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.
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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).
Shopping With GASP!
So we’ve talked WAY too much about the Asian flush here on 8Asians, meaning the immediate flushing response one gets when certain Asians–ahem, Ernie–drinks alcohol, where the symptoms can often include nausea, vomiting, and other not-so-lovely side effects when one imbibes even a half-glass of wine.
According to an article featured in one of Time magazine’s blogs, however, it looks like the Asian flush is actually seen as an evolutionary response– an advantage, even. According to Biomed Central journal, BMC Evolutionary Biology, Chinese researchers did a genetic study on a certain gene responsible for making the enzyme that allows alcohol metabolism all across China, and discovered that in areas where rice was first domesticated, mainly southeastern China, there were more people who carried the mutation that caused the Asian flush. However, in areas where rice isn’t eaten as often, like in Tibet, the mutation is seen in much less numbers. The authors argue that the mutation prevents people from dying from alcohol overdoses and somehow “supports imbibing in moderation.” Anyone who’s seen Asian American college students with the flush drink themselves literally under the table knows that just because one gets the Asian flush doesn’t mean that they don’t drink as much as others.
In fact, a drug now used to keep alcoholics from drinking too much, disulfiram, apparently acts exactly like the Asian flush. People who take disulfiram and try to drink suffer the exact same symptoms: flushing of the face, nausea, vomiting, weakness, and the list goes on. (I would make a comment about this being a drug for Asiaphiles that makes you more Asian, but I think that might not go over very well.)
(“Drunk Ernie, not Efren” photo was modified from this)
I find today’s tech news about about Google’s decision to refuse to censor Chinese results to be rather fascinating. There’s talk about how Google is threatening to pull out of China and open up their searches without the filters after they concluded that there were recent security breaches by parties that were under the direction of the Chinese government.
But in what is a great public relations play, Google is maneuvering this into how they’re supporting anti-censorship efforts, when it’s really a business strategy gamble. The threat of Google moving out of China really doesn’t scare the Chinese government at all, and I doubt that it was anything but to incite more loyalty in other parts of the world where Google reigns king; after all, no one comes close to unseating the current Chinese search giant, Baidu, which owns anywhere between 62% and 75% of the Chinese search market share. But it puts Google out in the open on how they’re very annoyed with the fact that their property was violated and instead of keeping quiet about it, they went ahead and spoke out against it.
The Chinese government, on the other hand, is in a position of strength when it comes to the negotiations; there’s not a good reason to back down from a business perspective since they don’t win out anywhere. Chances are that each side will go their separate ways and it’ll allow for the status quo to remain while each side claims victory. In the end, the anti-censorship searches will be short-lived and Google will then be freed from the dog-and-pony show while the rest of the market scrambles to divide up its search shares.
Oh, Tiger Woods. You have everything in the world, including a hot model wife and a pair of multi-racial children (who I like to believe symbolize world peace and racial unity or whatever), but you just had to go mess your (allegedly) perfect life up with an affair (supposedly). But what can we learn from this latest scandal?
Here’s my lesson: when all else fails, turn to China Taiwan for some pretty awesome reenactments. I have no idea what they’re saying but this is what I gathered. Tiger Woods looks like Gary Coleman, rich people still drive minivans and life is always more fun when it looks like a bad video game.
I’ll just say it first. It’s like the Chinese version of Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal where one passenger is caught between two countries, unable to enter one country and unable to return back where he came from. Except this time, Chinese activist and economist Feng Zhenghu refuses to pass through Narita airport customs to enter Japan because the Chinese government is refusing to let him come home. Feng believes that his background in human rights against China is illegally keeping him from returning to his family, even when he came as far as landing at the Shanghai airport before officials forced him to return. It’s been over two weeks since Feng first holed up in Narita and you can read the full heart-wrenching story in the LA Times.
As someone who came to the United States when I was only 2 years old, it was always expected that I would go home to visit the “mother” country. It was never hard to imagine doing, as I had plenty of relatives who still lived in Taiwan. But, my parents never had the money or the time to take me when I was growing up. The only times they ever went was because someone in the family was sick or dying. And then, only one of them would go and the other would stay and take care of the kids. My first trip back to Taiwan wasn’t until I was in college, using a frequent flyer ticket from my mom. I’ve been back many times since, and now I’m a parent struggling with the same issue. My own daughter is getting older and I’m trying to decide when is the best time to expose her to her roots.
