Author: telluswhereyourefrom

Angela Lin 0:08
Today is the day before Halloween so we’re gonna spend a whole episode dedicated to spooky shit inspired by it or in celebration of Halloween. But before we go into that we just wanted to chitchat a little bit about our love of or memories of or whatever of this holiday for me. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, obviously barring quarantine year where like, everything’s fucked up and like not the normal shit, but I’ve always loved Halloween. I love everything scary. Like there’s already part of me normally because I love horror movies. I love like serial killer shit. Like I always love that darker, scarier shit to begin with. And so if there’s a holiday, it’s like, dedicated to all things kind of paranormal and spooky. It’s like, Okay, this is my this is my jam. And I always remembered like very much looking forward to Halloween coming or like fall season and then definitely Halloween coming around as a kid. Not just for trick or treating like that shit was fun. But like that wasn’t really what I was looking forward to. I loved on formerly ABC Family, aka free form right now. They had 31 days of Halloween.

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 1:35
I remember this. I mean, I didn’t have cable, but I know what it is.

Angela Lin 1:38
Yeah. So it was like a countdown done the Halloween and everyday they play the classics. And like I loved watching Hocus Pocus, I’m definitely gonna rewatch that this year, I loved Halloween Town on Disney Channel, there’s like, all this fun shit. So it was something I always looked forward to. And then even as an adult, it’s definitely still like, stuck with me. And I like still like watching those movies. But I also really like the dressing up factor. And it’s not just like, oh, I get to like slap on a costume that I paid $100 for and like put zero thought into. I think as I became an adult, then it was more about like, oh, I really like spending time thinking about what costume I’m gonna have that’s gonna be like, really culturally relevant. And like, I’m gonna put a lot of thought into too. And like build on my own. I’m not the kind that’s like stitching together the costume. I know people who are like on that end of the spectrum, but I am more on the like, make it myself side than the, like storebought side. So it’s always like, it’s always brought me a lot of joy and like a lot of pride to walk into work or like, wherever we’re going out that night with my costume and getting compliments because I like put a lot of work into it. So yeah, anyways, I’m done.

Jesse Lin 2:59
So Halloween is like your Comic Con. Basically. That’s my shit. That’s so fun. So I also enjoy Halloween. Although I don’t think I have the same level of fervor as you do for it. Obviously, as kids Halloween is like super awesome. And as Angela and I have said many times we grew up in a pretty well to do suburb. So Halloween was pretty good. Like everyone had candy. It’s like very safe environment that you can go trick or treating. And I feel like Halloween wasn’t that big deal for me and like college and like early 20s because it seemed like a lot of work like to get a costume. And then it’s very expensive to get an adult costume like from the store. Yeah. And then to do your own costume, as you said is is like also very time consuming. And so a lot of the times I would just like I’m not gonna partake in this, or I would just like go out like dressed normally. Hmm. But since I’ve, you know, come out of relationship and I’m trying to like find more of a fun in life minus all of this year, thank you 2020. I did do a bunch of stuff last Halloween, which is like a blast, like went to a bunch of parties like actually dressed up in partake, so I could I feel like I embodied a little bit more of this spirit in 2019. And hopefully will continue so in future years.

Angela Lin 4:22
Hey, oh, yeah, past this year.

Jesse Lin 4:24
Yeah past this year, for sure.

Angela Lin 4:26
Okay, well, now you know our thoughts on Halloween. Let’s get to the fun stuff. So what we thought would be fun and relevant for our podcast theme was to tell some scary ghost stories or other spooky stories that we were able to mine from our parents. So things that are like from Chinese or Taiwanese lore.

Jesse Lin 4:49
Alright, so I asked my parents about some of the stories too. And I think there’s a very there’s like two tiers of stories just like the general level of stories that everyone knows which is kind of like backed in like Chinese mythology or Chinese fable. And then there’s kind of like your local from the countryside in Taiwanese like I don’t want to say hick stories. But you know, it’s like more of a country like a country story like you go to like, somewhere in the middle of Texas and they’ll be like, have you seen the, you know, X, Y and Z? What’s that Mexican thing?

Angela Lin 5:24
Chupacabra.

Unknown Speaker 5:25
Chupacabra? Yeah. So it’s like, not everybody believes in that, but like some people actually do. So my mom told me this story. So basically, the story starts off with this young person who’s going to climb a mountain in Taiwan with some of his firneds. And while he was preparing for it, one of his uncles gave him a talisman to wear, because he was like, your face looks not auspicious. So I’m gonna get you this talisman to wear so that you’re safe. He’s like, You’re ugly. So it’s a it’s a climb on a tall mountain. So they had to get a guide who is a native Taiwanese person, so not like people who immigrated from China but someone indigenous. And before the climb, said young person had basically was dreaming for a few days that something was chasing him and that his legs were bleeding. So I’m gonna start. And so then they went on the climb, right? So the first night, he heard a cry from one of the tents, and so everyone was like, Oh, my God, what’s happening? They went investigating the person was missing. Then the guide was like, Okay, let’s split up and try to find the person.

Angela Lin 6:33
That is never the right move.

Jesse Lin 6:36
Probably like, you know, we could probably it was like, I think my mom was a large enough group. So it was like three and two people. So groups, two groups, so it wasn’t like you’re by yourself or anything. Yeah. And before they split up, the guide was like, if you hear anything, don’t say anything. Like just keep going wherever you’re going. Don’t talk at all. So they were like, they split up. They quickly found out that the walkie talkies that they had which so this story is not in like in antiquity, they had walkie talkies. Okay, the walkie talkies that they had weren’t working. So they couldn’t communicate with the other group. He the young guy and some other person in his group, you know, they were walking around, they ended up walking to a waterfall, and they thought they heard someone like whining or like, you know, moaning, basically. And they found the missing dude. And the missing guy’s legs were bleeding and all his toes were bitten off. So they were like, oh, we need to like, we need to get him out of here right away. So they carried him and they were like, on the way down the mountain. And they were like, We feel like someone’s following us. And then they look back and they said they saw a bunch of like small green men following them. So they’re like, my mom called these “moh-shing-ah” in Taiwanese, and the way that she described them is they’re kind of like poltergeists, or like, gnomes. They’re not like, innately malevolent, but they’re very mischievious. So he saw that he realized they were following them, and it surprised and like scared him. And so he shouted out, like, Oh, my God, I see these “moh-shing-ah” . But then he realized the guide said, don’t say anything. So then he was like, oh, crap. And as soon as he said something, the small green men’s mouths, like sprouted like giant teeth, and they started like chasing them. So they ended up like running all the way down the mountain. And they finally crossed over like a railway. And they passed out. And then when they woke up, they were in a hospital. And the, the young guy asked the tour guide, like, hey, what happened? Like, what’s going on? We’re being chased by these like crazy gnome things. And the guy was like, kind of in like, befuddled kind of way was like, I don’t remember anything like that. And then he looked down at the talisman he was wearing and it was split down the middle. So he went back to his uncle after all this and told him about the whole story and experience. And his uncle was like, yeah, like, I gave this to you, because I felt like your, or your face was inauspicious. And then the uncle was like, but I also kind of felt like it was like, not enough. So the night that he left for the journey, the uncle went to pray at the shrine for the “tu-di-gong”, which is like the local, like in Taiwan, there’s like a local god for each like small like land area that’s supposed to be like the protector of that land area. So we went to pray at that shrine to that god. And he said, basically, that what the guide told them was the guide channeling that local God to warn them not to say anything, which is why the guide like was like I don’t remember any of this, and I don’t remember all that. Yeah. So that’s my story.

Angela Lin 9:58
Oh my god, I have so many thoughts and questions. Wait. So a question to start is this is like a legend that’s passed down or it’s like she is like someone they kind of know or like a friend of a friend kind of thing that actually supposedly happen.

Jesse Lin 10:17
I think – I know my mom said this was like a family friend story.

Angela Lin 10:20
Oh my god. Oh my god. That’s amazing. Oh, I’m freaking out.

Jesse Lin 10:28
It’s not that crazy, because I feel like, I mean, I remember when I went back when I was like, maybe 10, or 11. And Taiwan, even in like the 90s, early 2000s. It’s like completely not what it is now. Like, it used to be so hard to get around. And it’s a tiny, tiny country. I remember, we used to have to drive like 11-12 hours to get from Taipei to the countryside. And it’s literally like, in like straight distance it’s not very far. But because of the geography, the earthquakes and the monsoons it’s very hard to build infrastructure there that is not like destroyed immediately by a natural disaster. So I feel like there are a lot of situations like that where it could be like, very isolating.

Angela Lin 11:11
Yeah, but like, the little green men.

Jesse Lin 11:16
Yeah, so I think they were kind of like, they’re like folk creatures, you know, in a sense, and my mom explained that they’re, like, a kind of, like, forest fairy that live amongst humans in antiquity, obviously, but they are. They’re like poltergeists, as I said, so they’re very like mischievious and she said, like most of the time they will like lead you know, if you’re like climbing a mountain, or you’re somewhere in the forest like they will lead you around in like loops and stuff like trick you to go places to get you lost and stuff like that.

Angela Lin 11:52
Aren’t poltergeists bad?

Jesse Lin 11:54
Yeah, I guess poltergeists is not a good good analogy. I would say a gnome is probably I know, a gnome is probably a close wrong.

Angela Lin 12:02
Tricky elves kind of thing. Poltergeist is like the exorcist. You know, like…

Jesse Lin 12:08
That’s in the movie though. I don’t know if the actual definition of of Poltergeist I think is like a mischievious ghost early. I think so.

Angela Lin 12:18
Wait, that was a fantastic story.

Jesse Lin 12:20
Yeah, you liked it?

Angela Lin 12:21
What a great tale! Especially because there’s like, maybe it was real? I don’t know. Or they think it was real. You know? Oh, that’s so fun. Okay, so since you talked about the like, there’s like the formal stories, and then there’s like, more country bumpkin like tales. I also have, I also got both from my dad. So you told me so he also grew up like in in the straight up country, like rural side, and he talked about how when he was young, or like four or five years old, like he remembers that, you know, there’s like no TV back then there was like not a lot of stuff to entertain yourself with. So every night after dinner, basically everyone in the family would grab like a chair or stool and take it to their family temple, because everyone has a family temple to like, you know, venerate their, their ancestors and whatnot. And they would set up their chairs around like, candles, or whatever. And then the adults would basically just tell scary ghost stories to their kids to like scare them. So he remembers that there is a story that his uncles or whatever used to tell him, where it was like that there was a river ghost, so there’s a ghost that lives in the river. And he he or she is like constantly at the cusp of moving on to like their next iteration of life. But in order for it to move on to that next iteration, it needs to find someone else to take its place. So yeah, so they would tell I got like chills, and my dad was telling me it’s such a short story, but he basically was like, so our parents and uncles would tell us not to go near the river. Because if you go in and you try to swim in the river, the river ghost will come out and pull you down and drown you so that they can take, you can take their place, and they can essentially like take your life place, and like escape the river finally. And so this is like terrifying for me to think about. And but obviously, like, you know, there’s like the, you know, mystical side when you’re like imagining it to be real. And then there’s like, the practical side, which is like, parents not want their like five year old children near rushing water and like, you know, possibly killing themselves by accident. And so he told me like, and then the parents would make it seem like super real because like people kids did die in the river because it was like, you know, dangerous, and so they’d be like so and so’s son just got caught by the river ghost like the other days so you better be careful not to go down there. I’m like, oh, so yeah, that’s the country bumpkin one very short and sweet. But I was like, he told me at night and I was like, ah, like, oh, imagining this like demon thing coming out of the water and be like goodbye taking you.

Jesse Lin 15:17
And you’re like, kind of scared of the water.

Angela Lin 15:20
Yeah. already I’m already scared of the water so if some fucking ghost demon came out it’s like you’re taking me.

Jesse Lin 15:28
If I was a smartass kid I would be like, so he’s free now so I wouldn’t get captured, right?

Angela Lin 15:34
Wait what?

Jesse Lin 15:35
Cause you said so and so’s kid drowned. So that ghost is free.

Angela Lin 15:40
Oh, true. That’s true.

Jesse Lin 15:42
That’s if I was a smartass kid but…

Angela Lin 15:45
Yeah, well, or you could look at it the other way. Which is that kid who drowned now is the new River ghost.

Jesse Lin 16:43
Oh, good to see you again, Billy don’t drown me please.

Angela Lin 15:55
Oh, what mighty big teeth you suddenly have. Yeah, so my dad has just this like treasure trove of, of stories and like life experience things once you get him talking. So beyond the stories, he also was talking about other like ghostly things that are part of Chinese culture. And who’s talking about July being ghost month. So July in the lunar calendar, though, so it changes every year. So this like sticks out to me, because I remember when I was planning my wedding, which didn’t happen this year, anyway, because of quarantine. But I was planning it. I told my mom that we were looking at August, like end of July or first week of August. And I remember her van like whoa, whoa, whoa, let me go check the lunar calendar because if it falls in lunar July, that’s ghost month and that’s like super unlucky. So you can’t have your wedding then and I was like, eyeroll eyeroll. But my dad told me a little bit more about ghosts month and I was like, Oh, this is kind of like interesting and reminded me a little bit of Dia de los Muertos in Mexican culture. He was telling me that like basically like very common that like every family in Taiwan and China is essentially you have like a small temple or like an altar or something to remember your ancestors and you basically every day have like offerings to it right like food or whatever. So they’re always taking care of in the afterlife. But he’s talking about how they’re all these other souls that are lost and like don’t have families that remember them and like you know, help them in the afterlife because they died in an accident or they were like bad people or like whatever right there are all these other ghosts that exist and so he was talking about how the whole month is called ghost month but he said on July 15 is like the big day where you’re supposed to put out offerings like a bunch of food including like what was kind of expensive for poor people like my family back then like chicken and pork and stuff on July 15 as offerings to all these other ghosts because they also need help in the afterlife. And July is when the portals from the underworld are opened up and all these ghosts are released out into the human world and they’re there to like feed on the human world that’s what my dad said and he was like the food is very important and then you also have to burn a paper money so it’s not like real money…

…funeral money basically..

you burn it so that it can like transfer into the ghost world and then the ghosts can use it to like pay for things in the ghost world.

Jesse Lin 18:44
You can never escape capitalism money everywhere.

Angela Lin 18:47
Yeah, that’s right. But yeah, it was so interesting to me because I was like oh, this sounds kind of nice in a way because you’re like helping all these souls but he’s like yeah, but at the same time goes month is like a month where nothing happens like you’re not supposed to do anything big in your life like get married or buy a house or like move somewhere or get a new job like all that shit is bad during that month so don’t do it. Even though the sentiment to me feels kind of like very kind and like warm much like on Dia de Los Muertos is when like Mexican people celebrate their dead ancestors and like also put out offerings and stuff but it’s like a celebration that they get to reunite with her ghostly ancestors versus this is like I don’t know you’re like doing it to like not have harm happen to you.

Jesse Lin 19:41
No, my mom my mom does the same thing like towards the end of ghosts month like she’d be like, don’t like don’t go anywhere, like dangerous. I’d be like I’m going to the beach is like don’t go swimming. The other holidays is like you’re going to your ancestors and you’re like offering them stuff and in this one as you said it’s not that way like they’re released into our world and they’re like seeking stuff from you.

Angela Lin 20:05
They’re on a feeding frenzy.

Jesse Lin 20:05
Yeah, yeah. So that’s what they’re like this is the main difference is that like, you’re not profferring something? They’re coming to you for stuff so well, it’s so interesting,

Angela Lin 20:17
Right? It’s like, do I feel good about this like that we’re helping these lost souls or do I feel like really terrified that these this like wave of ghouls are unleashed on us? I don’t know.

Jesse Lin 20:29
I don’t know. But I don’t have an altar in my apartment. So

Angela Lin 20:35
Neither do I, we’ve never done it.

Well, so related to that, because like I said, once I started talking my dad, it was like this, like, endless spiral of additional things. So because we were talking about the underworld, he was like, Well, have you heard of the king of the underworld? His name is Yan Luo Wong. And I was like, no, who that.

So the person who..

Jesse Lin 21:01
What?!?

Angela Lin 21:01
I don’t know, you know, maybe I’ve heard of it way back when I haven’t talked to my parents

Jesse Lin 21:06
You’ve def seen a statue of him at least.

Angela Lin 21:08
Oh, probably yeah.

Jesse Lin 21:09
Yeah, the underworld gods are all like, their faces are scary.

