I am extremely loving of Chinese people

In light of the recent posts, I'd like to give you:

The top 10 reasons you should be extremely loving of Chinese people

10. Chinese New Year, where you get red envelopes full of money
9. We age really well
8. We value our families
7. Apparently all races love our women
6. We tend to be more insightful and believe in living a balance
5. We can solve your math problems
4. We tend to be good listeners and collaborators
3. If you need an impromptu violin or piano recital, you can count on us
2. Our language consists of one syllable words, so we don't need acronyms
1. We have really good, cheap food (if you know where to go)

Insights on race on this MLK day

An absolutely wonderful post about race, on this Martin Luther King day... from a surprising source: A blog about escaping the corporate world!

Pamela Slim talks about her mixed race kids and has great insights on how they talk about race. And how noticing the color of one's skin doesn't make you racist. Her attitude on race is right on. I would even tell her to teach her kids to take the best of both worlds!

Absolutely wonderfully written. It'll send chills down your spine (in a positive way). I hope you check it out!

Chinese speaking white guys

Pardon those of you who read my blog on Wisconsin sports, but this story crosses over into the Asian world... the Milwaukee Bucks' first round draft pick last year was a guy named Joe Alexander. He grew up in China and was born in Taiwan, and speaks fluent Mandarin. Click here to see the 30 second interview.

For the non-Chinese speaking people, near the end of the interview the reporter asks him in Chinese (a question that inevitably always comes up when Chinese people talk to Americans) what his favorite Chinese food is. He says, "Kung-pao chicken." Then later adds, "All Americans like Kung-pao chicken." Really funny stuff coming from a white guy!

An experience

I hadn't had to deal with something like this since I was in grade school, but by handling it with a calm but firm voice and by education, I made the best of the situation and I think everyone came out for the better.

I went to the batting cages on Friday to take some swings. There were two kids there, probably 8-10 years old, and African American. Apparently they had biked there on their own. One of them kept yelling "swing batter batter" as I was trying to hit. After one series of pitches I stepped out, found him, and asked him to not do that (in a game, maybe it was OK, but in a batting cage it didn't seem appropriate). He said OK and stopped.

As I left, he and his friend came back in the door. I stepped out of the way to let them through, and I was walking out I heard them snickering behind my back as kids do. Then I heard one of them say "konichiwa" (the Japanese word for "hello"). I wasn't about to let that go. I went back and confronted both of them. At one point I thought about asking the facility to throw them out, but I figured they were a couple of ignorant kids and this might be a good learning experience.

It turns out it was the second kid who made the comment (the first kid that I had talked to before didn't want anything to do with it). The first thing I told him was "konichiwa" is Japanese for hello, and I'm Chinese (thinking back, I should've taught him how to say it in Chinese). I told him that I don't make fun of him, and he shouldn't make fun of me, and we're here to have a good time. The first kid kept trying to help me out ("yes, you shouldn't talk to him like that").

I know that they were kids and didn't mean much by the comment. But I did want to make sure they understood that Asian people were more than just "konichiwa." He had the typical "I'm intimidated but I'm trying to look cool" look on his face, but hopefully he will be better off after this experience.

I invite anyone else who has an experience like this to calmly but firmly confront it, and take an educational approach to the situation.

Failure and the Asian culture

Being an Asian American means you live with Asian culture and American culture at the same time. Sometimes it conflicts, which makes it really difficult, especially if you're still young and impressionable.

I'm reading the book "Bounce" by Barry Moltz, which talks about the role of failure in success. Failure is a natural part of being successful, but in our society failure means you weren't smart enough, you didn't work hard enough. On page 66 of the book it talks about how failure is taken in the Asian culture... i.e. you've shamed yourself, your family, and the entire galaxy. Getting a B means you were that far away from getting an A. Asian parents believe that 2nd place is the first loser.



The advantage of the Asian culture in this case is the concept of humility. If we can take the humility part from the Asian culture and the risk-taking part of the American culture, we'd be very successful. One of the things the book talks about is failing with humility allows you to learn the most out of the failure.

Conforming our faces to Western glasses

There's this movie called Iron and Silk, where a white man goes to China to teach English... It talks about the culture differences and he gets to experience discrimination. He builds a nice rapport with his students, and one day they're talking about the differences between the Western world and theirs. One of his students says, "Your face... it's so 3-dimensional..."

I recently went to see the movie "Bolt" in 3-D at our local theater... I'm wearing 3-D glasses for this movie, and coming out of the theater I get these marks above my cheeks from where the glasses were sitting. This reminded me of how uncomfortable my safety glasses at work were... they wouldn't sit at the bridge of my nose and instead cut into my cheeks. This is because these glasses were designed for non-Asian faces. Maybe it's time we design safety glasses for Asians and stop trying to conform our faces to the Western world!