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ERNABEL DEMILLO: Welcome. I'm Ernabel Demillo for Asian American Life. As you know, Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in early November. The death toll is rising daily. Hundreds of thousands are homeless, and victims are still searching for their loved ones. Here in New York, there's an outpouring of help and charitable giving. If you'd like to give, you can donate to the following organizations: the Philippine Red Cross at www.redcross.org Doctors Without Borders Advancement for Rural Kids So in the spirit of this holiday season, please help in any way you can. ♪ [Theme Music] ♪ ERNABEL DEMILLO: Hi, I'm Ernabel Demillo. Welcome to Asian American Life. Today we are coming to you from the American Museum of Natural History's Holiday Origami Tree. Origami-folding in a Chinese art adopted by the Japanese and is now popular with people from all different backgrounds and ages, and we thought this was the perfect backdrop for our final show of the year featuring some of our favorite segments. To learn about the history of Chinatown and the Chinese immigrant community, the best place to start is right here at the Museum of Chinese in America on Center Street. HELEN KOH: So it was very much born and rooted in Chinatown to help preserve these things in Chinatown that were thought to be important, to help educate others about the importance of this, and to form a collection to attest to the history and past of Chinatown. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Helen Koh is Executive Director. The permanent exhibit here is called "With a Single Step." Visitors learn what it was like to live as a Chinese-American in the past, from the discrimination to the Chinese Exclusion Act. That was a federal law passed in 1882 that restricted Chinese immigration to the U.S. Museum-goers will also get a glimpse of Hollywood's early portrayal of the community. There are also artifacts from original Chinatown businesses, from the general stores to the laundry shops. There are also original art pieces and elaborate costumes, and a showcase of the many contributions the community has made. HELEN KOH: I hope that when people come, each time they come, they learn something different, something new, and to also be able to connect it with themselves, their own immigration story, because it is a story about immigration, and this country is certainly land of immigration. ERNABEL DEMILLO: And it was an immigrant from Hong Kong who cofounded the museum. In 1980, Charlie Lai started the Chinatown History Project, which eventually was renamed the Museum of Chinese in America. We caught up with Charlie recently, taking a tour of his old Chinatown neighborhood. He immigrated here with his family in the 1960s. CHARLIE LAI: This building here is the old PS23 and this is the central Chinatown Little Italy Elementary School. ERNABEL DEMILLO: The Chinese population in New York and the rest of the country grew rapidly in 1968 after the U.S. government lifted the quotas on immigration. Many settled in Chinatown. Today, Chinatown still has a large Asian population but many are moving away because of rising rents and better opportunities elsewhere. There are now four Chinatowns in the city, the largest two in Flushing and Sunset Park, but Manhattan's Chinatown is still a strong symbol of Chinese culture, a culture which is alive and well as we found when we walked to busy Columbus Park. CHARLIE LAI: It's a multi-generational facility. ERNABEL DEMILLO: While kids play nearby, the older generation gather for chess, checkers, and visit friends, and the narrow streets of Chinatown are still bustling with the ubiquitous fresh food markets and fishmongers. While shop owners have expressed concern about losing regular customers who have moved away, Manhattan's Chinatown is still a popular tourist destination, but Charlie, along with other long-time residents, hope that visitors get more out of their visit. CHARLIE LAI: The thing that is really important is to not simply bring visitors to come into Chinatown to satisfy their craving for this exotic stereotype of a community, that we want people to come to this area to learn something positive, relevant and important, that the Chinese American community and the contributions of the Chinese American population to the broad American story. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Today we've visiting Fort Lee, New Jersey. The New York Times recently wrote that Fort Lee has the suburban feel of a New Jersey and the ethnic diversity of a New York City neighborhood. According to the 2010 census, nearly 40% of the residents here are Asian and nearly a quarter are Korean, so let's check out Fort Lee, New Jersey. Walk down Main Street and it might feel like you were translated to Seoul, Korea. Korean immigrants are the fastest-growing segment of the population in Fort Lee, and it's evident in the businesses that have started opening up in the area, from traditional Korean restaurants to popular bakeries. KATHY LEE: This is, again, a good example of something that I used to enjoy but they have put a new spin on it, so it's got a sticky rice, a sweet sticky rice with red bean paste, and I think it's like a bean powder on the outside, but very good, very good. