8Asians | An Asian American collaborative blog

I am an avid fan of National Public Radio (NPR) – and this morning, I heard the story of “Young Indians Abroad Return to Help Better Country” as part of the series on “Climate Connections: Profiles.” The story discusses the growing trend of young Indians who grew up in Britain, Australia and America are now going to the new wild west – India, hanging out with Indian friends, and having conversations about climate change and the environment. Indian-Americans are known as “ABCD’s” – “American-Born Confused Desis”:

“In this broadcast on Morning Edition we talk to a bunch of American-born Indians and their local friends who discuss what it’s like to come “home” and what it’s like to be invaded by Americans who want to rediscover their “Indian-ness”. The locals have a nickname for these Americans —they call them “ABCDs.” That’s an acronym for American-Born Confused Desis. Desi is slang for an Indian guy or gal, and the term basically means kids from America who return a little mixed-up about who they are. “The conversation, as you’ll hear, explores all kinds of issues: the advantages of an American accent in India, the value (and limits) of Western experience in attacking pollution and poverty, the importance (or not) of movies and popular culture in creating social change, and why Indian woman (some of them) like beef-eating men.”

NPR interviews a local Indian man, who says he doesn’t like ABCD’s, since with their Western education and non-Indian accents, are highly sought out for better jobs, status, etc… as well as the fact that ABCD men can get local Indian women easier – as he had read in Maxim India (supposedly because ABCD’s eat more meat and are bigger, etc..) – which made the NPR reporter laugh.

To be honest, the Indian man’s complaints kind of reminded me of the perennial debate of Asian women dating white men. :-). After the laugh, the Indian does say that these ABCD’s do provide different and “amazing” perspectives and insights that are helpful. Anyways, I was amused by the ABCD acronym. As a Taiwanese-American, I’ve heard the term ABC – American Born Chinese quite often. I did know one person at college who referred to himself as a CBA – Chinese Born American, to emphasize the Chinese part of him, even though he was born in America. Finally, someone in my dorm referred herself as an ABCDEF – American Born, Culturally Deprived, Egyptian Female. I thought that was clever and got a big kick out of that.

The other night, as I was waiting to meet up with a friend of mine for a drink at the Tied House in downtown Mountain View, I dropped by Books, Inc. and was browsing the magazine section when I came across the latest issue of The New Yorker, and came across this intriguing article titled, “Letters from China: Crazy English – The national scramble to learn a new language before the Olympics.” The article profiles a motivational English teacher Li Yang, and China’s efforts to teach the Beijing Olympic volunteers English in anticipation of foreigners attending the games. Yi has become the Anthony Robbins of teaching English in China:

“He is China’s Elvis of English, perhaps the world’s only language teacher known to bring students to tears of excitement. He has built an empire out of his country’s deepening devotion to a language it once derided as the tongue of barbarians and capitalists. His philosophy, captured by one of his many slogans, is flamboyantly patriotic: “Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”… China has been in the grip of “English fever,” as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, for more than a decade. A vast national appetite has elevated English to something more than a language: it is not simply a tool but a defining measure of life’s potential…English has become an ideology, a force strong enough to remake your résumé, attract a spouse, or catapult you out of a village. Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States. English private schools, study gadgets, and high-priced tutors vie for pieces of that market. The largest English school system, New Oriental, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.”

I remember when I was in Beijing last summer, I met a local Chinese woman who was interested in practicing her English with me. Additionally, walking around a Beijing mall, bookstore or in the subway, I certainly saw advertisements for English language schools and books on learning English.

It doesn’t surprise me that with the growth of the Chinese economy and China’s stature and influence internationally, along with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, that the popularity and importance of English as a foreign language is growing. For better or worse (especially for Americans), English is truly the international language of communications. However, French, along with English, are the two official languages of the Olympics – as the modern day Olympics was established through the efforts of a Frenchmen.

