8 Asians

By Elaine

We Asians finally have our own version of Aleksey Vayner, the Yale graduate who applied for a job on Wall Street a few years ago with an eleven page resume (complete with video) that claimed he could bench press 500 lbs, leg press 1650lbs, and was employed by the CIA and Mafia, among other things. Meet Jeffrey Chiang — current student at The McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin — whose unfortunate story has been spreading throughout the interwebs like crazy.  This 2010 graduate supposedly lied to not one but two big firms: Bank of American and Morgan Stanley.  According to Bess Levin of Dealbreaker:

Chiang apparently interviewed at Bank of America, where he was asked if he had any offers from other firms. Jeffrey claimed that he was in his second round of interviews with Morgan Stanley. An associate at BofA then contacted his friend at Morgan about Jeffrey’s prospects. The Morgan guy said that contrary to popular belief, JC had only had a phone interview, at which time he claimed to have gotten a full-out offer from BofA. As proof, JC provided a fabricated email allegedly from a recruiting woman at Bank of America, who would probably be surprised to be informed she’d offered Chiang a job (and that she didn’t know how to spell “America”). The Morgan people forwarded the faux letter of employment back to the people at Bank of America who were doing recon and from there it was forwarded to the entire free world.

Both Blippitt and Dealbreaker also have copies of Chiang’s emails, along with his resume where he claims to have run a “5k marathon.”

Am I the only one truly appalled not by Chiang’s conduct, but by the fact of how boring his fake email was?  At this point, lies and deceit in business are all par for the course, and what really gets my goat is the utter lack of creativity and spellcheck he displayed. Levin seems to agree, saying “Obviously, the lies here are not good form but what’s most upsetting is the lack of effort.” Misspelling “America?” Come on!

I have to admit, this story is especially near and dear to my heart because I too am a UT student, albeit one on the opposite side of the spectrum – The College of Liberal Arts. As many of you may know, UT is known for its business school, which usually ranks very highly. This story comes at a rather timely moment; UT is planning major budget cuts with what seems to be extremely vague reasoning.   According to the Texas State Employees Union and Communications Workers of America, The College of Liberal Arts may lose 20-33% of non-tenured instructors (about 78-300 people). 40 support staff from IT and the College of Engineering were laid off in the past two weeks.  As one of my professors Tom Palaima once questioned, if UT has one of the best business schools in the nation, how are we in this financial mess?  I’ll agree with him, and raise him this: If UT is truly one of the best colleges in the nation, how come we make internet news not with stories of success but with stories of ridiculous budget cuts and Jeffrey Chiang?

Photo courtesy: Blippitt

ABOUT ELAINE: Elaine Wang is currently a senior at the University of Texas at Austin.  She stumbled upon 8Asians while at work in a research lab.

Earlier in the year I blogged about How Bruce Lee Changed the World.  And now Shannon Lee — Bruce Lee’s daughter — is trying to expand and profit more from his legacy, as described recently in the Wall Street Journal:

“In a bid to tap into growing interest in Mr. Lee in China and to develop her father into a powerhouse global brand, Ms. Lee last year bought back the rights to his image from General Electric Co.’s Universal Studios, which had held them since the late 1980s. “They didn’t put the effort behind it I felt should be put behind it,” she says. Universal declined to comment. Then she formed Bruce Lee Enterprises, a licensing company, and LeeWay Media Group, a production company, to raise his profile. Ms. Lee also consulted with the estates of other famous people, including Elvis Presley and John Wayne, to learn more about how to successfully revive a deceased icon’s image. In recent years, the Bruce Lee brand has brought in around $1 million a year, the estate says. With the new push, Ms. Lee hopes she can squeeze $5 million to $10 million from it annually.”

It’s odd to me that the Lee family didn’t own the legacy of their patriarch. Back in September, 60 Minutes did a really interesting segment on “A Living For the Dead” describe how famous dead icons were still generating a lot of income for the family’s estate. Given the fact that Bruce Lee died at the young age of 33 back in 1973, it’s amazing that he’s lived on in his movies and television shows. His impact has directly affected in many ways how Asians and Asian Americans are perceived in the United States and the world. The good for obvious reasons, but have you ever been asked as a kid if you knew Kung Fu like Bruce Lee?

