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.

The story is about this White asiaphile from the United States, who randomly becomes the ‘Chosen Scholar’ in a mythical Chinese story to free the Monkey King from being trapped in a mountain, and to save a magical book. He gets sucked into this because he falls immediately in love with the Goddess of Mercy, played by Bai Ling, upon seeing her. There are also heavenly celestials and the Emperor God, and then a band of evil extremist Gods who do under-handed things behind the Emperor God’s back. The Monkey King has to teach the ‘Chosen Scholar’ how to fight, and in the beginning he’s a nerdy klutz and by the end he’s defeating heavenly demons single handedly. After making out twice with the asiaphile, spliced in certain places throughout this crappy movie, Bai Ling says she’s in love with the asiaphile and wants to sacrifice her heavenly powers to be with him. In the end the magical book is saved, and a reincarnated Bai Ling meets the asiaphile in a university in China. The end.

Asia’s King of Pop, Andy Lau, has remained “single” for as long as anyone can remember. Like Jackie Chan, he is worried (or in Jackie’s case, was worried) that revealing his relationship status will cost him the support of his female fans. Jackie Chan did not own up to having a wife (Joan Lin) and a 20-something year old son (Jaycee Chan) only until five or six years ago. Andy Lau, who is in his mid-40s now, is clearly following in Jackie Chan’s footsteps. There were countless rumors surrounding Andy’s sexuality. When I attended a wedding in Hong Kong a few years ago, I sat next to this chatterbox who told me that Andy Lau would often travel to Taiwan to hook up with younger men. She used to work for a gossip magazine so there could be an ounce of truth in what she said. Gay men usually buy the gay story if the person in question is attractive. 

When Steven Seagal and Bai Ling arrived at the AZN Asian Excellence Awards 2008 ceremonies in Los Angeles, everyone turned each other to mouth an audible “WTF?” over the din of screaming fans. But Korean American Baby director, Peter Juwan Chung, was surprised he wasn’t invited to walk the red carpet at all on April 23, 2008, and probably suffered the sort of insomnia that leaves you staring at your ceiling at three in the morning, asking yourself, “Have they even SEEN my movie?”

(photo: Juwan Chung)

Well, Juwan, start building your trophy case .... right .... now.

Due to its worldwide box office success, The Forbidden Kingdom is getting a sequel. This chop-suey of Chinese fable will reunite the two big Chinese martial arts stars, Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and will likely feature a romance between Jet Li and Li Bingbing‘s characters, according to the Beijing Times report. Wait, the romancing of the Monkey God and the Grey Haired Lady aka Moonlight Witch? Now that’s a first. A better storyline would be to have Jet Li play a mute guy. This is certainly fitting since he uttered no more than 10 sentences in the first movie, and most were incomprehensible. 

Film Festival May Madness is officially HERE with the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) in full-swing, and the Visual Communications Film Festival (VCFF) kick-off last night signaling a full week of movie marathons in Los Angeles; both conclude May 8, 2008. And, let’s not forget that the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, NY, will be ending soon on Sunday, May 4th, and has already announced its winners—and then, it’s off to the Cannes Film Festival, Pittsburgh, Pusan, Venice, and ... well, you get the picture.

And the party people at Vanity Fair magazine know how to throw a HOT happy hour. I sat down with SFIFF ‘08 jury member, Chi-Hui Yang, to discuss this season’s documentary film line-up and his brother’s mind-boggling presentation, Cloud Eye Control feat. performing artist Anna Oxygen.

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..”

Korean R&B pop sensation, Rain, was on The Colbert Report earlier this week. The Michael Jackson of Asia was in LA for the promotion of his movie, ”Speed Racer” and decided to pay the funny man Stephen Colbert a visit for a dance off. The segment was pre-taped due to Rain’s limited English proficiency. This is how it started—In 2007, Time magazine conducted an online poll of the 100 most influential people of the year and Rain was number 1 while Stephen tailed him as the runner up. Ever since then, Rain had become Stephen’s arch nemesis and the comedian even joked about him and imitated a scene from his music video. (You can download high quality clips of their performance after the jump.)

Most Filipinos I know can sing very well, But none of them has a voice as big and a body frame as small as Charice Pempengco.  Apparently this 15-year old girl who found her stardom on youtube just taped a segment on Oprah’s show earlier this week. Charice also made an appearance on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show late last year and performed two songs. I saw this clip of her singing “And I Tell You I’m Not Going” and her voice simply blew me away. She has the voice of Whitney but the body of Britney (when Britney was 15 that is. She is probably thrice the size of Charice now). 

Things have been pretty slow in the Asian celeb world these two days so let’s talk about food (another subject I love dearly!). Ramen has been all the rage in the major U.S. cities as of late. I am not talking about the little ramen packets that you used to eat in college to save money for drinking. I am talking about a steamy bowl of noodles served in a delicious broth with some sliced pork, egg and seaweed (I am salivating as I am writing this) . There are four common types of ramen - shio (salt), tonkatsu (pork bone), shoyu (soy sauce) and miso ramen. My personal favorite is the tonkatsu ramen. I used to get my ramen fix at one of the many hole in the wall japanese noodles/yakitori places on St. Marks Place, where your entrance and exit are usually accompanied by a loud and zesty Japanese greeting by the restaurant staff.  Now I get them at newer establishments that specialize in serving ramen. These places seem to be popping up in the city like mushroom. Every month there is a new ramen place for New Yorkers to try out.