People I’ve Slept With are committed to an open and frank discussion of sex between consenting adults. Quentin Lee, the director and producer of the film, said that “It’s silly that we still face so much sexual and moral repression in this day and age.”
I spoke to writer/producer Koji Steven Sakai about it over the weekend and asked if they were planning on cutting a version of the video specifically for YouTube. He said that there were no current plans to do so, but said that they did do a version that was for Logo, so a “YouTube cut” could possibly be in the future. (Of course, you can see the uncut video on their site, so who needs YouTube?)
Last year, the filmmakers had put out a call for photos, looking for people to submit pictures of themselves as if they had been one of Angela’s lovers. I asked if there were a lot of responses to this and Koji said that several hundred people did submit photos of themselves and that many of the photos will be seen in the movie or during the credits. Now I’m wondering if I’ll recognize anyone in these pix!
If you missed that chance to be a part of the film you can still be a part of the dialogue. The filmmakers launched “The Most Memorable Person I’ve Slept With” video contest — where people can share with the world their most unforgettable sexual experience which promises to yield some interesting responses. I personally don’t like seeing myself on video, but I challenge you to put yourself on tape on this topic!
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animation, Ponyo, officially opens in the States this Friday, August 14th. Already the 8th highest grossing film in Japan’s box office history, Ponyo follows a new interpretation of The Little Mermaid, where the love for a kind human boy allows a magical fish to transform herself into a human girl. But rather than illustrating the romance between the two (no, there’s no marriage contract), Miyazaki takes a more child-oriented approach to the Hans Christian Andersen tale, highlighting the transforming power and strength of Ponyo’s love to overcome personal obstacles.
So warning to fans if you’re looking for a fantastic eye candy story like Nausicaa or Spirited Away: I thought Ponyo lacked the depth usually found in Miyazaki’s movies. I was a bit surprised at how he handled the plot of Ponyo, since he is so well known for his story-telling skills and even spoke at Comic-Con 09 about his process. The film’s ending left much to be desired, but as always, Miyazaki’s art, talent and message prevails in this new storybook tale about a young girl (literally) transforming a boy’s life.
This may be Disney’s first attempt to bring a Studio Ghibli film to the masses (sadly, only in its dubbed version) but my fingers are crossed that the American audience will respond well. With Ponyo coming out this week and The Princess and the Frog sometime December 2010, maybe we can also hope to see a return to hand drawn animation! (Please? There’s only so much Pixar I can take.)
I’ll just let Minneapolis-based Star Tribune Thomas Lee do the talking on this one: “I went to Fridley to interview the president of a large manufacturing company. I arrived a few minutes before noon and told the receptionist at the front desk I was looking for the president’s executive assistant. ‘Oh. Are you delivering food?’ she asked. Oh, no, she didn’t! [...] I was wearing a dress shirt, black slacks and black dress shoes. True, I was sporting a backpack and sunglasses, but how many food delivery guys whip out kung pao chicken from a Gap bag?” I don’t know, Thomas; maybe it was a really classy Chinese restaurant. Oh no she di’int, indeed. (h/t: @rohnjaymiller)
The other night, I caught actor/doctor Ken Jeong on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. It only seemed like a few months ago I saw Ken in The Hangover and I thought the movie was hilarious, although I have second thoughts about how Ken’s role in that movie portrays Asian Americans. Well, Ken is in another movie this summer The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard, opening on August 14th.
Ken always seems to be a bit hyper when on late night television, so it boggles my mind to think that he used to be a physician – he must have really restrained himself when he was practicing. Now that Ken is a full-time actor, he’s making the most of his success and apparently will be one of the main characters in NBC’s new series this fall titled, Community. Best of luck to Ken!
UPDATE: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS… this was meant for my personal blog. But it’s here now, and rather than deleting it, I hope you all had a happy 8/8, even if you don’t celebrate “Ba-Ba Day.” (Please file this under “Joz sucks” or just “FAIL.” Sorry, Ernie!)