It turns out I’m not the only parent facing this same dilemma, as Wayne Chan writes this week about his decision to take his children to China in Northwest Asian Weekly. Chan’s wife confronts him the with the 8 simple words, “Maybe we should go to China this year”, and his immediate reaction is dread, as he has visions of the long plane ride, and the the hot summer weather (the only time he can go as his kids are school age). But in the end, he reminisces on his own first trip to China, and the life-changing event that it was for him, and he realizes:
I went to China that year as an American who happened to be Asian. I came back as an Asian American. So in all seriousness, “Maybe we should go to China this year.”
It’s that same life-changing experience I dream of for my own daughter, and I know it’s really too early for her, since she’s only 4. But there are a lot of other reasons for taking her back to Taiwan. We’re going for our Thanksgiving break this year. It’s actually a trip I’ve wanted to make for the last two years, but we were never able to go. Originally it was supposed to be three of us who were going, my mom, myself and my daughter. I had even purchased the tickets 2 years ago, but my mom got too ill from her cancer. In the end we had to cancel the trip, and cancer won the battle.
I view this trip to Taiwan, partly as a way to honor the memory of my mom. I’ll be taking my daughter to do all the things I wanted to do with her and her grandmother. She’ll get to meet all the relatives (many of whom are also getting on in age), including aunts, uncles, and cousins. I’ll make sure she sees the sights of Taipei. She may not remember any of it when she’s older, but at least I’ll have the photos to show her, and I’ll know I’ve done my duty to her and to the other elders in the family. My only wish is that this isn’t the only trip to Taiwan she gets to go on before she’s in college.
At the U.S-Mexico border, an intriguing anomaly has unfolded. Authorities report an almost ten-fold spike in arrests of illegal immigrants from China in the southern Arizona desert. The Border Patrol in the Tucson sector has caught at least 261 Chinese crossers this year, compared to an average of 32 during the past four years — keeping the sector’s only Mandarin-speaking agent, a former Mormon missionary in China, very busy.
Chinese immigrants belong to a rare category known as OTMs: Other than Mexicans. OTMs are big business for smuggling gangs. Compared to Mexicans who pay about $1,500, fees for Central Americans and South Americans reach $6,000 and Haitians pay from $10,000 – $20,000. But the Chinese pay the most of all — they often work off fees between $30,000 and $70,000 over the course of several years as indentured servants in sweatshops and kitchens of New York and other cities. So why the influx of Chinese illegals? Enforcement officials are not sure. See the full story for more details.
Over at Sina and Chinasmack, people are reacting to the remarks from English naturalist, nature photographer, BBC television presenter and author Chris Packham when he said that humans should not spend vast amounts of money to protect giant pandas, but rather let them naturally die off.
In fact, he says, “I would eat the last panda if I could have all the money we have spent on panda conservation put back on the table for me to do more sensible things with.”
Packham’s reasoning:
An ex-carnivore bamboo muncher unfortunately ends up in the most populated place on earth. Its food predictably all dies with disastrous regularity and its digestive system is poorly adapted to its diet. It’s slow to reproduce, tastes good, but in a blind strike of evolutionary luck it is plump, cute and cuddly. That is from an anthropological point of view. So given only the latter in the formative days of conservation the pioneers choose it as a symbol and begin to investigate its conservation. Panda porn, or the lack of it, made us all giggle in the sixties and seventies and gradually the fat pied ones became greater than the sum of the sense in keeping them alive. But having spent so much it’s very difficult to stop. We are now spending millions and millions of dollars on a loser which lives in a country being stormed by the whole worlds greedy despite its horrible politics. It’s Catch 22 for Pandas and we’re caught by the credit cards despite our very own desperate credit crisis. So I say stop, save our relatively paltry funds for cases where we can make a real difference, because that’s our job. [full story]
About the giant panda, Packham says, “It’s got everything going against it. Furthermore, it’s gone down an evolutionary bottleneck where we could just let it go.” And of course, tons of money gets spent on “charismatic animals” which are virtually unsavable, while other species — like insects and rodents — or entire habitats are left to die.