While catching up on the ABC series “Lost,” earlier this year, I remember an episode where Yunjin Kim‘s character, Sun, is being introduced to a prospective “boyfriend/husband” , Jae Lee, and her mother is being defferential that Sun only went to “Seoul National University” and not “Harvard,” where Jae Lee went. Well, apparently according to this recent New York Times article, “Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills,” going to an “elite” university in the United States is increasingly becoming more popular:

“South Korea is not the only country sending more students to the United States, but it seems to be a special case. Some 103,000 Korean students study at American schools of all levels, more than from any other country, according to American government statistics. In higher education, only India and China, with populations more than 20 times that of South Korea’s, send more students. “Preparing to get to the best American universities has become something of a national obsession in Korea,” said Alexander Vershbow, the American ambassador to South Korea. Korean applications to Harvard alone have tripled, to 213 this spring, up from 66 in 2003, said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions. Harvard has 37 Korean undergraduates, more than from any foreign country except Canada and Britain. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have a total of 103 Korean undergraduates; 34 graduated from Daewon or Minjok.”

Daewon and Minjok are the two private schools in Korea, and their students, that are profiled in the Times article. The schools themselves are very hard to get into, so those high school students are an elite group in themselves. The article continues to describe the heavy workload and intensity that these students bear as they pursue their (and their parents’) dreams of attending a top notch university in the U.S.

It’s this kind of thinking that I think only re-enforces the negative aspects of the “model minority” stereotype. I wonder though – is there anything inherent in Asian culture that emphasizes education over other cultures? I was having dinner with an older out-of-town white executive friend of mine who described to me his astonishment that the CEO of his company, and Indian immigrant, was going over his son’s classes that he might be taking next year as a freshman in high school. My friend said that when his kids were going to high school, it wasn’t until maybe his son’s junior year that he knew what an Advanced Placement (AP) course was. What do you think – do you think Asians over-emphasize education. Americans under-emphasize, or a little of both?

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on “The spin on Chinese laundries,” profiling John Jung, professor emeritus at California State University Long Beach:

“In China, women traditionally did the laundry. But as Chinese men immigrated, they were only allowed to own laundries and, later, restaurants.”

Jung grew up in Macon, Georgia, where his father owned the local laundry and was the only Chinese family in town. Jung recently published “Southern Fried Rice: Life in a Chinese Laundry in the Deep South” and “Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain.” The article reminded me of a recent book I read, “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food” and how the Chinese in America in the

Jung was recently in Chicago speaking at the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago in conjunction with the exhibit “From the Great Wall to the Great Lakes.” The exhibit looks looks at occupations open to Chinese immigrants in the first half of the 20th century – which you can imagine, were quite limited. Chinese-Americans and Asian-Americans have certainly come a long way from those days!

I have heard and read this many times before – there is not enough experienced managerial talent (and experienced talent in general) for China’s needs. This past weekend’s New York Times article again confirms this in, “China Needs Old Boys With M.B.A.’s:”

“In the West — not to mention Japan and South Korea — management skills are a given. Graduate schools of management churn out M.B.A.’s, while instilling the basic processes and systems that virtually all multinational companies rely on. People who rise to the top of companies are the ones who have mastered the art of management. But there are also many first-rate managers who populate the middle ranks of companies. They are the lifeblood of most big companies. Not so in China. “The shortage of managerial talent is huge,” said Zheng Yu-sheng, the associate dean at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. In the course of my two weeks in China, I heard this refrain constantly — and not just from business school professors… Xiang Bing, dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, said: “We Chinese are so willing to work hard for money. We are intelligent. We have the drive and the passion. But we put too much attention on technology and not enough on institution-building. And our soft skills are a real weakness.””

The irony of this (in my opinion), is that although China regards Taiwan as a renegade province seeking independence, without Taiwanese managerial and technical expertise, and investment, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, China would not be where it is today…

I had sent the New York Times article to a friend of mine, who happens now to be the Director of Global Immersion Programs at The Wharton School of Business (Graduate Division), and she had commented that:

“I remember this same conversation from 2000-2004 when I was visiting Beijing and Shanghai for admissions. So many advertisements on English TV reflecting the extreme shortage of managerial talent and great need for MBA and executive MBA programs. I’m sharing this with a couple of my colleagues who are planning and accompanying an upcoming program in Beijing & Shanghai, as well as HK and Taipei.”

A friend of mine founded ORIENTED.COM, which I have written about in the past. ORIENTED.COM is sort of a “LinkedIn for Asia,” and they try to match opportunties for BMW’s – Bi-lingual, Mid-career, Western-educated/western-trained professionals. For those who have the freedom and interest to work overseas in Asia, I do think there are a lot of opportunities for Asian-Americans who are bi-lingual to truly be limitless. Have any of you found this to be the case – or this is just more media hype?