8 Asians

By Jasmine Jia June 4, 2013: It is raining in Beijing. It never fails to rain on June 4th, almost every year since 1989. A Chinese idiom, 老天有眼 (lao3 tian1 you3 yan3) means that God has finally spoken out Himself. The idiom is used to express many citizens’ and students’ opinion on how the Chinese government handled the June 4th-led political demonstration. Tiananmen Square was just a vague picture for me since I was in [...] Continue »

By Nithin Coca “The undignified mania of trying to adapt and assimilate, which happens among many of my social standing, has always been very repulsive to me.” Albert Einstein Einstein – a celebrity among Asians – is the most famous scientist in modern history, who used his splendid mind to destroy preconceptions. Among his many contributions to science are the discovery of the photoelectric effect, proof the existence of the atom, and the development of [...] Continue »

By Lianne Lin I’m a second generation ABC (American Born Chinese) who grew up knowing little to no Chinese.  My father is ABC as well, born in San Francisco to immigrant parents from Guangdong, China, and my mom was born in Taiwan to parents who emigrated from Shandong, China.  She came to America at age 14 and by the time she married my dad at age 22, she was fluent in English. I think my [...] Continue »

At a business brunch with a dozen Chinese investors, the topic of Tibet came up. It started when one of them said that the Tibetans are lazy, stupid, spend all their time on prayer, refuse to work, and only take the hard-earned money of the Chinese. China has to send billions of dollars of aid to Tibet every year and do the Tibetans even appreciate it? Oh no. They don’t. Because they’re stupid and lazy [...] Continue »

When I saw the title of this YouTube video, I was wondering what it was all about? (like, Model Minority Asian? Hipster Asian?) When I saw a white guy approaching the Asian American woman, I thought this video might be about yellow fever. But the question comes up from “Where are you from?”  (as in the micro-agressive question – “Where are you *really* from?”) a question many of us can relate to. This smartly written [...] Continue »

By Nithin Coca Let me start my first article on a lighter note–an anecdote from my freshman year of college, more than 10 years ago. I was at the In-N-Out across the street from the dorms sitting on a bar stool along with two Asian-Americans dormmates I had just met. We sat facing the window, with a clear panoramic view of the campus. It was orientation week at UC-Irvine, so school hadn’t yet started, but [...] Continue »

By “Cleanchino” Cho Although I am not a proud lurker on Facebook, I still continue to browse the ever-so revealing News Feed on a regular basis. It’s part of my ritual during my daily commute home from work. Facebook is not only just a social media profile page, but it is a marketplace for sharing information. While scrolling down, I find an interesting image posted on an acquaintance’s posting. I was profoundly confused after reading [...] Continue »

Lianne returned to the US after living in Taiwan, and experienced Reverse Culture Shock. This is how she dealt with it.

Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau released their report on the  Current Population Survey November Voting and Registration Supplement, that studies demographic voter turnout in the most recent presidential election cycle. The big news from this report was that for the first time ever, African American voter turnout rate exceeded the white voter turnout rate—66.2% versus 64.1% for a presidential election and increased from 2008 to 2012. However, what got lost in this news was that [...] Continue »

Before attending this game, I’ve been to three NBA games – including Jeremy Lin’s debut into the NBA for the Golden State Warriors, as well as twice when Lin returned as a Houston Rocket to play against his former teammates during the regular 2012 – 2013 NBA season (and even being mistaken as Lin’s dad). Having been born and raised in Western Massachusetts, I’ve always been a fan of the Boston Celtics. I’m of course [...] Continue »

The first Asian American fraternity was formed in upstate New York around the time of World War I to combat the racial discrimination that Asian college students faced. Basically, because Asians were excluded from the white people’s clubs, the guys decided to form their own. In the late 40s, a group of Japanese American women in Southern California formed the first Asian American sorority to support one another in the face of anti-Japanese sentiments and racism. After [...] Continue »

Watch Coming to Independent Lens: Seeking Asian Female on PBS. See more from Independent Lens. Both Dino-Ray and I have seen and reviewed Seeking Asian Female, the documentary. For those of you living in the United States, you can catch the documentary on PBS’s Independent Lens’ series this Monday, May 6th. Be sure to check you local listings for the exact time (as well as possibly slightly different date).