He’s got a lot of good points — if people weren’t spending so much money to save them, these fuzzy animals would probably have already gone extinct on its own. And, he is even in alignment with the WWF on a lot of the points… except for the “letting pandas go extinct” part, of course. Then again, the case for saving the panda could be used as a vehicle to save panda habitats — bamboo forests — which are also facing destruction. What do you think?
As for me, I’m just looking for an excuse to write about pandas so I can link back to this post and awesome image about a PANDA ATTACK!!!
* I didn’t know how to categorize this post, so I put it in “Food & Drink” since Packham talked about eating pandas. To quote Moye: why you bite me?? ;_;
(Flickr photo credit, with apologies: fujikinoko)
American food companies are blazing new trails in China — with flavors, according to this CBS News Report by Celia Hatton. I enjoyed this story because she showed us examples of foodstuffs that Chinese consumers can find which look familiar, but really are not.
Citing blueberry-flavored potato chips, strawberry and milk-flavored Cheetos and aloe juice from Minute Maid, Hatton says that it seems like every major U.S. food label, “is trying to bite into China’s $186 billion fast food and processed food industries by creating new products made just for Chinese taste buds.” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, said China is going to be the second-largest or largest consumer market in the world in the next five years. He said, “If American companies don’t figure out how to get it right in China, they’ll be missing out on what should be their major generator for growth.”
Other strange American-Chinese products? Tropicana cantaloupe juice, orange-flavored Chips Ahoy cookies, Chinese herbal medicine Wrigley’s gum.
But, she [Hatton] said, it’s Frito-Lay potato chips that really push the boundaries.
Taste tests, Hatton reported, revealed Chinese people didn’t like popular American flavors like sour cream and onion. So, to reach their audience, researchers developed new flavors inspired by traditional Chinese food, such as savory Sichuan spicy, sweet and sour tomato and sugary options like cucumber, lychee and mango.
Of course, we’ve discussed how popular American fast food chains like McDonald’s have different menus for different parts of the globe, so it shouldn’t surprise you that McDonald’s has a purple taro pie in China. But could you imagine getting your Starbucks coffee with jelly cubes in the bottom? How about getting spicy squid on a stick at KFC. Does that make it “Kentucky Fried Cuttlefish” instead of “Chicken?”
Hatton even cites toothpaste companies which cater to the Chinese market with flavors such pointing out lotus flower Crest and salty Colgate.
I will admit that I like my toothpaste minty and I hate the taste of taro, but beyond that, nothing in this report sounds TOO scary for me to try. In fact, I’m really tempted by all those flavors of chips. Are you tempted by these “Chinese” flavors? Do you think that any of them would work here in the States?
All I know is that most of these snack foods don’t remotely resemble the Chinese snacks I knew while I was growing up!
UPDATE: Our winner has been selected! Congrats to Peter Lo who will be seeing 24 City this weekend. Thanks to everyone for playing and to Landmark Theatres for providing free tickets!
Moye and I recently watched “Paper Heart,” which was a charming blend of documentary and fiction in film making. China’s most noted contemporary filmmaker, Jia Zhang-ke uses a similar technique in “24 City” (二十四城記 / Er shi si cheng ji), by fusing documentary and fiction to tell a tale of the transformation of the China of the past 50 years into the new, hypercapitalist China.
Shot in disorientingly vivid high-def video, “24 City” chronicles the dramatic closing of a State‐owned munitions factory and its conversion into luxury high‐rise apartments. Given the name Factory 420 as an internal military security code, the Chengdu Engine Group was founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines, and saw years of prosperous activity. Now abandoned, the factory was sold for millions to real‐estate developers, it is being transformed into an emblem of market economy: an apartment complex called 24 City.
As the buildings are demolished around them and their past is wiped away, former workers (some played by themselves, others by actors, including Joan Chen as Gu Minhua “Xiao Hua” / 小花) reminisce about the vanished world where they lived and worked. Meanwhile, a materialistic younger generation jettisons their parents’ traditions to pursue wealth and consumer happiness.
From the director, Jia Zhang-Ke (賈樟柯)
This film is made up of interviews with five workers, who share their real-life experiences with us, and of fictional monologues by three women. I decided to integrate documentary and fiction in this parallel flow because this seemed to me the best way of representing the last half-century of Chinese history. As far as I’m concerned, History is always a blend of facts and imagination.
