I really think Asian people think being Asian is a religion. Asian people think they own each other. Some like to judge each other based on how Asian they are — whether a person speaks the language of their parents/ grandparents, if they celebrate the holidays, etc. They even have little names for the heretics — “Little Stranger,” “Little Foreigner.”

Immigrant parents are deathly afraid of discrimination of any sort, and their children often inherit this idea, so certain things are safe and others are not. Violins and pianos are safe, voice is not (perhaps because being good at voice means people will actually have to look at you, and not just listen). Los Angeles and New York and maybe Florida are safe, other places are not. Asian parents don’t really believe Harvard is much better than Princeton, they’re afraid all the preppies at Princeton are going to persecute their kids or something. Christianity and Buddhism are safe, other religions are not — but Christianity is only safe when your church is entirely Asian, which is probably why Christian fellowships at universities tend to fragment into the “club for everybody” and “club for Asians,” to the bafflement of people unaware of the Asian religion. You go to church or temple or piano lessons with all the others because it’s safe and that’s what you’re supposed to do and that’s all there is to it. Conform, because if you don’t, then people might actually notice you and realize you exist.

Of course, there are people who conform and are there because they actually want to be, and not because of the little inferiority complex speaking. But it’s kind of problematic when a group of people start to define themselves by some artificial religion all about what they don’t think they can do.

Impressions of München before: Beer, People with weird Bavarian Accents, People who seem to like Schweinfleisch in and on everything, pretty Castles.

Currently: Beer, really really Catholic, surprisingly easy to be vegetarian in München since the beer-crowd coincides with the subsiding-solely-on-schweinfleisch-crowd, lederhosen and dirndls, really really good Lachs, pretty and colorful castles, the Alps are fun, skim milk doesn’t exist, really good bread, but I miss bagels. Also, we saw a black squirrel(!) which we’d thought only existed in Princeton and the DC area.

Being in München has really made me notice that there’s always lots of stuff for tourists to do in any city and perhaps not so much for actual residents. The last time I was at home, I literally found nothing to do. LA is, for sure, the Hollywoodized capital of the world, and we don’t seem to care much about arts and culture. We have the beach, the movies, movies on really big screens on Sunset Blvd. (our lower-culture equivalent of Broadway), loud concerts, bad concerts, good concerts with bad fans, and “Disneyland” which is actually in Orange County. Maybe it’s because my father worked in a museum when I was younger and I spent my entire childhood running around museums that I thought I’d seen all of the actual culture already. So…

I really want to see this when I get back to LA:

http://shakespeareinthecemetery.com/index.cfm

Who’s with me?

Interesting news story.