Integrating Chinese Immigrants into American Culture: Hollywood or THE NUMBER 4

 The following is excerpted from PBS NEWSHOUR- 

“Judy Woodruff: A recent string of brutal attacks on elderly Asian Americans caught on video has brought new attention to the rise of violence and harassment of Asian Americans. 

Since the pandemic started, more than 3,000 anti-Asian hate incidents have been reported in the U.S., according to the group, Stop AAPI Hate. 

Earlier today, Amna Nawaz hosted a live conversation unpacking the history behind these attacks, concerns in the community, and what happens next. 

 

• Amna Nawaz:Joining me now is Helen Zia, activist, award-winning author and former journalist and, of course, the author behind the seminal book "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People." 
  
  Also with us is Amanda Nguyen. She's a social entrepreneur, a civil rights activist and the CEO and founder of Rise, a nongovernmental civil rights organization. 
  
  So, welcome to you both. And thank you for being here. 
  
  Helen, what would you say to someone who's trying to understand what's driving this surge we're seeing now? 
  
   
• Helen Zia:I think we have to understand that this, as you said, Amna, was something that has been happening for a very long time and is actually part of the fabric of America, how Asian Americans have lived with this, ever since we have been in America…… 
  
  Folks are looking for people to blame. And from time immemorial, since Asian Americans have been in the Americas, Asian people have been blamed and attacked and scapegoated, even with periods of ethnic cleansing, killing, eliminating, lynchings, mass attacks. 
  
  So, this is not something new. 
•  
• Amna Nawaz:Well, Amanda, I want to ask you about this, because, as these videos have been surfacing, report after report of what are really brutal and brazen attacks, often in broad daylight, what were you thinking as you were watching report after report and video after video come in? 
•  
• Amanda Nguyen:Quite honestly, I was hurt. 
  
  When I saw these videos and felt like mainstream media wasn't covering it, I turned to social media, because I think the core issue is about visibility. I think these things are happening because people are ignorant. And they're ignorant because they haven't been able to get to know us, or they haven't done the work to get to know us. 
  
  I don't think people are born hateful. I think that there are systems in place, tools of oppression that shape people to other groups of entire communities. And so, at this moment, my call to action was to humanize us by getting our stories out there. 
•  
• Helen Zia:I think it's partly an enforced lack of knowledge. I mean, we have systems. We have — it's part of the systemic racism of depriving all Americans, including Asian Americans, of our own history. 
  
  I call it MIH, missing in history. And so it's not like there's this void in our brains. That gets filled with garbage, things that are like cartoon caricatures of what Asian — people from Asian backgrounds are supposed to be like. And many of those caricatures are subhuman, not human, animalistic, disease carriers, enemy invaders, which is a very constant caricature. 
  
  And so, instead of real knowledge about how the treatment of Asian Americans goes way back, and, in fact, is part of the systemic racism of America that came along with the enslavement of people from Africa and the genocide of indigenous people, there was the xenophobia, the ethnic cleansing, the use and manipulation of Asian Americans to sort of be an in-between wedge against other people. 
  
  And so that is damaging. The absence of knowledge is fundamentally the way to keep people fighting each other. 
•  
• Amna Nawaz:We have already heard stories about how people are telling their parents or their grandparents not to go out alone, of younger members of the community escorting older ones to try to protect them. 
  
  …..Helen Zia:What Amanda is describing is a community that has gone underground throughout this pandemic, and with the fears that you both describe. 
  
  And what that's meant, we can see visibly that people are not going to their doctors. They're not getting meds. They're not getting tested. They're afraid to get vaccines. This is in the middle of a pandemic. So, this is a terrible situation of a community that's been driven underground by fear of real attacks that are happening. 
•  
• Amna Nawaz: Helen, is enough being done to address this right now? And we have seen President Biden address this from the highest office in the land. There are task forces in the Bay Area, on the New York City Police Department. 
  
  What else needs to be done? 
•  
• Helen Zia:In the bigger picture, we have to be asking for real change that education happens, that the real America of what we look like today also has to be taught, taught in schools K-12, that Hollywood really needs to get it together. 
  
