I’ve had my eyes on ‘The Warlords’ since it was released in Asia as The Blood Brothers (投名狀 / tóu míng zhuàng) in 2007. Directed by Peter Chan, this spectacular historical action film is set in the midst of war and political upheaval during the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860s.

Based loosely on real events in Chinese history, it stars Jet Li as General Pang, who barely survives a brutal massacre of his fellow soldiers by playing dead. Pang soon joins a band of bandits led by Er Hu (Andy Lau) and Wu Yang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). After fighting back attackers from an helpless village, the three men take an oath to become blood brothers, pledging loyalty to one another until death. Of course, it wouldn’t be a movie if things didn’t quickly turn sour — the three men become embroiled in a web of political deceit, and a love triangle between Pang, Er Hu and a beautiful courtesan (Xu JingLei).

The film won a ton of awards in Asia and it was clear to me as I was watching the film that the sweeping cinematography and the masterful direction was what set ‘The Warlords’ apart from most modern Asian cinema. I’m not one for gory and grizzly fight scenes, but I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the battle scenes, even at their bloodiest. The three male main characters were engaging — though I’m the first to admit that I’m an unabashed Takeshi fan. The major distraction of the film is the “love triangle” storyline, but then, if you’re watching this movie for the love story, then you’re definitely watching the wrong movie.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I was not able to speak to Director Peter Chan as I had planned to, but I was curious to ask him how he thought American audiences would respond to the film, considering that most people here don’t have a background in the history of China. So since I couldn’t ask him, I’ll ask any of our 8Asians readers who have seen the film for their opinions on this topic. Do you know anything about the Taiping Rebellion or the Qing Dynasty? Does having knowledge of the historical background of a film’s setting make a difference in how you might view it?

‘The Warlords’ is available on VOD, XBOX LIVE and AMAZON and opened in selected theatres April 2nd. The Bay Area opening is on April 9, 2010 at Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre, in San Francisco, Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, and Camera 3 in San Jose. The film’s running time is 110 minutes, and is rated R. In Mandarin; fully subtitled in English.

If you like epic films, then you’ll probably enjoy this film as much as I did. Want to check it out this weekend, Bay Area folks?

What you could win from Landmark Theatres and 8Asians:
A free pair of tickets for Opening Weekend (4/9/2010) in SF (Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre) or Berkeley (Landmark’s Shattuck Theatre)!

How do you enter?
All you have to do is to leave a comment with your preferred location and your favorite out of the 4 stars (Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, or Xu Jinglei) and one lucky winner will be selected to go!

Hurry, the deadline to enter is: Thursday, April 8 at 12noon (Pacific Time)
ONE lucky winner will be selected and contacted that afternoon.

Rules for entering:
1) Please be serious about using the tickets– unused free tix suck!
2) Contributors to 8Asians and their immediate family members are not eligible to win.

Prize courtesy of: Landmark Theatres and 8Asians.

UPDATE: Congrats to our winners! Thanks to all who entered, but kudos to Confuse_Us, whose comment was long, complex, and orginal and ngatruong, whose comment was short, simple, and genuine!

This isn’t an April Fools joke, yo! Thanks to the generosity of Lac Su, the author of “I Love Yous Are For White People,” we’ve got another great giveaway for 8Asians readers.

So if you haven’t followed our advice to read Lac’s memoirs, or if you have already read this book and just want the companion t-shirt, this is the giveaway for you! People who’ve read the book kept telling Lac that if he would stamp the words “I Love Yous Are for White People” onto a t-shirt, they would totally wear it. So Lac made it happen with the help of Donnytello Tran from Neaato (who drew the illustration) and to Ryan Suda at Blacklava (for screening the image onto nice, soft, and comfy t-shirts).

It is so cool of Lac to create these shirts because he is using them to fundraise for Giant Robot Magazine and the Asian American Studies program at Purdue University, two organizations that need financial support. So if you don’t win the t-shirt in this contest and you want to buy one, they are just $20 and proceeds go to support these two worthy causes.

What you could win from Lac Su, Blacklava and 8Asians:
One t-shirt and an AUTOGRAPHED copy of “I Love Yous Are for White People” (book). (Two winners will be selected!)

