Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Category: Culture

  • Mountain View 99 Ranch Market

    The 99 Ranch Market in Mountain View is finally open. I visited the store on Saturday to check it out. This new Asian supermarket is conveniently located on 1350 Grant Road, just off El Camino Real, with easy access to highways 237 and 85. For those people living in Mountain View, Los Altos, and Palo Alto, switching over to the Mountain View 99 Ranch Market (from the Cupertino location) will save you about 7 miles of driving each way.

    I found the Mountain View 99 Ranch Market to be the cleanest 99 Ranch Market I have visited, but maybe that is just because it is the newest. Only time will tell. I also found the store to be absolutely cold. Maybe they’re still working out the kinks in their air-conditioning system, but the entire store was down right frosty (in temperature only). Finally, I found the store to be well-stocked. For example, the previous weekend, I couldn’t find Gold Plum Chinkiang vinegar at the Cupertino 99 Ranch Market. That happens on occasion when all the store has in stock is the Asian Taste brand. However, the Mountain View store was fully stocked. Again, this may just be a new store issue where the managers wanted to leave a positive impression and made a concerted effort to have everything in stock. Anyways, I walked away with a week’s work of groceries and a positive impression. For now, the Mountain View store is just a place to buy groceries and drive off. It remains to be see whether Asian restaurants will fill in around the supermarket, like at the other 99 Ranch supermarkets, to provide a broader ranger of Asian goods and services.

  • Proposition 8 and Interracial Marriage

    Is Proposition 8 a civil rights issue? The supporters of Proposition 8 would claim otherwise. Allowing blacks and whites to marry is one thing. However, allowing two men or two women to marry is another. Their argument is that the purpose of marriage is to propagate the human race. That’s why allowing gays to marry is different from allowing people of different races to marry. However, a look back in history reveals that the same arguments against gay marriage were also used to ban interracial marriage:

    It is stated as a well authenticated fact that if the issue of a black man and a white woman, and a white man and a black woman intermarry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid the intermarriage of blacks and whites, laying out of view other sufficient grounds for such enactments.

    I suspect that if this was 1948 instead of 2008, the same people supporting Proposition 8 would be advocating for the prohibition of interracial marriage.

  • The Princess of Nebraska

    I just finished watching Wayne Wang’s The Princess of Nebraska on YouTube. A few hours ago, I had just read that the movie was being released for free on YouTube. Without reading any reviews (or spoilers), I headed off to YouTube to track down the film. You won’t find a light-hearted tale of overachieving Chinese Americans (like from the Joy Luck Club) in this movie. Be warned. This is not a movie to see with the kids to learn about Chinese culture.

  • Changing Windshield Wipers

    I thought that today would be a good day to change the windshield wipers. We already had experienced an early bout of rain a week or so ago, so I didn’t want to be caught again with streaky wipes. So, I headed to the local Kragen Auto Parts to pick up some replacement wipers. At first, I picked up some Bosch windshield wipers and took them outside the store for sizing. The 17″ Bosch wipers were the exact size. However, when I returned to the store, I noticed that they only had one in stock. That wouldn’t do. So, I picked up a pair of Trico 17″ windshield wipers and headed outside to install them. However, when I removed the old wipers, I discovered that the Trico 17″ wipers were short. Glad I tried to install this in the Kragen parking lot this morning instead of waiting until I returned home after work. So, I went back into the store, returned the Trico 17″ wipers and purchased a pair of Trico 19″ wipers. How is it that the 17″ wipers on one brand would be the same length as the 19″ wipers on another? I don’t get it.

  • Asian Art Museum – Ming Dynasty Exhibit

    The Asian Art Museum is hosting a special exhibition entitled Power and Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty from June 27-September 21, 2008. Fortunately, Target sponsors a Free First Sundays program that opens admission to the museum for free on the first Sunday of every month. This past Sunday being a “first Sunday,” I headed to San Francisco to see what Ming treasures the museum had in store. I arrived shortly before 10 a.m., which is opening time, and discovered a line that literally wrapped around the museum. You would think that they were selling the beloved iPhone 3G at the gift store or something.

    Well, San Francisco being San Francisco, the weather was overcast, cold and windy in the middle of summer. As we entered the museum (about an hour later), we were given tickets that indicated our assigned time for viewing the Ming exhibits. After some more waiting inside the museum, we finally entered the first room at around 11:20 a.m. An hour and 20 minute wait! The Ming art is distributed among 3 exhibit halls on the first floor of the museum. As we proceeded from hall to hall, we had to wait in a new line. Some lines were longer than others.

    If you are visiting with a large group, you will save a few bucks by attending the Free Sunday event. However, the experience is sub-optimal from the long lines to the crowded exhibit halls. If you really want to see everything, you need to be patient because each exhibit probably had 10 or so people around it. People packed around the exhibits. More people streaming in. Not quite the quiet and leisurely pace typically found in museums. I don’t know if the museum is less crowded when they charge admission. I should have asked, but was a bit too frazzled from the whole visit.

