Apparently 1 min and 14 secs…
“I roll with a clan, you look like Jackie Chan” OHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
NOT
EDIT: this is Lupe Fiasco and Chris Brown backstage after a show in London for those of you who may not have recognized them…
Apparently 1 min and 14 secs…
“I roll with a clan, you look like Jackie Chan” OHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
NOT
EDIT: this is Lupe Fiasco and Chris Brown backstage after a show in London for those of you who may not have recognized them…
Last year, I had the opportunity to meet the writer/producer of the film Formosa Betrayed, Will Tiao as he was trying to raise money for the film. Formosa Betrayed is based on actual events that happened in the early-80s, about a student spy network which focuses on the political and social activities of Chinese and Taiwanese-American students on the campus. The filmmaker is looking for actors in an open casting call:
“We are looking for Taiwanese and Chinese actors, both male and female, ages 20-50 years old for roles in FORMOSA BETRAYED. Please send headshots and resumes to [email protected]. If called back by our casting director, you must be willing to be filmed on tape. If cast in the film, you must be a local Chicago hire, ie: any transportation to Chicago and housing in Chicago must be covered on your own. Must be available during the months of April to mid-May. If able to speak Taiwanese or Mandarin, please list on your resume. For further information, visit www.formosathemovie.com“
The film is being positioned as an international political thriller, like The Interpreter, The Manchurian Candidate, Air Force One, Patriot Games, etc… I remember my aunt telling me (who is always telling me something…) about KMT spies being on college campuses as I went off to college. So when Will Tiao was trying to raise money for the film, this quickly got written up in the Taiwanese and American press. If you or someone you know who is Chinese or Taiwanese that lives in the Chicago area, and might be interested, be sure to pass the info along!
A week or two ago I was fortunate enough to go to the 26th Annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (Okay, seriously, when the acronym is longer than most English words, that is when you need you come up with a snappier name.) The Center for Asian American Media had an interactive display where people could talk into a MacBook Pro and give their thoughts about San Francisco, Asian media and everything in between. They recently released the produced video, and what do you know, I make a cameo appearance along with Goh Nakamura. You’ll be able to tell it’s me by my fat face trying to say snarky things about hipsters.
(Thanks for the heads-up, Sylvia)
In today’s San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper reports in “San Jose City Council approves ‘Little Saigon’ banners:”
“After months of protests, rallies, even a hunger strike, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday voted to allow “Welcome to Little Saigon”banners to informally recognize a Vietnamese retail area on Story Road. The 10-0 vote brought an end to the incredible uproar over the last several months after the council voted to call the area “Saigon Business District,” enraging thousands in the community who wanted “Little Saigon.”… At the center of the months-long firestorm was Madison Nguyen, the only Vietnamese-American on the council. Activists called her a traitor and a liar for initially opposing the name Little Saigon… Nguyen preferred the name Saigon Business District – even though an official city survey conducted last summer showed Little Saigon was the preferred name…. The ordeal zapped time and energy from the city and sparked unwanted international media attention.”
I have to agree. Hopefully this whole controversy is over for good. Saigon Business District doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue… and it was just crazy how much time and negative energy was sucked into this, in my opinion, senseless mess. There are bigger things to worry about in San Jose than naming a neighborhood – like affordable housing and I imagine, an upcoming budget shortfall that all California cities will be facing due to the decline of the economy.
I guess one Taiwanese man who lived to 103 got what he wanted… a stripper at his funeral.
Son Honors Dad’s Wish, Hires Stripper for Taiwan Funeral
Tuesday, March 25, 2008A man hired a stripper to perform at the funeral of his father — who happened to have a fondness for gentlemen’s clubs, according to reports from Taiwan.
Taiwanese newspaper the United Daily News reported that Cai Jinlai had been promised a stripper for his funeral if he lived to 100.
Jinlai was 103 when he died — reportedly leaving behind more than 100 “descendants.”
He had died after walking about 3.1 miles to a town in Taichung County to vote in an election in the Taichung.
His son, Cai Ruigong, told the newspaper that he had paid more than $170 for the stripper to dance around the coffin at the funeral.
“He would travel around the island with his friends to see these [strip] shows,” Ruigong said.
According to reports, the exotic dancer performance at the funeral lasted 10 minutes.
I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition that the man died while walking 3+ miles to VOTE in the elections. Oh those Taiwanese people… crazy about voting!!!
Thanks to Grace Chu for this tip.
In Greece yesterday, the Olympic torch was lit and the ceremony was briefly interrupted by members of the Athens chapter of Reporters Without Borders. It was broadcast live by Greek television, but China state television cut away to a prerecorded scene. In “Olympic Event: Protests Kick Off The Torch Relay,” The Wall Street Journal reports:
“The gold-medal venue on the activists’ calendar is San Francisco, the Olympic torch’s only stop in North America when it arrives April 9. There, activists are expected to oppose a long menu of Chinese policies, including what they call repression in Tibet and Beijing’s support of oppressive regimes in Sudan and Myanmar. Demonstrators plan to take up banners on behalf of Taiwan and the spiritual group Falun Gong.”