How do you enter?
Simply leave a comment answering the following question: Why do you think Giant Robot Magazine and Asian American Studies in universities are important for you to support? (The two best answers win, as determined by an esteemed panel of judges*)

Hurry, the deadline to enter is: Tuesday, April 6 at 11:59 pm (Pacific Time)
TWO lucky winners will be selected and contacted later that week.

Rules for entering:
1) Please be in the US or Canada. Sorry, we will not be shipping anywhere else!
2) Contributors to 8Asians and their immediate family members are not eligible to win.

Prize courtesy of: Lac Su and Blacklava.

To help you write the best answer, visit Giant Robot Magazine and the Asian American Studies program at Purdue University

*Judges may include Lac Su, contributors to 8Asians, and other cool peeps

Belldandy as Power Rangers Operation Overdrive Drivemax Megazord

We received a link from a reader who thought that Ernie was kidding in this conversation with Rosemary about Filipino names but realized he wasn’t when she saw this link featuring a Filipina girl named Belldandy whose parents dress her up in cosplay outfits.   What kind of parent names their kid Belldandy?”   A Filipino parent of course!  (And also a manga fan, as Belldandy is a character in the manga Oh My Goddess!).  Filipino parents are famed for creating all kinds of crazy first names and nicknames.  I have a first cousin named “Ludwig” and another named “Lyndon Johnson.”  One Filipino who wrote for 8Asians is named “Genghis.”

So how did this name craziness start?  It started when the Philippines’ Spanish colonial masters converted Filipinos to Catholicism. Filipinos took up religious names, but in a rather random kind of way.  “They arbitrarily adopted the names of saints and this practice has resulted in the existence of thousands of individuals having the same name,” complained Spanish Governor-General Narciso Claveria. “I saw the resultant confusion with regard to the administration of justice, government, finance and public order, as well as the far-reaching moral, civil and religious consequences to which this might lead.”  In 1849, he sent out a catalog of acceptable names for Filipinos to use.    Some lazy local administrators simply named every person in a village with the same last name.  Other administrators had everyone in a village have the last name starting with the same letter.   As a result, many Filipinos have the same last name.  If you have the same name as a criminal (a common occurrence), you have to go through a lengthy process and carry with you a note from the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation saying that you are not the criminal with the same name.

To avoid this problem and to grant their kids have at least some individuality, Filipino parents have no qualms about coming up with, well, “atypical” first names.  This story from the Wall Street Journal talks about a man named Hitler Manila who has sons named Himmler and Hess.  Apparently the names didn’t go over well with some Germans.  A favorite is technique is to combine names, mentioned in this article from the BBC, resulting in names like Luzviminda (from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao – major regions of the Philippines) or “Jejomar” (combining Jesus, Joseph, and Mary).  I had a friend with the name of “Alvi”, from her father “Al” and her mother “Violeta.”

Does this tradition live on in Filipino-Americans?  Well, yes and no.  Yes, as my brother named his daughter “Kira Nichelle” after Kira Nerys from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhuru in the original Star Trek series.  No, as I suggested naming my son Valen Kosh (from the Babylon 5 TV series), but The Wife vetoed that idea.
h/t: Catherine for the Belldandy Pointer

While watching The Amazing Race on my DVR, I had to quickly rewind to see what I thought I had seen. Target has done it again, this time with a new television commercial featuring an all Asian American cast featuring an over-protective mom named Wendy as she keeps an eye on her teenage daughter and her new boyfriend. I really hope this ad is airing in other markets besides the Bay Area and California, as I find them so refreshing, especially after those recent commercials from MetroPCS and Radio Shack.

I bring up that specific example, because when I went to college in Philadelphia, my roommate, Phil, whose family was local, invited me to dinner one night. His mom was Italian-American, and his family has been in the U.S. for a few generations. Phil warned me before we got to his house that his mom had made rice for dinner, as she didn’t know what else to make for a Chinese guy (it didn’t matter that I’ve been in the U.S. since I was 2, and she’s met me and knew I spoke English with a perfect Long Island accent). Phil’s girlfriend, Val, at the time was African-American, and Phil’s mom prepared fried chicken whenever Val went to dinner at their house, so I guess I shouldn’t have been offended. (And I was plenty happy to have rice for dinner, since I was a poor college student living on mac and cheese.)