Angela Lin 21:13
I feel like I know what you’re talking about. But yeah, I probably never knew his name. But yeah, so so my dad was saying about ghosts month, Yan Luo Wang is the person who just says like, okay, you’re released to go like, you can be free for this month, right? But anyways, he was telling me about him. And I felt like it was super interesting, because there are some similarities, but also like, huge differences between the concept of like heaven and hell, and like grim reaper style, shit between, like, Eastern tradition, or at least Chinese specifically, and like Western world. So Yan Luo Wang has this book of everyone who’s alive and has your name and your like, date of deathrReady. So when it’s your time to die, he knows and he sends these like messengers out to tell you it’s time. And my dad was telling me that these messengers are like, they wear all white. And they have this like, three foot tall hat that they wear. So it’s like, very obvious who they are. And if you see those messengers, you’re like, ah shit, it’s my time. So anyways, so you when you die, these messengers are going to come and like take you down into the underworld. And then you are presented with this mirror, where you will see your whole life like replay across this mirror. And there’s Yan Luo Wang is like the judge of whether ultimately your good deeds and bad deeds, like balanced out to be net good or net bad. And if it’s net good, you immediately get to reincarnate into another life, and you just like leave and become a different person. But if it’s net bad, then you are sentenced to hell, like this underworld that he oversees, and like different punishments and like different lengths of time, but like your sentence to like, you know, torture and whatnot, and but even after that punishment, then you would eventually be reincarnated again. So that was interesting to me. And then I asked him like, so there’s basically no heaven, like, you’re if you were good, you just then reincarnate. And there’s like no other destination, it’s like hell or reincarnation. And he was like, no, there is a heaven type thing. But he’s like, it’s not really called heaven. He said, it’s called Shen Xian. So it’s called like fairy world and it’s where all the gods live. And so he said, if you are Zheng Ji Wei Sheng. So Zheng means like righteous Ji means like, you know, you never cheat you’re like super straight and like you You know, go by the law kind of person. If you are like super righteous, and like super, you know, justice, whatever, you know, a really good person, then Yan Luo Wang would deem that you are so good that you can be shot up to this fairy world instead of having to reincarnate as another human. And my dad said that like so essentially this fairy world is where all the gods live and in opposition to Western ideas of Gods where they’re like, this whole other being that like was never related to humans, he’s like in, in Chinese lore, all gods were once human, and they like transcended into Gods. So he was talking about like, all those statues we see at temples and whatever it is like they look human esque. Because they were humans once, so, so yeah, I thought that was super interesting. I was like, Oh, I love it.

Jesse Lin 25:08
I know that it’s really interesting. I feel like it does. It draws a lot from I mean, obviously they’re very related like, elements of Buddhism are seen in Taoism and this idea that I mean, the first Buddhas were humans who reached enlightenment right so it makes sense that they’re that heaven is all made of humans. But I think they’re like a few stories as well where likes quote unquote fairies are removed from heaven so your place is like not guaranteed forever. I think the um, the story about a lady stranded on a moon with a rabbit

Oh, yeah, that was Guanyin

I don’t think there’s a separate one. There’s like an epic love story where this lady who was a fairy I think I might be telling it right or incorrectly. But she was like, removed from heaven. Like, and yeah, yes for a forbidden love with a man and the man is like trapped on earth so they can never they can only meet once a year during I think it’s Zhong Chiu Jie.

Angela Lin 26:13
Oh, yeah. Well, that’s why you eat the moon cakes.

Jesse Lin 26:17
Yeah, yeah. And the rabbits supposed to be there to like make… I think the rabbit is like a modern cute addition so that she’s not like sad and lonely by herself.

Angela Lin 26:25
Oh like her one friend is this rabbit on the moon?

You know what? Know, I very much remember that. Sorry. And that maybe I conflated the Guanyin part of it but because I remember looking up at the moon when I was a kid. I mean, like I can see the rabbit like I can see it kind of a shape of a rabbit. And I feel like my I guess all my prayers were misguided them because I was always prayed to the moon

I got ask my mom about this. I feel like she taught me to do that.

Jesse Lin 26:54
Oh, yeah, you should. You should check that.

All right, let’s hop on over to the fortune cookie. Since Angela loves Halloween so much and obviously I’m building my Halloween love. We wanted to talk about as a fun clothes. What are the best Halloween costumes that we’ve done?

Angela Lin 27:14
Okay, well, yeah, this is I will never beat this one. And I like constantly still show pictures to people.

I think I know which one you’re going to talk about, but go!

You definite know – Kal Drago from Game of Thrones. Yes. Okay, so this was when I was still working in New York. So this is so long ago was like 2013 or something like that. But that’s also you know, peak of Game of Thrones, like when I was still on up it was very elaborate. Well, it helps that Jason Momoa is like you know has like Asian ish features because he’s half Hawaiian. So I was like, Okay, I can I can get away with this because I have also like dark skin I’m like long black hair. So I obviously tied into like the the style that he did but then it like really trip people out but because he’s like shirtless all the time. Right. Like he basically has like, like some sort of like pelts thing that he wears and long pants, but he’s shirtless and like jacked. So I had to, I had to buy like a nude leotard, that I could look shirtless without being totally inappropriate. And then he has these like, blue tattoo type thing on his shoulder like

Jesse Lin 28:33
Fangs kind of

Angela Lin 28:34
Yeah I drew those in, and then I pieced together like a gladiator skirt as the pelt thing. And then like black pants and boots, essentially. But then it took me like 40 minutes to put on the makeup because I realized like, I’ve worn the same makeup since I was like 22 years old, which is just a cat eye with eyeliner and mascara. Like I don’t know how to do anything else. So when I looked at his picture, he wears way more makeup than I do, because he has this huge like, kind of like, what is it called?

Jesse Lin 29:08
Like smoky eye?

Angela Lin 29:09
Yes, he has an intense smoky eye. So I was like, practice it the day before. And then basically because I was in New York and like no one has a car in New York, so I had to commute right to work on the subway and I didn’t want people staring at me that early in the morning at like 9am so I only half dressed without the makeup yet. And then I like quickly ran into the bathroom before anyone saw me and it was like applying this makeup. And I remember someone walked in and like looked at me and I was like, carry on. Don’t look at me. But it turned out really well to the point where like everyone gave me compliments about it. But it was funny because Game of Thrones is like very much part of the zeitgeist at that point. So like most people knew what I was, but even people who like don’t watch Game of Thrones there’s I remember, there was one woman who was like, I don’t know what you are, but I am into this. And the best compliment was, you know how New York everyone wants to be an actor, like everyone is an actor of some sort. And so I worked in Times Square. Unfortunately, that’s where my office used to be. And right near my office was a Jekyll and Hyde bar. Where like year round themed at Jekyll and Hyde, right? And so they always have their employees out in Time Square dressed in character and like trying to get you to come into their bar. And I was like, walking past them. Because I wanted a friend to take a picture of me in Time Square in my costume, and they broke character to be like, dude, I love your costume. I was like, yes, I’ve broken your character. So this was a good ass costume and I still show the picture too. It’s always like my go to fun fact for you know, work icebreakers and whatnot. And then of course, boy, like, okay, you need to see pictures, then. It was show the same pictures in there.

Jesse Lin 31:08
Maybe we’ll post some pictures!

Angela Lin 31:10
How about you?

Jesse Lin 31:14
Um, yep, my Halloween. Okay, so as I mentioned, I haven’t done anything too elaborate, because it’s a lot of work.

Angela Lin 31:22
Indeed.

Jesse Lin 31:24
And I don’t want to put too much time into it. So there will probably be something really cool in the future, but not quite so not quite yet. I think the most elaborate thing I’ve done is the Joker and I basically went and got like face paint and did like the craziest like crazy person application of the paint on my face, which is perfect because like my model or like vision of it was like Heath Ledger. And his like, makeup is basically like someone smeared it all over his face. So I was like, this was perfect. And it was pretty fun. It was like hand painting on my face. But I even then I didn’t realize how difficult it was because I was like, you had to black, white and red. Right? So I was like, wait, which one do I do first? And so I did eyes first. But then when I put the white on for the rest of the face, it’s smeared everywhere. It was a lot of trial and error. And the the makeup was fine, but it was like oil, so I couldn’t touch anything with my face. And I would like drink stuff and leave like makeup all over. But I did that and I got like green hairspray. And then the rest of my costume was like not specifically interesting. It was like kind of like the five minute Jared Leto version of Joker so it was like gangster dress but the makeup what’s what was important, and that’s my Instagram profile picture.

Angela Lin 32:59
Oh, yeah, that would do it. That’s why I remember it. So clearly. You see it every day. Yeah. No, I feel you. Because I’ve done the like candy skull, you know, Dia de los Muertos type makeup as well for previous costume. Yep. You can’t eat or drink anything. Or like accidentally scratch your eye.

Jesse Lin 33:22
I would I would. I think to get to that level of like makeup doing I would have someone do it for me. Like not not even like a professional but I would just be like, can someone else do this because like I can’t.

Angela Lin 33:34
Yeah, yeah, it takes a while. Cool. Well, that’s fun. Well wee hope everyone is channeling the spirit of Halloween in some way. I don’t know exactly what it’s gonna look like this year. It’s probably just…

Jesse Lin 33:48
…the partying at home socially distanced zoom.

Angela Lin 33:51
Yeah, for us. Yeah, maybe a six feet apart.

Jesse Lin 33:56
Throw candy at people out your window.

Angela Lin 33:58
I don’t feel like people are going to let their children accept strangers candies this year. You’re trying not to touch other people’s things.

Jesse Lin 34:09
True. I guess that’s it straight from the bag, though.

Angela Lin 34:14
Anyways, I hope you find a way to have fun this year and just be safe and but still have fun. And if you have if you have stories to tell us what we’d love, I’d love to hear yours. I’d love to see costume pictures for sure DMS post it tag us whatever. Also, because we told like, you know, culturally relevant like local stories that our parents told us if you have stories from your culture, or like your parents scared you growing up by telling you certain stories, we’d love to hear those. So definitely write us in at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com the you’re is Y-O-U-R-E. And as always, we will have a fresh new episode for you next week.

Angela Lin 0:11
Today we’re talking all things, elections and voting because that shit is coming up soon. But we’re not keeping it super insular just to the United States, we actually have a special guest with us, Savannah, who’s gonna be providing a different perspective because she is in Taiwan. Right now she is from Taiwan. So we’re also going to be talking about what democracy and voting is like, there kind of comparing and contrasting with the United States. So before we get started, I wanted to let Savannah give a little introduction to herself.

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Savannah 0:50
Okay, good morning is morning time from Taiwan. And I’m Savannah, I’m pretty honored to be invited. So first, thanks for inviting me. So basically, about me, I live in Taiwan, and I work as a flight attendant. So I think I did travel around the world, and then see different, you know, stuff about democracy, or how do we say that communism because I lived beside China? So I don’t know. Let’s talk about. Actually, I know Soviet, because when I went back to Taiwan, I think it was like, two or no, like three or four years ago by now. But I went back for my cousin’s wedding and my parent, I was with my parents. And they were like, do you need friends? I was like, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know anyone. And they’re like, okay, we’re gonna set you up with a friend date. And I was like, this might be a disaster. And then Savannah showed up, and she’s so fun. And she’s so bubbly. So we had a, we had a really good time. And we’ve been in touch ever since. So thank you, parents for setting me up on a friend thing.

Jesse Lin 1:59
That’s so nice.

Angela Lin 2:00
But before we get into, okay, compare and contrast, because our United States elections are coming up real quick. I think we wanted to give the plug, Jesse?

Jesse Lin 2:12
Yeah. So some of you guys might be wondering why we’re talking about the vote because the vote applies to everyone in the US. It’s particularly important, I think, for Asian Americans, because historically, Asian American voter turnout is much lower than any other ethnic race group in the US. And there are like a number of reasons we can talk about as to why that might be the case. But I think it’s really important as we move forward to be more civic minded and to develop our country and to move us in the direction that we all have a vision for, it’s super important that we get out and vote. And aside from that, there’s also talking about the vote with people, you know, having candid discussions about where you think you want the country to go, and which candidates represent that vision. So that’s why we’re here to talk about voting in the US and with some commentary compare / contrast with Savannah.

Angela Lin 3:19
Yeah. And one last blog, is, I think what gets a lot of attention is the candidates that are like the big ticket candidates, like the President, the Vice President, Supreme Court justices that we don’t get to vote on, but you know, like these big name, people, but actually, your local elections are probably arguably more important for your day to day life and things that are going to impact you where you live. And it’s something that is often overlooked, especially by young people like us, like I fully admit that I never really paid attention to local elections much. And President Obama actually came out with a really good Medium blog post, a few months back into quarantine, where he really hammered home, I think it was right after the George Floyd incident. And he made a good point of highlighting, you know, like, if you don’t want to see these kinds of injustice is happening in the future things with police misconduct, and the way that things are run in your city, like that’s done on a local level. So it’s up to you to pay attention to who you’ve elected there. And make sure you ask the people that you don’t feel are gonna, you know, push things in the right direction. So that’s, that’s somewhere that I’m going to spend a lot more time paying attention to, and just want to make sure that everyone else who’s thinking about voting is not just focused on the big flashy names, but also the stuff that’s actually going to impact your day to day in the locals local side.

Jesse Lin 4:50
Absolutely. Cool. So shall we get into it and talk about the voting process here versus Taiwan? I think we can start talking about the voting process here. I can say probably with fair accuracy and certainty that there is not really much of a voting process here. It’s kind of like, as with many things in this country, currently, it’s a very big dumpster fire that’s managed a million different ways across a million different states. So each state has slightly different regulations as to who can vote, how they can vote when they can vote. And yeah, it’s crazy, right?

Savannah 5:29
Yeah. So we do have news about America goes on. And Taiwan for no reason other country, like on the international news and Taiwan, we basically focus on only US and China. So as I know, I don’t know why. But as I know, there’s people are talking about the mail-in processes and the president right now who keep claiming, oh, the mail-in election is not going to get accuracy and different states have different rules. Some states allow you to sign up for a mail-in process that just one day ahead of the election for some, you know, you need to do like a week ahead or different state have different rules. And then when will they get the mail? So how do you make sure that everybody votes in all the mail counts?

Jesse Lin 6:16
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I yeah. I think federally, there really isn’t. As far as I’m aware, there really isn’t a federal thing that’s like overseeing how that is handled, that’s usually handled on the state level. So I think Angela, you and I were discussing, everyone in California is going to get a mail in ballot automatically. Yeah. But I live in New York, for example, and everyone who wants a mail-in ballot can get one, but you have to request it. So it’s not being sent automatically.

Angela Lin 6:48
Yeah. And things are also special this year, because of COVID. So like California doesn’t automatically send everyone a mail-in ballot. And normally, it’s because of COVID that, you know, voting can be dangerous when you’re congregating when you’re going to have thousands of people lining up to try to vote, that’s the usual process. A lot of people prefer to vote in person. But with COVID been such an issue. California proactively decided that everyone would receive a mail, mail-in ballot this year.

Savannah 7:22
So before the COVID, you should go to a voting booth for votes like in person people lining up and voting voting booths. So there’s only up

Angela Lin 7:31
You can do mail-in like, you can choose to do that. I used to actually I’ve always been a permanent mail-in ballot kind of person, I think because I’ve moved a lot so I I’ve always wanted to make sure I can vote no matter where I keep changing my address to. But But yeah, most people prefer I think most people do mail I mean, in person, because it feels like you’re doing something and everyone loves when you vote. You get a sticker that says I voted and so on that day, everyone wears their sticker and they’re like,

Savannah 8:06
You get stickers when you vote? That’s so cute. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in Taiwan, everyone needs to go to the vote station to vote we don’t have mail-in option.

Jesse Lin 8:18
So tell us what it’s like the process of voting in Taiwan. Obviously, Taiwan is much smaller than the US so probably there aren’t the same level of logistics problems and getting people to vote but I’m curious as to how it’s like administered like who actually does all the work of going to the polls and like many of them getting people registered

Savannah 8:40
Compared to US we are probably like I don’t know just way more easier cuz everybody needs to go to the voting station. So the legal voting ages are like I think 20 so if you’re already 20 they will when the voting they come they usually mail that’s not the vote they will mail you like how do we say that the information letter everyone’s What does this candidate talk about and everything like he’s age, where does he from? And he’s education and what is this candidate he or she wants so everybody can have information. And then on the voting day usually goes on eight to four. So they will like divided everyone into different section basically like into who how we say that. Five kilometers or even just each 10 kilometers have one voting booth which means everyone just needs to go out and vote it will be like 10 minutes walking destination basically for everyone. Because we are small, tiny country they are like more than thousand 2000s voting booth so everybody can go up votes, is there every corner is totally every corner like for example for mine. Me and my family just need to walk by for five minutes for a voting station is basically everywhere.

Angela Lin 10:03
Do you are you assigned a voting station? Or can you go to any of them

Savannah 10:08
They divided by where like, by your how do we say that – post code?

Angela Lin 10:14
Okay, so so they do they do tell you that you have to go to?

Savannah 10:18
By counties they do go you where you go, and usually the voting booths will be some elementary school and high school.

Jesse Lin 10:26
That’s similar to here. Yeah. So really important question. What is the voting right? Like in Taiwan? Like, is it mandatory that you vote? Is it optional that you vote?

Savannah 10:40
I think it’s option is not mandatory? It’s not like Australia, if you didn’t go to go they were like fine you like few thousand dollars? Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, yeah. But in Taiwan, this optional, but quite funny thing is like last year, our vote not last year, like this presidency election, we kind of go up to 70% of voting rate, which I think is pretty high.

Jesse Lin 11:03
That’s very high.

Savannah 11:04
Yeah, I think compared to us last year is only 40%. If I do read it correctly, that’s 40%. But we do it like 70%.

Jesse Lin 11:13
And I’m curious, how does your like voting work? Because there’s been a lot of conversation about how how voting works in the US, because sometimes you don’t get very good candidates. So you kind of feel like you don’t have the right person to pick but then you have to pick like somebody anyways. But some countries are doing like ranked choice voting so that you can vote for like second best. And like the vote gets distributed in a way where it’s a little bit more fair than if you just have like one to two candidates. And you have to make a choice

Savannah 11:48
We only can choose one. Yes. Well, we can only choose one is like US, every presidential elections, only two or three people to choose, you don’t have much option. Yeah.

