May

15

2008

(36) Comments

Help Needed in Asia

03:35AM by Hoc

Dear Ningin Community,

In the past week, Asia has endured two massive natural disasters, a cyclone in Myanmar and a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in China’s central Sichuan province. Combined, these two events leave possibly 100,000+ people dead and hundreds of thousands more homeless, hungry, and suffering.

While the majority of the news and content on Ningin is entertainment focus, allow me to interrupt you from that and ask for your help. You see, after reading about the NYTimes article about a school collapse in the Chinese city of Duijiangyan killing 900 school children and watching videos of terrified kids huddling under tables, I was overcame with unbearable sadness.

It’s very easy to get absorbed in our own lives, not noticing the rest of the world. However, the scale and depth of the tragedy and lost of life suffered is just too devastating for me not to do something.

Both Mixr Media (parent company of Ningin) and I personally will be making donations to the Red Cross and MercyCorps. These are two charities with tremendous track record for providing aid. It is my wish that you all do the same with whatever you can spare.

May

9

2008

(9) Comments

Asian Americans: Be Ready for Backlash

02:34PM by Alvin Lin

Here is an interesting article out from AsianWeek.  I think it is an excellent piece that summarizes a lot of points.  It doesn’t address much to tie in how anti-China sentiments affect all Asian Americans, but it’s not hard to see why.  An easy example is how Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was murdered by two auto workers, who were frustrated over Japan.  Here are some excerpts from the article

“China is now America’s number 3 Enemy. A February 2008 Gallup Poll found that Americans declared that China had replaced North Korea as our number 3 enemy. Is anyone surprised that China is perceived to be a greater threat than the long time trouble maker North Korea? It seems that every day our fellow Americans are feeling more and more threatened by China’s growing economic power, in addition to China’s growing international influence in Asia, Australia, South America, Africa and the Middle East..”

Apr

29

2008

(5) Comments

Far East Movement, Part II

08:22PM by Alvin Lin

Part II of the interview.  You can find Part I here.

[…and made us realize we can’t and shouldn’t hide the fact we’re Asian] I really respect that.  What has the reception been like within the hip hop entertainment community?

SURPRISE. hahah. We’ve had other artists and djs from radio stations say “I’ve been hearing your songs on the radio and always thought yall might be latino or white maybe… but when i looked yall up on the internet and saw FAR EAST MOVEMENT and yall were Asian i was really surprised.” To us, thats a compliment. it means they felt we sounded authentic to how they hear hip hop music. Hopefully the next time they hear or see an Asian artist it wont be as much of a shock.

[…we’re striving to be an Asian American Brand] How has the support been like from the Asian American community so far, how are you trying to reach out or accomplish this?

The support has been amazing. Just within the growing Asian American entertainment community we’ve been lucky enough meet and become family with some of the most amazing people breaking down doors like Justin Lin, Suchin Pak, Sung Kang, Jin, Brian Tee, Roger Fan, Se7en, DJ Shine (Drunken Tiger), DJ Eman (Power106) and countless other musicians, djs, comedians, actors, directors, journalists, tv personalities, dancers, promoters and executives who have all helped us to the path that we’re on today. And our fans, friends and family are the inspiration and support who have driven us to never give up when doors don’t seem to open as fast as we’d like them to. Our first event ever was MOVEMENTALITY, the charity show we talked about earlier. We pride ourselves in doing as many charity shows, high school, college and community shows as we can, especially with the youth, so that we may reach out to the next generation and give back the love the community has shown us. We’ve started working with an assistant superintendant named Diann from a high school district in Sacramento to reach out to students and inspire them in the arts. Definitely be on the look out for FM working much more closely with schools in the near future.

Apr

18

2008

(9) Comments

Nerd Love: Guy Proposes to GF Through Reprogrammed Videogame

06:59AM by Alvin Lin

Article Link

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Hiding a ring in a bouquet just wasn’t enough when a computer programmer decided to pop the question. Bernie Peng reprogrammed Tammy Li’s favorite video game, “Bejeweled,” so a ring and a marriage proposal would show up on the screen when she reached a certain score.

Li reached the needed score — and said yes.

The word of the romantic feat last December filtered out after Peng, a financial software programmer, posted details on his blog. The reprogramming was a tricky task and took him a month.

“I thought it was pretty cool, in a nerdy way,” Peng told The Star-Ledger of Newark.

Apr

10

2008

(6) Comments

Mad TV Clip about IR Couple, Revealing Closet Racism

07:33AM by Alvin Lin

Here is a clip I’ve been looking for a long time. It’s a Mad TV clip of a Black guy and White woman couple, where the woman reveals her closet racism as they talk. Same thing applies to certain Asian-White couples, especially some recent prominent and controversial ones in recent news (like those NYC radio hosts with the racist Asian jokes that got them fired, who used the ‘my wife is Asian so I can’t be racist’ defense).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fKDP__q0pw

Apr

9

2008

(5) Comments

Minorities with Internalized Self-Racism

07:00AM by Alvin Lin

“When you have Asian American women who are ignorant of history and that the desire from these people goes back to the colonization of Asian countries, the media portrayal of Asian women, and Asian American women being socialized into the White supremacist world of media, it makes perfect sense. Underlying it all is a form of racist love, not an equality. These Asian American women get hit on or propositioned by White men, but they don’t realize what lies beneath; that they’re coming onto you as a prostitute or massage woman, because that’s what they see, first and foremost, regardless of educational level. Conversely, an Asian American woman in White supremecist America will value anything White. I won’t say it’s instinctual, but almost at the preconscious level.”