8/8 (Eight-Eight in Mandarin is pronounced “ba-ba.” Father in Mandarin is also pronounced “ba-ba”) is Father’s Day in Taiwan. Even though we refer to him as “Dad” in English, 95% of the time, we called him “Ba-Ba.” Usually, my Dad would be in Taiwan at this time of year, so I would have to remember to call him on 8/7 so I could wish him a happy Ba-Ba Day on the right day.
Happy Ba-Ba Day, Dad.
We miss you.
I originally couldn’t remember where this picture was taken. I knew that it was taken on October 7, 2004, and thanks to my blog, I was able to go back figure out the context of this photo. I think this was taken in Rowland Heights, just before my Dad was going to get on to a shuttle bus that would have taken him to LAX to board a flight back to Taiwan.
UPDATE: Comments are closed and the winner is being contacted… announcement to follow in the next couple of days!
Those of you who can’t take advantage of our Asian American Arts Stimulus Package 2 giveaway, pay attention on how you can score a free goodie from 8Asians!
Lily and I both blogged about how much we enjoyed Ping Pong Playa and if you didn’t heed our advice to watch it at your local film fest, or if you weren’t able to see it for some other reason, now you have no excuse!
Ping Pong Playa is out on DVD, BluRay and Amazon VOD. Even better yet, Angry Asian Man tipped us off to an Amazon sale on indie DVDs so the PPP DVD is only $5.99 (regularly $14.98) for a limited time. I say you should buy a copy to lock in your awesome deal and then enter our 8Asians giveaway… if you win, gift your original DVD to a friend!
What you could win from 8Asians: one Ping Pong Playa DVD with a PERSONALIZED AUTOGRAPH by PPP star Jimmy Tsai! I will also provide photographs of Jimmy signing your DVD for you!
How do you enter?
Simply leave a short comment stating why you want to be chosen as the winner for the DVD. “I haven’t seen it yet” is totally acceptable! (Be sure to use the email address you’d like to be contacted at if you’re the winner. I will contact you to ask you what you want your personalization to be!)
Hurry, the deadline to enter is: Wednesday, August 12 at 11:59 pm (Pacific Time)
One lucky winner will be randomly selected and contacted on Thursday morning.
Rules for entering:
1) Please be in the US or Canada. Sorry, I will not be shipping anywhere else!
2) Please be ready with your personalization request by Thursday if I email you. And don’t be rude or crude in your personalization request; if I deem it offensive, I will give it to someone else.
3) Contributors to 8Asians and their immediate family members are not eligible to win.
Prize courtesy of: 8Asians with special thanks to Jimmy Tsai.
I was just sent this link from Marie Claire entitled The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women and the subhead reads: “Rupert Murdoch has one. So do financiers Vivi Nevo and Bruce Wasserstein. Why are the West’s most powerful men coupling up with younger Asian women?”
“Not another white guy asian girl article,” I thought to myself. I kept reading…
Call it the Woody Allen Effect. When the venerable director scandalously left Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter, South Korean-born Soon-Yi Previn—35 years his junior—he may as well have sent out a press release: Asian-girl fantasy trumps that of Hollywood royalty!
Not two years after they tied the knot, media baron Rupert Murdoch walked down the aisle with fresh-faced Wendi Deng—17 days after finalizing his divorce from his second wife. Then, CBS head Leslie Moonves wed TV news anchor Julie Chen; Oscar winner Nicolas Cage married half-his-age third wife Alice Kim; billionaire George Soros coupled up with violinist Jennifer Chun; and producer Brian Grazer courted concert pianist Chau-Giang Thi Nguyen. Add the nuptials of investment magnate Bruce Wasserstein to fourth wife Angela Chao and the pending vows between venture capitalist Vivi Nevo and Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang, and we’ve got a curious cultural ripple.
Were these tycoons consciously courting Asian babes? Do any of them qualify for the unnerving “yellow fever” or “rice king” moniker? It’s unsavory to think so. But after two or three failed attempts at domestic bliss with women of like background and age, these heavy hitters sought out something different. Something they had likely fetishized.