Jesse Lin 11:59
Yeah, I guess for Yeah, for our larger elections, it doesn’t matter. But usually like the rank choice, I think it’s like very interesting for local elections, because you can, number one, I like this person. Number two, I would like this person number three, I would like this person. So on and so forth

Savannah 12:14
Every election is only for one, you only can choose one for each, like categories, I believe.

Angela Lin 12:20
So let’s talk about the last election because that was well. Now it’s been almost a year. Right. But it feels like it was because of COVID. It feels like it was kind of recent, um, how important was the last election to you? Because I feel like there was a from what I hear from my family, at least that’s like where I get my Taiwanese information. It was like a big divide between kind of young people and older people in terms of the President, at least.

Savannah 12:53
The presidential you mean talk about the presidential election last time. So last is last year, am I correct? That’s up kind of a biggest election. I would say biggest because there’s a lot of news comes on. Because it’s pretty controversy is kind of like for young people. We don’t usually go to vote because we don’t care the president, and we don’t care. But last year on news, you can see a lot of news goes on. If we have two candidates, we have to have two parties in Taiwan, basically KMT, which is Kuo Ming Tang, if you transfer from Chinese, it means nothing English, but is KMT. And the other is Democratic Progressive Party, if I do mean, so we have two candidates, actually, number three, but nobody can number three, so just focus on these two, nobody can understand it. So we just focus on these two parties. And KMT is most known in Taiwan, people will say they are more aligned to the China side. They they came from China. And now a lot of policies based on what the previous president do is more like lay on China, they will do everything which is benefit China not our country. So for young people, the news keeps saying, if you vote for the candidate for KMT, Taiwan, will became a part of China, something goes on like this, which is really important for young people right here. We want our democracy we’re our own country. So that’s why everybody go out for vote, kind of really important last year.

Angela Lin 14:20
But this is her second term, right. So when her first term election have also been just as important because it was also I imagine,

Savannah 14:30
She – when her first time, which is I last time she is our first female candidate for presidents not vice president. President. And then that’s after eight years of the other president, the other president do eight years too. So each president do four years I think is kind of same as us and they can only have two times. So that’s president already did his eight years and he’s from the KMT which is China party something so people want change. That’s why I think a big process of she get elected because I think in Taiwan, for example, my grandma, they still have the old Chinese typical stereotype of women cannot be president.

Jesse Lin 15:12
Can ask a question about something you said earlier, you said that younger people don’t really turn out for the presidential election. Can you explain why that is?

Savannah 15:21
I remember, because so last time when I vote I was how old am I 26. So I did vote like last last time. Because that we don’t see much news about the presidential and for Taiwan, I don’t know for us, we don’t really care about politics, because it’s not related for our life. The recent yeah I say again again, the reason why we go vote this time, because all young people don’t want to be a part of China. That’s why we vote the previous time. There not much news, kind of saying, if you don’t go vote, your life will change. And if you don’t go vote one day, you might need to change your passport and Facebook like, for example, they will keep saying news this time. If you don’t go vote, you can no longer use Facebook, if you don’t go vote, you can no longer browsing on YouTube. That’s why pushing people to vote.

Angela Lin 16:14
They, young people were hurt social media.

Savannah 16:17
No, no, I want to keep my social media. That’s why we go to vote. So the biggest reason is, we don’t move it for because it’s not related to our life. But this time, if you want to keep Facebook and YouTube go vote. Will you feel the same as what Taiwanese do last year you feel crisis for young people? If I don’t go vote this time, my country will go down that’s what we feel less time. Do you get the same feeling if I don’t go this vote, everything change?

Jesse Lin 16:46
I mean, I think from my perspective, definitely younger people have become more energized about the voting process. Because I remember when I was like 20-21, like, it was, like cool to I mean, I don’t want to say it was cool to vote, like, I feel like not a lot of people were talking about voting, like, it’s not like an exciting thing. And we don’t get like time off to do it. So it’s like, I mean, like, technically, I think technically, you have the companies have to give you like two hours or something. But it’s like just not done in a way that makes it easy for you to vote. So it’s like, kind of difficult, like you have to go out of your way to do it. But then, as more and more of the news came up about how like, I guess the direction that the government was going or the direction that the country is going and with all of these things that have been happening that Angela has said, I think it’s really motivated a lot more people to try and vote because they realize that the vote does matter. Like it does matter who you put in places of power from both local elections to the highest office in the US, because those people affect the policy which affects our lives.

Angela Lin 18:02
For me, I don’t disagree with anything you just said. But I kind of feel like the most youth driven election of like recent times has been was Obama’s first run. I think that was the biggest youth driven movement. And it’s because he spoke to young people in a way that like no other politician has ever spoken to our people and like, honestly, we’re young people are like constantly still, like grieving over the fact that we don’t have Obama still as a president. Like we’re we can’t get over it. It’s like a boyfriend that broke up with you that like you don’t want to accept that that happened. Um, and I remember that feeling of like, oh my god, this is like this has changed because he was the first black president so so for you guys like first female president right? It’s like, this is a big like, if nothing like symbolic change forward country, and he like really understood young people and like seem like, actually listened and cared. And like, that was the last president I think were like, everyone, it felt like more young people came out like explicitly because they were positively motivated to want to vote. I do agree like young people are like very much like we have to vote now like that. But it’s more driven by like what you were saying of like a little bit of like crisis mode. It’s different because in the Obama era was like, hopeful you’re like this, I can like, be a part of like, really positive step forward for the country versus I need to vote to like, prevent the country from going backwards

Jesse Lin 19:42
Yeah. I’m so glad you said that. Because I think that’s exactly the case with Obama. The campaign spoke to the needs and the ideals that young people had for the US with the current elections and like the people that are in place now. It’s like they’re speaking to the same people that people were speaking to in the previous elections, which is like older people, like people with families. And the honest truth is that those people have completely different needs and a completely different vision for the country than young people do.

Angela Lin 20:18
So let’s talk a little bit you talked about the biggest deciding factor and the latest Taiwanese election was democracy versus not. So we wanted to get your thoughts on the current climate with China because I think there’s always since the beginning of Taiwan, there’s always been like China’s threatening to take back Taiwan, like they never really wanted you to go away in the first place. But I think it was last week or two weeks ago when China sent like a bunch of those fighter planes.

Savannah 20:50
That’s a lot I heard this another one this morning. We do hear this like “brrrrr” this sound in Taipei, there’s another one this morning, I believe.

Angela Lin 20:58
So what are what are you guys feeling now with like that kind of stuff happening live over your heads? Like, does it kind of feel like well, they’re always making fake threats? This is not anything real? Or does it feel like it’s a little bit different and there’s something to be afraid of?

Savannah 21:16
I don’t know much for other people. But for me in person, I do watch a lot of you know, news around the world. So my personal experience, I definitely feel like scary, especially when your personal you are sleeping like for example, this morning, I was getting up and getting ready for this podcast. And then you hear the sounds is actually happening. You hear the very loud noise fighter planes. Probably flying above your apartment. You’re thinking about is it going to happens. Is it really gonna happens. The easiest way is one day, we probably need to change our passport change to another country. But the hardest way we still scared like one day. Because Taiwan is such a tiny country if they do throw something. We’re all gone. Oh my god.

Angela Lin 22:00
What has the President said about like preparing for something like that.

Savannah 22:06
Oh, she did. I don’t know how to say does English it she did a lot of rehearsal about the army. I don’t know how to say that English defense. Okay, the defense of rehearsal. But speaking the truth, how many people we do have in Taiwan? How many soldier we do have so but I think for my personal view, it probably won’t happen since Taiwan, the location is quite good. Japan, South Korea, especially even US there are a lot of battleship but on Taiwan trying to protect ourselves. I think we’ll be fine.

Angela Lin 22:41
Okay, I hope so.

Savannah 22:42
Yeah, they don’t, they don’t need to fight. They just cut off all our financial system. Since there are a lot of big, you know, company surviving by China. They just cut off the finance, we will be gone. So I think they will if it won’t happen for my personal view.

Jesse Lin 23:01
So I was going to ask because you basically told us about this concern with China, but you personally don’t think that anything will happen? How much do the politicians there use this to like try and manipulate people into choosing one way or not? Is it like a lot?

Savannah 23:20
Like US election they say if you don’t vote for the woman President Taiwan will go back to China. They use this all the time. Like, oh, especially last election, they use the Hong Kong crisis to they’ll say, look what happened in Hong Kong, it’s gonna be Taiwan. They say if you don’t go vote Hong Kong today, tomorrow, Taiwan. That’s the biggest slogan for this election. So they do use this to manipulate it all the time. Oh, especially we do have our first time how do we say the English we remove the mayor? We get to vote like for example, in California, everybody can vote, say we don’t like this senator, we can remove him. We do remember, a mayor in Taiwan, like this year, is the first time happened in history because we found out first of all, he said he’s promised are fake and the secondary we found out he probably get money from China. That’s as what I see from the news. So that’s why we recall him like remove him from his position. we vote to remove him from his position. First time in the history quite big deal, that’s why you say manipulated.

Jesse Lin 24:30
Yeah. And do people like a lot of people buy into it? Like they believe in it.

Savannah 24:37
That’s why he’s been removed it because we buy what the other party say. Is it fake is true? I don’t know from my personal view. I don’t know. But it does happen. Okay.

Angela Lin 24:49
Wow. This is then a very fun conversation. very enlightening.

Jesse Lin 24:55
Yeah. Many many things. Yeah.

Angela Lin 24:56
Really? Yeah, we learned a lot. Thank you for joining us.

Savannah 24:59
Yeah. Thank you for inviting so cool. It’s my first podcast its so fun.

Angela Lin 25:05
Well, I think we’ll transition this into the closing section then. So Jesse in our pre recording, just so you guys know, we were pre recording this episode it’s actually the night of the first presidential debate happening in three minutes. So

Jesse Lin 25:22
It’s on C-Span

Angela Lin 25:23
We’re very excited to watch that soon. But since it’s where we have politics, top of mine, we want to close out with reminding our listeners of where are how they can vote. California, pretty easy. Like I said, you should be getting your mail in ballot. But if you want to track where your ballot is, you probably already got 1000 emails like I did. But if you did not, there’s a website called ballot tracks the tracks is trax. There are a million different ways you can check on your voter status. But vote.org is another one that just make sure you’re signed up with a lot of times you just assume but better to double track and then the ballot tracks for California to track where your your thing actually is in the mail.

Jesse Lin 26:14
Okay, and before I get into to New York, just reminder, Election Day is November 3, November 3rd- just just so everyone remembers what the day actually is. In New York, you can request an absentee ballot online right now, you should do it as soon as you can. Because there are a lot of requests. And we’ve already seen a few issues with the board of elections, not sending the right things. If you want to vote in person, you can do so on election day, or you can do early voting. Early voting in person runs from October 24th on October 24 to November 1. And as a reminder, you can request an absentee ballot, you can also early vote, or you can also vote on election day. It does not like requesting one thing does not mean you cannot go in person to vote.

Angela Lin 27:11
Very true. And I think all those things are also true for California. But since you’re getting the mail-in ballot. You might as well just use the fucking mail-in ballot. It’s a definitive thing you’re getting.

Savannah 27:22
Go vote everyone. It only take a few minutes, why not? Just go do it.

Angela Lin 27:29
All right. Well, if you like this episode, if you want to learn more about how Taiwan works with their voting system, or you want to give your opinion on any of the stuff we talked about today, feel free to write us in. Telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that your is Y-O-U-R-E.

Jesse Lin 0:08
This week, we wanted to take a deep dive into the history of Indigenous Peoples Day, and where it originally came from. So we did a little bit of background research as it relates to Indigenous People’s Day or as it was more commonly known to us in the 90s Columbus Day. In a nutshell, basically, Columbus Day was supported by a bunch of Italian Americans who moved here because at the time when Italian Americans were moving here, they were heavily discriminated against by the local population of people who are already here. And so they were looking to create a holiday that would embody like these good things about being Italian American, and to celebrate that. And basically, it was picked up state by state, not all states have Columbus Day I think there are a few states where the holiday’s officially designated as Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day. So the idea that it wasn’t Indigenous Peoples Day until recently, I think it’s not correct. I feel like a lot of people think that because it’s been tied up with a lot of the recent conversation around like social justice, and which narratives we should be reverberating now. But there were already a few states where it was it has been Indigenous People’s Day for a few decades now. Yeah, people are really taking a reevaluation of what Columbus actually did, and how it was impactful for the local population in a negative way. And actually, some of the articles were really interesting. They said that, like, in some Caribbean nations, they actually don’t have this day at all, they have like a national holiday to celebrate local people. Because Columbus didn’t actually make it to America, I think he only made it to the Caribbean islands. So as a result of him making to the Caribbean islands, there’s like, obviously, a lot of bad things that happen like the disease spreading, which killed a lot of people. So I think locally, they don’t celebrate him at all. They just celebrate like the local people day. So that’s in a nutshell, I found it really interesting because the background of it is almost kind of like the same reason why people want to rename it Indigenous People’s Day now because Italian American for like we don’t want to be discriminate against them. We don’t want to be seen poorly by the population is already here. So that’s just the primer, and what we’re going to be talking about today, and to help us with that. I have a special friend from college Maggie who will be joining us. So Maggie, as usual, we’re gonna be asking you, but where are you really from?

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Maggie 2:54
Um, so when I’m asked where I’m from, I always say Kansas, I’m from Shawnee, Kansas, but I was actually born in San Jose, California. So woohoo the Bay Area. And yeah, I lived there until I was like eight but most of my memories are from Shawnee, Kansas. And then I actually don’t rarely get but where you really from I get you look different. Like I am the variations Yes, I am the classic like very racially ambiguous person that people want to ask. And like can’t Yeah, just don’t really know how to phrase it. So yeah, I get you looking different. But I’m half Navajo and half German.

Angela Lin 3:40
Cool. Do people try to guess?

Maggie 3:42
No. I think people are like walking on eggshells all the time. Um, I get I get I also call myself a shapeshifter. Because I feel like whoever I’m with people will assume I’m them. So like, I have a really good friend who she is half Puerto Rican, half Mexican. And we would like go to the gym and her co workers would be like, oh, is your sister in town? Is that your sister and like, my dad put up a picture of us to like wish me happy birthday. It was like a cute picture with her and I in it. And people were commenting like wait, which one’s Maggie? And things like that. And I get that like I’ve been asked. I’ve gotten my nails done with my Vietnamese friend and I’ve been asked like, Oh, are you being tummies? And I’m like, what?

Angela Lin 4:28
Actually that’s really funny. Every story you’ve told now I’m like looking at you through our video chat right now. I can see that.

Unknown Speaker 4:35
I have high cheekbones so she I think the Vietnamese woman saw my cheekbones and was like I see it. I’ve been asked if I’m Nepali. Like everything I’ve people have like they’re like, oh, are you french? And I’m like, do I look French I it’s an identity crisis at the end of the day. Rarely has anybody ever like I actually don’t think anybody has ever guessed Native American, usually it’s Mexican, which makes sense because my the Navajo are from the southwest. So like, you know,

Jesse Lin 5:09
Have you ever been in an opportunity to be like, amongst a lot of Navajo people like, what do they think you are?

Maggie 5:17
Oh yeah, any. It’s really funny. So my mom is actually pretty distant from her culture. Obviously, we all know the stereotypes of like living on a reservation and alcohol abuse and all that things. And she has a lot of dark things in her family that, you know, as soon as she turned like 16 and graduated high school, she left she got out of there. And she really distanced herself from it and distance my brother and I from it. But we always have like family reunions, or something. And I think the last one I went to, but she didn’t, and people were running up to me and calling me my mom’s name. And you’re like, oh, Elaine, Elaine. And, and I’m like, people, there’s like, 33 years older than me, like, I’m either very offended or, like, they just haven’t seen her in that long. But, um, when I was younger, I felt like I didn’t look like either of my parents. I always had this thing that I was like, Oh, I’m adopted, I’m adopted. And I was like, either of them. But now that I’m older, I look so much like my mother. So whenever I’m like, around all of my mom’s family, they just assume I’m her.

Jesse Lin 6:23
Interesting. Cool.

Angela Lin 6:25
So I have a question for you. That’s like, somewhat ignorant because I, like openly admit, I’m ignorant on a lot of topics. But one of the ways that we reference like, Asian American identity is like what generation you are. So based on what you just said, of like, your mom grew up sounds like around everyone else who was also Navajo, and then she decided at age 16. Like goodbye. So from that, is that like, would you say your first gen because you’re like the first generation outside of that culture?

Maggie 6:59
Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve never thought about it that way. It’s also like, it’s different for me too, because I mixed. So I think, like mixing has its own identity in and of itself. But yeah, I guess you could say first because my I mean, my mom doesn’t speak the language, though. She could a little bit when she was younger, because of course, she would be like, yelled at in Navajo. And, yeah, I mean, I think most of the time, I just say I’m half Navajo, and I think a lot of people assume that’s like first kind of like first generation because my mom is full. So we kind of go by blood. And yeah, just by saying, Oh, I’m half Navajo, it’s like, oh, we’re definitely half white to because we can tell.

Angela Lin 7:45
Since today is Indigenous People’s Day. As someone who is half Navajo, I know, you know, your, your mom kept you a little bit distant from that culture growing up. But I’m curious what this holiday means to you because it is in celebration of your people.