The King of Licensing also happens to be the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, who according to Forbes Magazine brought in $52 million. Actor James Dean brought in $5 million. While I think Bruce Lee is more well known than James Dean, most Chinese didn’t know about Bruce Lee as a result of the Cultural Revolution and China being fairly well closed to the rest of the world when Bruce Lee was alive. Last year, the Chinese state television company CCTV showed a 50-part series — yes, you heard that right — on his life after Shannon Lee licensed her father’s image to the company.

I’m glad Shannon Lee has controlling rights to her father’s image, but I hope she doesn’t do anything tacky to tarnish Bruce Lee’s iconic image. Lee has apparently already starred in a Nokia commercial in China, showing him play ping-pong with a nunchuck and his daughter has signed an off on a Broadway musical about her father which is to debut in the 2010-11 season. Hopefully, we won’t see him vaccuming with a Dirt Devil like Fred Astaire.

(Flickr photo credit: striatic)

So I got this email, and saw the tweet:

Being Asian can prevent you from ascending the corporate ladder. Our seminar, presented with EMC Asian Circle, can tell you what to do about it.

You’ve done all the right things, top marks from perhaps a top school and top job performance. Why haven’t you reached the top as an executive? Learn from a renowned Asian exec who has been there and done that.

Business Professor David Lum will explore the fundamental reasons for why Asians/Asian-Americans have such difficulty in reaching those coveted positions. In addition to exploring the root causes, this seminar will also give clear and practical guidance on what you can do to prepare your career now for the long-term.

I read that and thought, “Wow.”

And that was the end of it. Total jaw drop. I’m not even sure what to say to this considering some facts, but more to that in a second. Let’s backtrack a little bit: I belong to a chapter of NAAAP, the National Association of Asian American Professionals. And obviously with any business organization, there is favoritism and so on, but seriously? We’re going to play the “we don’t get promoted because we’re Asian” card?

While I don’t know where this business professor came from, he apparently used to work for the same corporation as myself, and I never saw any inkling of Asians not being able to get promoted. Perhaps we didn’t work in the same division, but I never saw it within my corporate culture at least. And in my circle of friends and family, there are people that are in middle management all the way to senior management of their respective corporations; I never heard any complaints about promotions being blocked because of being Asian.

Maybe it’s just me, but this type of promotional email doesn’t exactly make me want to hear this speaker ever. Call me crazy, but I just can’t help but shake my head with this one.

In 1969, my dad came to the United States to get a Ph.D., on the recommendation of a mentor of his in Taiwan. The idea was to get the Ph.D., then return to Taiwan and get a high paying job in government, considered the easy way to get prestige and money in Taiwan. About a year after he arrived in the U.S., the U.S. government sent a letter to my mom, inviting her and the kids (myself and my sister) to move to the U.S. with a complimentary green card. This was part of a program the U.S. was running trying to convince foreign graduate students to stay in the U.S. after their studies were over. It was also known as the brain drain program, the U.S. government had in effect at the time, a.k.a. the brain gain for the U.S.

Even with our entire nuclear family in the U.S., my parents still planned on moving back to Taiwan after my dad’s studies were completed. But months turned into years, and at some point it became easier to stay than to go back, so my parents became U.S. citizens and made America their home. For most coming to the U.S. in the past few decades, the idea of returning home was a less common one, instead most immigrants came to the U.S. to find a better a life here for their families. With the recent downturn in the economy in last few years, there’s been a dramatic change in this attitude according to the Tech Crunch which is reporting a reverse brain drain to India and China.

Tech Crunch found in a recent survey of recent arrivals from India, over three-fourths indicated they were planning on returning to India. In a separate study of foreign students, a majority stated they did not think the U.S. was the best place for professional development and they planned on returning to their homes. Some of you reading this may think there’s little wrong with immigrants returning to their homes. The reality is, there is a price to pay if highly skilled workers go back to their home countries. As Tech Crunch states:

… A growing body of evidence indicates that skilled foreign immigrants create jobs for Americans and boost our national competitiveness. More than 52% of Silicon Valley’s startups during the recent tech boom were started by foreign-born entrepreneurs. Foreign-national researchers have contributed to more than 25% of our global patents, developed some of our break-through technologies, and they helped make Silicon Valley the world’s leading tech center. Foreign-born workers comprise almost a quarter of all the U.S. science and engineering workforce and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. It is very possible that some of the smart Indians who sat in the room with me holding their hand up on Columbus Day will start the next Google or Apple. Many of them will build companies which employ thousands. But the jobs will be in Hyderbad or Pune, not Silicon Valley.