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Kathy Lee emigrated to the U.S. from Korea when she was 12. She settled in Fort Lee because she says it felt like home. KATHY LEE: I like the town, I like the energy. It's like a city away from the city, and of course the cultural part of for me. I've been away from the Korean culture for a long time but by coming back to Main Street, I've gotten a taste of that without actually having to go back to Korea. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Lee has become an ambassador of sorts, helping to bridge the different cultures introducing Korean flavors to the rest of the community. Kathy, how are you bridging the two communities? KATHY LEE: Through food. I'm a 1.5 generation, meaning I wasn't born here but I came here as a 12-year-old, and I can fit into both communities very easily, and language is not a problem so I, in my own way, through introducing food -- because we can all relate and we all enjoy delicious food. ERNABEL DEMILLO: And there is plenty of food to enjoy. During the last few years, several Korean-owned restaurants have opened. There is the trendy Tea Bar just off Main Street, fashioned after the restaurants in Seoul's trendy neighborhood Gangnam, made famous by Psy. The family-owned restaurant fusion dishes like the K-Town Burger, a burger with kimchi, and there is the always-popular Korean delicacy -- ERNABEL DEMILLO: Ryan, that popular dish, what is it called again? RYAN LEE: [Korean] ERNABEL DEMILLO: [Korean] RYAN LEE: All right! ERNABEL DEMILLO: Oh, I got it right? Yay, excellent! Thank you. Just a block away from Tea Bar is Koryodang, a busy bakery known for its fresh-baked goods. It has a feel of a European café but there's definitely an Asian flavor. SE PARK: What we have done is, one of the key examples that we have improved on is we use rice flour. We mix that with some of the American or European flours, and the flour itself becomes a fusion. ERNABEL DEMILLO: When the bakery first opened, it attracted a mostly Korean clientele, but that soon changed. SE PARK: Today we have 40% non-Korean. It goes from Asian to Jewish people to Spanish, as well as to Russian. I would say it's becoming more universal. ERNABEL DEMILLO: It's a tough place to leave without having a taste. KATHY LEE: [Korean] It translates into steamed rice bun. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Oh, and that's Korean comfort food. KATHY LEE: Yeah. I mean for me, I love this. ERNABEL DEMILLO: I'll try a little. I'm already so full. That's delicious. KATHY LEE: Is it good? ERNABEL DEMILLO: Ooh, I like the bean paste. That's really nice. KATHY LEE: And you can taste, it's warm. ERNABEL DEMILLO: And the bread, yeah, it's so soft. From comfort food to a traditional Korean meal, right next door is BCD Tofu House, a popular Korean chain. This looks like a feast. What do we have here? ERIC: We have tofu soup and [Korean] and [Korean] and [Korean] bean. ERNABEL DEMILLO: And finally, we can't leave out one of the most popular foods, Korean chicken. Right on Main Street is Boom Boom Chicken, where all they serve is, well, you guessed it, chicken, but this is not your Colonel's chicken, this is spicy fried Korean chicken. If you've had it before, you'll know what I mean when I say addicting flavors. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Tell me the secret behind Korean chicken. CHRISTINA LEE: It's a special flavor for Korean seasoning. I can tell you two things. There's the soy sauce and the garlic, but other things are secret. ERNABEL DEMILLO: So you're not going to tell me? CHRISTINA LEE: Secret. It's a secret. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Okay. Really? You can't even whisper it to me? I'm Ernabel Demillo for CUNY-TV. We went to Red Egg on Center Street, a popular dim sum spot. First the owner gave us a brief history lesson. Dim sum dumplings are made from a rice flour which gives it a very silky and translucent dough texture. The chef rolls the dough into an oval shape then flattens it into thin pancake-like crepes which will be filled with different vegetables, seafood, or meat. So what makes a quality dumpling? Restaurant owner David Wan says you are at a good dumpling by counting the creases. DAVID WAN: A good, high-quality shrimp dumpling, for example, has to be between 12 to 14 crease. ERNABEL DEMILLO: So the dumplings are done and are placed in a steam bowl to cook. Next are vegetable dumplings which have a different preparation. The style of making vegetable dim sum dumplings differs mildly from the shrimp. As we can see, they are compressed into little plate-like shapes. The biggest difference is the style of folding for each dumpling. These dim sum veggie dumplings have the appearance of little oranges with the green peas as the naval. From scratch to finish, we're ready to try out the finished product. DAVID WAN: So go ahead, try it. ERNABEL DEMILLO: I got the creases. DAVID WAN: You got the creases, great. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Hmm, that's delicious. DAVID WAN: Hot, eh? Yeah. ERNABEL DEMILLO: The dough is really good. So how many dumplings a day do you make here? DAVID WAN: We usually do between 1,000 or 2 a day, it depends the daily business because we have to keep them fresh every day. ERNABEL DEMILLO: This is amazing. Great. I give you a thumbs up, double thumbs up. Compliments to the chef. KYUNG NUN: I'm Kyung Nun in Newburgh, New York, where some Asian American artists are redefining the way we look at art. CHEE *** NG: If you turn the bowl upside down, it is actually a bell. My work is about identity, it's about the voice, about individual. CHEE *** NG: And about Chinese diaspora. It's about individual voice. KYUNG NUN: At first glace, all you see are white bowls. Take a closer look. Each one tells a unique story. Enter the 360 Labyrinth Walks of Life, created by Chinese-American artist Chee *** Ng. CHEE *** NG: We have all the white bowls but there are some bowls that are big, some bowls that are small, some bowls that are different textured and a different shade of white, some a little blue or some a little pinkish. VIRGINIA WALSH: And once they hit the entrance to the labyrinth, rush where you could see that they became very quiet, and they had to be extremely conscious of their body because of the narrow space and to navigate. KYUNG NUN: For Chee, a rice bowl can mean many things. CHEE *** NG: I use the motif of a bowl of rice as a common theme in all my work. A bowl of rice is very essential, that's what we need for survival as Chinese and particularly Asians. That's become our identity. KYUNG NUN: Chee's installation is part of Sublime revisited, an exhibit at Newburgh's Ann Street Gallery, showcasing contemporary and controversial Asian-American art. Unlike most artists whose works provoke emotional and esthetic responses, Chee tries to use humor to combat stereotypes. CHEE *** NG: It's always a fun fact that, you know, everybody kind of jokingly said, "Hey, all Chinese look alike." Yeah, we are look alike but like all my bowls, you know, we look alike, we have black hair, we have black eyes, but we're all different. KYUNG NUN: There's a significance to the number of bowls in this exhibit -- 360, which are the degrees in a circle, and the fact that these bowls come from all around the world. And from Main Street's galleries to Christie's, the world's largest auction house, Asian and Asian-American contemporary artists like Chee are making inroads in the marketplace. INGRID DUDEK: We've been looking at a huge market transformation in the last five to ten years, and I do think in the contemporary realm, broadly speaking, you have a thriving international market, and within that there's always a hunger and an appetite and a search for new ideas, new visions, fresh takes on old practices. KYUNG NUN: And through his art, Chee hopes to inspire greater understanding and appreciation of identity and differences. CHEE *** NG: And when it come out, it's not a white bowl any more. There's so many different white bowls and so many different individual. That's the whole idea of the work. So I want, it's a sense of respect, a sense of identity, and a different white bowl for everyone. KYUNG NUN: This exhibit in Newburgh is just one of many opportunities to see contemporary Asian and Asian-American artists as the marketplace for this kind of art continues to grow. I'm Kyung Nun for Asian American Life. PAUL LIN: I'm Paul Lin reporting from Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the home of author Susan Choi. I had a chance to catch up with Susan to talk about her new novel and the landscape for Asian-American writers. Over tea, I chatted with Susan Choi to discuss her book, My Education, published by Viking and featuring a character who, like Susan, is bi-racial. Does it matter that Regina is an Asian-American character or of Asian-American descent? You write that in but does that make a difference to the book? SUSAN CHOI: She could be anyone from anywhere. I think that her main concerns are growing up, falling in love, figuring out how to be in a relationship and how to make that work. Regina is a 21-year-old graduate student in the early '90s, and she has arrived in a new town to start a new program and a new phase of life, and feels herself to be very adult, and ends up making a series of terrible decisions and discovering that she's maybe not quite as mature as she thought. PAUL LIN: In 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior broke into mainstream publishing. A decade later, Amy Tan's bestseller, The Joy Luck Club, sold millions. Their success paved the way for other Asian American authors including Susan Choi, whose first novel, The Foreign Student, took inspiration from her Korean dad, but Asian-American writing has evolved