Maggie 8:03
Yay. So happy Indigenous Peoples Day. Nations, everything that everywhere around the world calls it because like Jesse said earlier, it is like an international thing. And places like in California have been celebrating since the 90s. So the rest of us are just kind of like catching up. I was thinking about this because honestly growing up like as a millennial in the 90s. I didn’t really think anything of it. It was like, oh, it’s Columbus Day, we don’t have school, probably, you know, I’m from Kansas, I pretty much guaranteed we celebrated Columbus Day. And by celebrated I mean, we just didn’t have school, right? Like, it’s one of those holidays that like we don’t actually know much about we just know, we don’t have school, we don’t have work. And, and then of course, going to NYU and you know, being exposed to things that are a little more politically correct. You know, I started realizing, like, oh, there’s so much more to this. And as somebody again, that’s mixed and has like, very confusing relationship with my identity, I guess you could say, you know, I kind of felt like an imposter, pushing any of those things like on social media or like with my friends and family and but I was thinking about it. And it’s one of those things that’s like, Native Americans, there’s so many stereotypes around them whether – and they’re all negative, too. You know, it’s like, oh, you’re alcoholics. Oh, you live on a reservation. That means you’re poor. That means, you know, it’s government subsidized. That means there’s, you know, domestic abuse, like Native American women are at like the highest rate of like sexual abuse, domestic abuse, going missing, abductions, just so many dark things. And I feel like with Indigenous People’s Day, there’s so many awesome things we can be celebrating. And there’s so many ways that other people who are not indigenous can celebrate too. So, like I have recently found the Navajo niche on Instagram. And there’s so many small businesses like Navajos, especially, but Native Americans in general, are amazing artists. So that’s something that it’s like we should be celebrating this so much more and talking about it, whether it’s pottery, silversmith jewelry, beading artwork, you know, there’s just like so many things – weaving my great grandma was a famous weaver, like, so many things that we can give money to and buy and celebrate this culture that is actually just really been whitewashed, like, you know, how many people are buying turquoise on Amazon because it’s cheap, like, no, that’s part of my culture, and you should go buy something handmade from somebody and support their business. So yeah, I think, you know, the more that I think about Indigenous People’s Day, the more that I’m like, we need to celebrate and uplift the positive things in our culture that so many people just don’t even realize exist.

Angela Lin 10:48
You’re gonna have to send us that Instagram that you found because

Maggie 10:51
Oh my gosh, I fallen into a hole and I absolutely love it. Because these women look like me. Like for the first time ever, I’m looking at people that I’m like, Oh my gosh, you have a round face. I you know, I’m curvier. We’re bigger women, like we’re bigger bones. And it’s just something that’s beautiful to look at. because growing up, you know, I would see on TV, really only Latinas that I could kind of relate to, or it’s like, oh, yeah, I look like them. Like when Jane The Virgin came out, Oh, my God.

Angela Lin 11:23
I love her.

Maggie 11:24
I’m like, she kind of looks like me, I see it. I love her. You know, like I was all about that show. And now I’m finding real women who look like they could be my sister on Instagram. And I absolutely love it. And of course, they’re always talking about small businesses, a lot of them still live in the southwest. So just things like that, that, you know, I feel like it’s such a small community that could be so much bigger and that it’s such a positive and like beautiful place with all of the artwork and everything that people just don’t learn about.

Angela Lin 11:53
That’s always been such a shame to me that I feel like we don’t talk about Native American culture much. Like I remember when we were growing up in California, we did learn, I feel like quite a bit of history around it, because we are closer to like, there are reservations in California and like, you know, so there’s a history there. Compared to like, when I talked to friends from different states, they had like a very different depth of knowledge around all of that. And I like personally have always been a huge fan of all things Native American because I feel like it’s, it’s a beautiful culture. And

Maggie 12:29
I feel like I got those vibes from you in previous episodes to when you went to like, do the ayuhuasca and stuff. I’m like, does Angela burn sage in her house like if so support small business.

Angela Lin 12:44
Um, but yeah, it’s never talked about and it’s such an underrepresented group. Because it’s almost like it’s like the silent group that is never left, like we’ve extinguished a huge portion of that population, but like, you guys have always been here. And it’s just something that isn’t celebrated. And I always find that such a shame.

Jesse Lin 13:08
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I feel like what’s great about the idea of Columbus Day becoming Indigenous People’s Day in the popular mindset, like having people recognize it differently, is that personally, I feel like the way that we learned about Native Americans in school makes it seem like it’s something that’s relegated in history in the past, like they were here but in the past. And like these conditions, and the way that they live, don’t exist anymore, almost like you’re going to a museum and like looking at, like, archeological exhibit, when in reality, like a lot, a lot of people in the US still live on reservations, and a lot of people are Native Americans. So having this visibility, I think is really important, because it reminds people that you’re still here, like you haven’t gone anywhere.

Maggie 14:02
Yeah, exactly. And I think something that you brought up is this huge idea of the past in so many, I think a lot of our stereotypes are also like, some things of the past. So you know, I follow a few Navajo men who are vegan, and it’s like, people would never think like, Oh my gosh, a vegan Native American, it’s like, Hello, where people to it’s 2020. Like, you know, I’m here living in Japan, like, things like that. It’s like, we’re not just yeah, we’re not just people who live on reservations and can’t speak English and don’t have electricity. You know, people just, they think of these things in such like, archaic ways. But the modern Native American is really just like everybody else. But we have, you know, a culture behind us that we celebrate. And while those are more traditional, you know, I think especially in America, so many mixed Americans and first generation Americans celebrate other cultrues as well. So yeah, it’s one of those things that it is confusing that it’s like, why are we seeing in the past when like, we are just as modern today, like, I’m following Navajo influencers, you know, like, that is definitely very modern.

Angela Lin 15:15
One thing that I noticed, because we’re talking about in the United States, there’s this like strangeness where we’re seeing your people as something of the past when we think about broader indigenous peoples. So outside of the United States, like, very recently, I was watching a Netflix series about, like, the streetfood Netflix series in it like highlight and it was a Latin America one. And I don’t remember if it was Peru, or different South American country, but it’s one where like, a lot of the native people are still amongst the population. And they are still like, dressed in their traditional garb and like, do a lot of the same kind of like crafts that they’ve been doing for centuries, probably right. And they are mixed within the population. But people look down on them, like, almost like they’re a second class of citizen. And that’s always been really like, frustrating for me to see. Because it’s like these people to the point of the United States, like they haven’t gone away. It’s like, it makes me mad when I think of the other types of non native people looking at them as almost like, I could imagine them thinking like, Oh, well, we evolved past you.

Maggie 16:30
Yeah, I think that’s definitely the thought process, which is why kind of going back to what I said, it’s like, no, I mean, we’re here word mixed in with everybody else. You know, obviously, the people that are still living on the reservation are struggling a bit more because of the circumstances. But you know, percentage wise, not that many people are living on the reservation. Most of us live off of the reservation. I mean, it’s one of those things that’s like, I can be at home. And I can be you know, my cousins were like electrical engineers and doing my amazing job. And just, you know, again, shape shifting and living with everybody else. And then over the weekend, I can go back to the reservation and do a ceremony of some sort that I believe in spiritually. And then on Monday, I’m back at work like that is completely normal. You know, we’re not all just living on the reservation and living that life. Yeah. Have you seen Padma Lakshmi is Taste the Nation?

Angela Lin 17:26
I’ve seen it advertised, but I have not yet watched it.

Maggie 17:30
There’s a great, so again, as me being somebody mixed, they have a German episode, and they have a Native American episode. And I love that, like, both of them speak so much to me. And I’ve been to so many of the places, but in the Native American one, they have, you know, movement to decolonize Thanksgiving. And as I’m watching it, I’m like, oh, yes. decolonize Thanksgiving, I love this, you know, that’s really interesting to think about what is, you know, Native American food that isn’t colonized. And it’s hard to think about because so many people on the reservation, are, you know, government have government subsidized food. So it’s a lot of really unhealthy food. And they actually highlight that, like traditional before any sort of like government intervention, native foods, it’s a lot of like, pack rats, and like, you know, those kinds of animals. And so while I’m like, yes, decolonize Thanksgiving, like, oh, I don’t know if I’m, like ready to hop on that, like Peruvian tradition of like eating guinea pigs and whatnot. So it’s really interesting, though, that, you know, it’s while the other countries with, you know, Native people, I feel like they have more of their history that they can hold on to, and that they can keep practicing. Like in Peru, they do eat guinea pig. Obviously not like if you go to a restaurant, but if you’re going to a small village, like they will have a little guinea pig hut in this on the side. But for Native Americans, you know, we grew up on frybread. And that’s with flour. That’s not a native, you know, traditionally native food, you know, we use corn. So it’s these things that it’s like, I don’t even think a lot of Native Americans even know what going that far back like native food is.

Angela Lin 19:14
I think I deduced from what you’re saying what decolonizing Thanksgiving means but essentially, you’re saying, it’s like re finding the stuff that is actually traditional to your culture, food wise before white people came and took everything.

Maggie 19:32
Exactly. And again, I love the idea of it, but I don’t know that I’m ready to go eat, like, you know, rodents.

Angela Lin 19:43
Well, like fish, you know, like things weren’t weird.

Jesse Lin 19:49
I mean, I think the good part about like, re-engaging with your heritage and culture later on in life is that you can make a better assessment of like, the good and the bad things and you can pick kind of like the best of both of those things. So take the corn and leave a guinea pig behind, basically. So just gonna change gears for a little bit and go back to kind of something you were saying earlier about how you feel like you appear as a chameleon as a different person to different people. How did you feel growing up? Do you feel like people were able to integrate you into, into like, how they look like they’re like, okay, like, you look close enough to be like one of us. So you belong? Or people, we’re always kind of like, we’re not like super sure where you belong so we’re like, a little bit more cautious about it.

Maggie 20:45
Yeah. But no, I definitely feel like me, as somebody who is very white passing, I can fit in in pretty much any situation. I feel like if anything, it was more like the build my build and my like weight that made me feel a little like ostracized because again, like, I am native, like, we are just bigger people, like my brother is probably like six, two, I mean, he’s huge. He’s like, 200 pounds, like, that’s not uncommon, like all of my Navajo cousins look like that, you know, and so I felt like that always kind of, you could tell like, Oh, she’s a little bit different from that. But in terms of my skin color, definitely. I can really shape shift into any community, it feels like, like I mentioned, my brother is a lot darker than I am. And everything he has like black eyes, black hair, his skin colors a bit darker, he’s huge. He’s got a lot of tattoos. And he is definitely more discriminated against, especially in terms of the law. He’s somebody that in high school, like everybody called him the Mexican. And that was like his nickname. I mean, he embraced it. I don’t know if he wanted to, but he embraced it. And it was like, what, dude, you’re not Mexican. But he has been arrested for doing something that my dad who was white with, like blue eyes has done the exact same thing. And, you know, didn’t didn’t get arrested. So it’s something that is like, in my own immediate family, I’ve witnessed.

Angela Lin 22:13
Wow. Something that we talk about a lot is like, how we develop our identities throughout our lives and how that’s changed, and how we’ve like, changed how we see ourselves too, and how we judge our own culture, right. And like, I very much admit that when I was younger, I definitely like rejected, being Asian and like, didn’t want anything to do with that I wished I was white, you know, that’s kind of the way that you’re taught to think is the best way to fit in with society. Right? And so, I’m curious, since you were more white passing than your brother and your relatives, when you were growing up, did you ever have a sense of like, oh, I’m so glad that I don’t look like you. Because I feel like if I were like, 14, and I was not trying to understand my culture and like embrace it fully, like I am now as an adult, that’s how I would see is like, oh, I’m glad I got like dealt the good genes or whatever.

Maggie 23:16
So no, I had the exact opposite. Growing up, I so only recently have I really been more like vocal about being Native American because I felt like like imposter syndrome basically. So I think basically, I felt left out. And that like, I just really wanted to look like the rest of them. So it was something that I was teased by my own family for going like from my own brother, he we grew up and he would call me a mutt. And he knew that it would make me cry. And I hated it. Because you know, like the word mutt, it’s just like, you just picture I mean now obviously, you know, mixed dogs are embraced. But back in the 90s it was like a dirty street dog, you know, that, like, didn’t have a mom and was nasty. And so my brother would call me a mutt and I would cry. And then I know and then my cousins would call my brother and I city kids, even though we lived in Shawnee, Kansas, I was like, I don’t fit in anywhere I go in terms of my own family, like I’m, you know what I mean? It’s like, like, gatekeeping like, I’m not good enough for this, or this or this. And so that was really challenging. It was like, if I could just be darker if I could just look more like this, you know, I would, they would accept me more. So I think, at the end of the day, it was just easier to be accepted by like, the white side of me, you know, than it was the native side of me. And now that I look back on that, it’s like, that’s just kids being kids and joking. And you know, and I don’t truly don’t think they meant anything of it and didn’t mean to make me feel any less native, but it’s definitely that’s something that like, stuck with me until today, really.

Angela Lin 25:03
Wow, interesting. Because your mom kind of removed herself from all of that at an early age and then had a trickle down effect for how much you guys, you and your brother were exposed to that tradition, those traditions? Like how close do you really feel to your native culture? And how much of the customs and the traditions and those spiritual practices do you practice? And like to stick to, I guess, in your current adult life?

Maggie 25:33
Yeah, I think traditionally, and in like a formal setting, probably not many. Um, but I think one of the great things about being Native American and especially about like, being Navajo, and being from the southwest, is I have a connection with nature that I’m realizing more and more as I get older, that is, like, so important and so ingrained in who I am, I just feel so alive when I’m outside. And when I’m connecting with nature, and when I’m hiking, and when I get to go and see, like, beautiful things that Mother Nature has built. And that’s something that you know, not to be like, whoo, whoo, is that the technical term on this pod? Not to be like, woowoo about it, but it is something that like, I feel, and that like, my husband, who is white is kind of like, okay, Maggie, and you know, like jokes with me about but like, even anywhere, like we went and hiked in the Himalayas, in Nepal, and it like, my friends will tell you, I have an obsession with the Himalayas, like with Mount Everest, like, I just, I absolutely love it. And I feel alive and like, I am me when I’m, like, immersed in some of these places. And so I think that is something that like, you know, before, it was just like, oh, I like nature. Now. It’s like, Well, no, this is literally part of like, who I am. And that’s something that I think is important to recognize, and not just say, oh, I like nature. It’s like, no, this is like, literally in my blood. And another thing, I think would just be like the artistry. You know, while my great grandma was a famous weaver I am not and I don’t really do anything with my hands in terms of like physical art. I am a graphic designer as my day job. So I feel like I can kind of see some of these traditions and some of these things that are just like in our DNA being reflected in a more of a modern way. And same thing I definitely – I’m sure have you guys are have skinwalkers?

Angela Lin 27:29
No.

Jesse Lin 27:30
It’s the like werewolves that masquerade as people is that it?

Maggie 27:34
Yeah, they’re like, yeah, like this evil spirits kind of thing. They’re called chʼį́įdii in Navajo. I totally believe in the chʼį́įdii. My mom says she seen them. You know, there’s certain things like ghosts and whatnot that are really, really ingrained in my family. I, when I first moved to the house that I’m in right now, a lot of weird things were happening. I won’t get into it. But a lot of weird things were happening. My dog was acting very strange. And I kind of just mentioned this on the phone in passing with my mom of like, Oh, yeah, you know, something’s going on here. It’s not right. And literally, like, the next day, I have texts from all of my aunts on the reservation who are like, we’re mailing you this you got to, you know, you need to do a Navajo ceremony to get that rid of the spirits in your house. We’re mailing you, these charcoal buttons that you like, like they, when they like sent me they like sent voice messages of how to say the like ceremony saying in Navajo, and all of this stuff. And I was like, You know what, I believe in this, like, I’m going to do this. And I did it. And I have not experienced anything in the house since. At the end of the day, even though I’m, you know, not somebody that’s going and doing every ceremony on the face of the earth that I can be like, I you know, my aunts and my grandma’s and stuff are still embracing me. And if this is something that they’re like, do this, this will help like, why wouldn’t I? You know, do that. And if I believe in it, I can do it. You know, it’s part of my culture. So.

Angela Lin 29:07
Maggie you have so much to talk about. And I think you need to come back for a Halloween episode.

Maggie 29:16
Oh my gosh, no, literally everybody. I think everybody in my family knows about my house. Now. I’m like, Mom, I barely mentioned this. And now I’m getting mailed cedar and charcoal from like, Arizona.

Angela Lin 29:32
All right. So this has been great. Moving into our close or Fortune Cookie segment. We always like to end on something sweet. Um, and we thought it would be fun if we could learn what is your favorite like fun traditions or customs that like you’ve learned about your culture and that you’ve practiced before or that you like one or practice that maybe we haven’t talked about yet.

Maggie 30:01
Yeah, so this is maybe not fun. But I think this is one thing that like I hold on to like this is, to me is like one of the most important things. And so I’ll just start with basically like, I was not baptized. So you know, in like traditional Christianity baptism, you’re like giving, you’re surrendering yourself to like the Christian church to God, right? That is what essentially it symbolizes. So in Navajo culture, when you’re born, you bury your baby’s umbilical cord. And it’s basically you are like giving your body back to like Mother Nature and like the earth. And so it’s just one of those traditions that is kind of like, oh, you know, like, your earth has fed me and has like, helped me build this baby. And now I’m giving like, literal like, body back to you. And that’s just one thing that like I absolutely love. So I’m not baptized, but my umbilical cord is buried. So I always like to say that I’m like, baptized like a Navajo.