The stories of these characters, both real and fictional, center on a state-owned factory which supplies the Air Force and other sectors of the military. The factory was founded 60 years ago, and was moved to Chengdu City 50 years ago. It has weathered all of the successive political movements under communist government. I’m not interested in chronicling this history as such, but rather in seeing how a century of experiments with Socialism has impacted on the fate of Chinese people. To understand the complexity of the social changes, we need to listen to the direct and in-depth testimonies of the people who have lived through them.
Presented by Cinema Guild, “24 City” opens on Friday, July 31, at Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco, and Landmark’s Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley. Also opens August 21at Camera Cinemas in San Jose. (Updated Screening Schedule)
Bay Area folks, lucky you… 8Asians is doing another ticket giveaway!
TICKET GIVEAWAY FOR SAN FRANCISCO OPENING!
Courtesy of Landmark Theatres, 8Asians is giving away a free pair of tickets for Opening Night 7/31 in SF (Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre) or Berkeley (Landmark’s Shattuck Theatre)!
All you have to do is to leave a comment with your preferred location and one lucky winner will be selected to go!
(Contest will be closed at 11:59pm Pacific Time on Thursday night, 7/30)
The death of Michael Jackson has unleashed a lot of craziness here in Los Angeles, as it has been the location of his death and memorial service, as well as “home base” for the Jackson Family (via their Encino compound).
But all over the world, the outpouring of emotion over Michael Jackson’s passing has been its own kinds of crazy. Fans all over the world have been following the ongoing saga, but how have Asian fans been reacting? See this CNN video which includes an interesting comment by a Japanese woman: “I am surprised by his death but I understand why he had a short life: he didn’t seem like a happy person.”
What about in other parts of Asia? For those of us in North America, MJ’s death broke during the middle of the day, but in Asia, early risers were the first to hear the news. OneIndia reported the following:
Indian fans resorted to the internet, news websites, blogs and foreign channels. Social Networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter soon became the destination for sharing and grieving.
According to media reports, the SMS networks in India registered a significant rise in traffic after 4:30 am on Friday, Jun 26.
Many Chinese were affected deeply as MJ’s passing signified the demise of the icon that exposed the China to the outside world. Many people in the U.S. don’t realize that the release of “Thriller” in the 1980s was one of the first times Western (American) pop music to make it into China. Maybe that’s why there are already investors in Shanghai who are already talking about building a small scale version of Neverland in China.
Elsewhere, the Filipino prisoners, who became famous via their version of Thriller on YouTube, completed a tribute to Michael Jackson complete with a giant banner of Michael Jackson on June 27, 2009… that is “10 hours after receiving word that the King of Pop passed away.”
Speaking of quick turnarounds, “two Chinese writers locked themselves up with coffee and cigarettes, no cellphones and no sleep for 48 hours — and emerged with a finished Michael Jackson biography. “Moonwalk in Paradise” hit shelves this weekend, fewer than 10 days after the pop star’s death.”
The newspaper China Daily reported:
The 130,000-word book, titled “Moonwalk in Paradise — the Michael Jackson biography,” written by Jiang Xiaoyu and Xing Han, and published by Chinese publishing house Xiandai was available for pre-order sales online on Friday and on bookshelves Saturday. …
A report in China Youth Daily said the writers never met or interviewed Jackson and simply wrote the story from their “accumulated knowledge about the king of pop.”…
[co-author Jiang Xiaoyu said] “I am not only a music critic but also a fan of the King of Pop, so I understand what fans really need…. fans cannot wait for months.”
I, for one, have no idea how long it would take me to come up with 130,000 words, so props to these guys for cranking it all out. Of course, there’s no saying how accurate or well-written this book is, but in today’s world of “instant information,” authors do have to move fast. “Instant Michael Jackson books” have already been released in the U.S., too.
As for my personal memories of Michael Jackson music from my childhood? My parents were pretty strict about what kind of music we listened to (mostly classical music), but “Thriller” was so pervasive, even I managed to persuade an uncle into getting me a copy of the album. I think I can safely say this now, but my copy of “Thriller” was on cassette tape, obviously some sort of bootleg tape from Taiwan with the lyrics of the album poorly “translated” into Engrish inserted. I’m not certain, but I think this may partly explain why I never know the words to any songs. Shamone!
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