Warning: some major spoilers ahead so if you haven’t watched this Glee episode yet, don’t read this.
I’ve used to be a huge fan of Glee but as of recently, I’ve been tuning it off. But when news came about that Tamilyn Tomita and Keong Sim would guest star as Mike Chang’s parents in a Mike Chang-centric episode of “Asian F,” I thought it was something worth checking it out.
When the trailer for this episode came out, there were immediate concerns raised that the show would amp up the feared stereotype that Asian parents are ruthless dictators who force their kids to focus on career choices that does not revolve around the arts.
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Food for thought from the New York Times: The Chinese Premier is meeting with US counterparts and talking as if the US economic smackdown is just a passing phase. Amusingly, this carries a little bit of bias, considering that the Chinese actually own the majority of United States debt and thus wouldn’t want a collapse of US economics since that would make their debt worthless.
Shopping With GASP!
Having been a game reviewer for ages who hasn’t found a genre of video games that I didn’t like, I’m not surprised when I read that China had gold farming prisons. I actually have participated in gold farming in games like Second Life when it was still legal. Gold farming, if you’ve never heard of the term before, is basically the process of doing tedious work in a virtual world for items that you then sell for real currency. While most game operators expressly forbid the exchange of money for virtual items, there are multiple black markets for these sort of things and the ideal really comes from the fact that if the game operator can make you pay for it, then there’s some sort of economic means to sell those items too.
The last time I checked the Red Dawn remake, their release date was put on hold indefinitely and that news alone was enough to keep me happy. But yesterday, I stumbled upon this article from Racebending that not only is the film being pushed forward, MGM has changed their villains from Chinese to North Koreans.
By now, this political ad of a Chinese Professor paid for by “Citizens Against Government Waste” has certainly created quite a splash in the Asian American blogger & social media world, most notably Angry Asian Man who posted a very angry entry about it:
“This new political ad, titled ”Chinese Professor” and paid for by “Citizens Against Government Waste,” is running on some serious Red Menace juice, and has to be one of the most racist and xenophobic pieces of fear-mongering propaganda I’ve ever seen.”
But is this ad truly racist and xenophobic? Let’s break this video down under an objective lens and look at it carefully, after the jump: Continue Reading »
There are a lot of Asians in the gym where I work out, and I remember one in particular. He would do intensive cardio, and after getting hot and sweaty, he would try to cool off by pulling his shirt over his belly. It wouldn’t be so bad to see his sweaty abs if he had a six pack, but he had only a one pack. A fairly big one pack.
If that image disturbs you also, you are not alone. Many in China don’t like it either. This article from the LA Times says a campaign there is trying to stop men from becoming “bang ye” (“exposing grandfathers”), as those who expose only their bellies are called. Apparently, many Chinese men would take off their shirts in hot weather, but a campaign to stop that practice left them to expose only their stomachs. Some of the men tout the health benefits of doing this, but one Eastern Medicine practitioner disputes this. “Exposing one’s belly has nothing to do with Chinese medicine’s theory about maintaining a person’s health. People chose to expose their belly because they feel too hot in summer but feel embarrassed to take off their shirts completely.”
A comment on the article argues that since people don’t have problems when women can show their midriffs, why not men too? I don’t know. I changed my workout time, so I don’t see the “bang ye” guy anymore. I don’t miss him or his one pack.
There’s something about paying it forward. Zigen does just that from what I understand. I first heard about this nonprofit through my mother. They basically travel to very rural areas of China to build schools and provide children with the basics for education. They also have scholarship programs where they board and educate people on the basis that the person has to go back to their own village and teach.
While the Zigen Fund has since expanded from the education realm, that is still one of their major nonprofit goals that really touches people in the right place. There’s something about young children who don’t even get basic needs, let alone basic education that really drives home when we grow up in the United States where school is pretty much given to us through the taxpayers.
I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to actually travel to areas like that, but even donating to a fund that I know all of the money is going to the right place makes me feel good. It also helps to know that there are Chinese American professionals out there that give their time and money to help those in need.
I ran across this a while ago but haven’t had time to look into it further until now. I was searching for a microlending organization that not only was either a write-off or “investment” of sorts, but focused on China. Everything so far that you usually hear about was Kiva this, or Kiva that but they don’t really allow tax deductions.
Enter Wokai.