Jesse Lin 31:02
Oh, my God. That’s an interesting fun fact.

Maggie 31:05
Yeah, there’s a lot of things that are like, oh, if your baby – if you didn’t bury your baby’s umbilical cord, there’ll be like searching for it for their life. So they won’t like they won’t be at like, like, always be searching for something and like you won’t be you won’t have that sense of like, fulfillment. Yeah, exactly. Like, there’s like, it’s tied to a lot of like, really deeper things. And it is interesting, because my brother’s umbilical cord was not buried because my mom was lazy. And my mother, I have a lot of differences. So, um, so yeah, it’s interesting.

Jesse Lin 31:44
Is there like a special, like ceremony around it? Like, do you know where it’s buried?

Maggie 31:50
I knew at one point, I’m sure mine was probably just buried in California and like San Jose in our backyard. But there are different things like supposedly, I mean, really, you can do it anywhere. Again, like if it’s the modern Native American, like, obviously, you could go on to the reservation and do a more traditional, like ceremony around it. I think you can also like bury it somewhere that could maybe have like, significant meaning. So I think my brother wanted to bury his sons at like, Kauffman Stadium, which is like a baseball stadium in Kansas City, you know, something that can like manifest of like, oh, I want my son to be like an amazing athlete. Or, you know, like, I want this or that, you know, like places can symbolize different things. But I don’t really, you know, that’s not really as important as just like, the giving back to nature kind of thing, like surrendering yourself to nature.

Jesse Lin 32:44
That’s beautiful.

Maggie 32:45
Right? And I love that.

Angela Lin 32:46
What’s the psychedelic that’s from a cactus?

Maggie 32:50
Peyote

Angela Lin 32:50
You want to do peyote with me?

Maggie 32:54
My dad has done peyote.

Angela Lin 32:57
Love your dad.

Jesse Lin 32:59
All right. Well, thanks so much for joining us. This was such a fun conversation.

Maggie 33:04
Yeah. Thank you. And I’m sorry, we kind of got off of the like Columbus Day talk of, you know, changing it over to Indigenous Peoples Day. But I feel like that’s what it’s all about, you know, definitely about embracing indigenous people and all of our different stories. So thanks for having me on and letting me like, share my voice as not only a Navajo but also a mixed person.

Angela Lin 33:25
Yeah, we love learning about it.

Cool. Well, if you enjoyed this episode, or if you have something to share in terms of your knowledge of or connection to indigenous people or you want to learn more, or you have questions, whatever, email us telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com, the “you’re” is Y-O-U-R-E and come back next week, because we’ll always have a fresh new episode for you at that time. Until next time, bye.

Angela Lin 0:10
Today we’re going to talk about a very controversial topic, Jesse and I just had a heated pre discussion about this, we’re talking, canceled culture. So before we get into the many topics that can come out of this, we thought that we should define what each of us believes cancel culture means because I think there are a couple of different definitions floating around, and that the way that you see that probably colors, the way that you’re going to see the topics that we discuss anyway. So in my opinion, cancel culture is when someone says something that offends someone that a lot of people disagree with what they think is, like racist, or sexist or offensive in some other way. And that person then becomes the target of a mob of people essentially, largely through the internet, or through the press, or through some other public forum in which they are attacked for their reputation. They are trying, they tried to get people tried to get them fired or taken off of their public platform that they have, ie if they’re a celebrity. Essentially, they try to kind of ruin their lives as a consequence for what they said that was offensive. That’s my opinion.

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 1:37
Yes, so I definitely agree with that. I definitely think that canceled culture is essentially some kind of group backlash or reaction to something that someone has said, because they feel that that person has stated something that is, like, socially unjust or racist, or just otherwise offensive commentary that’s like unbefitting of a person in their position. And as a result, they are putting together actions to like remove the person from wherever they might have the most power. So that might be their platform. It might be their career, with the idea of showing that there are some intended consequences of the things that you say.

Angela Lin 2:25
Yep. I feel like cancel culture is a byproduct of the inability today to have really nuanced conversations. What I mean by that is that a lot of hot topics today, things like politics, race relations, other very sensitive topics, it’s hard to have an open dialogue with a lot of people, because people have very strong opinions about where they stand on either of those things. And so it’s very easy to kind of fall into, like, you’re with us, or you’re against us, like my side is the one who has the correct opinion, your if you say something that’s opposite, you’re incorrect.

Jesse Lin 3:05
From your perspective, I understand it, because we should have conversations like this episode, that recording right now to discuss, like, how we feel about specific topics, and so that everyone can get a better understanding of where everyone is coming from. But on the flip side, I do understand that there is like, a deep history of hurt around some of these sensitive topics. And people don’t, don’t feel like they should have to have a conversation around things that are like very basic things like our basic human rights for social justice things. And I can like feel and understand that frustration.

Angela Lin 3:41
Yeah, I agree with you on on certain topics, I think I I’m guessing which one you’re talking about, specifically, right now, race relations, um, but a lot of other things like politics, you know, that are not necessarily like your personal history, or like, you know, what has happened to you. It’s more just like your beliefs. So like, those are kind of those are the kinds of things where I’m like, I don’t understand why people aren’t willing to have just like a discussion around them.

Jesse Lin 4:13
But don’t you think politics is personal because politics can influence things in your life that are deeply personal people are very concerned about the woman’s right to choice. They’re very concerned about where LGBT rights might stand. So I think that the politics piece of it is also very sensitive to a lot of people because they see how the impacts of what a president or congressmen or Senate people can do to their lives. And for a lot of people, they’ll be like, why can’t you see that? Like, it’s very clearly, you know, it’s very clearly seen in the news, and you can find out what each person has a vested interest in and how they’ve previously voted and all that stuff.

Angela Lin 5:00
So I don’t disagree with anything you just said, I, I’m also very concerned that I can’t, if I needed to, I couldn’t have an abortion one day, you know, like all these issues are very important. But I don’t agree with everything that Democrats are putting out there right now. And that’s speaking as someone who’s voted democrat the entire time I’ve been able to vote. You know, I mean, like, this is more, what I’m talking about is that I feel like there is a backlash right now to anyone who’s trying to recognize any good that the opposing political party has done, or is proposing, and is fed some negativity for any dismissal of something that your party is doing or proposing, I don’t find a lot of people who are willing to have conversations with me about like, the things that the left is not doing, right. And it’s more just, like, just accept it. This is like the only way and like you’re either with us or you’re pro-Trump. And that’s, that’s what I’m hearing. And it’s very discouraging. And that’s what I mean about like, there’s no nuance anymore.

Jesse Lin 6:11
I mean, regarding the other piece of it, I will just say that, I can’t speak for a lot of people, because the truth is, even though neither of us grew up, like particularly rich, we’re also not like we don’t belong to like the lowest class of people. Right. And we haven’t suffered the most egregious, I think, of ways that some people in the country have suffered. And when I’m talking about that, I’m talking about people who are like, extremely poor and neglected, that are like living in the middle of the country, in parts of the urban areas where people have just been, you know, not paying attention to that population for a while. They’re going to point us and say like, it’s a privilege for you guys to be able to debate the nuances of who you like we don’t like. Yes, I understand that that matters, because who you like is going to represent these policy agendas are going to make all these changes, it matters. But from someone who has been pressed for so long, and so hard to see people arguing about who you like and don’t like, on a face level, I can understand why that would upset people because they’re like, we’re out here, were suffering the consequences. And you guys are kind of just over, they’re not really affected by the consequences, debating about how these things will affect you, and not necessarily us.

Angela Lin 7:34
What you just said had a lot of nuance in it a ton of different topics that we could break out, but one of the things I want to discuss that you mentioned is this idea of like liking or disliking some someone at face value, right, and what that means in terms of the way we make our voting decisions, the way that we identify with ourselves and with other parts of the community and things like that. And this is where I’m like, maybe I’ll get cancelled right now. But I want to part of what I want to talk about what the nuance is that I think, why I tried to say that politics shouldn’t be so sensitive is that a lot of what I meant was when it comes to talking about political figures, so I’m not pro Trump. I didn’t vote for Trump. I’m not going to vote for Trump. I just may not vote for Biden, I may leave a blank thing, I don’t know anyways. But when it comes to politics, I feel like people automatically associate certain traits with key political figures like Trump that they cannot get past. So no matter what he says, no matter what he does, everything is wrong and evil, because he is misogynist. He’s sexist, he’s racist, whatever, right? Like people have already given him these labels. So they’re not willing to look past those things. When he actually maybe didn’t say the thing you thought he said, or he actually made some good decisions were made some good global relationship, you know, impacts like he’s nominated for a Nobel Prize, because he just brokered peace treaties between two Middle East countries like that happened, and that was Trump, and people don’t want to talk about it, because they’re like, but that can’t coexist with this like rapist persona that I have with him. One of the things that I’ve been doing is trying to be more objective in the way that I read news. And so especially because a lot of the major news outlets today are left leaning, they are writing in a certain way to appeal to a left leaning audience. So I try to kind of like counter those same points with right wing people’s perspective of the same thing or like reading people’s videos and comments that are on Twitter. Like if there was an incident that happened on the ground to see what actually happened. So I’m trying to like verify what the reality is right? And one of the things that’s been interesting to me is like, Trump is like the epitome of right, like very politicized, very heated, like identity driven politics, because you’re, if you’re a Trumper, you are automatically associated as a certain type of person. If you’re anti Trump, you’re associated with a certain type of person as well, right? And one of the things I’ve been trying to dissect his whenever he speaks, is what he says as incendiary as everyone’s making it out to be or did they happen to the news outlets happened to clip, a specific phrase of what he said, that sounds really crazy, because that’s he just speaks off the cuff. Right? He has a very, he’s not very polished. He’s not a politician prior to this, so he is not very, like, refined in the way that he talks, it’s easy to find really crazy sounding things. But if you listen to the entire three minutes of what he spoke about, it’s not at all what that 10 seconds was. So I just feel like, there’s a lot of stuff that people like to latch on to and warp into a much bigger thing that was not even the truth of what happened. So a specific example, is many years back when he was quoted as saying, all Mexicans are rapists, and murderers. And that was what made it into the headlines of like every media outlet, like that exact quote, and go back to the actual speech, he didn’t say that you never said those exact words, he said something to the effect of, you know, Mexico is sending some of their worst people, those people are rapists, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s not the same thing. I think all Mexicans are rapists and murderers, which is what was quoted. So I just think there’s a lot in that that’s kind of like clipping, like two second attention span culture that is making it easy to villainize specific political figures, Trump and others, to make them come out to be someone that you will never accept anything that they say, or any policy that they’re trying to push, even if there is some beneficial, you know, beneficial thing attached to it. And then on the flip side with, like, someone you admire on your side of the party, like you’re much more willing to forgive something that they have said, that may be on the same equal like horribleness as the other side, just because they’re on your party. Right?So there’s a little bit too much identifying with these political figures at the surface level. That is like having a lot of waterfall effects into the way that you receive information and make decisions.

Jesse Lin 13:04
Well, yeah, I agree with that. I mean, everyone likes to think that their shit don’t stink. Right? The reality is that a lot of the things that were castigating the current administration for a lot of that stuff happened before President Trump was in office. But the thing is that I feel like most people are discounting him out, not necessarily because there aren’t good things that he’s doing, but that most of the things that he’s doing causes people to want to disconnect. So it doesn’t necessarily matter that he, like, if you’re looking at the specific thing he said, I understand what you’re saying that he didn’t actually say that those like everyone coming from Mexico were rapists, drug runners, whatever. But he didn’t come out clearly to say that – to disassociate all these things, from the context of it, I still feel like many people that he’s talked to, from his base, take those words seriously. And until that’s been disassociated by him, it’s still the truth that he’s put out. I think that’s a problem to not clarify what your intentions of of what you said, when you know that people are being impacted by what you said.

Angela Lin 14:18
Yeah. All right. We’ve spent too much time on politics. That’s only one piece, the very salient example of where it’s like very difficult to have these kinds of discussions that you and I just had. So in the name of having like open discussion, one of the things I feel like cancel culture has diminished a little bit is the ability to really exercise your like freedom of speech, because it’s exactly what cancel culture is trying to like, cut down on is that depending on what you say, like you may face really crazy consequences because other people disagree with you. And it may not even be as egregious as like KKK – I’m putting out there that I’m going to lynch someone in 2pm today, you know, like, there’s like a line that you can draw. And so we want to talk to talk about two recent examples of where, basically, where people have said stuff that they’ve been, like, ultra canceled for that. And this is where we’re tying it back to our Asian identities, because it has to do with Asian communities. So one of the most recent issues is the USC professor who was giving a lecture on like, global languages, like many languages around the world, and he happened to give an example of in Chinese, this, it, there is a filler word that is very often used as kind of like saying, like, or, um, you know, over and over to fill, fill the gaps. And one of the ways that that phrase is pronounced can sound like the N word. And he said it in his lecture many times, because in Chinese, someone might actually say it many, many times in a row, because they’re just kind of like, um, like, like, like, you know, they’re just like, they’re thinking, and they they say many times, and the African American students and and other students in his class, a lot of them took offense to that. And they called for his removal, he was definitely suspended. And then it was like, I think it was pending, if he would get removed.

Jesse Lin 16:34
Okay. I mean, so here, I definitely don’t agree that this is like a right place where someone should be canceled or face some kind of consequence about it. I mean, like, it’s very clearly a different language. And obviously, like, different things in different languages sound like other things, and other languages. And I think what would have helped was, would have just been, as you mentioned, a conversation between a student and the professors, the students and the professor, so that they could have a discussion about, okay, this word makes me feel uncomfortable, but actually doesn’t mean what you think it means at all. And that should have been that. I think part of the problem is that there isn’t the same approach that I would like to see in many places, which is for people to evaluate things critically, before, as you were mentioned, mentioning, evaluate critically before they pass judgment on something. And I think in this case, the problem lies with both the people who were accusing the professor, but also with the administration at USC for simply just removing the professor without first investigating what the situation was. And it does a few things that I think you’ve mentioned, it shows that as soon as you scream foul about something, something adverse will happen to someone without investigation, that is like kind of not what we want to happen, because we don’t want everyone to be able to accuse other people of things willy nilly. And then everyone gets punished before there is a clear understanding of what has happened. So yeah, that’s my stance on it.

Angela Lin 18:09
Yeah, I completely agree. I also feel like what you were talking about, were way early in this conversation about like, the reason people don’t want to have nuanced conversations, especially like race related conversations is because they don’t want to have to explain to you, the hurts of like that they you’ve gone through and like the context of their experience. And this is an example where I feel like, that’s so true. But people are only thinking about that within their personal context. What I find problematic about this incident is that by finding faults in this professor using a Chinese word, in the context of teaching about Chinese language, they are contextualizing, the Chinese language in a Western context, because they’re saying Western language is the only important and the like one true language. And so everything else has a secondary position to that and relationship to that. So thereby, the Chinese word has to subordinate to the English language where that first those sounds came from. And actually Chinese has existed for thousands of years, and English has not. So I have a lot of problem with people using only their perspective when it’s convenient, and not choosing to learn other contexts and other perspectives that might prove them wrong.

Jesse Lin 19:40
I don’t know I don’t want to say it’s a silly case, because I don’t want to discount how anyone is like feeling in this situation. But like, if it’s a language class, and it’s conducted in a different language or a communications class, and it’s conducted in many different languages, I think there should be some cognizance of the fact that you will hear some things in different languages that might sound like other things in the English language, which may not sound good, and that you shouldn’t take those things at face value. There’s another example right? You wanted to talk about?

Angela Lin 20:11
Oh, yeah. This one’s pretty funny, but I was like, um, this happened a while back maybe like a month ago, but there was a new boba shop, bubble tea depending on where in the country you are. There’s a new boba shop that opened in Colorado, and it’s called to be fair, its name is Trap tea house. Keep that in mind. But it was like opening day of this boba shop huge line out the door. And then there’s this video that went a little bit viral. That the woman who shot the video uploaded herself where she went up to the people making boba for her. And she went on this tirade about how they were appropriating black culture and like she thought this was a black owned business and like you guys are stealing from black people and I heard was like the guy making boba had the biggest side-eye happening right now in that video and then everyone in line was like, what the hell this is boba – are you trying to tell people that boba was a black people thing? Because it’s not. And then there’s a the customer who happened to be right behind her was black. And he tried to calm her down and be like, look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s like not cultural appropriation at all. And she called him the C word. And I was like, What the f? What was hilarious is that she then posted it online. And then the black community and the rest of the internet community in general, just like completely trashed on her because they’re like, girl, no, this is like, not what this was supposed to be about.

