This is beef tripe noodle soup from Tanxia Wang Fuzhou Cuisine at 13 Eldridge Street, New York. Only $3. I liked it. The place was packed at 5pm. Their dumplings looked good; I’ll try them next time.

This is from Yi Zhang Fishball at 9 Eldridge Street. It’s really tasty. I wasn’t expecting to see anything inside, but this is fish and some sort of meat (probably pork). It’s only $3

MSG Crystals

Why do so many Americans, even very well-educated ones, still believe that MSG is bad for our health? It is an urban myth that it causes allergic reactions. Many studies from around the world have proven that MSG is no more harmful to our health than plain salt, yet the urban myth in the US continues. (Read Wikipedia entry on MSG ») In fact, in large quantities, salt is more harmful to our health than MSG is. When restaurants don’t use MSG, they just put more salt which is worse. I think it’s just because the name “monosodium glutamate” sounds too scary. If we called salt by its chemical name, I think the same thing would happen: “Would you like some sodium chloride on your French fries?”

Some people feel lethargic after eating Chinese food which lead to this myth called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. I believe this has to do with the heaviness of the food. I feel the same way whenever I eat rich, heavy, greasy food. Cheap food in general tends to be so, specially cheap Chinese, Indian, and deep-fried food. If you were to stuff yourself with rich French food loaded with butter, cream, and cheese, the same would probably happen but because French food is generally expensive, we don’t stuff ourselves with it. And, that leads to another argument that enhancing the flavors with MSG would be good for us because we would feel more satisfied with less calories.

The main reason why the urban myth of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” spread so fast and wide, I believe, is xenophobia. Chinese food was a perfect candidate for it. MSG is strongly associated with Chinese food but it was actually invented in Japan, and the Japanese people probably consume more MSG than the Chinese.

MSG first went into production in 1909 in Japan, and since then, the Japanese people have been using it in just about everything. It’s nearly impossible to avoid MSG in Japan, or even in Japanese grocery stores in the US. You pick up any food product randomly and look at the list of ingredients, you will find MSG. For over a century, the entire nation of Japan has been consuming MSG every day. But, as it is commonly known, the Japanese are significantly healthier and live longer than Americans. So, what is there to be concerned about? More than one generation of people have already consumed it all their lives. Cutting down on sodium consumption is a common health concern even in Japan, but I’ve never heard anyone talking about cutting down on MSG.

It is true that using MSG in everything you cook is a form of cheating, but the same is true for salt and sugar. When you eat fruit, say strawberries or a grapefruit, you would want it to be naturally sweet, and not have to add sugar to it artificially. The same is true for savory food. You want to enjoy the natural amount of salt that’s in the ingredients, and if you get high-quality ingredients full of natural flavors, you wouldn’t need to add salt. We tend to add salt to food when flavor is lacking. High-end restaurants don’t usually have salt on the table, and asking for more salt is considered an insult. In that sense, yes, adding MSG is a form of cheating; we should enjoy the naturally occurring MSG if possible. But why single out MSG as a form of cheating? If MSG is cheating, then chefs should not add any salt or sugar in any of their food either, but they all habitually do. So, it’s hypocritical to single out use of MSG as cheating.

This is beef soup noodle ($5) from Lam Zhou Handmade Noodle & Dumpling at 144 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002.

I used to think Japanese ramen noodles were superior to the original Chinese versions, but now that I started tasting a variety of Chinese noodle soups, I think the Chinese ones are better. I think the Japanese put too many things into their broth. It’s too rich. It’s somewhat ironic that there is a “Ramen” fad in New York right now, popularized by the famous Korean-American chef, David Chang.

This is what I would call yellow trash food. It’s chicken and cheese over rice. It tastes amazing. I loved this. Check it out at Xo Kitchen, 148 Hester St, New York 10013, (Between Elizabeth St & Bowery)

Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan, Japan

Another thing that surprised me was that many of these old businesses are hotels. I would not think hotel business is easy to sustain for a long period of time as it is easily affected by the trends in tourism as well as by the ups and downs of economy.

The photo you see on the right is of the hotel in Japan which is officially recognized as “the oldest hotel in the world” by the Guinness Book of World Records. Well, according to Wikipedia, it is not just the oldest hotel but it is the oldest company in the whole world. I would say that is a big difference. It’s been in business since the year 705. That’s 1,307 years old. “300 years of excellence” sounds like a trifling matter.

