Bilingual ballots, And You Never Really Know What That Chinese Character Really Means

I was reading this article down at The Boston Globe and the ongoing fight about having candidate names in Chinese and I couldn't help but pause at a few pieces:

Last year Boston started printing the names in Chinese characters on the ballots for the first time, drawing opposition from Galvin, the state's top elections official, because of the potential that the names could mean something else entirely. But Chinese-American voters say the translations are rarely misunderstood and help elderly voters who struggle with English [...]

He said the translations do not always reflect the person's name and at worse could have a negative connotation. As examples, Galvin said, Mitt Romney's name could have been confused in Chinese characters with "sticky rice" on the ballot; Mayor Thomas M. Menino could be "imbecile." [...]

Jian Hua Tang, a 59-year-old Chinese schoolteacher, said she never would have confused Romney's name with "sticky rice," like Galvin suggested last year. "That's like saying if your last name is Green, I should confuse you as a green person," she said.

I wonder if maybe Galvin, in addition to thinking that people would confuse Romney with sticky rice was afraid that maybe somehow people would be communicating government secrets through the use of ballots, because you never really know what's going on with those strange and quirky characters and you can't really ever trust those Chinese people anyway because they just might be spies - or at least calling you an idiot.

But in this case that might not be such a bad idea.

Xu Yong: Sadly, we never got to know you

Unfortunately, Chinese player Xu Yong, who looked like he was destined to head to the NBA and be the next great prospect out of China, has been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer where the treatments will most likely end his basketball career, and while his life - living his life and beating the disease, is more important than being an NBA player, it would have been nice to see him suit up in an NBA jersey and realize that dream.

When Big Men Go Down Who Tells Them To Get Back Up?

With Yao going down - and the Houston Rockets looking at the remainder of the season where the trade deadline has past and there's been significant moves in the Western Conference (Jason Kidd, Pau Gasol, Shaq) - things could just be getting started.

ESPN's Henry Abbot asks the question in a new article of who makes the decision if Yao plays in the Olympics:

The relationship between the NBA, the Houston Rockets, and the Chinese government figures prominently in any and all matters Yao Ming. Even picking him first in the draft was not simple. Now, with Yao Ming slated to be the superstar showpiece of perhaps the most important sporting event in China's recent history -- the 2008 Beijing Olympics -- there must be a hundred new ways these international relationships can be tested. With something this bad having happened, there will be blame to spread around, and future questions to work out. Will Yao Ming be ready to play in the Olympics? Whose decision will that be? Are the Rockets prepared to let the Chinese team make that call? And what about next season -- now that China's national basketball treasure has injured himself repeatedly Houston's watch (he has also had a broken tibia) might there be concerns about his returning to the NBA at all?

Yao's injury could heal with surgery in three months, technically giving him another 3 months to work out and prepare for the games - but NBA teams would rather have a franchise player of his caliber sit out from any formal play until next season.

While the Chinese national team is preparing for an Olympics without Yao, when asked about not playing, he said this from a recent article:

If I cannot play in the Olympics for my country this time, it will be the biggest loss in my career to right now

Yao didn't say anything about an NBA championship for Houston, or the dearth of playoff successes for the team. What happens if he and the Chinese government are adamant on him playing no matter what the cost to his NBA career? Will Rocket fans still support him?

I don't think there's anything in the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement that quite covers this situation.

Jet Li top earner in 2007

Jet Li kicked his way through the competition last year ahead of fellow movie stars Jackie Chan (59 million), Andy Lau (32 million), and Chow Yun-Fat (13.8 million) to become the top earning Chinese star, bringing in a cool 62 million. Others on the list included Michelle Yeoh who brought in 11 million and Zhang Ziyi who made 9 million for the year.

Read more about the lists here and here.

China Unplugged

MTV will be having their first Unplugged series in China in December. Among the first to be featured are Pu Shu and Yu Quan.

Check out the video Radio In My Head by Pu Shu

Brenda Xu Unplugged

From singer/songwriter Brenda Xu, this is a video that was shot for a promotional piece for the San Diego Asian Film Festival music event, Blowfish: Unplugged.

From her site:

Taking piano lessons from her mother at age 10 was almost enough to scare her off music forever. But San Diego’s Brenda Xu said that within a few years she’d rekindled her love for the music.

Today, the UC San Diego grad is devoting her energy and time to her budding career as a singer-songwriter.