The newspaper goes on to report what the coalition of Dafur groups are doing, as well as The Burmese American Democratic Alliance (plans an aerial event with a plane to tow a “Free Burma” banner” as well as lead a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge (possibly stopping lanes of traffic), and Students for a Free Tibet, (launching dozens of helium balloons carrying signs as well as placing banners on high-profile structures around San Francisco – possibly the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and/or the Transamerica Pyramid).
For the life of me, I don’t see how the Chinese picked San Francisco as the only city in the United States to do the torch relay – they might have as well picked Berkeley. I think Los Angeles would be a “safer” choice in regards to local activists protesting against the Chinese government. Then again, any city in the United States would be ground zero for anti-Chinese activists. I can only imagine what it will be like if the protesters steal the day from the Olympic Torch relay – a huge embarrassment to the Chinese and a diplomatic nightmare for the United States. But the Chinese can only censor their country’s media, not the rest of the free world’s.
I don’t care where you learned it or how. It seems that at some point, there was probably an Asian involved, wasn’t there? Pen twirling that is. Don’t deny it. You were in awe when you first saw it and you just gaped at the defiance of gravity as the pens just went back and forth and all over the place. You never knew pens could be fun, yet the person doing it looked bored and was probably studying.
Now, there’s a new pen, specially crafted for the art of twirling. It’s balanced, and has colorful LEDs and has different styles depending on what type of pen-twirling you do. PENmawashi was developed by champion pen twirler, Hideaki, and you probably don’t care but you know that you really really want one. Especially after watching the video and head-banging to that hard rock piece that accompanies it.
Photo Credit: (lintmachine)
I was just driving home from work when I heard this National Public Radio (NPR) piece on (listen/read at): “Long Duk Dong: Last of the Hollywood Stereotypes?” and knew I had to blog about this right away. In “Sixteen Candles,” Japanese-American Gedde Watanabe plays Long Duk Dong.
“Long Duk Dong is the creation of writer-director John Hughes, whose films — The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — enshrined a Hollywood-heightened image of a suburban high school near you. Geeks, jocks, cheerleaders, kids desperate to find an in with the popular crowd — they were the standard character set. In real American schools, Long Duk Dong gave the mean kids new material. “Every single Asian dude who went to high school or junior high during the era of John Hughes movies was called ‘Donger,'” says Eric Nakamura. Nakamura and Martin Wong co-founded the magazine Giant Robot, which covers Asian and Asian-American pop culture. “If you’re being called Long Duk Dong,” Wong explains, “you’re comic relief amongst a sea of people unlike you.” Worse, says Nakamura: “You’re being portrayed as a guy who just came off a boat and who’s out of control. It’s like every bad stereotype possible, loaded into one character.” Nakamura and Wong say that before “The Donger” came along, they got called “Bruce Lee” at school. That wasn’t so bad: At least Lee, the martial-arts star, could kick ass. Sixteen Candles stole even that limited pleasure — and Asian-American guys focused their frustration on the actor who played Long Duk Dong. After all, he was one of them: born in the U.S.A.”
I’ve blogged about “yellow face” performances perpetuating bad stereotypes of Asians/Asian-Americans before in movies before, but this was the first ever piece on the radio I’d ever heard regarding Asian-American male actors and bad stereotypes. I also blogged recently about how that a Hollywood pioneer actor was an Asian, before Hollywood took a big step backwards in stereotyping Asians and Asian-Americans.
To be honest, I’ve never actually watched the 1984 John Hughe’s film, “Sixteen Candles” – maybe caught bits and pieces of it on TV (I have seen and did like The Breakfast Club). I was in the 8th grade when that movie came out, and although I lived in Western Massachusetts where very few Asian-Americans lived, I was never called Long Duk Dong or ‘Donger.’ I was however called Bruce Lee or asked if I knew karate while growing.
(Here are some other clips with Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles: “What’s happening hotstuff?“and “Very clever dinner.“)
Continue reading
A while back, I got the chance to interview the lovely Kina Grannis, on behalf of 8Asians. She is one of Interscope’s newest artists ever since winning the Dorito’s Crash the Superbowl contest. The conversation itself covers everything from some background history, to how the Japanese culture effected both her and her sisters, to what’s coming up with her musical career.
I must apologize for the crackling of the recording since it seemed that the buffering didn’t completely set up yet before I had started. Novice sound tech on my part. Fortunately for me, she was very easy to talk to and we had a great conversation. We’ll probably catch up later with her to see where everything is going in her life.