Jesse Lin 21:50
Yeah, so I think this is a very clear example of a cancel gone wrong, where it was just like, like, what are you even mad about? I’m not even clear what you’re mad about. I unless, unless somehow the owner of the boba place was like, pretending that it was a black owned business or black enterprise. But like if there’s no misrepresentation there, like everything that she’s saying is false. And the truth is that we blend a lot of different things between cultures all the time. We see tons of people with Asian tattoos all over their Asian character tattoos all over their body. frickin Nicki Minaj dressed up like Chun Li in a music video, FKA twigs. I love her to death. She dropped a music video recently, where they were basically doing like wire foo fighting. And it was beautifully done. I loved it. But that’s I’m saying like, there are many of these things where like, people take a shine to specific things in different cultures. And they really love that. And so they show and they represent that. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Angela Lin 22:48
Yeah, that’s going back to nuance in, you know, conversations, I think, because it’s so heated right now, this race relations topic is so heated right now, everything is cultural appropriation, there was no such thing as cultural melting pot, which is what America is, like we as the founding of this country, and onwards, like this has always been a country of immigrants coming from different cultures, coming together making new stuff by mixing together those different cultures and like, borrowing from one and making it a different thing, you know, and that’s always been something that’s like, very beautiful. And now all of a sudden, like, every single thing is actually just cultural appropriation. And in this particular case, black people were not happy with her because they’re like, I’m sorry, are you trying to claim trap? Is that why you’re like trap houses? Is that why you assumed it was a black owned business and you’re trying to claim trap houses for us? News alert none of us want to claim trap houses to black culture, because that’s drug dens. And we don’t want to be associated with that. Like, why would that be something that you are trying to claim for our people. So it was just very problematic. Yeah.

Jesse Lin 24:02
I mean, I think these are like very egregious examples of, like, I don’t even want to say it was like well intentioned thing gone wrong. It was more like, these are egregious examples of people immediately having a gut reaction to something where there was nothing to react to. So I’m always glass half full in the sense that like, I don’t like to think of things super negative, so I don’t feel like everything now is cultural appropriation are more people pointing the finger and saying that’s cultural appropriation when it’s not Yes, I agree with you there. But I don’t think that following that people are being immediately canceled or suffering negative repercussions like as you mentioned in this Trap Tea house example people are like well, what are you mad about like nothing? Yeah, so I think most people’s more it’s emboldened some people right to be more egregious and how they’re like pointing things out that are like nothing. But also like the majority of people still are, like, have some common sense and wits about them. And they’re like, this is not clearly not an example of what you think it is.

Angela Lin 25:10
Well, let’s talk about emboldened people. This is the perfect example. So we also wanted to talk about the fact that everyone has become their own kind of news outlet now, because there’s so much just like, your phone can record anything, you can go live in any moment, and you can like suddenly become viral and get a ton of people watching your shit if you happen to catch a crazy event that’s happening in, you know, at a protest with police, in a boba shop, like whatever you happen to be capturing. And this thing has been such an interesting phenomenon to me, because I feel like there’s definitely some pros that come with this, like we’re catching a lot of really bad behavior that you would otherwise not catch, especially with, you know, police misconduct and like, because now people are emboldened with our phones to like, put people on blast for shit they’re doing. There’s there’s definitely good that’s coming out of this. I also think there’s all like bad coming out of it. So the boba shop is like a kind of funny example of that. But I think people are just feeling like, they want to, like catch everyone in the act of like doing something bad. So they’re whipping out their phones for like, every little thing. And there’s so many consequences that I’m like, I don’t know if it’s good or bad. There’s both but maybe it’s like the bad outweighs the good. I don’t know.

Jesse Lin 26:40
It’s hard to say, because there’s such a huge torrent of things coming at you. I think a lot of people will point to the police misconduct stuff as like a really clear example from both sides. Because some people will be like, oh, well, you know, it doesn’t capture the full story, because you don’t see like, what happens before. And then other people will be like, well, what’s happening in the clip is not appropriate. And this is where I think a lot of people will run the gamut. But from my perspective, a lot of the things that I’ve seen from a police officer perspective is not appropriate in terms of the use of force.

Angela Lin 27:18
Yeah, well, the reason why I’m like I don’t, I think it might be worth more bad than good is because I am one of those people that is trying to like piece together what the truth is. And so I see how like crazy things, you can interpret things the wrong way, if you only happen to see one certain piece of that story. So like, especially a lot, because there are still a bunch of protests and violent riots happening, like, yes, I think you and I have had this discussion a lot. But like, yes, most of the protests are peaceful protesters. However, there are also violent rioters that are causing crazy harm to people and property that happened to latch on to these peaceful protests and take it into their own worlds, right? And there are people getting killed, and raped and like crazy shit happening at these these violent portions of these protests. And I’ve seen a lot of clips where if you happen to only watch one certain angle of like, the 10 seconds of a clip, you would definitely say like, oh, my God, it was like this person’s fault, then you see a different angle capturing the full 30 seconds, and you see that that person was being chased with a gun. Prior to that they had they were thrown, you know, a Molotov cocktail in their way, like they were provoked with violence first, and they were acting in self defense. But if you happen to only watch the second half of that video, and that’s the only thing you see, because you don’t care enough to investigate further, because you have a 10 second attention span. That’s what you believe. And then that has ripple effects of people, you know, telling other people and then like creating these narratives and making it into something that is not the truth. And that’s a lot of what’s happening right now. And that’s very scary to me, because then you’re just taking something that’s totally untrue, because you’re only seeing a portion of it, and you’re making that the truth.

Jesse Lin 29:23
Yeah. So I think in terms of closing, where we’ve landed, is that it’s really important to try and keep an open mind where you think that there is the possibility that like, there might be more to discuss, right? Like, if there is the opportunity to have a conversation with someone about something. I think that’s a good chance and opportunity that you should take, not only to understand the topic that you’re trying to discuss further, but also understanding like the other person’s perspective on it. I will couch that like from my personal opinion like, this is not going to be the case for everything like, for example, for people who are ardently against LGBT rights, I’m not going to have a conversation with you like, I don’t see the point. And if you don’t think my right to exist, is my right to exist. I’m not going to talk to you about that. But I think where there are, spaces are, for example, when people are questioning certain things about the LGBT community, like why are there so many different identities? Like why do people feel like they need to feel a specific way or not feel a specific way. And there’s the intention of trying to understand, I think there’s an opportunity to have a conversation there and really help a person understand why these things are here. And hopefully, create for them, the same mindset that you see things as well. So that’s my perspective on it.

Angela Lin 30:59
Yeah, I will add that something that I’ve learned in my relationship with someone who is very different from me, remote is very different for me with very different opinions on a lot of different things, is that it’s very easy to assume that the way that you are thinking about a certain topic and like the associations that you have with that topic is the same way that the other person you’re talking to also views that same thing. So for example, when we opened up this topic about politics, I was mostly thinking of like political figures and the like surface value attachment to them. Whereas you were thinking about, like, the policies that come from politics, and like the personal impact of those decisions on your rights and your life, right. So like, different interpretations. But if we didn’t bother to explain that a little bit more, we could have had like, very misinterpreted conversations with each other and like, potentially very heated discussions. Right. And so I agree with what you said, and I feel like, you should just always assume that what you’re assuming is not what the other person had, like, be curious about what what they mean, like, what they’re really talking about, and then maybe you actually can find more common ground than you think. And back to the the, like, universal topic of cancel culture, right? I think you and I have agreed on this, which is like, you know, first try to understand if it’s a topic that is you’re open to discussing as well, like, have an open mind have that discussion, if you still like very much disagree, or you’re like, offended by what someone’s saying, just opt out of that conversation, you know, block them if you need to out of your life, but like, I think to going to the extreme of canceled culture, especially immediately of saying, like, I’m going to ruin you that’s like very extreme, and should not be like the default means to approaching people and conversations.

Jesse Lin 33:02
Mm hmm. Okay. Well, this has been a very deep topic about something that’s very contentious. So we hope that you will continue the conversation with us after listening to this episode. So if you have any thoughts, opinions on cancel culture, and things of that nature, please feel free to reach out to us on social media, or email us at telluswhereyourefrom. Wait, tellustelluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. The YOURE is Y-O-U-R-E.

Angela Lin 33:37
Yes. And I’m going to start plugging this in every episode from here until we do that episode, but we’re doing a listeners episode soon. So if you have a story that you want to share about around this topic around any of our previous topics that we’ve done, again, please write us in because we’re starting to collect those stories. And it’s a chance for you to share your stories with the broader community on our podcast, so please write us. And with that, come back next week for a fresh new episode. Hopefully, it’s not going to be as contentious as this episode but who knows.

Jesse Lin 0:06
Hi, I’m Jesse Lin.

Angela Lin 0:07
And I’m Angela Lin and welcome back to but where are you really from?

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 0:11
Whoo. All right, so this episode, we’re going to take some time to review spoiler alerts, Disney’s remake of Mulan. So just for those of you who have been sleeping or sitting, hiding under a rock, so Disney was supposed to release the remake of Milan, I believe in March. But obviously, like COVID pushed everything like way far out. And it was supposed to be like summer and then obviously, that didn’t happen because everything was so close. So then finally, they’re like, okay, we now have this captive audience. We’re gonna release it on Disney Plus, but you still have to pay $30 to watch it. So there’s kind of some like mucky muck suspiciousness behind it, because it kind of feels like they shuffled it around and then finally, they’re just like, well, we’re just gonna, like, release it. But like, make it unfavorable for people to watch because you have to pay extra money on top of your Disney Plus subscription

Angela Lin 1:14
It wasn’t even that it was extra money. It was like how much they were charging for it. $30 is so much more than a movie.

Jesse Lin 1:21
It’s a lot of money. Yeah.

Angela Lin 1:24
The fucking subscription is like, I calculated it, because I’ve Disney Plus, and it was like, a third of the subscription price. The annual subscription is for one fucking movie.

Jesse Lin 1:35
So let that be the first note, because I think I feel like part of the reason why it wasn’t received well, for a lot of people that I’ve talked to, not that anyone has specifically said this, but the fact that you have to pay extra money for it. And $30 I think, already soured a lot of people’s perspective on it before they even started to watch the movie. So like, I’ll pay $30 for it, it better be a really good movie. So let’s set the stage with that. Expectations?.

Unknown Speaker 2:03
I had such high expectations for it, which like, to be fair, I did. I did feel like maybe I shouldn’t have such high expectations. But like, when the trailer first came out, I was like, I like got a little emotional. The scene where the dad is walking towards the officer to take his order from the Emperor and his knee buckles and he falls to the ground. Let me just cry, right? Oh, because I was remembering the old movie, obviously. But like, yeah, and then production value of all these live action things. Like even if the movie sucks, all the production value has been phenomenal for like, every live action that they’ve done. Even if the end result movie was terrible, but it looks beautiful. And the part that I like was both I was like, hopeful and v-skeptical was they started including all these like Chinese traditional Chinese filmmaking techniques, right? Like, there was like, when more legit kungfu, and like the tropes of like, Ninja, like jumping on walls. And like, there’s a new character that’s like basically a witch that’s like, also in every other Chinese movie that exists. So when I saw that stuff, I was like, oh, well, I mean, that’s kind of cool that they’re like integrating legit Chinese filmmaking techniques. So maybe this is gonna be like, really legit, but I also was like, or maybe they’re just ripping off China and maybe this will suck. So it was like, I had high expectations and also at the same time, I was trying to tell myself like, don’t have such high expectations.

Unknown Speaker 3:39
Well, I will tell you my perspective on it. I love I mean, I loved the Disney Classics. But to be honest, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched any of them so I’ve like mostly forgotten all of them. So from that perspective, like I already was kind of like fresh like, blank slate like I remember the general story of Mulan obviously it’s like a very culturally relevant story. So we generally know it, but I remember the story so that’s basically like kind of the only expectations that I had plus some of the things you mentioned where I saw like okay, they’re incorporating some like wire-fu into it. There’s like a badass witch looking person which I’m into love me a well dressed villain. So I was like, okay, like I think these will be good plus like I don’t I didn’t have that like strong recollection of the initial Mulan movie so I wasn’t going to be like oh it but this is different and like here is different and there’s different so I feel like my expectations were pretty fair. I was kind of going into it thinking it’s like the Mulan story but with like cool wire-fu action and done in like Hollywood production budget level so it’s like really nice kind of situation.

Angela Lin 4:50
Well, also, let’s talk about the other expectation, which is like for the Asian American community, right? It was like oh, finally, we have – well not finally, we’ve had a few, we’ve had a few good you know all Asian cast movies with Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, Parasite, even though that’s a foreign film, so it’s a little bit different, but like we’ve had a few English speaking all Asian cast things, but still not prevalent. So with Mulan, it definitely was another like, yay, here’s a win for Asians. So I think there was also just like, maybe pent up, like a lot of hopes and aspirations for this movie that maybe it could never have fulfilled just because like trying to represent for too much from a cultural point too.

Jesse Lin 5:33
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I kind of feel like I missed a huge red flag because it kind of because the actors were all Asian, because normally, when you see a film that’s stacked with some heavy hitters, you’re like, that’s gonna suck they stacked it with heavy hitters for a reason because the film sucks. They’re just trying to staff up with people that you like. And I totally missed that because they have Gong Li, who is a witch loved her in Memoirs of a Geisha. They have Donnie Yen heavy hitter – IP man. They also have Jet Li is like, super super famous.

Angela Lin 6:07
Yo, it took me the whole movie to know that that was Jet Li.

Jesse Lin 6:12
Dude yeah he hit that Asian menopause really hard.

Angela Lin 6:24
No, I hear you. That’s true. I mean, there are a few movies that are good with a huge star studded cast. But I agree that when there’s too many, it’s usually a flag.

Jesse Lin 6:36
And I just missed it. I should have known. ,

Angela Lin 6:39
Well, spoiler alert, if you couldn’t tell by the attitude we’re bringing into this…

Jesse Lin 6:43
It was amazing…

Angela Lin 6:46
Best movie ever. No, so spoiler alert, we’re gonna go into for whatever, it’s worth our review of the movie. Jesse…thoughts?

Jesse Lin 6:59
Yeah, so we’re gonna do basically like, our thoughts about the movie first, and then we’ll talk about I guess, like some of the context drama around the release of a movie. Yes. So the movie…okay, what did I like about the movie? The cinematography was lovely. Like, the regions and the like background shots and everything was really beautiful. Like, if I was really in the mood for some like China geography landscape porn, I would be like this is it. Like NatGeo perfect. Yeah. Um, so lots of that if you’re into that you’ll really like the different scenes that it takes you through. And obviously as a Disney production, they had like exclusive access to shooting in specific locations that made the movie like really come alive. So like some of the fight scenes in the palace. I’m not super sure if that was like actually in the Forbidden City, but it kind of looked like it was it could have been, obviously as a Disney production, like costumes were also beautiful. Like, even like what everybody was wearing from Mulan’s, supposedly poor village. I was like, y’all look nice for poor people. Like all the way through, like the costume design was like really lovely. Like the witch you know, I said, I love a villain in a costume. I’m just like, why are you wearing this? Like, it’s so over the top like, You don’t look like you were outcast. You look like a rich bitch. But cool. Um, what else did I like about it? I enjoyed the wire-fu. I think this is controversial because some people will say the fighting scenes are not as good as some of the, like, low budget productions, but I thought it was pretty decent. Like it was there was no part where I was like, I can see this, I can see the wires. And there wasn’t the part where I was like, this is like so unbelievable that I I am no longer in this scene. So that was pretty good. And I thought there were some cute moments with some of the characters like the fat Cricket. And, like, try to introduce like a little bit of humor into it, but the overall tone of the movie was just like, so mehhh, those moments I feel like you were just like, you missed it because you weren’t expecting like levity there so you just completely didn’t even like receive it. So now I’m like moving into like the negative negative parts were to start. Okay, the main actress I I loved that they cast an Asian female lead, but I feel like there was no display of appropriate emotion through the entire movie. I felt like she was kind of flat. Like she was just kind of like, sad and forlorn and like withdrawn the whole movie. And I kind of get it because like, okay, you’re you’re hiding a big piece of yourself. And that’s like very, you know, stressful and anxiety causing but I’m also like, there’s no range. Like that can be the only thing that you’re feeling the entire time. You can’t just be like an anxious and sad and that’s it.

Angela Lin 10:02
You know, I don’t know how to feel about that. Because of all the things I didn’t like about this movie that didn’t completely stand out to me. But when you aren’t a native speaker of a certain language and you’re trying to act in that language, it’s kind of hard to convey emotions properly. Because it’s not your like, your brain is working kind of hard to like, translate what’s happening. And she’s, uh, I don’t know her very well, but I know that she’s like a actual, semi famous Chinese actress. Like she’s not this might be like her first American film that she’s done. So I don’t know how fluent in English she actually is. I would guess not that fluent. So like, I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt that like maybe if it was, if her emotions weren’t coming across that well is because there’s that language situation because like, if you think about some of the other actors like Tzi Ma, who’s the everyone’s dad in every Asian film, that’s his Instagram, like slogan is like Hollywood’s favorite Asian dad. He’s so funny. But like, he’s, I mean, he’s like, from Hong Kong, which also like, speaks English, as you know, a second Motherland country language, and also has been acting in Hollywood forever. So like, I think he has different range of abilities because of that. So I don’t know, maybe I’m giving her too much of the benefit of the doubt but.

Jesse Lin 11:31
I will join the devil’s advocate boat with you. Because the other thing that I noticed is that like, I kind of feel like a lot of the characters, her included, did not have a lot of dialogue. Like I was expecting her to talk more than she did. Like, I know, there was a lot of like action scenes, and there’s talking, like, interspersed with that. But there was like, no extended dialogue where I could, like, get to know her better as a character. So I think from that perspective, it was also it also kind of like handicapped her because not only if she’s fighting like a language barrier, but she’s also been giving a script where she is like, she doesn’t have a lot to work with.

Angela Lin 12:11
Let’s talk about the script. That’s script was shit. That script was awful and so cringe worthy in so many places. Like, can you not say I believe Hua Mulan, I was like, I’m dying, that you included that in the script and had four people repeat it to try to appeal to the woke audience because no one’s buying it. And this is awful. That was that was one moment that stood out drastically to me. What about you?