Perhaps many of those planning on returning home will end up staying like my parents, but in this economy there’s definitely a higher chance of these immigrants going home. In my particular case, I’m happy my parents stayed, as I’ve definitely had more opportunities than my cousins who grew up in Taiwan. The question for these new arrivals is whether they and their children will do better in the U.S. or back in their home countries.

The other night, I saw for the first time ever a commercial for Panda Express. You’ve probably seen a Panda Express before at your local mall food court; if I’m hungry and at the mall and in the mood for fast greasy Chinese food, Panda Express is there to serve its purpose. So I was kind of shocked to see a commercial for the restaurant — I mean, I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there. But what got me were the two UGLY talking pandas, Eddie and Tom-Tom, with a “gong” at the end of the commercial as the tag line “Experience Pandamonium” is shown along with the Panda Express logo.

Since the Panda Express is the name of the restaurant, it’s not a huge surprise that the restaurant uses talking pandas to pitch itself. But there’s also been another commercial that has been bothering me that’s been airing for a while — Wanchai Ferry’s “restaurant quality Chinese in your grocer’s freezer” commercial pitching their orange chicken – with, you guessed it, another UGLY talking panda.

What’s with the ugly talking pandas pitching Chinese food? I wonder how much money it would cost to make a decent looking panda suit or something in CGI? Enough of the ugly talking pandas! Jennifer 8. Lee, do something!

In our economic meltdown in the U.S. it turns out it’s harder to get a job if you’re a graduating MBA than it used to be. Apparently this is driving some Asian Americans and U.S.- educated Asians to consider opportunities outside the U.S., specifically in China, India, and other Asian countries.

I often wished I had been able to take the route of working overseas after my MBA, but instead I took the easy choice and ended up working here in the U.S. Working overseas would certainly have given me a different life experience and one that I’m sure would have reflected positively on my resume. But I’m also not sure I would have wanted to feel like I was being forced into that decision, like many are today because of the economic situation.

Voice of America News reported that New York City is warning about a projected loss of 46,000 financial jobs and a loss of hundreds of thousands more jobs that depend on Wall Street by 2010. Those numbers should be enough to make any graduating MBA student nervous. Since our economic troubles aren’t a new phenomenon, it should be no surprise that China, India, and other Asian countries have already seen an upsurge of highly educated returnees. According to the Chinese government, the number of returnees increased by 55 percent in the last year. What is surprising, is the numbers at this education level. We’ve all seen the reports of immigrant workers returning to their home country due to the poor economy. This article on MBAs looking for work overseas just goes to show that the recession is touching people across the entire workforce spectrum.

Folks at Asian Pacific Americans for Progress (APAP) are reporting that a bunch of APA activists are upset at the Oakland Planning Commission for approving a permit for a new bar in Chinatown to be titled “Geisha”, stating that the name invokes violent and derogatory stereotypes against Asian women. The campaign is headed by Diana Pei Wu, Jenn Pae, Angelica Jongco, Xiaojing Wang, and Jen Mei Wu.

No, I’m not kidding you. Aside from the heavy cultural significance of the word, the leaders of this protest also cite that giving the bar with such a name would help support sexual harassment, mental illness, and a negative economic impact with its indirect support for the sex trade and/or pornography. Oh yeah, and don’t forget that rapist in the area who was targeting Asian women. Wait, what? These are all related?

I hate to be the one to say this, but I can’t help think these folks are overreacting in this situation, and wrongly defining the history of Japanese geisha. They were dancing and musical entertainers, and nowhere did violence and overt sexuality come to play in their formal occupation. No, geishas aren’t prostitutes. Maybe some of them were but hey, it’s the oldest job in the world.  If anything, they should be focusing their outrage on two Asian American businessmen with a tired and unoriginal idea for a new bar, or at least ask why someone would want to go to a Geisha bar in the heart of Chinatown. Wrong culture, people.

Also, what does the NorCal rapist have to do with this? Did he have a geisha fetish or something and this bar is his one chance to finally hang out in the open? I don’t see the connection.

It’s good to see politically active Asian Americans keeping an eye out for their community but I’m finding it hard to support a group who base their protests on a narrow, sensational definition of a single word, especially when it directly affects two men bringing more business to Chinatown.

PS. And I will say that I used to live down the street from the Geisha House in Hollywood; while I disliked the name, never once did I experience a down turn in the civic quality of life. All of that was caused by the Hummer driving douchebags who would congregate in the neighborhood.

(h/t: spamfriedrice)