as a new generation finds its own voice, and that includes Susan Choi. KEN CHEN: She ended up winning the first Asian American Literary Award, an award that was later won by people like Jhumpa Lahiri, who was a good friend of hers, and Ha Jin and others. Since then, she has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. PAUL LIN: The Asian American Writers' Workshop advocates for emerging writers and it hosts events to showcase diversity in writing. KEN CHEN: People sometimes when they come to the events at the Asian American Writers' Workshop expect it to be about, you know, a plucky, young, Chinese-American girl assimilating and developing in 1980s America but we present a range of writers. There's a lot of Chinatown crime fiction now by writers like Henry Chang and Ed Lin. There's a lot of great South Asian political writing around things like Drone attacks and the wars in west Asia. There's a burgeoning wave of memoirs by Iranian-American women writers. PAUL LIN: To have a home where words and books are well-loved comes easily for Susan and husband Pete Wells, the New York Times restaurant critic, and for Susan it runs pretty deep. She was reading and writing at an early age. SUSAN CHOI: My mom had a typewriter and sometimes I would sit and like *** out, you know, little stories just, I kind of thought because I liked using the typewriter but I realize now also because I just liked telling stories and I liked seeing how they looked in that nice, crisp way, so I think already I wanted to be published before I knew it. PAUL LIN: Susan was born in South Bend, Indiana, to a Korean father and a mother of Russian-Jewish descent. When her parents divorced, Susan moved to Houston with her mother. Growing up bi-racial in both places set her apart from other kids but never uncomfortably so. SUSAN CHOI: I was kind of the oddball out, more so in Indiana where there just weren't that many kids of color at all in my school, and I can still name them for you, the one other Asian American kid. Hi, Caesar Aquino, wherever you are. I hope you're well. PAUL LIN: Today Susan is an accomplished author living in one of the most diverse cities in the world and bringing up a family. SUSAN CHOI: I feel like now it's so amazing living in New York in this age, and you look around and like multi-cultural kids are the norm almost, and you know, they're all like kind of strut it and brag like, you know, my son is, "How Korean am I?" -- Because he wants to be telling his friends like, "I'm a quarter Korean." They often don't believe him because of his appearance. You know when I was growing up, it wasn't like that at all. And so I think that my characters do reflect that, that sense of not being part of a category that's instantly recognizable. PAUL LIN: Not instantly recognizable is how one might characterize the new canon of Asian American literature in which there's plenty of freedom to write about anything, but while there are many more books now than there were twenty years ago, Ken Chen says groups like the AAWW have much more work to do since the overwhelming majority of all books that are published and reviewed are still by white male authors. One thing's for sure, Asian American writers are pushing the boundaries of what the publishing world and readers expect. I'm Paul Lin for Asian American Life. ERNABEL DEMILLO: The setting of David Henry Hwang's play "Golden Child", which was recently revived at the Signature Theatre, is early twentieth century China. It's the story of a traditional Chinese man with a dilemma. DAVID HENRY HWANG: This is essentially the story of my great grandfather and how he converted to Christianity in China during the 1920s, and then the effect that this had on his three wives, because Chinese men were polygamists at the time so like he became a Christian but then what do you do with these wives. ERNABEL DEMILLO: East meets West, assimilation, and cultural clashes -- these are the familiar themes for the award-winning playwright. Hwang currently holds the distinguished title of Playwright in Residence at the Signature Theatre. He follows in the footsteps of many great playwrights including Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and Edward Albee. Hwang, who grew up in California, is the son of Chinese immigrants and is celebrating thirty years in theatre. He is not only one of theatre's most famous playwrights but also the most recognizable Asian American to bring the community's narrative to the stage. DAVID HENRY HWANG: Although I've written a lot of different kinds of stories in different mediums, when I come back to plays, which are the most personal form, I still seem to be attracted to telling stories about Asians or Asian Americans and those characters, so I guess there's some part of me that, as an artist, this is still material I need to work out, and I still find it fascinating, and I think a lot of artists have kind of a plot of soil that is your most kind fertile area where your artistic plants bloom. ERNABEL DEMILLO: For David, those so-called