Rant of the Exiles

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent. - Confucius When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. - Proverbs 10:19 In this past year’s movement to promote racial and cultural awareness, it is a painful irony that we, as Asian Americans, are derided for one of the unique virtues we possess. This post is a response to slogans like "silence is complicity", for allies to appreciate the underrated value of silence particularly in Asian culture, and an encouragement for Asian Americans to experience freedom from shame and guilt when we are silent. I want to argue that silence is a valid option in a culture that places great value on the frequency, volume, and pitch of emotional self-expression. In a world of shouting and noise, silence is crucial. I am deeply grateful for my Asian American brothers and sisters who have spoken up during this unique season where a...

Mark 1:40-41 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, If you will, you can make me clean. 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will; be clean. I sat in a McDonald’s hours before the governor of California announced a shelter-in-place directive for Santa Clara County residents. Social distancing was already in full effect - every other table had a sign “DO NOT SIT”. The McDonald’s near my home has two rooms - a main dining room where the counters and drink station are, and a side dining area where the restrooms are located. An older Asian woman sat fifteen feet away from me at a table. I heard her begin to cough. Once she started coughing, a person sitting in the room immediately got up and left. Another customer walked in and abruptly turned around.  If the devil wanted to devise a scheme to further create division and alienation, he would concoct a novel illness that would not kill the healthy but...

James Taylor, the great grandson of Hudson Taylor, the famed missionary to China who founded the China Inland Mission (now OMF) once said: “It is a tragedy so many foreign Chinese have left the evangelization of China up to the non-Chinese.” James spoke those words over twenty-five years ago during a Chinese church retreat when I was a senior in high school. His calling out of the Chinese diaspora vis-a-vis white missionaries challenged and haunted me. This challenge was the impetus behind my plans to join Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) staff to do a one-year mission trip to China. But I didn’t go. Rather, I accepted an invitation from my hometown pastor, Tom Chow, to return to San Jose and reach my American-born Chinese peers. After nine years of working as a project manager and volunteering with the youth group and young adult ministry, I joined the staff of my home church, Chinese Church in Christ - South Valley (South Valley) in 2006. In the summer of 2007, South Valley...

This article was originally published at SOLA Network on June 4th, 2019. In a previous post , I took issue with Brene Brown’s definition of shame and examined how we often overlook how shame occurs in the context of relationship and is the pain of disconnection. I defined shame as the exposure of a relational rift caused by one’s party misalignment with another party’s stated values. It can (and often does) result in thoughts of being worthless. And yet the act of incurring shame can also be a redemptive gift because of what Jesus has done. The shame of Jesus has two purposes: First, the misalignment of values rebukes the injustice embedded in the religious system at the time. The Messiah’s disgrace exposes the self-seeking nature of the Jewish ruling authority. Second, the shame of Jesus is evangelistic. It indicates to the world there is no person who falls so far in disgrace that Jesus is unwilling to fall deeper to catch. In other words, Jesus suffered shame to heal the rif...

*Spoiler alert” This review is full of spoilers. Watch the movie first. Sometimes you watch a movie and it feels like coming home. No, not coming home to the palatial mansion Nick Young spent his childhood in but the familiar refuge of people who get you - who understand and accept your idiosyncrasies and love you regardless.  What makes Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians movie so enjoyable is the subtle and over-the-top ways it captures the diversity and nuance of Chinese culture. Nothing speaks home more than food and music. Cuisine plays a pivotal role in the film, and though most of the characters are absurdly affluent, the night market food scene and dumpling-making scene resonated strongly with me. Those moments were relatable on many levels. Asians of all socioeconomic classes are familiar with night markets and sitting around a table making dumplings. Food is comfort and the ultimate nostalgia. I’m reminded of Pixar’s Ratatouille, when callous food critic Anton Ego ...

Update: What I learned after writing this.  What does the outsized willingness of Asian American women to date interracially reveal about courage vis-a-vis their male counterparts? It’s well-documented that Asian American women date and marry outside their race far more often than their male counterparts. Most estimate around a 2:1 ratio but I’ve read up to 4:1.   Weike Wang’s New Yorker short story perfectly captures the power asymmetry in Asian female-white male dating relationships with this memorable line: "So it was settled. The big question of why he was dating her was out of the way. Her Chineseness was not a factor. They were merely one out of a billion or so Asian girl–white guy couples walking around on this earth.” ONE BILLION Asian girl - white guy couples. That’s certainly what it feels like in the San Francisco bay area and other urban centers like New York City, where her story is set. It’s a trend I observed in my high school over two de...

Sometimes ideas linger in the back of one’s mind like dirt at the bottom of a swimming pool - dormant, unnoticed yet hiding in plain sight. They are left lying at the edge of one’s consciousness for years because they’re too unsettling and difficult to articulate. Only when a cleaning implement rustles them that one becomes aware of how filthy the environment really is.  For decades, I had suspected an affair might exist but the fact of it eluded me until a recent disruption. The problem with this tryst  is that it ’ s hidden from one of the partners. The relationship functions at the subconscious level. The rustling started with conversations some friends and I had about race, ethnicity, and culture. This dialogue birthed a desire to read a book or study a curriculum together on the topic. One friend recommended Daniel Hill’s White Awake , a book about diagnosing the hidden cancer of white supremacy in American evangelicalism. Earlier this week some members o...

It was 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning. Five-year old Tommy looked up from his Chinese homework and protested: "But mom why do I have to study?" Ai-Ling looked down and as she stroked Tommy’s hair affectionately, looked out the window at the sunrise and said:  "Tommy, studying is about learning. Learning is the greatest beauty. Some day you will attend an Ivy League school, take literature classes, and immerse yourself in the work of giants. Your mind will expand and grow as far as the horizon, like the radiance of the sun rising into the sky." The preceding sentence has never been uttered in an Asian* household. And yet I’m certain the scene of early morning studying has been replayed often. This the premise of Bryan Caplan’s book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money , that education is anywhere from 30-80% signaling. Signaling is communication. Education communicates to employers that you’re suitab...

[1400 words, 8 minute read] During the start of Linsanity in 2012, Jeremy Lin spent a night sleeping on the couch of his New York Knicks teammate. After Lin exploded in popularity, Taiwanese and mainland Chinese reporters expressed concern over his lodging situation, repeatedly asking him if he had found more permanent digs. Western media had a field day with the question - the idea of a stranger publicly worrying over a NBA player’s living situation was preposterous. And yet this is classic Asian culture - unsolicited care-taking for an independent, capable adult.  According to Cloud and Townsend’s seminal book , boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else. According to Bowen theory (a widely accepted psychology in Western culture), this is what self-differentiation looks like: “People with a poorly differentiated “self” depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that either they quickly adjust what they think, say, and do to...