-Prof Darrell Hamamoto, Asian American studies at UC Davis

http://www.audreymagazine.com/Sep2005/Features03.asp

Apr

8

2008

(8) Comments

Planet B-Boy in Theaters Now

07:13AM by Alvin Lin

I saw it in Cambridge on Saturday, where the Executive Producer was there for a Q&A afterwards.  This movie is ridiculously, amazingly awesome on multiple levels.  Not only does it have really catchy music (from MIT alum Woody Pak, the go-to “Asian John Williams” for a bunch of AA films), but this documentary explores multiple interesting teams from across the globe in the annual B-Boy (breakdancing) world competition.  The bulk of the documentary focused on a few teams: ‘Ichigeki’ representing Japan, ‘Phase-T’ from France, ‘Knucklehead Zoo’ representing the USA and two teams, ‘Gamblerz’ (the returning champions) and ‘Last for One’, representing S.Korea.

Some of the main protagonists are dancers from the S.Korean and Japanese teams, who have very heart-warming and emotional stories related to strained relationships with their fathers.  For example, one of the Japanese dancers lost his father before the competition, who he had a rocky relationship with, and one of the Korean dancers tried to bridge the distance with his father through his dancing.  A lot of these Asian dancers faced not only poverty, and not only the inevitibility of military service, but also cultural and family obstacles to pursuing their dream of dancing.  They worked jobs in order to pursue their dream of dancing (which paid little to no money) in their home nations at the time, and sacrificed much, including not sleeping at all for many days in order to train and be successful.  The film covered the poor beginnings and extreme poverty that one of the Korean teams came from, having grown up in the countryside and never having seen any buildings higher than a few stories tall.  The prize for world champion was under a thousand per member, so it’s clear their motivation was not money, but pride and winning for their countries.  There was also some emphasis on a young French youth and his racist mother.  A really funny scene involved the cultural differences behind food.

Just like in ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’, this movie does a great job of showing just how amazing at dancing Asians can be, as well as how creative, innovative, and personable they can be as well.  The end not only made me feel GREAT as an Asian person, but the movie gave me a greater appreciation as well as desire to learn more about the true hip hop culture.

Last For One (Korea)

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Apr

8

2008

(4) Comments

Lena Chen’s Harvard Blog Entry/Discussion, on Asian Fetish

07:28AM by Alvin Lin

Lena is a (notorious) blogger whose prose has generated heated commentary on her school newspaper as well as in some major newspapers.  Her main viewpoint is she enjoys non-emotional sex, that there is a double standard for girls who do this compared to guys, and how she feels an empowered feminist doing this.  Her counterpart in a NY Times magazine was another feminist who went the other way, no sex whatsoever with her boyfriend.

Anyways, here is the link to the discussion about Asian fetish, where she seems to make good points but no one has the guts to point to mass media or societal conditioning to manufacture sexual attraction, in this case Asian fetish:
http://sexandtheivy.com/2007/11/11/economists-disprove-yellow-fever/#disqus_thread

[But don’t you ever ask yourself WHY you find Asians more attractive? I have no doubt that I like tall men (like 6’ 3” tall even though I’m 5’ 2") because I’ve been told that masculinity is attractive and that height represents masculinity. Or maybe there’s an evolutionary reason. But you definitely weren’t born thinking, “Whoo, Asians!” and unless I’m missing something, this is probably not evolutionarily to your benefit or anything.]

[Agreed. Our tastes are very often socialized. Especially since you weren’t born knowing what ‘Asian’ meant—race is a social distinction, not an innate biological fact, Verde.]

[Also, I think it’s particularly strange when some guys date exclusively Asian women and claim it’s really just accidental. Asian people make up 4% of the American population. That’s not a lot to choose from, even if you account for greater density in metropolitan areas and the Ivy League. For example, at Harvard, you just happened to date three people in a row from the same 10% of the student population? Like, really? Obviously, there’s some pretty intentional selection going on here.]

Apr

8

2008

(4) Comments

An Asian Woman’s Experience on How Men Exotified, Objectified, Fetishized Her

07:00AM by Alvin Lin

(from a blog post)

“And as a young woman, I learned just as fast how many men also think that Asian females are submissive, sexually eager and overly pleasing women whose main objective is satisfy their man’s every desire - especially in the bedroom.

My first day on campus of my freshman year in college, two upperclassmen approached me, but didn’t really talk to me as much as they did talk about me - as if I wasn’t even there.

“Dude, Adam would totally love this chick.” (Motioning towards me).
“I know. You know how obsessed he is with Orientals.”
“Yeah. What’s not to love?”
Lots of laughter.
“Hey”, says one of the guys, looking at me. “Wanna meet our friend, Adam? He would so totally dig you.”
Me: Stunned into silence, too shocked to move or say anything.
“Um, do you like, speak English?”

By happenstance, I eventually did end up meeting Adam later that year. Turns out, I wasn’t “authentic enough” (his words) for him. Turns out he didn’t want an Asian woman who spoke as much as I did, especially without an accent. (Not that I was auditioning to be his girlfriend.)

[post continued below]

(more...)

Apr

7

2008

(5) Comments

Impact of Korean Entertainment on Asian Women

07:00AM by Alvin Lin

Due to Korea’s hot movies and shows now, many non-Korean Asian women suddenly all want a Korean guy. Here is a NY Times and a Korean newspaper commenting on the phenomenon of women in Asia infatuated with Korean men, based on the soap operas they watch.  I swear to God, mass media has more influence than most people realize:
----

“A weepy love story, “Winter Sonata,” became the rage in Uzbekistan after driving the Japanese into a frenzy last year. In Thailand and Malaysia, people devoured “A Tale of Autumn,” and Vietnamese were glued to “Lovers in Paris.” In China, South Korean dramas are sold, and pirated, everywhere, and the young adopt the clothing and hairstyles made cool by South Korean stars.”


..."Of course I don’t think all Korean men are like Yon-sama, but still...” Mrs Nakagama mused”