Another thing you notice about this list of oldest companies is that there are only about a dozen countries listed. It makes sense; it’s hard enough for a country to survive for that long, let alone businesses. Political instability too is another big factor even if the country itself survived. China, for instance, wouldn’t be there because of their Communism years. Japan was basically like Galapagos Island.

Hello,

Please forgive my English. I found your blog yesterday while searching articles regarding the Cove. I totally agree that this is an issue of ethnocentrism rather than protesting for whaling or for killing Dolphins. The issue has gotten an extreme now. Please see this:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

This is nothing but hatred. The fact that the Academy has awarded the movie the Cove an Oscar has given them more confidence in what they are doing to people in Taiji. I want to spread this as much as possible and make people realize how wrong they are to the people in Taiji. The people in Taiji do not deserve this. The anti-Whaling, anti-killing Dolphin people need to find another organizations or ways to achieve their goals but not by supporting Sea Shepherd.

Do you think you could in anyway (in your blog or through twitter) to raise a voice about this?

Thank you,
Noriko
Tokyo, Japan

Great execution and production. In my 20s, I worked on the trading floor of a British bank where there was another Asian guy named Sonny. A white guy named Steve used to call me Sonny and I just went along with it, and let him call me Sonny. One day, another trader who was sitting near him noticed and said, “Wait, did you just call him ‘Sonny’? That’s not Sonny, that’s Dyske.” He apologized profusedly but I thought it was pretty funny. At the Christmas party that year, the head trader got all the Asian men on the stage and asked Steve to point to Sonny. It was pretty funny.

My kid

The short answer is: I don’t really know. I don’t think anyone knows. So we need to make our best guesses, and that is what I would like to do below. Let me divide us Asian-American parents into two schools of thought. One school believes that we should teach our children whatever we know about our Asian heritage, which includes language, culture, values, customs, etc.. The other school believes that we should do our best to raise our children as Americans. Naturally, there are a lot of people who fall somewhere between the two extremes. Let’s call the first school, “bi-cultural school” and the latter “assimilation school”.

Statistically I’m not sure which school is more popular, but my own anecdotal evidence suggests that bi-cultural school is significantly more popular, at least among the first generation (immigrant) Japanese parents. My daughter attends a public school here in New York City and there are many Japanese parents. I’m one of the few parents who does not send their kids to Japanese schools on weekends, and I may be the only parent who does not teach Japanese to his child. Even my own parents are baffled by the fact that I do not. If my family was living in Japan, I would certainly teach my child English. The reason why I don’t teach my child Japanese has to do with the specific time in history and the context that my child will grow up in. Needless to say, I’m in the assimilation school.

Last week, New York Magazine published a thought-provoking article entitled “Paper Tigers – What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?” The article meticulously analyzes what Asian-Americans experience in this country. The author, Wesley Yang, is a second generation Asian-American, and I do not believe he has a child. He writes from a point of view of a child and a victim. If he were a parent, he could not be so one-sided, since he would be partly responsible for what his children experience in the world. Although he covers a wide range of issues, parenting is left out.

Towards the end of the article, Yang reveals his own opinions of how Asian-Americans should behave in this country. He suggests that we behave more like the Americans. We shouldn’t be shy about getting (or demanding) what we want, but at the same time he suggests we should not do so by assimilating into the white-dominant culture, i.e., what white people find pleasant, comfortable, desirable, or appropriate.

For instance, he suggests we become more entrepreneurial and start our own businesses instead of working for white-dominant businesses. This makes sense. We could manage our own businesses any way we see fit. We wouldn’t have to smile if we don’t feel like smiling. We could even tell our white employees to act more like we do, and reward those who do. (One of my white American friends working in Japan told me that, this is essentially what is happening there.) If we work for a white-dominant business, naturally their rules, values, and appropriateness would dominate, and if we were to insist on being ourselves, and refuse to master their culture and values, we are not going to succeed.

Until quite recently, the world was racially segregated. We can’t expect the white people to undo over night their cultures, customs, and values which developed in the racially segregated world for centuries and over many generations. It would be silly if a white American went to work for a Japanese corporation in Japan and complained that their corporate culture favored Japanese customs and values. If he wants to do it his way, he should start his own business in Japan.

We cannot so easily change our cultures. Whether we like it or not, this is the reality. The question we should be asking as Asian-American parents is: How could we prepare our children for this reality?

The way I see it, culture is very much like language (and language is very much like culture); it is something you can learn and master, and you can master multiple cultures. We can master both Asian and white cultures. We do not have to give up one to master the other. Yang says in his article “Striving to meet others’ expectations may be a necessary cost of assimilation, but I am not going to do it.” He goes as far as to say, “I’m fine. It’s the rest of you who have a problem. Fuck all y’all.” In my view, the problem is his pride and ego. As an Asian-American parent, this is where my biggest concern lies.