Wokai actually helps rural entrepreneurs in China start their own businesses. It goes through field partners and gathers information on whether or not this person is successful with repaying their loans. A person that gives to Wokai gets to see the money all the way through three rounds of loans before it goes into Wokai’s long-term fund which I found absolutely gratifying since you are donating money and writing it off, but you also get to pick and choose where it went went, which is a bit more unusual.
While there are many microlending foundations, there really aren’t many that focus on Asia in general (most of them are more Africa based). So finding something that ties back to my heritage was pretty neat to say the least.
A while ago, I had blogged about how Americans expect their business leaders to be white. When you are a Caucasian male in China, you definitely stand out as a foreigner and probably expected to be a white collar worker at the very least, if not a company executive. So I wasn’t totally surprised and somewhat amused about China’s practice of hiring white expatriates to represent foreign business partners. Mitch Moxley wrote about his experience for The Atlantic.
“And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: ‘Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.’”
I remember back in the mid-90s, I was visiting my high school friend Tom (who happens to be white) in Hong Kong. For the day, we went into Shenzen, China to visit the factory where his company manufactured and assembled small home appliances. I recall quite distinctively him half-way jokingly saying that when he visited the factory, productivity went up by 10%. When we walked through the factory, the Chinese factory workers definitely took notice. The fact that my friend Tom was fluent in Mandarin (and learning Cantonese) and I was less so–the factory workers were none the wiser. But Tom was actually an executive unlike the confessions of the fake businessman.
Next time you try to steal someone’s bag while riding a moped in China*, re-think your actions: are the contents of this purse worth being hunted down and beaten with pieces of furniture by a hoard of people? Probably not. It was an ugly handbag to begin with.
Also, check out the “hilarious” comments over at Geekologie. It’s 2010 and people are still saying “Me rove you rong time?”
* Note: I’m just assuming that it’s China. I could totally be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s not Japan. There aren’t enough schoolgirl uniforms.
This week, News Hour is dedicating a whole series on China, including this segment which focuses on the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. I’ve been to Shanghai only once, back in 2002 and I remember seeing billboards for this event. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shanghai has quadrupled (or more) in size since I last visited! China has spent over TWICE the amount they did on the city than they did in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics! The United States almost didn’t have a pavilion there, since U.S. government policy prohibits direct funding for such events. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her rolodex and helped raise over $60 million for the United States to be represented at the Fair. Most of the visitors of the World Expo will be local Chinese residents, making up an estimated 95% of all attendees. With all the grandeur and the incredible crowds of the exhibits, I’m tempted to make another trip to Asia to check out the World Expo myself.
About a month or so ago, I went to a networking event titled, “Opportunities in China” organized by the National Association of Asian American Professionals – San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NAAAP-SF).
The guest speaker was Larry Wang, founder and CEO of Wang & Li Asia Resources, a recruiting firm. I had first heard of Wang & Li back in the mid-1990s when contemplating the possibly of moving to Asia instead of going to business school. They made a niche for themselves by focusing on recruiting American – usually Asian American – talent for opportunities in Asia. In retrospect, this was a no brainer idea given the economic growth of China back then. They must be doing something right, as they were selected as “China’s Recruitment Firm of the Year” in 2008.
I was eager to finally meet Larry and hear his story about career opportunities in China. His presentation was titled, “The Return Of China’s Hiring Market – Pursuing Career Opportunities In The Mainland Today” (.pdf) and I wanted to hear the real deal about finding a job in China, over all the press hype. Larry confirmed the realities of the job hunt: it was easier said than done. Back in December of 2008, I had met up with my friend who has a start-up in Beijing, and he said that there were a lot of unemployed Westerners trying to learn Chinese while looking for jobs. But the opportunities were limited, given the number of people seeking employment, unless you were teaching English.
The reality of finding a job in China is that it’s certainly not as easy as it was ten or twenty years ago, when you could be confident in finding an interesting opportunity just by moving overseas. After graduating from business school in 1999, I turned down a few job offers in Austin and the East Coast, and instead, moved to Silicon Valley without a job, like plenty of other MBA’s. During the dot-com boom years in Silicon Valley, it was very easy to get interviews and find a job. I did find an position at a real large software company that generated huge profit margins – which was the best decision I ever made, as most of the dot-coms where I interviewed subsequently went out of business).
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