Enter the doll-faced Asian sylph on the arm of a silver-haired Western suit. (Hello, mail-order bride!) The excruciating colonial stereotypes—Asian women as submissive, domestic, hypersexual—are obviously nothing new. But decades after The World of Suzie Wong hit drive-ins and more than 20 years since David Bowie’s “China Girl” topped the music charts, why are we still indulging them? [full story]
The “Woody Allen Effect?” You mean HE’S the one to blame for this? [/sarcasm]
The article — written by Ying Chu — rehashes a lot of issues that have already been dissected, skewered, and critiqued in countless other publications (fetishization, in particular), but she also cites that globalization as a key reason that “bigwigs [sic] seek Asians.”
Consider that, stateside, Mandarin classes have spiked 200 percent over the past five years (apparently, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was an early adopter; he taught Mandarin classes in his Dartmouth days), and China has claimed status as the world’s top export nation. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell theorizes that Asian kids’ intrinsic work ethic makes them outsmart American kids in math. (In the latest Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development international education survey, Taiwanese students were tops in math, while the U.S. placed 35th.) It’s as though these Western men are hungry for a piece of that mystical Eastern formula. As such, Asians (in addition to African orphans) are hot commodities right about now—status symbols as prized as a private Gulfstream jet or a museum wing bearing your name (neither of which goes so well with a frumpy, aging first wife).
I have a bunch of different reactions to this oft-debated topic. I find Chu’s flagrant mentions of stereotypes (mail-order bride) to be annoying. And I think it’s pretty funny that Chu refers to all these “accomplished Asian women” throughout the article as simply “trophies,” “foxy,” and being “more than exotic arm candy.” By stating as fact that these Asian women are status symbols and commodities, Chu, on one hand, tries to dispell a myth — but she uses the other to confirm it.
But I figured rather than making too many of my own observations, I’d just put it out there for critique and commentary by our readers. Surprisingly, as of this posting, no one has commented at Marie Claire’s site. But over at The Frisky, a post entitled “Asian Trophy Wives”: A Label We Could Do Without is already up, and I couldn’t agree more with that headline.
h/t: @iancollins via Twitter and @GuyKawasaki: How about Asian husbands as trophies?
Flickr photo credit: ©Rubenstein, photographer Martyna Borkowski; used under Creative Commons License
Compared to cities like Singapore, Taipei or even North American cities like New York and Toronto, San Francisco’s street vendor food scene is barely existent, unless you count the bacon-wrapped Hot Dog lady when stumbling out of bars in the Mission at two in the morning. Thanks in part to twitter — and maybe a faint nod to the twittering Kogi BBQ truck in LA — we’re beginning to see signs of life of street food in San Francisco, even if it means we have to be glued to technology to find it. Along with the vendors such as the Magic Curry Cart, Creme Brulee Guy and Sexy Soup Lady comes Jason, otherwise known as The Adobo Hobo; I was able to get a serving of chicken adobo at Dolores Park and ask him some questions.
“The Adobo Hobo?” How did that come about?
That started a week and a half ago, one Friday night. Amy [who manages TAH's communication channels] came up with idea of starting a food cart, and we didn’t know what kind of product we would put out there. I brought up adobo since it was pretty simple and a lot of people are familiar with it. Her boyfriend — my roommate — came up with the name “The Adobo Hobo” … we picked up the cart and things just picked up there.How did the whole idea of twittering the location beforehand come into play?
Amy and [her boyfriend] are a couple of foodies, checking out different places to eat. She’s been following the street vendors on twitter and decided it may be a good opportunity to do it as well.Where are you from?
I live in Hayward; I’m from the East Bay – I grew up in San Lorenzo, Alemeda and Oakland. I might try to do something in the East Bay [down the line], but it’s a lot more street vendor friendly in San Francisco.Do you have much experience with the street food scene? Or at least, eating street food?
