8Asians is a collaborative online publication that features original, diverse commentary by Asians from around the world on issues that affect our community. Established 2006.
“The Board of Supervisors passed the apology resolution presented by city supervisor Matt Haney on Monday, coinciding with the Lunar New Year.
Citing heinous behavior from the mid-1800s when the city was taking shape, the resolution acknowledges “the shameful history of structural and systematic racism and discrimination against Chinese immigrants and the Chinese American community by the City and County of San Francisco (that) reaches back over 150 years and touched every aspect of life including employment, housing, education and culture.”
A violent three-day riot targeting Chinese Americans in 1877 was also among the racist incidents for which the supervisors apologized.”
If you haven’t heard of Weee!, maybe the online delivery grocer doesn’t deliver in your area (their major markets are SF Bay Area, LA, Seattle, Portland, San Diego and New York but expanding rapidly). Weee! was founded in Fremont, California (San Francisco Bay Area) and is focused on ethnic food, specifically Asian and Hispanic groceries.
“It was Chu who, as one of Weee!’s new pandemic-era customers, initiated contact with CEO Larry Liu, who founded the Fremont, Calif.-based company in 2015. The two men – both Chinese Americans from the San Francisco Bay Area – got to talking, and to their surprise, an opportunity to collaborate emerged.
“I don’t know any combination of two people coming together with as different skill sets as us, but what we found in common was the idea of creating a new experience for food buying and, in that, culture sharing and passing,” says Chu. “It just became a very potent idea to me that I couldn’t let go of.”
In addition to being a signature element of his films, the sharing of food is part of Chu’s roots. His father, Lawrence Chu, opened the Chinese restaurant Chef Chu’s in 1970, and the family continues to run the beloved Silicon Valley staple to this day. “I’ve watched food spread the ideas of who we are as a family, as a people, both at the ground level at the restaurant and on the movie side,” the director says. “This idea of being able to make that experience accessible to everybody using story doesn’t mean [screen] content. It means the actual experience of discovering something.”
…
Weee!’s website and mobile app currently already have a social component alongside the e-commerce; each product’s page includes a robust reviews section where customers post photos and multilingual quick takes, but Chu and his team will ideate ways to further enhance engagement, including tapping into the director’s extensive rolodex for partnerships with Hollywood studios and Asian American leaders and influencers like the nonprofit Gold House.”
What I found really interesting to read was that Chu had reached out to Weee! first. Given his family’s background, its no wonder that Chu has a connection to food. Food is obviously a very important part of cultural connection to any ethnicity, and it’ll be interesting to see what Chu comes up with at Weee! Maybe a YouTube webseries feature Weee! groceries centered around Asian and Hispanic families? Looking forward to seeing what comes out of this collaboration!
“Because her dad was always there, Chloe Kim has the confidence to stand on her own.”
I just love it. From the 2018 Olympics, I knew that Chloe was especially close to her father, who spent lots of time driving her when she was a kid to the slopes to snowboard. This commercial is such a touching tribue to Chloe’s father. A lot of the footage looks to be actual home movie footage from Chloe’s parents and reminds me a little of some of the interactions I’ve had with my young nieces. I’m hoping great things again for Chloe for these Olympics.
Four years later, Kim continues to set the tone for her peers. An anguished transition to celebrity life resulted in Kim leaving the sport for 22 months to briefly enroll at Princeton. She returned to snowboarding in January 2021 and has won every competition since: first the Laax Open, then the World Championship, then the U.S. Grand Prix, then the Laax Open again. Three of those four wins have had margins wider than 4.0 points, including the 2021 Laax Open, which was decided by a staggering 13.25.
Such is Kim’s dominance that any result less than gold in Beijing would register as an earthquake.
“She is the greatest women’s snowboarder of all time,” said Arielle Gold, who won a bronze medal in the halfpipe in Pyeongchang. “By far.”
Kim is the Olympic, Youth Olympic, World and six-time X Games champion in the halfpipe, the first athlete to hold all four titles. She has appeared in 29 career halfpipe events 3 and has won 22 times, including each of her past 11 starts. The margin for error in snowboarding is as thin as the board, and with each rider given just a handful of runs at each event, unmitigated dominance is incredibly rare. Kim has missed the podium only twice in her 14-start World Cup career and is undefeated at world championships and Olympics. She has never missed the podium in eight appearances at the X Games.
Kim will join U.S. snowboarding legend Shaun White as one of the most marketable athletes in Beijing. And although she’s 14 years younger than the Flying Tomato, Kim already has a legacy that rivals his.”
She competes in the half pipe qualifiers on Wednesday February 9, 9:30 AM Beijing time (Tuesday 8:30 PM EST), with the half pipe finals on Thursday, February 10, 9:30 AM Beijing time (Wednesday 8:30 PM EST ).
Best of luck to you Chloe, but I don’t think you need any luck!
If you’ve watched any television or movies in the past 70 years, you’ve probably seen actor James Hong at least once in your life, even if you may not have known who he was. In fact, he may be the most prolific English speaking American actor ever, having been in over 600 TV and movie credits to his name. CBS Sunday Morning did a nice profile on Hong recently:
“Over nearly seven decades, James Hong has racked up more film and TV credits than almost anyone. Even more impressive, the character actor did so while confronting demeaning stereotypes in Hollywood. Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz talks with the constantly-working Hong about a career that began with entertaining U.S. troops during the Korean War, and extended to such treasured films as Chinatown and Big Trouble in Little China.”