Photo Credit: (Tim Monzon)
Reporter Peggy Orenstein discuss the role of race, racial identity and Obama (with Obama’s speech on race bringing up much discussion in America), as well as America’s growing, bi-racial nature. I thought Orenstein’s thoughts, as a parent of a bi-racial child, had some very interesting points to make:
“Most Americans watching Barack Obama‘s campaign, even those who don’t support him, appreciate the historic significance of an African-American president. But for parents like me, Obama, as the first biracial candidate, symbolizes something else too: the future of race in this country, the paradigm and paradox of its simultaneous intransigence and disappearance… More than anything, though, Hapas remind us that, while racism is real, “race” is a shifting construct. Consider: Would Obama still be seen as “black enough” if the wife by his side were white? And don’t get my husband started on why Tiger Woods — whose mother is three-quarters Asian and whose father was one-quarter Chinese and half African-American — is rarely hailed as the first Asian-American golf superstar…
During Obama’s campaign, Obama has certainly faced criticism that he was not “black enough” or too “black.” Will race matter in America in 50, 100, 150, 200 years from now as we increasingly inter-marry, assuming humanity can survive that long? Genetically, Tiger Woods is more “Asian” than he is “black” – but from the color of his skin, he is judged to be more black than “Asian.” (Of course, how Tiger Woods self-identifies himself as is his personal choice.)
In the future, will Americans truly be color blind and the concept of race, as we know it today, be foreign? Let me know your thoughts on this!
Today, Taiwan held it’s fourth truly democratic election for president, where it elected its first president who had campaigned for closer economic relations with Beijing, paving the way for a considerable lessening of tensions between the Taiwan Straits, as reported in The New York Times “Taiwan Elects a Leader Who Seeks Closer China Ties“:
“Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Taipei mayor from the Nationalist Party, won by a convincing margin. He prevailed despite a last-minute effort by his opponent, Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party, to warn that the Chinese crackdown in Tibet represented a warning of what could also happen to Taiwan if it did not stand up to Beijing. With all votes counted, Mr. Ma prevailed 58.45 percent to 41.55 percent and Mr. Hsieh quickly conceded defeat…in election day interviews, voters echoed Mr. Ma’s stance that closer relations with the mainland and its fast-growing economy represent the island’s best hope of returning to the rapid economic growth it enjoyed until the late 1990s.”
The referendum on calling to for the island, which was mostly symbolic rather than realistic in nature, to apply to the United Nations as Taiwan and not using its legal name, the Republic of China failed. The Republic of China remains status quo and falls under the “One China Policy,” which China and the United States, and in the past, the Taiwanese government has often agreed with.
The voter turn-out was estimated to be around 75.7 percent of the electorate, which is pretty impressive when compared to America’s traditional voter turn-out rate of 50% – but not as high as in 2004, where turnout was approximately 85%.
For most of the Taiwanese-Americans and their parents I know, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) loss is disappointing. From what I have read though, outgoing (DPP) President Chen Sui-Ben’s eight years in office has been disappointing, controversial (for his strong stance on independence), and full of corruption and mismanagement with also a decline in the economy which lead to “Chen” fatigue. Despite the tensions in Tibet, the Taiwanese electorate clearly want a more moderate approach to dealing with China than the previous eight years.
Apparently San Francisco’s own Nancy Pelosi, along with others, in a Congressional delegation are currently in India, and had an opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama, as reported in The New York Times: “On Visit, Pelosi Offers Support to Dalai Lama“:
“Buddhist nuns waved American flags, and the Dalai Lama ordered his followers to offer a standing ovation Friday morning as Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, came to Dharamsala, the emotionally charged headquarters of Tibetan exiles, and seized the opportunity to stick a finger in the eye of China…The visit by Ms. Pelosi, accompanied by nine other members of Congress, most of them Democrats, was arranged some time ago as part of a visit to India. As it happened, though, it came on the heels of the largest protests in Tibet in nearly two decades, followed by a broad crackdown by China, and almost nonstop demonstrations in solidarity in this town, where the Tibetan government in exile has its base.The timing could not have been better, at least for the Americans.”
I’m sure the Chinese government is pissed off. I really wonder how much China will complain and push back against international pressure. Just the other day, the Chinese government admitted that there had been Tibetans as well as Chinese who have been injured and killed during the protests. Talk about being a little bit more “open.” Also reported recently is that the Chinese government may be preventing live broadcasts during the Olympic games from Tiananmen Square, where it previously was going to allow broadcasters such as NBC to do so. China pledged to the International Olympic Committee, when bidding for the games, that the games would promote greater openness. Yeah, right.
Tomorrow is Taiwan’s presidential election. Along with the election, there is a referendum for Taiwan (officialy, The Republic of China – R.O.C.) to change its name from R.O.C. to Taiwan the next time Taiwan applies for the United Nations. China sees any such move as a referendum for independence and will complain loudly if the referendum passes.