Suppose the British colonized your country; you could refuse to learn English to maintain pride and respect for your own country, but there is nothing wrong with learning another language either. The same goes for learning the white culture. Mastering it does not mean your soul has to assimilate into it. There are plenty of Americans who move to Asian countries because they are interested in learning more about Eastern cultures. This does not mean that they hate their own cultures, or that they need to lose their American soul. I suspect it is Yang’s insecurity or inferiority-complex that drives him to take on such a hardened attitude. It’s a defense-mechanism. I have met many second generation Asian-Americans who struggled with their own identities in their 20s and 30s. At least among the people I know, first generation Asian Americans do not suffer from this. Why? I have my own theories.

First generation Asian-Americans consciously chose to learn and master the American culture when they immigrated to this country. By that point, they were already sitting on solid cultural foundations of their home country. As they lived in the US, they experienced different values, points of view, behaviors, customs, appropriateness, etc.. They consciously observed and understood the differences. This is the critical part: Being conscious of the differences enables them to use them appropriately in different contexts.

In contrast, second generation Asian-Americans grew up not knowing what is Asian and what is American. To them, whatever the cultural environments their parents put them into were their own singular cultural experience. They are unable to determine where their own influences came from. And, when they enter the real world, they begin to realize that their own behaviors, values, and ways of communication and expression are not the norm. They have to essentially go back in time to sort it all out, but this isn’t easy because both cultures are so inextricably fused by that point. This, I believe, is what leads to their identity crisis in their youth.

When children learn two languages simultaneously in their early childhood, their brain structure becomes physically different from that of monolingual children. This is touted as a benefit, but I am skeptical. What is beneficial is determined by the market, what the world will be like when they grow up. Many people misunderstand the theory of evolution to mean that there are fundamentally and universally superior qualities. (This misunderstanding gave birth to Social Darwinism.) Who is “fittest” is not determined by any universal qualities but by the changing environment. It is possible that the world our children will be living in would favor the bilingual brain structure but the opposite scenario is also possible. Therefore, I’m skeptical of any such “scientific” claims about “benefits”. I believe that this inextricable fusion is what leads to the confusion about their own identities. Because the fusion of two different cultures and languages is physical, it becomes impossible to determines the sources of their influences, so they can’t use them individually and effectively, and eventually give up by saying “Fuck all y’all”.

In my view, growing up in an Asian family in the US is similar to growing up in a Hasidic community in that it ill-prepares you for the real world, and sadly it’s worse than growing up in a Hasidic community because at least they are more aware of the differences between their own culture and that of the outside world, and they also have their own support system. This problem is made worse by sending Asian kids to schools like Stuyvesant High School in New York City where the majority is Asian. (However, just for the record, I do not support race-based school admission policies. Schools have no business using race for that. I’m suggesting the parents to think carefully about where they send their children.)

I believe it would be better for my child to master the American culture first. I would like to put her on a solid cultural foundation first. If she becomes interested in learning Japanese or more about the culture of Japan, she can consciously choose to do so on her own will. I believe this would enable her to use both cultures appropriately and more effectively. I also believe that having a solid cultural foundation would make it less likely for her to have an identity crisis in her 20s, although some degree of that would probably be unavoidable.

This practice of mastering one thing and using it as a foundation to explore others can be seen in many fields. Great chefs, for instance, usually master one cuisine and then explore other cuisines to create fusions of their own. Constantly moving your family does not make your children masters of different environments; it just makes them insecure and even neurotic. It’s better for children to have a solid foundation/home from which they can safely explore the world. At the beginning of your career, it’s better to stay put in one city and build a solid network of friends and colleagues before you start exploring different cities. For the same reason, it’s usually better to attend college in the city where you plan to work. If you graduate from a college in LA and move to New York for work, you would have a significant disadvantage compared to those who went to school in New York. Steve Jobs did not start out doing a bunch of different things. He used his success in his computer business as a foundation to explore other industries like entertainment and telecommunication. Children are not like computers; just installing a bunch of different things doesn’t necessarily make them more successful.

Now the obvious question is: How do we put our children on the solid foundation of American culture? Many parents of the assimilation school have tried this and failed. Many Chinese parents, for instance, didn’t bother teaching Chinese to their children. The writer of the New York Magazine article never learned how to speak Korean either, yet the invisible influence of the Korean culture became obvious as he entered the real world. Why? Again, this is only my theory but most parents of the assimilation school exposed their children only to the trappings of the American culture, and were lacking in where it really mattered.