There’s been a lot of street carts coming out. For years and years I’ve been going to the taco trucks in Oakland and getting burritos in the middle night or in two in the morning after drinking. [There's the] bacon-wrapped hot dog lady and the creme brulee guy is pretty good as well. There’s been some communication between the vendors [via twitter]; they’re pretty welcoming [and they say] they’re glad I’m out there.To be honest, not a lot of non-Asian people know about adobo is, or do they? Do people look at you all crazy and go “wait, isn’t that some Spanish thing?”
A lot of people will come by and say “oh yeah, chicken adobo,” and if they don’t know, I just say it’s Filipino comfort food. If they like it, they’re welcome to have it … if I get looks, it’s more for curious looks than for disgusted ones.Since the Dolores Park or the Mission — where you’ve been serving food — isn’t exactly Daly City, what are some of the questions you get about the food? And have you changed your family recipe any to cater to the crazy hipsters?
Just a little bit. I made it a little bit healthier – I’m not going to say it’s totally healthy – low sodium soy sauce and I skin the chicken skin off before cooking it, which may be the most tedious part, skimming the fat off.From the business perspective: How much of this pure money business versus a hobby, versus a way to just get some Asian food up in this?
Right now the main thing is getting the food out there in the scene — this is just for fun and a hobby; it’s not really a business, but it can turn into something, you know? [Amy, who's on the interview as well, jumps in here.] We’re all realistic that this isn’t going to last forever, and costs are really lenient but we’re having a lot of fun with this. Especially with the health department requiring people to purchase permits there may be some sort of crackdown, but we’re just trying to ride this out, I guess.True or false: There’s never such thing as too much garlic.
When it looks like you have too much, throw in a little more, I say.
Custom Search
Recent Posts
- What if Jeremy Lin Weren’t Asian?
- Jason Wu’s Target Collection Debuts With Super Bowl XLVI
- Jennifer Yuh Nelson Wins Annie Award for Kung Fu Panda 2
- Report Reveals APA Gay & Lesbian Organizations Only Receive 0.7% Of Available LGBT Funding
- What I Learned From Posting A Dragon Lady Personal Ad
- Hard Boiled Egg Mold for Bento Decoration
- Is Classical Music Alive For Long?
Recent Comments
- : This is stupid, after a civil war, the loser shouldnt be considered a different country. Civil war in America, Ethiopia, Lebanon etc, didn't end with... – NPR / KQED: Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse
- : @Reechard That's my point... If he weren't Asian, he wouldn't matter (as much). My question is this: Why Jeremy? What makes him special? And what... – What if Jeremy Lin Weren't Asian?
- : Also, I think your fear that if he fails it will spur stereotypes is unfounded. Those stereotypes already existed before Jeremy Lin exploded into the... – What if Jeremy Lin Weren't Asian?
- : Also, I think your fear that if he fails it will spur stereotypes is unfounded. Those stereotypes already existed before Jeremy Lin exploded into the... – What if Jeremy Lin Weren't Asian?
- : I think America pretty much DOES recognize that "LinSanity" is spurred heavily on the fact that he is "Asian-American in a league devoid of them:... – What if Jeremy Lin Weren't Asian?
APA Events
Feb 10: (Los Angeles, CA) CAUSE: Women in Power Annual Luncheon
Feb 15: (Seattle, WA) Pork Filled Players Enter The Year of the Dragon Spam*O*Rama
Feb 16: Adam WarRock and Kirby Krackle: West Cost Tour Dates!!!
Feb 16: (New York, NY) Amar Chitra Katha: Monica Ferrell, Chitra Ganesh, Keshni Kashyap, and Himanshu “Heems” Suri of Das Racist
Feb 17: (Los Angeles, CA) All My Sons
Feb 18: (Stanford, CA) Stanford’s 16th Listen to the Silence Conference- Feb 18: (San Francisco, CA) NAAAP-SF Lunar New Year Gala 2012
Feb 25: (Los Angeles, CA) Past Present I Future Imperatives: Queer Space Time
Staff and Contributors
- Editors
- Ernie Hsiung - Founder, Editor-in-Chief
- Moye Ishimoto - Co-Editor, Editorial
- Joz Wang - Co-Editor, PR & APA Outreach