“Olympian Nathan Chen is greeted by dinosaurs from Jurassic World Dominion, in theaters worldwide June 10.”
There’s really no connection between the Winter Olympics and the Jurassic Park films at all. I do like the majestic soundtrack playing with Chen skating, but I find it really bizarre that Chen is skating and then sees these dinosaurs and then the dinosaurs running away. I have to say that the commercial did its job – I clearly remember that there is a Jurassic World Dominion coming out in June, which is the 6th film in the franchise.
The highly popular and successful Golden State Warriors play in the San Francisco Bay Area , which overall is almost 25% Asian. San Francisco, where the Warriors play in Chase Center, is itself 35% Asian, so it’s no surprise that Lunar New Year is a big deal in the Bay Area, as well as to the Golden State Warriors.
This past Saturday (January 29, 2022), the Golden State Warriors had their Lunar New Year Celebration Night for their game against the Brooklyn Nets, with lots of live and taped video entertainment during the game and I was fortunate to be able to attend on behalf of 8Asians. It’s really great that the Warriors support the AAPI community with such evenings as well as other activities in a big way.
In San Francisco, there were many notable speakers at the rally, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu.
After the rally, there was a short march to where Vicha died, where there was a national moment of silence as well as a cello performance and some comments by activist Justin Zhu, “We will not be silenced.”
After that, there was a luncheon in Japantown, not too far from the rally & march locations, where a slideshow of Vicha’s life was shown, as well as many speakers discussing about the #StopAsianHate movement.
It was really great to see all of those interested and involved in the community to help address the issue of #StopAsianHate.
There are an additional few seconds of dialogue on the web version of the commercial tham the televised version which make this commercial funnier:
Caroline: Mitch you live in a van. Mitch: I’m a free spirit! Caroline: You don’t have a job. Mitch: But I have crypto! Caronline: That’s not a job. Mitch: But I’m a content creator! Caroline: That’s not a job. Mitch: But I stream stuff! Caronline: That’s not a job.
Every year, Apple releases a short film for Chinese New Year that is shot on an iPhone. This short for this 2022, called The Comeback, is very “meta,” and I liked it a lot. The film was created by Chinese director Zhang Meng. Here is a short synopsis:
A young stunt-double, who dreams of being behind the camera not just in front of it, returns home for Chinese New Year to spend time with his father while nursing an injury and escaping his perceived failure. The villagers celebrate his return as the ‘big director’ and he is reluctantly convinced to help the village create a movie of their own, to make their unknown village ‘internet famous.’ What it really does is bring the villagers together as they craft and create a movie set on Mars — writing the story, making costumes, building sets and setting up stunts — and reignites the young man’s belief in becoming a director and fulfilling his filmmaking dreams.
Not only is it funny and heartwarming, but it also touches on changes in China like increasing urbanization and the decline of village life.
“In Take Out with Lisa Ling, award-winning journalist Lisa Ling — whose own family story began in a Chinese restaurant — travels from the bayous of Louisiana to Orange County’s Little Saigon. She explores some of the most beloved foods while shining a long overdue spotlight on the contributions Asian Americans have been making to this country, since before the United States was even the United States. Take Out with Lisa Ling is streaming January 27 on HBO Max.”
Take Out with Lisa Ling will be a a six-part docuseries – certainly a show that’s going to make any viewer instantly hungry! It will stream starting on January 27 on HBOMax.
Before Try Hardercame out in theatres, Number Two Son mentioned to me that he had a friend who worked on the marketing of the film, and so we decided to watch it together while he was home on winter break. I once did college recruiting at Lowell High School, drove by it dozens of times, and attended the cross country meet that they sponsor, so I was anxious to see what this view of the students there would reveal. I was pleasantly surprised – while there are things I thought could have been done differently, I strongly recommend it.
The best aspect of the movie was that it engages the audience with the humanity of Lowell’s students. Lowell students have the reputation that they are hardworking Asian robots. I really liked how Try Harder tell the stories of a diverse collection of students. They show Asian students with stereotypically controlling parents but also show Asian American students who don’t have those kind of parents. They follow an African American student and what she goes through in a majority Asian American school. While they show students with tiger moms, they also tell the story of a student whose parents seem totally uninvolved.
What did I think could be have been better? The film continually asserts that Lowell students don’t get into elite colleges because they are Asian, but as one study have points out, Asian students often apply to elite schools even when they are not likely to get in. It is easy to see how peer pressure at a school like Lowell encourage that – I would have liked to have seen the documentary explore that. In addition, the documentary seemed a bit dated, with the action taking place in 2017 through 2018. I can understand the time to get it editted and released, but the some of the students shown could have already graduated by now. It would have been good to see where they are now and how they were affected by the pandemic.
Overall, I definitely recommend this movie. Some of things I mention above might make a good follow up documentary. Number 2 Son thought that it might also be interesting to take a look at other well-known similarly competitive and predominantly Asian public schools, like Stuyvesant in New York.
Try Harder can be seen on a number of digital platforms, including Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