artistic plants have bloomed into some of theatre's most talked-about plays, which deal openly and honestly through satire and drama with Asian stereotypes, racism, and assimilation into Western culture. It started with his first play, the Obee award-winning "FOB", about the differences between established Asian Americans and those fresh off the boat. He does it again later in "Dance in the Railroad, which was a Pulitzer-Prize finalist and also revived recently at the Signature. The story is set during the construction of the Trans-Continental Railroad and told through the eyes of two Chinese workers and the struggles they faced as they tried to stay connected to the country they left. Then in 1988, Hwang received both a Tony and Drama Desk award for Best Play for "M Butterfly", based loosely on the real-life relationship of a French ambassador and a male Peking opera singer, and while the theatre has been his home base for creativity, Hwang has also branched out into movies and television. He wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation of "M Butterfly" with actors John Lone and Jeremy Irons playing the leads; and he is the first playwright to collaborate on the small screen, the very small screen. His award-willing off-Broadway play "Yellow Face" has the distinction of being the first play to be adapted to YouTube. FEMALE 1: This day and age, a Caucasian playing a Chinese, it's racist, sexist, imperialist, misogynistic -- MALE 1: And I didn't even get an audition. MALE 2: He's not right either. MALE 3: I'll tell Miles to keep looking. MALE 2: Well, tell him there are hundreds of -- ERNABEL DEMILLO: The dark comedy, which addresses the nuances of race, centers on a playwright who accidentally casts a white male as an Asian in a leading role. Hwang famously led a protest against the casting of Jonathan Price, who is white, as a EuroAsian male in the musical "Miss Saigon." MALE 2: Marcus isn't Asian? MALE 1: Say what? MALE 2: I mean, I can tell he's not 100%. FEMALE 2: Whatever you do, he can't know that you know he's white. DAVID HENRY HWANG: To be able to take a play and try to do it on YouTube seemed like something that hasn't been done before but that's part of the excitement of it. It's like the early days of film, and it was really great to get to be part of that, and I loved the way the film turned out. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Hwang's next project will bring him back to the stage. Up next at the Signature is the much-anticipated play, "Kung Fu," the story of one of the most iconic of all Asian movie stars, Bruce Lee. For Hwang, who grew up watching Bruce Lee, it's a story he's been wanting to tell for some time now. DAVID HENRY HWANG: You know, I've been wanting to do Bruce Lee's story ever since the mid-'90s, and I think it's because I started to feel, oh, the image of China has changed so much in my lifetime. When I was a kid, China was sort of poor and uneducated and dysfunctional, and now it's sort of, if anything, people are worried about it having too much power and too much money, and it's the next super-power, and all that happened just in the course of over the last thirty or forty years. And Bruce Lee comes along at just the moment when the image of China starts to change, and he becomes this sort of first pop culture manifestation of that. So I wanted to explore that, and I wanted to explore sort of what it means to be an Asian American man and the masculinity issues and the challenges that exist, which I think he had to face both as a person and also dealing with the media in Hollywood. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Again, Hwang will deal with similar issues of assimilation and belonging but this time the protagonist is one of the world's most popular icons, which could mean a new audience to Hwang's works. "Kung Fu," which originally was conceived as a musical, will now be a play with music, dance, and of course martial arts. DAVID HENRY HWANG: I hope that what the play is able to do is of course he's a martial artist and of course martial arts is going to be a big part of the play, but I also hope that the play is able to kind of reveal the human being underneath that. ERNABEL DEMILLO: Hwang says no matter what the theme or the message, it really all boils down to telling a story that will resonate with the audience. DAVID HENRY HWANG: Basically at this point I feel like my primary responsibility is to be the best writer I can and do the best work I can because if I don't do that, nobody is going to care what I have to say about anything anyway. ERNABEL DEMILLO: We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want to visit the Holiday Origami Tree, it'll be here at the American Museum of Natural History until January 12th, 2014. Also in January, Asian American life will focus on the recovery and rebuilding efforts in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan. On behalf of everyone on Asian American Life, thank you for joining us. I'm Ernabel Demillo. We'll see you in 2014.