r/aznidentity

What do you guys think of him? Is this a good thing or it goes against the narrative?

A new Hallmark Channel film All’s Fair in Love and Mahjong has drawn criticism from multiple prominent Asian Americans in the media industry.

The promotional poster ... did not feature any visibly Asian cast members or Chinese cultural elements despite the movie title including “mahjong,” a game at least 200 years old played across Asia (and now globally) with Chinese origins.

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The poster features white romance leads, Fiona Gubelmann and Paul Campbell, and three side characters— only one is Asian, Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe who is Chinese on her father’s side.

The mahjong tiles depicted on the poster are non-traditional— colors deemed palatable to a demographic of White American women and reminiscent of recent heavily criticized rebrands of mahjong by White American companies.

Philip Wang (@wongfuphil) ... commented, “collective ancestral sigh,” and posted on his stories that he would soon share more of his thoughts about the movie.

Nancy W. Yuen, scholar and sociologist who has written extensively about the lack of AAPI representation in entertainment, ... commented “What in the appropri-asian”

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Former ABC7 news anchor Dion Lim commented, “At first I thought this was a late April Fool’s joke… 🤦🏻‍♀️”

For Chinese Americans, this white-washing of mahjong is deja vu, over and over again.

Earlier this year, the New York Times published a cover story on mahjong in their Sunday magazine—the cover featured two White American women, founders of the brand Oh My Mahjong, who “design” mahjong tiles to match a home’s style, reducing them to an aesthetic flourish rather than a design reflective of its roots and origins, embedded with meaning and part of a lineage of history.

... a wound for those of us who remember the same attempt to “refresh” the game to meet White tastes just five years earlier.

... harkening back to 2021 when another brand, The Mahjong Line, founded by three White women, already came under fire both for the expensive price point ... and release of re-designed mahjong tiles meant to satisfy the style preference of one of the founders.

... journalist Jeff Yang told NPR: “It’s obviously not the first ... in which something coming out of a ... non-Western culture has been reappropriated. Their other language talked about how they felt like the game did not really fit their personal style ... That’s the kind of thing that I think sets off red flags for Asian Americans and other people of color ....”

For any racialized culture that has seen their cultural elements enter mainstream while erasing the people and the historical context of said culture — this is a deeply entrenched pattern.

The game of mahjong has been growing in popularity across the United States the last few years especially after it was featured in the 2018 movie Crazy Rich Asians ...

... It resonates with Asian Americans and Asian diaspora communities looking for a connection to their cultural roots ... and there has been a more recent interest from young non-Asian Americans’ in Chinese culture, emerging from (or perhaps showing up as) a social media trend broadly known as “Chinamaxxing.”

These content creators on social media, not Chinese in heritage, have made videos of themselves engaging in customs associated with Chinese culture, sometimes stereotypically, using the phrase “I’m in a Chinese time in my life right now.” ...

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The resurgence of interest in some Chinese cultural elements has raised complex feelings in millennial and older Chinese Americans; many of us can remember being bullied or mocked for our customs during developmental ages — and having been encouraged to learn a pathway of assimilation to the dominant American culture to survive required relinquishing our heritage.

The movie poster feels like a continued slap on the face.

There are young mahjong players in China who have made changes to mahjong tile design, putting on their generational spin — and some brands like McDonald’s have created branded mahjong tiles, and those have received mixed feedback from peers, as well.

The Mahjong Line’s unsolicited “refresh” of mahjong in 2021 was in some ways, perhaps the canary in the coal mine, as one mahjong tile after another fell to a dominant “American” culture that refuses to acknowledge the origins of things that are melted into its pot.

And perhaps not unexpected, ... adds insult to injury, is that this film is releasing in May, AAPI Heritage Month.

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Anyone notice how many Chinese living in Southeast Asia are just straight up minstrels?

From isawkwardguy who constantly pokes fun at East Asians and NEVER truly offends Southeast Asians to online trolls of Malaysian Chinese heritage that upvote every anti-Asian tweet. To Singaporeans who constantly make fun of their food.

Sorry, I really do not respect people like this and you shouldn't either.

....Economic Espionage Act (EEA) filings from 1996 to 2020, found stark disparities in how individuals of Asian and Chinese descent were treated in such cases.

It concluded that around one in three Asian-Americans accused of espionage may have been falsely accused, while individuals of Chinese and Asian descent were found to receive harsher sentences, on average, than defendants with Western surnames.

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A Chinese university student has been charged with unauthorised photography of US military aircraft in Nebraska during a road trip through several states, which included a stop at an air force base in South Dakota.

Tianrui Liang, who is studying in Glasgow, was arrested at New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport on April 7 as he attempted to return to Scotland, court documents filed in the Eastern District of New York revealed.

Non-paywall https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3350933/chinese-college-student-charged-illegally-taking-photos-us-military-planes

The 21-year-old has been charged with photographing defence installations without authorisation, which is prohibited under US law.

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... The FBI said he admitted to taking such photographs, but stated it was for his personal collection.

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There have been other cases involving military sites in the US and university students from China in recent years.

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In August 2023, five Chinese nationals were confronted in the dark near a remote Michigan military site, where thousands of people had gathered for drills. They were charged in 2024 ...

Additionally, two Chinese nationals, pursuing master’s degrees at the same university, were sentenced to prison in 2020 for illegally photographing sites at a naval air station at Key West in Florida.

Although Liang is not charged with espionage, which is difficult to prove in US courts, his case comes amid broader concerns among some Chinese-American advocacy groups about scrutiny in US espionage-related investigations.