Speaking of not doing something just because it would perpetuate a stereotype, Jennifer (of Mixed Race America) brings up the example of not wearing a cheongsam at her wedding, because she didn’t want to perpetuate the stereotype of her being “Suzie Wong”. I do catch myself sometimes thinking I shouldn’t order “oriental chicken salad” and then do it anyway, just because I like mandarin oranges. There’s probably dozens of other examples just like that. And then sometimes I do things just to completely be opposite of a stereotype. My entire career and profession is sort of a reaction to the Asian stereotype. My parents wanted me to be an engineer, but I followed a career path to become a marketing executive. Instead of being meek, quiet, and hard-working at my desk in a cubicle farm, I go out and give presentations, talk loudly at work functions, and meet and greet customers.

This topic gets more difficult when I try to apply this to my four year old daughter. I want her to learn about her culture and heritage, even if it means perpetuating stereotypes, because it’s too easy to lose sight of where you’re from as an Asian American. I want my daughter to wear a cheongsam at her wedding and to consider it a part of who she is, rather than what it makes her appear to be.

The question remains whether as a society we’re ready to see people for who they are or are we helping to perpetuate stereotypes when we do things that are really just who we are?

I love the Olympics. We already covered that. My second favorite Winter Olympic sport is Short Track Speed Skating. My fandom of this sport is in large part to a certain cutie named Apolo Ohno who makes speed skating look like the hottest sport ever invented. I’ll admit that I’m pretty biased when it comes to Ohno, because even if he makes ungracious comments, I’ll overlook it, chalking it up to his good looks impairing his social graces during interviews.

We’ve had movie versions of Mortal Kombat that was kinda campy but watchable, and we’ve had movie versions of Street Fighter which were pretty bad to downright terrible. Now video gaming males from ages 18-35 — and Moye, ha ha — can rest tight knowing that there’s going to be a movie about everyone’s favorite four button fighting game that incorporates corporations and demon possession, Tekken.

Tekken will be centered around Jin Kazama, played by British model and wushu martial artist Jon Foo, and will have some of the characters from the latter series, including one scary-ass lookalike for Craig Murduk and Chiaki Kuriyama, who as Ling Xiaoyu will be able to stay in her “I kill people in a schoolgirl outfit” roles she took on for Battle Royale and Kill Bill. (Update: Nope, not true.)

Who won’t be in the movie? Paul Phoenix, which attests to the fact that they were not able to convince any 45 year olds to get a Kid-N-Play haircut and be a cheap asshole. (In this movie, that role goes to Eddy Gordo. “Hows it going, Eddy Gor-” [gets leg swept]) So what’s the verdict: will this movie be bad good, or bad bad?

Recently, the Taiwanese American Citizens League (TACL), TaiwaneseAmerican.org, Taiwanese American Foundation, TACL-LYF: Leading Youth Forward, Taiwanese American Professionals – San Francisco (TAP-SF),  Taiwanese American Federation of Northern California helped produce this Public Service Announcement (PSA), advocating for all Taiwanese Americans to self-identify for the 2010 U.S. census taking place in April as “Other Asian” and write in “Taiwanese.”

For more information about the PSA, check out http://taiwaneseamerican.org/census2010/ , where you can learn about the Taiwanese Americans in the PSA, including California State Assemblyman and California Attorney General candidate Ted Lieu.

According to TACL, the 2000 estimates of Taiwanese Americans are 1.12 million (in the census 2000, only 144,795 Taiwanese Americans were recorded an under count by almost 90%. The U.S. Constitution requires a national census once every 10 years and census forms will be mailed to every household in March & Census Day is April1, 2010. The census counts EVERYONE residing in the United States (including non-citizens & international students.) The census is confidential – your responses are protected by law under Title 13, U.S. code, Section 9 and only takes 10 minutes to fill. The census data is important because it directly affects how more than $300 BILLION per year in federal and state funding is allocated to communities & non-profit organizations. That’s more than $3 TRILLION DOLLARS over the 10-year period.

