Asian American Families Are A Health Risk

Insight from UC Davis psychologists in TIME article, A Family Suicide Risk in US Asians? highlighting the all-so-important role of family for Asian Americans and how it affects us more negatively to the point of suicide than any other factors do like poverty or depression.

The question is, what are the triggers?
Is it conflict? Is it control? Is it this weird sense of honor and expectations?

I think very often the church reinforces some of these triggers. The Chinese church system more often than not is set up to create moral upstanding citizens that write big checks rather than Christ-followers that are willing to be transcultural [Thanks Seth Kim!]

Layers I say. We’re like onions, full of layers [Thanks Shrek]. The Asian-American identity is full of layers. Our identities are so wrapped around the family and weird cultural expectations that it affects our spirituality like nothing else.

Ken Fong, Dan Hyun and I were having this discussion once on the who’s more repressed, Chinese or Koreans? What do you think?

Also Related
Asian American women and cultural pressures [via L2Foundation.org]

Chinese in the Mainstream: Three Delivery? Sigh.

Next week (June 27) Nicktoons will premiere “Three Delivery“, a cartoon about three Chinese teenagers saving Chinatown from evil one delivery at a time…
I don’t know about this one.
Is three delivery a play on “free delivery”?
Why do Chinese always have to be associated with take-out and kung fu?
The artwork is somewhat nice. The clips off the site were so-so. Not as funny as The Notorious MSG. It hasn’t grabbed me. I’m still a little taken back by how it all seems very backwards in these times. We’ve come so far from this image.
Please, just don’t suck.

Links
Three Delivery.com
Official Nicktoons Site
Also check out…Why is TV so White? Entertainment Weekly pulls out a very interesting article on the topic of why there is such a lack of diversity on TV.

Related Posts:
Chinese in the Mainstream: Learning from Kai-Lan

Asian American Population Increases

Last week census statistics unveiled that the Asian American population increased by 434,000 to surpass 15.2 million, or 5 percent of the estimated total U.S. population of 301.6 million. AsiAms are also the second fastest-growing minority group after Hispanics. The white population grew by 0.3 percent between 2006-2007.

Hot Spots: Five million Asians live in California, which had the largest Asian population, as well as the largest numerical increase, of 106,000, during the 2006 to 2007 period. New York (1.4 million) and Texas (915,000) followed in population. Texas (44,000) and New York (33,000) followed in numerical increase.

Links
US Census Press Release
AsianWeek: Asian American Population Surpasses 15 Million

Related Past Blogs
The Asian Invasion and Other Minorities Fast Becoming the Majority
33 Million Asians by 2050

Engage Speaker Series: Living Out the Gospel Across Racial and Socio-Economic Lines

It’s been awhile since I’ve attended an ENGAGE speaker series event in NYC sponsored by PaLM. I’m hoping to go to one again. They’ve done a great job of exposing issues and equipping leaders to engage culture. If you’re in the New York area there’s one tonight featuring Christine Lee of All Angels Church.

“Living Out the Gospel Across Racial and Socio-Economic Lines”
Ephesians 2 says that Christ Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. So then as the familiar saying goes, why does 11 am continue to be “the most segregated hour of the week”? Come hear how one church - of professionals, families, students, artists, homeless men and women - has sought and struggled (and sometimes failed) to live out the reality of the gospel in community and overcome the dividing walls of race and class.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
7:00pm - 9:00pm
All Angels Church
251 W. 80th Street New York, NY

Christine Lee is the Director of Spiritual Development and Outreach at All Angels’ Church, an evangelical Episcopal Church on the Upper West Side. She attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and received her M.Div. and Th.M. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. After seminary, she spent a year and a half serving as a short-term missionary in Bangkok, Thailand, teaching Thai and tribal students at the Thailand Evangelical Seminary. In 1999, she joined staff with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, first at the University of Chicago and then Columbia University after getting married to Jimmy Lee in 2002. Before coming to All Angels, she worked for Habitat for Humanity - NYC engaging the faith community in volunteerism and advocacy around affordable housing issues.

All Angels’ Church Official Website
All Angels’ Church Mission Statement: To build Christ centered communities of witness and healing, and equip people to be a transforming presence in NYC and beyond.

Chinese in the Mainstream: Learning from Kai-Lan

I sat down to watch a few DVR days worth of Nick Jr’s “Ni Hao Kai-Lan” with my virusy family. It made it’s debut on Chinese New Year. (btw Xin Nian Kuai Le! 農曆新年) Jayden’s picked up more Chinese in one week than he has since he was born. The show is an interesting venture capitalizing on the bilingualism of Dora the Explorer and the play along think along techniques of Blues Clues. What’s more interesting to me is the emotional intelligence that Kai-Lan teaches. During the middle of the episode a character demonstrates some issue and Kai-Lan encourages kids to figure out why they acted in that way and find a solution. I can appreciate that and the Mandarin lessons.

The NYTimes has a good article on the show and its creator, Karen Chau. I found her relationship with her dad quite amusing and all too familiar.

Ms. Chao, who earned a degree in digital art from the University of California, Irvine, in 2000, didn’t quite follow the path her father preferred. “He set me up for an internship at PaineWebber, but I doodled on the cold-call sheets and taped the phone receiver down,” she said. “I wasn’t a very good worker bee, but Dad was ecstatic because I was wearing business outfits with shoulder pads and big pants. In Chinese culture criticism is love. So my dad must really, really love me, because he has a lot to say.”

Kai-Lan is timely. Kids are more influenced by Asian culture than ever before getting beyond Kung-Fu and Moo-Shu Pork of my childhood experience. Makes me think of all those years of Chinese school. To think, my parents were cutting edge then. It’s essential now to learn Chinese in American schools in order to prepare for a global economy.