A Committee of 100 st udy, which analysed Economic Espionage Act (EEA) filings from 1996 to 2020, found stark disparities in how individuals of Asian and Chinese descent were treated in such cases.

It concluded that around one in three Asian-Americans accused of espionage may have been falsely accused, while individuals of Chinese and Asian descent were found to receive harsher sentences, on average, than defendants with Western surnames.

I’ve seen repeatedly some strange representations of Asian people in movie and TV shows, even in the sci‑fi scene. I thought the “geeky” aspect of this subculture would make it more open and accepting, but maybe I was wrong?

Just now I posted in the r/ Stargate subreddit about obvious misrepresentations from pre‑2010 episodes, assuming that 2020s readers would be aware of how mentalities have changed. Yet I seem to have been mistaken, because the downvoting was intense:

•	First minute after posting: +1

•	Second minute: −1

•	Ten minutes later: 500 views and 16% upvote stats, bringing the thread down to 0 karma.

So I was thinking about this the other day but as I was looking back at some of the shows or films featuring AAPI characters that I have seen, heard about or actively watched over the years, I have picked up on this one thing: All these characters are shown having a very surface-level understanding of their culture (mainly not speaking their mother tongue fluently if at all) and are shown as very Americanized in the way they carry themselves.

For example, Anne Boonchuy and Molly McGee, both Thai protagonists in separate Disney Channel cartoons ("Amphibia," which I watched as a teen and "The Ghost and Molly McGee") do NOT speak Thai at all, and the Boonchuys and Sharon McGee did not make imparting their culture onto their respective daughters a priority. In Anne's case she is second gen and her parents came directly from Thailand whereas Molly is mixed and Sharon was born and raised in the U.S., making Molly third gen. However, Molly's cousin on her mother's side (Sharon's brother, David's, daughter) is shown being fluent in Thai as she is fully Thai (David married another Thai woman, from Thailand itself to boot) and just being more comfortable in Thai culture even though both Sharon and David were both born and raised in the U.S.

Another example is Devi from Never Have I Ever. At the start of NHIE, she has been shown having internalized resentment over her Indian heritage, she does not speak a lick of Tamil at all because neither Nalini nor Mohan are shown to have taught her (even Nirmala, Mohan's mother is shown to be speaking in fluent English!) even though they are both Indian born and bred and immigrated to L.A. a few years before Devi was born. Her relationship with her culture gets a little better by the end of the series but she still is shown to be very Americanized.

Finally, the Covey sisters from the "To All The Boys..." franchise (and yes I know Jenny Hahn does get some flack in here but bear with me for a sec). They do get a bit of slack because Eve had died early on and were primarily raised by their White father but even so, Kitty is the only one out of her, Lara Jean, and Margot who shows even the slightest interest in her Korean roots (and even so she initially applied to KISS to chase after Dae first, reconnect with Eve's past second), and I personally watch "XO, Kitty" for the drama, not really for the representation to be honest.

Okay that being said, as someone who is Korean-American and born and raised in the U.S. and has parents who made SURE she spoke Korean, ate Korean food, and generally just never forgot her Korean culture (and most of the Korean kids that I grew up with are of the same case)... Hollywood, more depictions of AAPI children of immigrants that are actually in tune with their culture PLEASE. I have a theory that the depictions like the ones mentioned above are why there is a bit of a school of thought among "sourceland" Asians that people from the diaspora are way too Americanized to be considered "one of us"

It needs to be discussed because it feels like the west is pushing wasian to become the default for the Asian American identity. Asian Americans have always been this blank canvas to be molded to whatever is convenient to the white narrative. but ultimately its a blank canvas. Nobody truly understands ​asian americans because of the lack of ​representation​. ​I fear the push for wasians to be at the forefront will make ​​Asian Americans even more ​invisible and foreign to the west. Ultimately upholds white surpemacy. ​Let's discuss

The Seoul Western District Court has sentenced American livestreamer Johnny Somali to six months in prison plus 20 days of detention.

Found guilty on all counts, including obstruction of business operations, Minor Offense Act violations, and related charges tied to his controversial online stunts in South Korea. In addition to the prison term, the court imposed a five‑year employment restriction at institutions working with children, adolescents, and people with disabilities, and ordered the confiscation of two mobile phones used in the offenses.

Apparently both Mainland China and Taiwan actually have relatively easy/attainable business visas and work visas for foreign business owners.

For Mainland China, it seems that a foreign citizen (including Chinese Indonesians) could open up any kind of business or company that is not restricted to Chinese citizens only, as long as they have enough capital to start one, have a profitable business/business idea, and follow local regulations.

Business owners can also get a work visa through their businesses/companies as long as they fulfil the requirements of getting an ordinary work visa (which I believe isn’t that hard for business owners who have their businesses/companies running for a few years). Getting permanent residency would likely be doable if your income/salary generated by your business is above a certain threshold.

For Taiwan, a foreign citizen could open up a business or company there and get a work permit/ARC as long as you meet the minimum starting capital of 500k NTD and reach an annual turnover/average annual turnover of 3 million NTD. If you manage to get past that, permanent residency seems relatively easy to obtain as long as you meet the other requirements for one.

Of course the biggest problem would be figuring out if your current business model would work in Mainland China / Taiwan and/or finding a business idea that would be profitable and sustainable there in the long run, especially considering the competitive environment there (especially in Mainland China).

And getting your Mandarin to business-level proficiency would take some time.

What are your thoughts on that?