The native of Harbin, China (next to Russia’s southern border), Xu came to the United States at age 5 to live with her grandmother in the L.A. area. At 10, her mother was able to join the family here —- and it was then she decided that Brenda should learn the piano.

But Xu said the lessons didn’t go very well.

To learn more about Brenda Xu and pick up her CD check out her MySpace page.

Star Rising: Telly Leung and Rent

It seems that not only are Asian-American males getting more play in television and movies these days, but also on Broadway too. Case in point is Telly Leung, a 27 year old actor who is playing the role of Angel in the hit musical Rent.

Some of the national shows that Telly has played in (including Rent):

RENT (Angel / Steve and Others)
WICKED - Chicago Shiz Co. (Boq)
PACIFIC OVERTURES (Boy, Oberserver, Sailor)
FLOWER DRUM SONG (Ensemble, Ta u/s

At the same time Telly is also working on a full length feature album for release on MoppTopp records. To learn more about Telly Leung visit his site.

Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian two of the stories to watch for in the NBA this season

As the official start of the NBA season approaches, ESPN and their analysts are predicting all the stories, the drama, the teams, and the players to watch out for - and two of them are Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian.

John Hollinger - ESPN’s resident stats man and forecaster - is predicting Yao Ming will have the best Player Efficiency Rating (PER) in the league this year above players like Dwane Wade, Lebron James, and Kobe Bryant. For those of you that don’t follow basketball too much (or the stats) - that just means Yao is predicted to be one of the best players in the league this year.

Pretty cool.

Yi Jianlian, while not as impressive, is still being mentioned in the top 10 of first year players who may be in the running for the Rookie Of The Year award (although mostly due to more guaranteed playing time than anything else). Whether or not he’ll wither from the cold weather in Milwaukee versus LA where he was training for six months, and garnering a base of rabid female fans, might end up being more of the story.

Take that: Jackie Chan finally disses the Rush Hour films

You knew it was coming

According to Associated Press reports Jackie Chan is speaking out AGAINST the Rush Hour films:

Chan said when he made the first installment of the “Rush Hour” series in 1998 he only wanted to test the U.S. market and didn’t have high hopes.

“When we finished filming, I felt very disappointed because it was a movie I didn’t appreciate and I did not like the action scenes involved. I felt the style of action was too Americanized and I didn’t understand the American humor,” Chan said in a blog entry on his Web site seen Sunday.

The actor said he made the sequel because he was offered an “irresistible” amount of money to do it and made the recently released third installment to satisfy fans of the series.

Chan said “Rush Hour 3″ was no different from the first two installments for him.

“Nothing particularly exciting stood out that made this movie special for me … I spent four months making this film and I still don’t fully understand the humor,” he said, adding the comedic scenes may be lost on Asian audiences.

While it would have been nice to see this comment earlier - better late than never on this one. Read some more news down at cinemablend.com and contactmusic.com.

Mover over Criss Angel, meet Andrew Ngo

18, Asian - and the best damn stage magician in San Francisco.

So maybe he has a few more years until he starts competing directly with Criss Angel - but his future is looking bright:

Ngo, the youngest performer there at age 18, won not only the title of 2007’s “Best Stage Magician of San Francisco,” but also the People’s Choice Award, voted on by the 500 members of the audience. For the past four years, no one has won both simultaneously.

Ngo’s confident persona and sharp, quick moves wowed the audience at Noe Valley’s James Lick Middle School when he made two 15-inch umbrellas appear out of one. Clutching his trophy, Ngo stepped off the stage grinning from ear to ear. “It’s a dream come true,” said Ngo, a San Francisco native of Chinese and Vietnamese descent. “I’ve worked so hard for this. Everything’s fuzzy right now.”

Mid-Autumn Festival and the super sized mooncake

Image from CCTV's coverage

Today is the official day of the Mid-Autumn Festival - or Moon Festival - or Lantern Festival - or Children's Festival. Much like the Thanksgiving holiday with its roots deep in agriculture, it has become a time more for family and giving thanks for those around you, and while different types of celebrations happen in different parts of the world, one of the main staples is the mooncake filled with anything and everything.

But a 13 ton mooncake?

Citizens in a dozen of Chinese cities had opportunities to taste super moon cakes while the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching. In Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, hundreds of people ate up a 40-kilogram moon cake within one hour on Wednesday. It took the chefs nearly six hours to make the cake, which is 2.8 meters in diameter.