  And all this talk about Hollywood so white and stuff like that includes the omission of people who look like not what they imagine America to be. 
  
   
• Amanda Nguyen:The problem is in visibility. Therefore, the solution has to be informed, thoughtful visibility. 
  
  It's so important that, when we do this, we remember that justice is not a zero sum game, and that, in order for us to move forward together, we are stronger together, across solidarity, across different issues, because justice is a fabric that has threads from all different communities….PBS.’ 
• 
  
• What is happening to Asian Americans in 2021 America is horrifying; they are being assaulted by all other ethnic groups. It may not be as bad as the Indonesians  killing 500,000 Chinese Indonesians  during the Suharto coup, or Mexicans massacring 300 Chinese immigrants in one day during  the Torreon massacre, but it is bad enough. 
  
  Perhaps, just perhaps, more Hollywood representation is not the answer; perhaps, just perhaps, titles like CRAZY RICH ASIANS spur attacks. Perhaps, just perhaps.  
  
  Perhaps, just perhaps, if Asian, specifically Chinese immigrants left their irrational customs at the American border, they would have a more comfortable existence in America. 
• 
  
• Perhaps, just perhaps, the first thing Chinese immigrants should do is jettison their hatred of the NUMBER 4.  

“Pity the poor Arcadia couple trying to sell a house with a street number 44. Most local buyers are Chinese — and for them, such a number can kill a deal. 

That’s because, in Mandarin and Cantonese, the word for four sounds like the word for death. So 44 essentially adds up to double death. 

Josh Grohs, managing partner of Sol-Mur Development, LLC, buys up Arcadia houses, tears them down and then builds new homes. He knows his market and the dangers of picking the wrong property. 

“This property is worth $1.4 million if the address was not two fours. If they don’t change it, that would knock $300,000 to $400,000 off the property,” Grohs said of the owners of No. 44, who do not want their street name mentioned for fear of making a bad situation worse. 

“No one would have thought anything of it 30 years ago,” he said. “Now it definitely, 100%, does not make their home that attractive.” 

Twenty years ago, Arcadia dealt with similar complaints from residents about numbers when the city started seeing a dramatic rise in Chinese homeownership. At the time, like numerous other San Gabriel Valley cities, it decided to allow people to change inauspicious numbers — for a fee. But five years ago, it abandoned that program after city workers complained about how onerous and confusing the process of changing addresses had become. 

….This month, the City Council voted 3 to 2 in support of bringing back the old address-changing program…Some of those facing numbers problems bought their properties many decades ago, before the Asian influx. Asians, predominantly Chinese, now make up nearly 60% of Arcadia’s population. 

“If we can save somebody from taking a financial bath, we should,” said Bob Harbicht, the council member who first brought the topic up. 

But his colleagues don’t all agree. 

“There are 20,000 homes in Arcadia. One in four has a number four in it. That’s a potential of 3,000 addresses that could be changed,” said Councilman Roger Chandler, who is against restarting the program. “We have people who want to change the entire 1400 block……. Where do we stop?” 

….Veteran Arcadia real estate agent Imy Dulake of Coldwell Banker tried to show a condominium at 444 W. Huntington Drive to Asian clients about five years ago. 

“We drove up there and the buyer saw the number 444 and didn’t even want to see it,” said Dulake. 

At the time, the city still allowed residents to change one digit of an address, but changing the number of a condominium building would have been too hard. Around the same time, though, Dulake got a listing for a house at 444 Oxford Drive. She persuaded the homeowner to get a new number, 448, which was an improvement because eight sounds like “to prosper.” 

Armed with its new address, the house got multiple offers and sold within a month, she said….….LOS ANGELES TIMES.” 

Perhaps, just perhaps, if Chinese immigrants were not so keen on extirpating the number 4 from American life, hostility against them could be tampered down, mollified, altered,  even eliminated. 

 

To fit into the American mainstream, the Mormons gave up polygamy; giving up a base hatred and fear of the number 4 because your ancestors in the Han Dynasty were superstitious, is a small price to pay to accelerate a safe integration into the American Mainstream.

NEW AMERICA

OLD AMERICA