Public Image

It seems that Ms. Wu’s piece on Shanghai was controversial, but I think she brings up a damn-good argument. I want to put in my two-cents here.

How do Asians reconcile the discrepancies of the public images that “natives” create and those created by Asian-Americans? How should someone like Judge Ito who was born and raised here, who speaks perfect English, deal with the media image that a typical Japanese foreign exchange student creates and is perpetuated by actors like Gedde Watanabe in Sixteen Candles? How do you deal with the stereotypical image of Chinese being dirty, greasy, and rude? If these are images created by the natives or the “fresh-off-boats”, and have nothing to do with the generations who were born and raised here?

I was a Japanese foreign exchange student at a high school in California guilty of contributing to the image of Long Duk Dong. The second generation Japanese people hated me and ignored me. I don’t blame them. Why should they have to suffer from the images that people like me create? But this is an unfortunate schism when both sides have much to offer to each other.

Personally, I stay neutral. In a way, I have to, since I was on both sides at different points in my life. When I hear news like Virgin Airlines canceling Upper Class on-board masseuse for all flights going to Japan since too many Japanese businessmen ask them to massage their private parts, part of me feels ashamed and angry, and part of me thinks it’s funny.

I’ve been seriously ill for a while (it’s getting better now), and from this recent experience I learned the essential difference between Eastern (Chinese) and Western medicine. I have respect for both. The fundamental difference is that the West attacks the negative, whereas the East fortifies the positive. The West kills viruses, for instance, whereas the East strengthens our own immune system. Both are effective in their own ways. Western medicine is very effective when you know what the exact cause of the illness is, but without this knowledge, it is often helpless, which is what happened to me. It’s like a detective without a suspect or a criminal. The Eastern medicine does not have to identify the criminal. It’s like strengthening the economy to lower the crime rate.

I think this philosophical difference applies to everything in our lives. Since I am an Asian, I’m naturally inclined towards fortifying the positive, instead of negating the negative. I believe that by doing what one does the best, whether it is baking, singing, designing, acting, teaching, writing, whether you are a lawyer, a banker, a doctor, an engineer or a programmer, as long as you are positively contributing to the world, you are helping to fight the negative. That is, without dealing with it directly. I think the important thing here is to be forgiving and accepting of negative images caused by others if they have no bad intentions, and to be contributing to the positive images regardless of the amount of contribution. After all, not everyone can be a Chow Yun-Fat.