An estimated 50,000 American children are being taught Mandarin in public schools, with an additional 50,000 studying in private settings. Next month the first 2,000 high school students will take the College Board’s new Advanced Placement exam in Mandarin. The number is small but an indication of big things to come, said Tom Matts, director of the board’s World Languages Initiative. “We expect to see growth in this course unlike any other introduced in the last decade or so.”

Also read Nick Jr on Ni Hao Kai-Lan

Tom Hsieh Interview

Thanks to Danny at NewPointe Community Church who provided us a link to the interview they conducted during their service with Tom Hsieh. Enjoy!

Read:
Missional Living. Earn 200k. Live on 38k.
Missional Living. Earn 200k. Live on 38k. Part 2

Missional Living. Earn 200k. Live on 38k. Part 2

My post about Tom Hsieh has gotten a lot of attention. I’m glad that Danny, the music director at NewPointe Community Church caught wind of my post. His team decided to do something creative with the story. Read the post on his blog.

This Sunday, NewPointe Community Church will be doing a live conference with Tom Hsieh for part of their worship service. Listen live from their website, www.newpointe.org.
It will feature towards the end of the message (around 9:45 or 11:45am).

Related
• Missional Living. Earn 200k. Live on 38k.

This Is A Bust

Award-winning author Ed Lin has a new book out called, This is a Bust.
Haven’t read any of Lin’s books but the stories are based in Jersey and New York City Chinatown. This is a Bust is a murder mystery in 1976 NYC Chinatown through the eyes of a Chinese-American cop.
Here’s a description through Kaya<

A Vietnam vet and an alcoholic, Robert Chow’s troubles are compounded by the fact that he’s basically community-relations window-dressing for the NYPD: he’s the only Chinese American on the Chinatown beat, and the only police officer who can speak Cantonese, but he’s never assigned anything more challenging than appearances at store openings or community events. Chow is willing to stuff down his feelings and hang tight for a promotion to the detective track, despite the community unrest that begins to roil around him. But when his superiors remain indifferent to an old Chinese woman’s death, he is forced to take matters into his own hands. This Is a Bust is at once a murder mystery, a noir homage and a devastating, uniquely nuanced portrait of a neighborhood in flux, stuck between old rivalries and youthful idealism.

Sounds like pretty cool stuff. I’m more won over by the book cover. It’s a picture of the old Pagoda Movie Theater on East Broadway, one of the few great movie houses in Chinatown. These theaters showcased Chinese kung fu and comedy flicks. I remember watching movies at the Music Palace on the Bowery as a kid. Classic nasty theater floors. Dubious characters. Silhouetted gang fights in the middle of the movie screen.

This has got to be one of the best covers I’ve seen in a long while. Brings me back.

If you’re around NYC tomorrow (Thursday, January 17), Ed Lin will be reading and signing This Is a Bust at the Museum of Chinese in America at 7:00pm. 70 Mulberry Street, 2nd floor (at Bayard Street). $3/5 members/non-members. To RSVP for event, and for more info on MOCA programs, you can call 212-619-4785 ext 106

Asian American Ministry: Links

Since I’m back to reading blog feeds and searching the net for yummy stuff I’ve noticed some nice updates to Asian American ministry related things that may be of interest to you.

• Check out the new digs of Vox Veniae, always a visual feast with a mission
• The 2008 Asian American Leadership Conference site has been updated with more information
• The EPIC East Coast Conference 2008, “100% Sent”, February 1-3, 2008 at Herndon, Va
• Called Out , Called Forth, Asian American Leadership Conference, April 4-6, 2008 in San Diego, CA, with Dave Gibbons, Peter Cha, Ken Fong, and more. Hosted by San Diego Fellowship of Asian American Ministers and InterVarsity. Read more through Headsparks blog.

OK, tho not completely Asian American at its core, but check out FermiProject’s Q Conference.
• The Q event has confirmed Asian American guests like artist Makoto Fujimura, journalist Michael Luo, Pastor David Gibbons of NewSong, and the founder of Interfaith Youth Core, Eboo Patel

ABCs and Church

The L2 Foundation blog posted today about the alarming percentage of ABCs that attend church, less than 2% according to the recent Render Conference near Houston. [link:"Alarming Statistics About American Born Chinese"]

Less than 2% doesn’t surprise me as if any number would be comforting or satisfactory. If I have my numbers correct, there are roughly 3.5million Chinese in America and out of that number we have somewhere around 1.1million ABCs. So you do the math. 2% of 1.1million. You’d probably find many of these church going ABCs on the coasts.

The Chinese have been in America a long time (since the 1840s). So you have Chinese churches in practically every state. A Chinese church over 50 years old would typically have lots of ABCs in it and probably close to half of those churches would be found in California. However the fact of the matter is that these churches have been losing generation after generation of ABCs. Since the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965 those statistics would dwindle further since there would be a growing number of first generation immigrant churches/congregations under 20 years old. These congregations will have ABC children and eventually English speaking ministries. The ABC population will only continue to grow (approx. 30-40k a year). The need to reach them will also grow.

It’s easy to be complacent with who comes to our services. We need to ask how many “new” Christians or seekers actually come? Why don’t they? I believe most of the growth in our English Speaking Ministries is not new growth by conversion but from transplanted Christians. We have young mostly single ABC Christians coming and going. It’s a cultural phenomenon. The hard truth is that there are many Chinese or ABCs outside of our walls (over 95%). There’s so much work to be done.

Statistics on Chinese in America from US Census Data 2006