Jesse Lin 12:42
Just, yeah, just the choices and the choices that were made? I’m very confused. Like, for example, Jet Li as the Emperor has, like, also magic kungfu powers.

Angela Lin 12:57
Why do you need guards?

Jesse Lin 12:58
Yes, but somehow he’s like, stupid enough to get captured by the barbarian who has no kung fu powers. What else was like a choice but like a really extra? Oh, at the very end, where they defeat the Barbarian there was like a really extra thing where like, somebody deflected an arrow and then Mulan, like, kicked it into the barbarian from like, up in the sky. I’m like, is this necessary? Like, he’s on the ground like basically dead. And you have to do that. Like, why?

Angela Lin 13:31
There’s also to your point about Mulan’s character not having that many lines, like, there was so little character development for all the characters like the witch character. I was like, I’m sorry, how do you go from like, I’m a lone wolf. I’m never gonna help anyone. I’m only out for myself. So at the end, she like suddenly changes her mind and helps Mulan. And it’s like, we’re on the same team. I’m gonna have to die for you. I’m like, you don’t, I don’t know your story. This is doesn’t make any sense.

Jesse Lin 14:02
What do you think if you can make like one change to the film? What would you have changed to make it better? Like, what would have the most impact?

Angela Lin 14:09
Well, this is gonna roll into the controversy. So I really think you should have cast Chinese writers. Like there were no, one of the controversies, which I’m sure a lot of you are very aware of is that even though it was an all Asian cast, there were no Asian people in the crew. So like, of the people who made the movie, none of this more Asian. And I disagree that like that needed to be a fully Asian crew. I think that’s like, too much. And like, you don’t need to implement that kind of extreme. But when it counts, you should have Asian people – like it’s a historical movie about actual China. And like Mulan is a legend that is actually from China that’s existed for thousands of years, right? And like, you’re gonna have on Chinese people as part of the writing, that’s probably part of why it was such bullshit. So I think if I could only change one thing that would probably make a significant difference, I would have been it. What about you?

Jesse Lin 15:13
Honestly, I have to agree with you. I think that and not to, like, put everything on the people who were doing the writing. But I kind of feel like there was a step missed. Not even in the writing process, but maybe just the testing process of the film. I’m very surprised that came out the way it actually did. Because as I understand, and we’ll get into all this controversial stuff later, Disney did a lot of kowtowing to the Chinese government to try to get this film made, they got special access to film in different places in China, they really want to break into the Chinese market, because it’s a huge market for them. So I’m surprised that the film is so disjointed, because I can’t imagine that it would be well received by local people there either.

Angela Lin 15:58
Yeah. So even though we both love the beautiful scenery, and the landscapes, there’s a darker side to that shit, which is that they filmed exclusively in Xinjiang Province, right?And that is where all the Uyghur concentration camps are. And you know, just like illegal detainment of millions of people. But you know, I don’t, there’s just like a lot there. And I didn’t notice anything, but it was like, obviously, the internet picks up on everything. So people put screenshots of like, if you actually watch till the end of the credits, they named the like, essentially, the local Chinese government propaganda councils from Xinjiang as like, partners. Of course, you should have filmed it in China, because it’s about fucking China. But China is a huge country. And there is like so many things you could pick apart about China and the Chinese government. But that is like one of the worst things happening right now. So why would you choose to specifically film in that province out of like, anywhere else you could have filmed?

Jesse Lin 17:15
So the other thing that was I think semi controversial was the lead actress, I think, like, you know, a few months ago voiced her support for the police in the Hong Kong protests. And obviously, like a lot of people were not happy with, let’s say what she was putting out, because most people want Hong Kong to retain their democratic or pseudo democratic system. So that was also another I think, big thing for people to be like, don’t watch the movie because like, she supports the unauthorized expansion of Chinese authority into Hong Kong. And it was so hard because you were like, okay, as you mentioned, like, hey, we really want to support this movie, but then there’s like, the Uyghur stuff, then there’s like this Hong Kong stuff. And then the movie just was not that good. So you’re like, oh, man, like, this is like really rough. Because you like the same when Crazy Rich Asians came out, we’re like, let’s do this. Like, let’s have this experience. And that was great. There was like no weird controversies. No people saying things where you were like, nuh uh, and the movie was good. This was like, kind of the opposite of that. So it’s like a little bit of a letdown.

Angela Lin 18:32
Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting, because when you think about it, I wonder how much of that has to do with the mix of cast that’s included, because when you talk about Crazy Rich Asians, those are all Asian American, Asian-British, like, you know, Asian blank, people as opposed to like, Chinese people or Japanese, you know, like, from the country people. And Mulan was more leaning towards like, actual Chinese people. They’re like, even the the actors we know, are actual Chinese, like they’ve, you know, been in Hollywood forever but they’re, they’re from China and Hong Kong and whatnot. So I wonder how much of that has to do with it for like, the potential for controversy, because even when you were saying that I was like, I mean, I’m not, you know, I’m not pro, the hostile takeover of Hong Kong by any means. But at the same time, I’m like, you’re kind of asking for a lot for a Chinese actress to be pro Hong Kong. Like, what did you expect? She’s from China? Like, I don’t know. Okay, let’s sweep behind this negativity. And I mean, it’s a little bit negative still, but I want to bring some fun back to this. Maybe we move into our closing Fortune Cookie?

Jesse Lin 19:56
Yes, please.

Angela Lin 19:58
All right. So for fortune cookie is still a little bit of shitting. But it’s in a fun way we want to talk about our favorite character that was missing from this movie because they they made so many changes which like was necessary because of the type of film that they were trying to make. But like, there’s so much like fun and like personality and specialness that was missing because it cut out a bunch of the best characters that were in the animated version. So, Jesse, do you have a fav that you wished was part of it?

Jesse Lin 20:34
Yes. My favorite character that was missing was Mulan’s. humor. No, just kidding. Well. I mean, that was missing. My favorite character that was missing was Mushu obviously Mushu as I mentioned, I don’t have a really like clear memory of the animated Mulan but Mushi was like the clearest thing that was missing – Mushu had a character arc I remember there’s a part where he’s like, oh, like cuz he went from like, teeny useless dragon and there’s a part where he turned into like a big giant dragon and he had like a full character development for this like Eddie Murphy sad dragon thing.

Angela Lin 21:13
He was an outcast and then became a hero, yeah.

Jesse Lin 21:16
Yeah so Mushu was a big miss. And there was nobody or nothing that they put in his place like there was nothing that went through that character development.

Angela Lin 21:30
You don’t think the Phoenix was a good Mushu replacement?.

Jesse Lin 21:39
What about you?

Angela Lin 21:40
You know I have a hard time answering this because I miss – I pretty much miss every character that they cut out because – hear me out – every every single character that they cut out added like 20% extra like fun and like something like special so for example, characters that said nothing the cricket, the sassy ass horse. Like all even those characters have more character development than half the humans in the fucking live action movie. Like the horse was the sassiest motherfucker, the cricket was like went from like being scared all the time to like being a hero. There’s like all these you know, little arcs. And the grandma, the grandma who is horny because at the end, when Shang comes by to find move on, she’s like, mm, break me off a piece of that. You know, she was like, she was awesome. And yeah, her love interest, I think his name’s Shang, but love interest sucked in this one. Like there’s barely any character development and their love story. You weren’t rooting for them. There was nothing there. And he had nothing. Because the original one he was a son of the captain. So he wanted to like prove himself. That was what was driving his competitiveness. And this was just like some dude who like was trying to compete. I was like, who cares?

Jesse Lin 23:06
Now, to be fair, they were both hot. There was some ABS action.

Angela Lin 23:13
Yeah, well, his face didn’t get any screen time

Jesse Lin 23:16
Oh, true.

Angela Lin 23:18
Yeah, so my answer is all of them. Because all of them – to be fair, all of that there’s only had like a few scenes, but there are a few scenes combined where like, all the specialness that was missing,

Jesse Lin 23:29
So basically…

Angela Lin 23:31
I basically miss the whole old movie that they chose to ruin.

Jesse Lin 23:38
Well, on that note, we hope you guys enjoyed our trashing of the Mulan movie in the form of an ill disguised review. If you watched Mulan and you have the same opinion, different opinion, or if you work in the film industry, like we’d be really interested to hear like what your perspective is on representation from writing, to directing to casting to crew, all that jazz. So, yeah, drop us a note. Feel free to reach out on Instagram or you can email us at our email – telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that’s Y-O-U-R-E. Take us to the close Angela.

Angela Lin 24:15
Well come back next week for a fresh new episode because we got some fun shit left for you this season and until next time.

Angela Lin 0:00
Hi, I’m Angela Lin.

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Jesse Lin 0:00
And I’m Jesse Lin and welcome back to season two of “But Where Are You Really From?”

Angela Lin 0:16
Today we have two special guests with us usually we only have one today we got two they are huge BTS fans. So there was a preview for you on our topic today. We have Diana and Leslie. Hey, girls.

Diana Jin 0:34
Well, hello.

Jesse Lin 0:36
Yeah.

Angela Lin 0:37
So so we can have a little bit of a sense of who you ladies are. We like to use the listeners in a with kind of the the opening question of our podcast. How would you answer “But where are you really from?”

Leslie Kim 0:54
You know, this is like starting off with a hard question first. This is always the thing where like, it’s usually accompanied by an eye roll before I actually interact. But when I have gotten this, you know, for the fifth time after somebody asked me where I’m from, I am a native New Yorker. So I was born and raised in New York, but my parents are from South Korea.

Angela Lin 1:18
Very cool. Nice.

Diana Jin 1:19
And where am I really from? So I was born in a Xinjiang province in China, which is the North Western most province like at the tip of China, where you meet Mongolia and Russia and all of the istan countries and I moved to the United States when I was six and a half to Ohio. So that’s where I grew up. And I went to New York for school and I’ve been in the region ever since.

Jesse Lin 1:49
Fabulous. So as Angela already alluded to this week, we are taking a deep dive into K-pop and BTS and I think this is gonna be an interesting journey for both Angela and I because part of it is like demystifying our Asian identities and also part of it is exploring like cool new parts of being Asian that didn’t exist when we were growing up. So first question for you ladies. What does BTS stand for?

Diana Jin 2:21
In Korean?

Angela Lin 2:26
We’re starting you off with an easy one.

Diana Jin 2:29
You want to take this one?

Leslie Kim 2:31
Yeah, so BTS as it’s like air quotes original form is essentially the acronym for the Korean name which is Bangtan Sonyeondan so the like B, “Bangtan,” T and then “Sonyeondan” so BTS and then you know as part of that the direct English translation is basically Bulletproof Boy Scout. So that’s kind of what they were like kind of there’s there’s a whole like prepared speech to about what the name means about how they’re like protecting the youth against you know, the the stressors of society and kind of the pressures that society puts on them. So they act as like the bullet proof boys for you know, the younger generation but before and especially as they’ve been increasing in like, the Western world, you know, and everyone’s like, what does BTS stand for? And like them being able to be like, well, it’s actually the acronym for a Korean name is obviously gets a little bit confusing. So a few years ago, they essentially did like a rebrand where they were like, BTS stands for Beyond The Scene. So like, beyond the scene and and I think it’s very interesting actually, like as a kid, I would love to like, hear everybody’s feedback cuz I think as a fan you’re like, but that’s kind of it, but also not really, but then it’s kind of funny to see like, Western press be like, yeah, like BTS, like parentheses “beyond the scene” and everyone’s like, that’s kind of true, but also not but they basically did like a rebranding, you know, as they got more popular.

Jesse Lin 3:54
Okay, so, how did you guys first get into Kpop? Or BTS? Did one come before the other? Like, how did you kind of start to slowly sink yourself into the world of K-pop?

Diana Jin 4:08
1I think for me, growing up in Ohio, I wasn’t introduced to a lot of the Asian music culture. You know, I just grew up listening to mainstream whatever was on the radio. It wasn’t really until I went to NYU and joined a bunch of these Asian interest clubs like KSA or CSA where I really befriended a lot more Asian friends and then got exposed to a lot of Asian cultures. So through that, I started listening to a lot more, you know, Asian artists, such as Kpop artists, I think at that time, it was the Wonder Girls and Big Bang were really big – oh, and a Girl’s Generation so I think that was my introduction, and then BTS I found out about I think in 2014, because there was this one song that kept on getting played over and over again. And then it was really catchy. So I was thinking, okay, like who is this and then that’s how I found out more about them

Leslie Kim 5:11
In New York there were basically like Korean festivals, like Korean culture festivals that would have like, you know, the stands with like, people like selling kimchi, or like, you know, having snacks. And as part of that there would usually be like a headlining act or whatever. So I remember even when I was like, seven or eight, I’d go with my family, or I’d go with my best friend. And we would like go watch the artists that was there. So I was kind of introduced to it in a casual way. But when I was a teenager, I was totally like, all about American pop, though, like, I was like, all in on that. And it was very funny because my best friend, my childhood best friend, who is also Korean American was like, very into Korean pop music. So it was interesting, because we were like, both interested in the same things, but from very different, like viewpoints. It wasn’t until 2009 that I actually like going deep into the fandom world with a group at that point, and then that sort of, like, kind of reinvigorated this, like, love or sort of interest in K-pop. And then it kind of went on from there. And here we are in 2020, where I’m still like talking listening to like, generally K-pop or bringing all this in and definitely when I was like in my Backstreet Boys, like heyday would not have necessarily like seen this down the road.

Angela Lin 6:24
So what is – what was the Kpop group that like, got you first interested? And when did BTS come into the picture? Because I don’t hear you talking about other Kpop nowadays – only BTS.

Leslie Kim 6:37
The group that I got interested in in 2009 was a group called 2pm. And they were also a seven member group, but there was a falling out between the members. And basically one of the members who was my favorite member at the time, basically, like had a falling out with the company and left the company and left the group. If I’m honest, like I fell real deep into fandom then. And then I got burned by it right? Because the whole point of like, fandom and these groups is like, it’s an escape. It’s fun. It’s, you know, it’s a distraction from the real world. And all of a sudden, I was like, sucked in this drama, and all of this. And so I like stayed away from K-pop for a good while, too, because I just kind of felt like I got burned. What’s happening right now is like, incredible to see just like how much it’s it’s expanding beyond like, oh, you like K-pop? Like now it’s like, it’s no longer super niche. Obviously, it is, like niche to an extent. But there’s so much more that’s happening that is really cool to see. Because, you know, five years ago, when I was like, started becoming a fan, it was still a very, you know, more insular group, or it was like a smaller kind of group of fans. And yeah, again, like going back to like, oh, I never would have thought that 11 years ago, this would have been where I I am. But I think the same thing, like five years ago, I would have never been like, oh, look, there’s just like, a casual magazine with a Korean, you know, group on the cover, like, no big deal, whatever. Like things that are crazy.

Angela Lin 8:35
Well, I think that’s a good segue, you talked about, like how much the Korean influence has evolved and like grown in mainstream in Western culture. I think that’s a good starting point for the broader conversation. So let’s talk a little bit about this import of like, not just K-pop but overall Korean trends like K-beauty and like, obviously, K-pop and I’m sure there’s other things well, you know, Parasite. I read online, Leslie, I can’t be Korean. So you can correct me, but I read that this is called the hallyu?

Leslie Kim 9:15
That’s pretty good.

Angela Lin 9:17
So the Korean wave quote unquote. So why do you think that Korea became this like new focal point for all the rising trends because there was a time in the past when like, Japan was kind of the focal point where everything was like J-beauty. And like, I don’t know if there were J-pop things like muted to mainstream, but at least from the beauty aspect, and like things that did get imported it was if it was from Asia, it was from Japan. So like, what do you think is it about Korean culture and these Korean boy and girl groups that it’s like, that is the country that’s breaking out from the Asian region, and how such a big influence despite you know, it being a small island in the East.

Leslie Kim 10:06
I think it’s twofold, I think. I mean, I would agree the fact that like, Korean stuff is like so popular and like you can find like kimchi in like Trader Joe’s or whatever, like blows my mind because growing up when people were like, where are you from? You know, they’d be like, are you Chinese? No. Are you Japanese? No, then what are you? Like Korean was like never even part of that, like set of, you know, classifications of Asians and then to have now people being like, oh, I love all these things is so just amazing to me. But I think yeah, it’s twofold. I think one, I think it’s the Korean government basically invested in product in K-pop, in K0beauty, I mean, Kpop, specifically, but in all these as like, this is going to be our soft power. And this is where we are going to actually use government money to help fund this and use this as like our export. So like, obviously, they’ve got the Samsung, you know, they’ve got the LGs and all that. But like, they are literally putting government dollars and resources to help fund kind of the growth of K-pop export of that, and everything for that. So I think it’s, it’s a small country, but they’re they’re choosing to like invest their government dollars in this, which obviously, helps it because being a collectivist government, too, I do think that that that means that right? It’s just like a rallying experience to because it’s not just like individual like companies or individual people that are trying to like spread a movement. It’s like, no we like hallyu wave, like, yes, we are, we are going on this and we’re going. So I think and I think it’s usually rare to see like governments really like truly investing in like entertainment as their, you know, choice of like, this is what we’re going to put our our money on, but they have done that, which I think has helped for that expansion. I think the other thing that you know, definitely comes into play for K-pop I know this sounds trite, especially for like BTS fans, too. It’s always like, the code word to where it’s like social media is always like, like, they’re not a social media group. Like they’re more than that. But I do think, you know, social media, especially YouTube, like, you know, Diana, I’d love to hear your experiences, because I remember to like, we used to find like, like, minute clips of things like on like torrent sites, you know, even before YouTube was a thing and you’re like, I like even being Korean American, I am obviously not 100% fluent. So I’m like, I don’t really understand what this is. This is the only thing that this is the only way for me to get their content. Whereas now it’s like, everything is readily available on YouTube. There are like, teams of fans that are like, you know, subbing content immediately versus being like, okay, they’re laughing here this is something I should laugh at do. And a lot of that greater exposure that people have to stuff right, then it prevents Korea or you know, whatnot from being like, so insular. And I think with Japan, they do have a ton of J-beauty, there are some like J-pop artists, but like Japan, as a country is is quite insular, right? Like they’re even like, looking at music or whatever their music industry is super insular, it’s really hard to break through like they do a lot of stuff that’s catered just to that market and Korea almost look like the opposite approach of like, we’re welcome to all and I think that that then also opened up not only them exporting things, but also like being open to all these different platforms and taking and being able to take advantage of that and use that to also fuel, you know, people learning more about Korea or getting more interested in Korean culture.