One example is Asian preoccupation with production. In the world of business, production is a sphere of the young and inexperienced. When you start working, you start by offering your skills, labor, and knowledge in how to produce things, whether it’s food, T-shirt, or computer software. As you gain more experience, you move up and learn how to strategize. Because the current business world is dominated by the West, the Easterners in general are behind the curve on learning how to strategize. The Westerners, particularly white people, have more experience in being strategists. Growing up in a family of strategists would naturally make you better prepared to be a strategist yourself. This is the type of cultural foundation that Asian-American kids are lacking.

Think about it. What do typical Asian-American parents do? They make their kids study hard, get good grades at school, and score high on standardized tests. It’s all about discipline and hard work, and doing better at things that can be measured and compared. The most important quality that strategists must have is creativity. Hard work and discipline does not make you creative, and creativity cannot be standardized and measured. Hard work and discipline are great for production but not for strategy. Asian-American parents are still stuck in their production mode of thinking.

Japan did that for decades and look where they are now. They are stuck. Being able to produce efficient, functional, and reliable products is just a matter of time and training. The Koreans have already caught up with the Japanese, and surpassed them in many ways. The Chinese will catch up with the Japanese quite soon too. Given that hundreds of millions of Chinese children are being educated with this production mentality, there is no point in teaching your children the value of hard work and discipline. We should not aim for any type of work whose productivity can be predicted and measured by standardized tests. There is no future in that.

During my first year of art school, I was technically the best painter and drawer. I could paint with photographic precision. One of my teachers said to me one day: “Do you want to be another one of those Asian artists on the street drawing portraits for the tourists?” Good question. What’s the point? There are millions of technically competent artists in the world. Why bother competing in that market? So, for the remaining years of my school, I stopped using my technical competence to create art. In other words, I stopped working so hard, and started having more fun. By the time we were ready to graduate, most students in my class achieved the same level of technical competence I had anyway.

When you are in the production mentality, eventually, you yourself become a mere product. Take professional illustrators for instance. For each illustrator to develop his/her own unique style and technique takes years but the trend in illustration comes and goes. The art directors who work for advertising agencies or publishers might love hiring one illustrator with a particular style one year, but drop him entirely next year. As soon as his style is out of vogue, he is dropped like a fly. To the art directors, he is a disposable product. It’s better to be in the position of art directors (strategist) than be in the position of illustrator (producer/product).

When you are poor and starving, you choose the surest way to make money. You don’t want to aim too high and fail. So, you don’t study English literature; you study accounting, computer programming, or nursing. White people can afford (both financially and emotionally) to study literature, architecture, art history, or advertising. This is what prepares them to operate at the highest levels of their culture. This is the advantage the Americans have. While the Asian kids are studying hard, the American kids learn to have fun, and when you have fun doing what you do, you tend to be more creative and do better than others. This is the American culture that our children need to be exposed to. By pushing our kids to study hard and score high on tests, we are just preparing them to compete with the billions of Asian children many of whom are literally starving. Our Asian-American kids are not starving, so their drive to study hard wouldn’t be as great as those starving kids in Asia.

The reason why most Asian-American parents cannot do this for their children is because it’s scary. Most of our fears come from lack of knowledge or experience. Most Asian-American parents do not have experience operating at the highest levels of the American culture. Most of us only know how to produce, not how to strategize. We teach our children what we know, and ironically and unfortunately, this perpetuates the problem of Asians being stuck in the production mentality. To break this vicious circle would require us to take the risk and let our children have fun, an unfamiliar territory for most Asian-American parents.

A lot of immigrant parents are afraid of losing emotional connections with their children. They don’t want their children to become too American or too foreign for them. In fact, I believe this is the most significant reason why many immigrant parents insist on teaching their native language to their children, even though they use bilingual brain advantage as their reason. They want to retain control over their own children. Their biggest fear is that their children would become so independent and American that they run away from home with their American lovers. But I would argue that this type of fear and insecurity is precisely what keeps our children ill-prepared for the real world in America. We need to let go of them, and offer our Eastern wisdom only when they ask for it.

On March 18, 2011, the school my daughter attends, The Neighborhood School (PS363) in New York City, hosted a fundraising event for the victims of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami. At the event, we filmed the students cheering for Japan, “Ganbare Nippon!”, which means “Don’t give up, Japan” or “Go Japan Go!”.