One month ago, a super large moon cake weighing nearly 13 tons, was made in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province. Referred to as the "No. 1 of Chinese Moon Cakes," this cake is 8.15 meters in diameter and 20 centimeters in height, and has a coating weighing one ton, and filling weighing 12 tons.

It took ten chefs more than 10 hours to make the king cake.

More Festival News

CCTV 2007 Festival Coverage

Mid-Autumn Festival kicks off today in China. People across the country are preparing to celebrate in many different ways. In Fuzhou, east China, the Mid-Autumn Festival means building towers of tiles. People do this so their lives and fortunes will grow just as high. Overseas Chinese and those living in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are heading to their hometown, Fujian, to spend the festival with their families. The local airport witnessed a 40 percent surge of passengers

Mid-Autumn for disadvantaged and blind children

In the festival called "The festive night of full moon" organized for the eighth year, the children had a fun day participating in the lantern and banquet decorating and karaoke contests, as well as watching lion dances, and music and circus performances. On this occasion, State President Nguyen Minh Triet and other leaders of the city's government joined the children to celebrate the festival.

Giving gifts down, barbecues up during festival, poll shows

The gift giving culture among office workers is on the decline, but the practice of having barbecues during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday is rising unabated, the results of an online survey released yesterday showed.

Mattel apologizes for toy recalls - to China and the Chinese people

We knew this wasn't what it was made out to be a long time ago - now however - it's been actually confirmed by Mattel THEMSELVES:

U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified.

The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.

"Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li's office at which reporters were allowed to be present.

"And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys," Debrowski said.

Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer involving more than 21 million Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint and tiny magnets that could be swallowed.

The recalls have prompted complaints from China that manufacturers were being blamed for design faults introduced by Mattel.

On Friday, Debrowski acknowledged that "vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers."

What's funny though about this post is how EVERYONE from China seems to get lumped into the toy scandal - there's no difference whatsoever between Chinese workers who actually work at plants that make Mattel toys, and Chinese workers who never touched a Mattel toy in their lives.

An Asian is an Asian is an Asian is an Asian - and that goes double for everyone in China it seems.

At least there won't be any more smack talk about how everything from China is tainted - at least for a while.

Typhoon Wipha and Shanghai Watch

A clip from the full story at Bloomberg on Typhoon Wipha:

Typhoon Wipha slammed into the east coast of China with winds of 185 kilometers per hour (116 miles per hour), causing almost $400 million in damage as it headed toward Shanghai. About 2 million people were evacuated.

Wipha’s eye crossed the coast in eastern Zhejiang province after 2 a.m. today with winds gusting to 232 kilometers per hour, according to the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Winds later decreased to 90 kilometers an hour, meaning Wipha was downgraded to a tropical storm. No deaths have been reported, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.

More links and information:

• Typhoon Wipha batters China (LA Times)


• Typhoon Wipha threatens northern Taiwan (The Times of India)


• Typhoon Wipha slams into coast near Shanghai (MSNBC)

Vanessa Hudgens: 18, Asian, caught naked - now what?

So how do you go from cute Disney star to barely-legal Polanski lolita? Maybe music really is the root of all evil - even the Disney kind…

If you haven’t heard by now, the ever popular Vanessa Hudgens who has risen to modest stardom through the Disney movie High School Musical (1 & 2) - and whose ethnicity is Irish and Native American on her father’s side, and Filipino, Chinese and Spanish on her mother’s side (who was born in the Philippines) - has literally been caught with her dress - and everything else completely down.

According to reports - actually her publicist - pictures circulating around the internet of her - some where she is wearing nothing at all - and which got out *gasp* by mistake - are indeed real.

And from there it all gets muddled - Disney fired her, then they say they didn’t, now they’re backing her - and now her legions of fans are backing her as well on her myspace page.

So where does that leave the once role-model who may have learned a thing or two from her peers if in fact this was a publicity stunt (and a stupid one at that because she was far more marketable before this)?

Asian, eighteen, caught naked - and waiting.

More Lust, Caution

Here are some more roundups of recent articles on the Ang Lee movie Lust, Caution, including reviews, China versus Taiwan, censors, and Venice:

• Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee gets caught by political tensions
• Will Ang Lee Give China More Caution, Less Lust?
• All’s fair in love and war
• Lee aims at second Venice victory