After the jump, you can read more about my rant on being a Taiwanese American and why it matters.

Growing up, as part of my upbringing, always identified as a Taiwanese American rather than a Chinese American. Both my father’s and mother’s side of the family had been in Taiwan for hundreds of years and spoke Taiwanese (as well as Mandarin – they would speak to my brother and I in Mandarin for us to get the maximum benefit of learning the most populous language and Taiwanese when they wanted to keep their conversations “secret”). I remember my father often having to explain the difference between Taiwan and China, and that the U.S. official stance was the “One China” policy, and how the United Nations switch recognition of “China” from the Republic of China (ROC – Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (PRC – mainland China), and the United States officially recognizing the PRC over ROC diplomatically in 1979.

However, what really galvanized me as an adult to self-identify as a Taiwanese American was when in 1995 I attended an ITASA conference at Harvard and heard a speech entitled, “How I Became a Taiwanese-American and why It Matters.” What really got me in the speech was this:

“Just start telling me that “Taiwanese” is “the same thing” as “Chinese” and I would feel blood rising to my head … Moreover, it seemed so unfair that other people could say they were Korean or Italian or Egyptian and no one would try to tell them that they were something else. It was incredible to me that people who knew nothing about my background and even less about Taiwanese history would try to argue with me about my claim to a Taiwanese identity… We must realize that if we do not make the distinction between Taiwanese and Chinese, then nobody will do it for us. To take it another step further, if you don’t determine your own identity, then it will be imposed upon you, as Taiwan’s history has demonstrated time and time again.”

In the past, I would tell others that being Taiwanese and Chinese was basically the same thing, just to make things simple and not having to explain the whole diplomatic history and differences between the two countries, because in most contexts, it’s hard to explain in just a sentence or two (but I would say that my parents were from Taiwan – to make the distinction that they were not from Hong Kong or mainland China). But since that speech, I’ve gone out of my way to make sure to identify as Taiwanese American, and explain the differences if questions did come up.

I really do think there is a real distinction between being a Taiwanese Americans and Chinese Americans – everything from linguistically (Taiwanese vs. Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) to the overall immigrant experience. Most of the Taiwanese Americans I know of my age and generation, their parents immigrated to the United States in the 1960s to study for an advance degree and then chose to remain in the U.S. At the time, there weren’t that many Chinese from mainland China (PRC), immigrating to the U.S. (as that was during the Cultural Revolution). Since I only knew Mandarin, I could barely communicate with my grandparents, because they only spoke Taiwanese or Japanese (due to the 50 years of Japanese occupation from 1895 to 1945).

Even in college, I noticed differences from those who self identified as Hong Kongese-American – from the way they spoke in Catonese to the way they acted and hung out with each other. To be honest, I don’t think I even knew any Chinese Americans except for maybe some graduate students who were from mainland China (this was in the late 80s and early 90s).

I like to think that being Taiwanese that we can have the best of both worlds – having a Chinese heritage, taking the best of Chinese culture, and building upon that tradition along with unique differences and history of Taiwan. In fact, I think Taiwan takes the best of China without the bad baggage. Without Taiwan, Traditional Chinese, which has thousands of years of history, may have not been preserved as well as it is today, as well as the historic treasures of China were safe from the Red Guard in Taipei’s National Palace Museum. Although Taiwan, the country, may not be diplomatically recognized by the United Nations or by most nations, it is a defacto independent country. Taiwan has its own unique language, culture, cuisine, democratically elected government, Olympic team (“Chinese Taipei“) and independent currency, just to name a few things that make Taiwan unique.

Historically, most Taiwanese have ethnic roots that emigrated to Taiwan from the mainland several hundred years ago. But much like the British who settled Australia, I doubt most Australians think of themselves as British or English. Self-identifying as a Taiwanese American is important in the census and does have consequences – everything from having the right number of government forms available for translation (in Traditional Chinese – especially for older immigrants who come over with their adult children), addressing health issues specific to the Taiwanese community and to of course, politically. So check “Other Asian” and write in “Taiwanese.” Be counted. Be recognized. Spread the word!