Mom: Make sure you marry a Chinese girl, so when I’m old and come to live with you I’ll be able to talk to her.
Me: Uh, ok. What if she doesn’t speak any Chinese?
Mom: It doesn’t matter, we’ll understand each other, as long as she’s Chinese.
[Eventually I failed on both counts - my spouse is neither Chinese nor a girl]

If you know a bit about Chinese culture, you also know historically the youngest daughter was the one who stayed behind, didn’t get married and took care of the aging parents. I think in the back of her mind my younger sister always felt she had that role to play even though she got married and had kids, so she stuck by my dad’s side when he got sick with cancer. But it was always known that I would be the caretaker for my mom, when her cancer came back from remission.

The question of which child cares for the elderly parent was the recent topic of a NY Times article, which tackled the widely held belief in American culture that parents treat and love their kids equally (there’s obviously no such thing in Chinese culture). According to the Cornell University study (quoted by NY Times), American parents do really have a favorite child, even if they tell their kids otherwise. It’s their favorite child, who they typically want to be their caretaker in later life, even if their favorite isn’t the best suited (due to things like bankruptcy or drug abuse).

So I guess it should be no surprise to anyone, my younger sister was always my dad’s favorite, and I was always my mom’s. That much was obvious to anyone who knew our family. My parents didn’t hide it the way American families do. In another interesting aspect of the Cornell study, they found that the adult children in the study quite often incorrectly identified the favorite child in the family. Most often they’d say it was themselves, incorrectly. I guess that goes to show you, in American culture, there’s at least a facade of loving all the children equally. Being in America I think my parents at least attempted to do that, even if they didn’t succeed. Do your Asian parents play favorites? Is it obvious, or do they tell you all, they treat you all the same (I hesitate to use the word love as we all know Asians don’t use the word love and I love yous are for white people).

Lam is also the creator of a website, www.GoInspireGo.com, designed to give voice to inspirational and uplifting stories that would otherwise not have a voice. He also writes about George Lin, former Program Director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, whose loss to Cancer inspired the theme of this year’s recent film festival, Cancer Awareness. The video above from GoInspireGo discusses Lin, his Cancer, and the tributes paid to him during the Festival.

Lam’s goal is simple, all of us know someone whose life has been touched by Cancer. So in an effort to help prevent the pain and suffering of losing someone to Cancer, we need to break the silence — talk about Cancer, especially in the Asian community. Awareness and Early Detection could save lives. In my family, we didn’t find out about my dad’s cancer until it was already stage 4 (the last and most progressed stage), since he never wanted to see a doctor or talk about his pain. So spread the word and let’s help make it so one day when we talk about Cancer, we can replace the big C with a little c.

BY ANY DREAMS NECESSARY
LIVE ART. LIVE MUSIC. LIVE FASHION.
OPEN BAR. DON CHOWS TACO TRUCK.

Date & Time: November 14, 2009, 8pm – 1am
Venue: Gallery 1018, 1018 Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021

Artwork by TIMOTHY TERUO WATTERS
Live Music by JESSI MALAY, TERRA INCOGNITA, SIX REASONS and more…
Live Fashion by DANIELLE KELLY
JOSEPH GETTRIGHT, DJ IZM, TRUTHLiVE, BZ and ED GOLD spinning all night

OFFICIAL RELEASE PARTY FOR DJ SKEE MIXTAPE “ENDANGERED SPECIES” featuring BRIAN “DEEP” WATTERS, PROPHET and SIX REASONS

TERUO ARTISTRY debuting its Fall Men and Women’s line
COL.ABO presents KORRUPTION: A Vinyl Toy Project

Art raffle benefitting A PLACE CALLED HOME

Sponsored by EVERYDAY and JLP “The President’s Tequila

Want to learn more about what Teruo Artistry is about? Check out these videos by Skee.TV:

h/t: Koji

I miss the days when my mom would get that twinkle in her eye and say we’re going out for breakfast, and we’d end up in Cupertino, at either a diner-like Chinese restaurant (A&J) or at Marina Foods, where she’d order hot soy milk (豆漿 dòu jiāng) and “shao bing yóu tiáo” and insist we eat it the way you’re supposed to, one wrapped inside the other. She’d order the sweetened soy milk, as would I, but my dad always got the salty soy milk (the choice of purists).

For me, it’s the mix of textures, the crunchy yóu tiáo with the soft shao bing that makes this breakfast dish an attraction, and one I haven’t had recently. The blog article is a good reminder that it’s time to make another weekend morning trip to Cupertino.

It turns out there are local Muppet characters developed for almost every international location that Sesame Street has a broadcast. In addition to the Indian characters, there’s the ones for the Chinese market, Hu Hu Zhu and Xiao Mei Zi, the Bangladeshi market, Shiku and Tuktuki, the Filipino market, Kiko Matsing and Pong Pagong, the Japanese market, Meg, Teena and Mojabo, among others.

With my upcoming trip to Taiwan with my daughter, and this new found discovery of local Sesame Street productions, I’m going to keep an eye out for an airing of Sesame Street in Chinese, so she can watch and I can see her reaction, especially since Elmo has always been one of her favorite Sesame Street characters. Maybe she’ll find a local Asian one to adore as well.

South Koreans make up the largest group of transracial adoptees in the U.S., and they comprise an estimated 10% of the total South Korean population here. The first generations of adoptive parents were told to assimilate the children into American culture without regard for the children’s native culture; as a result, older South Korean adoptees tended to have the mindset of being white or wanting to be white.

Nowadays, adoptive parents are encouraged to maintain ties to their adopted children’s native background. They send their kids to “culture camps” to learn more about where they came from. They take the kids on a family trip to their native country. They enroll them in classes to learn their native language. The adoption mindset definitely shifted in the right direction by encouraging kids to learn more about where they came from — instead of avoiding it.

Why yes, this would be fellow 8Asians bloggers Joz and Jee, and here they are in a video promotion with Steve Nguyen to promote BANANA, the FIRST-EVER gathering and round-table discussion/panel of Asian American bloggers at the USC campus on November 21st. I’d go into more detail, but event creator Lac Su explains it all the more eloquently (he did write a book, after all):

BANANA, [is] where we will get into important discussions about the future of our voice, where it will lead to, and how we can come together to find common grounds and focused endeavors to voice our opinions about relevant issues affecting our community. Why? Because the time is a-changing. We rise.

Steve Nguyen, a television/film producer and head of the Los Angeles ChannelAPA.com division, will be there to co-host and capture the event on film to help promote our voices and to introduce the faces behind such blogs.

Unfortunately, Joz will be in Asia during the event, so attendees will have to put up with grumpy, cynical me traveling down from San Francisco to be one of three 8Asians representatives. Whether this event is an Asian love-fest or an all-out shouting match is anyone’s guess, and if you’re in the Los Angeles area, you’re more than welcome to attend and watch what happens.

Cao won his seat over troubled eight time incumbent William Jefferson, who still received 47% of the vote despite charges of bribery and corruption (Louisiana politics, do you expect any less?).  Rep. Cao is very “moderate” for a Republican, as highlighted by his vote for the Health Care Plan; he has to be, if he wants to have any chance to be re-elected in a very blue district.