  • Save the Outrage

    Yahoo! / Reuters: U.S. “Outraged” by Myanmar’s Response to Cyclone. The United Nations estimates 1.5 million people have been “severely affected” by the cyclone that swept through Myanmar and the United States expressed outrage on Thursday at the delays in allowing in aid.

    Compare and contrast: Katrina Response Sparks Outrage.

    Here’s another quote:

    “It’s clear that the government’s ability to deal with the situation, which is catastrophic, is limited.”

    5 points if you guess correctly whether the person speaking was talking about the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina or the Burmese response to Cyclone Nargis.

  • Rice Shortage in Aisle Six

    The sky is falling! As if $4.00/gallon wasn’t bad enough, we now have food rationing. In America! At Costco!! The local store of abundance in the land of plenty ran out of rice this afternoon. Just a lonely note standing guard over two empty pallets. Although the store had no jasmine or calrose rice, it had plenty of basmati rice on hand. I spotted a customer with three bags of basmati in his shopping cart, perhaps in anticipation of the contagion spreading to the next pallet over.

  • Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra

    I saw a free performance by the Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra this weekend at the Stanford Shopping Center. These young musicians really put on quite a performance with a full complement of Chinese instruments. As the Chinese population expands in the United States, I am seeing new opportunities for the Chinese American youth to rediscover the culture and heritage of their ancestors through music. A group like this would have been unheard of 3 decades ago. Basically, music lessons then consisted of learning Western music on Western instruments. However, this slowly matured to learning Chinese music on Western instruments, and finally learning Chinese music on Chinese instruments.

    The Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra will be performing a Chinese Operatic Music Concert at California Theatre in San Jose on May 10, 2008. Visit their website for details.

  • My Hero Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

    Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, admitted that he was wrong in opposing a national holiday in honor of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I am glad that Senator McCain admitted his misjudgment because Dr. King is not just a Black hero. He is an American hero and a Chinese-American hero as well.

    As Chinese Americans, we owe a debt to our parents and grandparents for all they have given us. To say that the 20th Century was a difficult time to live in China would be an understatement considering the perpetual state of conflict, war and turmoil that wracked the country. Despite all of this, somehow, our parents or grandparents managed to survive and eventually immigrate to the United States so that we could take advantage of opportunities that may not have been available to them.

    However, we would be remiss if we did not also acknowledge the sacrifices of Dr. King and the other participants in the American civil rights movement. In fighting against racial inequality, Dr. King opened doors not just for Blacks, but for people of all color, including Chinese Americans.

    60 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited state courts from enforcing racially restrictive covenants. These covenants were private agreements to exclude persons of certain races or colors from using or occupying real estate for residential purposes. In the case, the convenant read as follows:

    [T]he said property is hereby restricted to the use and occupancy for the term of Fifty (50) years from this date, so that it shall be a condition all the time and whether recited and referred to as [sic] not in subsequent conveyances and shall attach to the land as a condition precedent to the sale of the same, that hereafter no part of said property or any portion thereof shall be, for said term of Fifty-years, occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race, it being intended hereby to restrict the use of said property for said period of time against the occupancy as owners or tenants of any portion of said property for resident or other purpose by people of the Negro or Mongolian Race.”

    The property at issue was in St. Louis, Missouri. And, Mongolian refers to East Asians, including Chinese. Let’s look at a racially restrictive covenant from the State of Washington:

    That neither the said premises or any house, building or improvement thereon erected, shall at any time be occupied by persons of the Ethiopian race, or by Japanese or Chinese, or any other Malay or Asiatic race, save except as domestic servants in the employ of persons not coming within this restriction.

    If you ever saw those photos from the South with the signs for Whites and Coloreds, the racially restrictive covenants listed above should tell you where Chinese Americans fit into the mix. And, it ain’t the White group. Now, if a presidential candidate trivializes a man who was instrumental in opening up so many opportunities for Chinese Americans, I am not sure that this candidate best reflects my values. What do you think?

  • Guanxi Marketing

    Last night, as I was cooking dinner, I received one of “those” phone calls. The ones you usually hope to avoid by signing up with the National Do Not Call Registry. As the seller started her sales pitch, I didn’t hang up. This time, I responded enthusiastically and placed a sizeable order. The difference? I knew the seller.

    Americans love to overcomplicate their understanding of the Chinese. They turn ordinary human friendships and relationships into a complex set of social norms that mandate the provision of certain favors based on several millennia of Chinese tradition, customs and culture. It’s not that complex, really.

    When banks send unsolicited credit card offers, I mail back the empty prepaid envelopes. If someone shows up at the door to sell magazines or newspapers, I don’t answer the door. If someone calls to switch my long-distance service, I hang up. However, if my friend’s daughter calls up and asks if I want purchase Girl Scout cookies, I’m in. That’s Guanxi 101. Guanxi marketing is relationship or word-of-mouth marketing. If you know the buyer, you will have a leg up on the competition because the natural distrust that buyers exhibit for salespersons will be absent. I don’t have to worry about the pitch being a scam or some form of telemarketing fraud. The discussion starts out with which cookies I will buy, instead of deciding whether or not I will buy.