Angela Lin 13:25
Very cool.

Diana Jin 13:27
In terms of K-pop, one of the main I guess, initial draws can be that it’s so novel, right? Like you have choreographed dancing, you have very intricate costuming and music videos are so well produced, they’re like, you know, Hollywood level trailers for, you know, there’s previews for music videos, you know, there’s a set of like, okay, sneak peek one and then two, and then three, and then they make it sort of like that, you’re waiting for the next one to come out. So you’re anticipating so there’s more of that hype for when the, the actual video comes out. And then, so there’s a lot of buildup and the production value is like super high. I, you know, initially when someone is a casual viewer that can draw them in initially. And, you know, if they say, oh, this is pretty catchy, I want to learn more than, again, it becomes a YouTube hole where you just keep on clicking related video related video. And they do a good job of providing enough content, where you keep on going back for more, but also limiting it to where you want more when it comes back out. So I think they do a good job of however they decide to sort of control the flow of content as well.

Jesse Lin 14:45
Interesting. Yeah. So now we can understand a little bit more about this Korean wave and how it’s like penetrating into the US. But help us understand a little bit more about BTS and like why it’s so popular for y’all and kind of how it’s gotten so popular in the mainstream here to be even, like on our music awards shows a few times having appeared at the Grammys, like, it seems like they have like a really meteoric rise. And for me, I’m like looking at this. And I’m like, it’s kind of just it looks kind of like it’s coming out of left field for me. So I would really like to understand like, what you guys think the secret sauce is to them that’s like driving them so far and so fast.

Diana Jin 15:26
I guess from my perspective, the thing that drew me into BTS versus the previous artists that I still like, but not as much is that I think the company did a good job of letting the artists control their conversation with the fans. So allowing them to have a Twitter have WeVerse and all those other social media platforms to talk directly with the fans answer fan questions. That kind of thing is, I think pretty rare for the Korean entertainment industry where they more tightly control what their artists are able to do. I think you’ve heard in probably the headlines like, you know, if certain artists dates then it becomes a scandal and who they interact with, it’s very tightly controlled, even, you know, smoking or having tattoos is looked down upon but I think BTS is a parent company, they did a good job of allowing their artists the freedom to engage with the fans openly. So it seems like a more authentic, almost a relationship that you’re able to have with the artists where you are more invested in how they’re doing. Like, you don’t just see them on the stage or in the music video, you see them, you know, doing cooking shows, or just messing around in the practice room, or, you know, playing pranks on each other, that sort of thing that makes them more real people than just someone you put on a pedestal and admire as an idol. I think it gives them a real realness a humaneness to them, so that I think that helps the fandom connect better. And that’s what engages so many people because you see them struggling, and you can sort of connect with that because they’re not perfect. They’re not portraying a perfect image.

Leslie Kim 17:24
I do think too. And I think it’s probably hard for either newer people or people who aren’t as familiar with like, BTS is like, their story and their journey for all of that but like, as fans maybe that are like kind of on the like, have been around just a little bit longer or whatnot. Like they were very much outsiders when they started like they you know, the K-pop industry in and of itself is notoriously difficult, right? You have like hundreds of thousands of kids that are wanting to like debut and become superstars and and the industry is ruthless, right? Like it demands a lot of people and only a select few groups are able to rise. And then of course even, like fewer able to, like break through and like you know, reach that like top group status. They were very much outsiders and so there was a lot in BTS’s overall like journey that is very much about them, like fighting for their place in the industry. So like giving 110% because when you’re not like, here’s a great way for you to come into this, like you have to, you know, you have to double down and you have to do everything that you can. So I think that’s also something that is very prevalent, even in how they carry themselves today, even though like they’re like definitely certifiable millionaires, right. But I think there’s a lot in the way that they portray themselves where it’s like, they don’t half-ass things. And I think as a fan that is so great to see because like, they could do the bare minimum, and everyone still be like, this is amazing. I love this, right? Like, they’ve earned that right to do that, right? But they don’t they go all out on their concerts, on their tours, like all of this, like, and you see that and as a fan, you’re like, they’re committing to their craft, they take their, you know, they take their job, because at the end of the day, even though it’s for entertainment, it is their job, right. And they, they take that seriously. And that humility and that sort of mindset of them having to basically like work as hard as they can to get to where they want, I think hasn’t left them even though now they’re in a very different, you know, level from any of their peers, honestly, right? Because they’re they’re forging a lot of paths there. And I do think that that also helps with their overall story. And I know as a fan, it’s something that really connects to me because like, you know, they’re at the top but they’re still giving everything they can there’s a lot in there that I think that makes me proud to be their fan and like things like even you know, for buying things like I do it happily because we’re like yes, you should be successful. Like you should make more money you know, like doing all of this. We’re like, I am happy to do that because I’m like, you should like you should be even more successful and like doing all this stuff and I think that’s like honestly pretty rare very much do you feel like you are a part of their success and their journey and kind of it goes back to the point that Diana was saying before about that, like connection and authenticity, I think shows up in a lot of different ways. So that like, I think a lot of times, if you’re like an ARMY, you’re like, I’m an ARMY, and I’m like, throwing down and this is it. So here we are good and bad for that. But I think it’s something that is felt maybe more passionately with this fandom than potentially other fandoms.

Angela Lin 20:31
Let’s talk about ARMY. ARMY is so interesting, because as someone who doesn’t listen to BTS, but like, I know who they are, I’ve heard of ARMY and like, from what I know, they’re one of the biggest and like, most intense fandoms that have maybe ever existed, right? What is it about the mix of being a BTS fan and being part of like this specific fandom that is making this magic sauce like this is such an explosive thing and such a big influence on the internet right now. Like I remember, when BLM first started, ARMY, like took over the internet and like directed spotlight to a lot of important messages there because they had that influence, like, where did this come from, and what’s like driving this huge power behind this fandom.

Leslie Kim 21:26
I think, honestly, one of the most interesting things and Angela, you know, you and I work in marketing, like a big part of our jobs are like KPIs and like what our goals and doing this like, ARMY is extremely goal oriented. And I think that that makes it – I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous, because they’re like, oh, but like, they’re literally like comeback goals. So like, goals on the official trailer goals on x goals on like, literally being like, driven. And obviously, you know, everyone’s like, it’s okay, if we don’t meet it, but like, here’s what we’re gonna try to do. And I think that like organization plays a big role in how such a large fandom can be seemingly like super hyper focused and super, you know, organized and able to impact change, like there are some very big and influential. I don’t know what to call them, I guess like, people on Twitter, I don’t really know organized, they’re not really organizations, but basically

Jesse Lin 22:20
Twitterati

Leslie Kim 22:21
Twitterati yes, perfect. Like one of them is called like, BTS charts data and like literally is like King of ARMY Twitter, like can rally people, there were times and it was like, hey, like something something, you know, pissed ARMY off. So they were like, we’re gonna show the American music industry that we’re not to be messed with and basically ranked every single song in the iTunes chart, just by this one account tweeting out like, we’re going on a mass buying spree, like everybody by now and like, literally every single song in the iTunes chart is like taken over by this. So it’s very influential accounts that are being hyper organized and focused on goals and purpose that are then allowing for things like BLM or kind of other movements to happen and like things like BLM, I think the reason why ARMY was able to mobilize quickly is because, like, we have done this before, right? There have been other causes that, you know, people will rally and do all that. So it’s not like somebody is like, oh, shoot, we should do this. And like, scrambling together, it was like, here’s, here’s a platform, here’s a, you know, one of the Twitterati who, who, you know, can manage this. And it was like, hyperfocused, right, we are going to match a million dollars in 24 hours, let’s go. And then it’s like all the, you know, big fan accounts tweeting that too. And so, I think there’s a lot of like, honestly, it’s a lot of organization that allow this, like, massive group of people to seemingly feel like they’re acting as like, one cohesive unit.

Angela Lin 23:48
Can we just give a shout out to Asians for a second, the fact that like, it’s like a goal oriented, objectives oriented thing that has to come from being Asian.

Diana Jin 23:59
Yeah, I mean, it’s true, you know, every every time a music video comes out, they want to trending number one, or, you know, like the, the Twitter trends 12345. And the other thing is, it seems like it’s a very inclusive community, nationalities all over the world. If you if you look at when a song is released, or when an album is released, they’re literally ranking on charts across the globe. So it’s not just Asian countries, plus, English speaking countries. You know, they’re on charts in Africa. They’re on charts in the Middle East. They’re on charts in Europe, all over the swath of the entire globe. So it’s very inclusive, and then there are ARMY translators as well that are able to translate, you know, the Korean content into all of these languages so that they can be consumed by the local fan base.

Jesse Lin 24:50
Do you think that being able to understand what the music is actually saying in the native language gives you a different perspective on the music versus have like someone else who, let’s say fandom in Africa or someone who doesn’t understand the language?

Leslie Kim 25:05
Um, it’s an interesting question. I think, too, because I’m not like 100% fluent, I rely a lot on translations, too. And so it’s like an interesting thing, I think. I don’t think I necessarily get less from it. Because I think honestly, in some ways I can get lazier. Because if there are some phrases that I recognize or whatever I’m like, okay, like, I get it or like contextually I get it versus fans who don’t understand Korean, like, really want to know, you know, what the context of that lyric is and they’ll go to like the fan translators who usually will also have like, notes or you know, asterisks or things that will, like provide additional context. So I think there’s actually a chance that like, I get less out of it, because I’m like, okay, I understand the intent and like, somebody out, you know, like, not to, like, be racist or whatever, but like, the random white person is like, actually, did you know that there’s everything about this? I’m like, Oh, no, I guess I’ll go and read that lyric translation then. So I think there’s a bit of that, but I think the part for me as a Korean American seeing people like sing along to Korean lyrics, like, it’s, it’s like an incredible feeling. It’s amazing to see like, I’m like, I get like, so proud feeling too because obviously, those people usually they’re singing along, but a large majority of them are, you know, have also like, read the lyrics or done whatever. And, like non Korean speakers also feel a kinship with the lyrics. So I think, honestly, there’s been a bit more of that, for me personally, where it’s like, the lyrics I do actually, like, admit that I probably know less than some others but it’s um, it’s been really just incredible to see people like singing along and Korean and really being moved by what they’re saying. Because again, like as you like, deal with like, insider outsider, what that all means. It’s like, it is literally feels like a cultural shift to see like a blond haired, blue eyed white girl like singing Korean lyrics. I’m like, I don’t. How is this happening? Like, what’s going on?

Diana Jin 27:04
I think for me, as someone who doesn’t speak Korean, just reading the lyrics, I do think a lot probably does get lost in translation, because just like, all Asian languages, certain things are very poetic. So certain phrases mean things when they’re put together. But if you take each word and try to translate it, a lot of that meaning is just, you know, it can’t be translated. So on one hand, I get the basic idea of what the song is trying to say. And I, you know, what, the whole lyric together, you understand how deep the lyrics are. But if I’m taking each line by itself, they might be saying something like way deeper, but because it can’t be properly translated into a language that I can understand maybe I’m not getting the full feeling.

Angela Lin 27:53
So at the beginning of this, you answered the like, where are you from question that’s like a kind of intro to identity. But I think as part of our entire experiment with this podcast, it’s very clear that like, identity can mean a lot of different things. And like, you can identify with much more than just your ethnicity and like, the country that you grew up in. So I’m curious how much ARMY and like your affinity to BTS, you consider as part of your identity.

Leslie Kim 28:25
You know, it’s like, kind of funny, because I feel like now that I’m like, getting older, I’m like, I don’t have any hobbies. I don’t have it. You know, like, I mean, like, when we were younger, we were like, oh, I love like doing all these things. And now I’m like, I like watching YouTube, doing other things. So I think honestly, from that perspective, like, being an ARMY, like being a fan of BTS, is, is very much like a part of my identity now, because now if someone’s like, oh, what do you like to do? I’m like, oh, you know, I like to watch YouTube, which correlates like I love going to concerts correlate. You know, it’s like a lot of stuff for that. And I think I’ve been fortunate enough at work where, you know, I know a lot of times, some people have to kind of like, separate personal from professional and there could be an impact, like, my senior vice president knows that I’m a huge BTS fan, and it is like part of my identity, like having that I’m like, yeah, then it, then it is part of my identities in a group of strangers, maybe I wouldn’t lead with that. But maybe I’d like kind of like figure a way to like, get around it a little bit, and then kind of like, suss it out and see if like, it’s a safe environment to kind of go in on that. But like, I don’t feel like I can’t say that it’s part of my identity, which I think is really nice and is the benefit of ARMY being so like, all encompassing and being able to, you know, apply to such a wide range of people.

Diana Jin 29:42
If you’d asked me maybe 10 years ago, if I would have admitted to a group of people that I’m like a k-pop fan, maybe I wouldn’t be so comfortable doing so. But I think as I’ve grown older, older, it’s, you know, if it’s something I enjoy, I don’t think there’s any reason why it should be looked down upon, I think probably a decade ago people would be like, oh, what’s K-pop is like, you know, as almost like a derogatory, like, why would you listen to that, almost seen as like this weird counterculture or subculture group. But now it’s very much something that I would say, oh, like, I would love to introduce you to, you know, my favorite group or whatever, here share a music video, you would love this or like, yeah, like Leslie said, I wouldn’t, you know, go out to a group of strangers and say, “Hi, my name is Diana, and I’m a ARMY”. There’s more ARMYs than you would expect, though. You know, just you know, sometimes I’m going to, because I have ARMY like a BTS case on my phone. So sometimes when I put it down, they’re like, oh, you like BTS? Yes. Are you ARMY? I mean, it’s like this instant connection that you have with somebody, which is really sort of rare. You know, it’s almost like being from the same hometown, you know, halfway across the globe or something. So it’s really nice.

Jesse Lin 31:00
Love that. Where do you think this Korean wave of people, music, products? Like, where do you think that’s gonna be like a year down the line, five years down the line? I mean, what do you guys think is going to be kind of the continued trend of this moving forward?

Leslie Kim 31:15
I think it’s really hard to tell, because I think it’s hard to know if it’s going to reach the saturation point really quickly, because now like every group is trying to expand into America, right? Like, every group has now partnering with the, you know, a US label, and they’ve got plans, and they’re doing all of this like, now it’s very, almost formulaic. It’s almost like taking the K-pop formula. And then now like saying, like, oh, how can we bring it into mainstream? So I do wonder if we’re starting to kind of hit that inflection point, because I think a lot of Western audience, audiences are like, ooh, here’s the shiny thing. And then once it becomes like, too, oversaturated, or like too whatever, then you start having like, the backlash to that, right? And then it’s just like, oh, no, now we’re gonna reject it. So that’s the pessimistic outlook. But I do worry that we might be reaching kind of a saturation point with that, but I think to be said, like this stuff, yeah, like Parasite winning, like, and everyone’s like, it would like, this film deserves this, but it won’t win. You know, like, it was kind of like, we’re gonna hope it wins, but it probably won’t to like, sort of protect everyone’s like pride and not get too excited. But I think what that does is all of a sudden, now it’s not just like music, right? Because now it’s film and then you know, whatever, what what else is next? So I do think that there will be this kind of like, growing need to start outsourcing or like pulling in for like content ideas or doing all of that I think for better or for worse, what’s happening all now with, with all like, the anti racist, you know, movement, and everybody wanting to be more inclusive and thinking about that, I, I hope that that also continues like to be, you know, to start including Asian content, as well like not to take away from that moment, and you know, what’s important for like, the BIPOC community, but I do think that there is gonna be like, oh, hey, like, we weren’t really paying attention to this before. But like, maybe we should check this out. And that’s where the real future in that five year mark is going to be that people are now actually starting to, like, pay attention to what’s going on over there. Like, we have seen it like there are adaptations of like Korean shows that have come over into the US. And I do think that that type of sort of, like, cross collaboration, I guess, of content is what’s going to continue and help not make it be like, oh, here’s this like, foreign thing that’s coming into our country, but then it’s just part of like, oh, yeah, this is like the next evolution of American you know, media or Western media.

Diana Jin 33:35
Yeah, I think just like, you know, Latin music broke through with, you know, trailblazers in the industry, you know, the Shakiras and the J-Los of the world. Maybe BTS will be a trailblazer in that sense, it may never be as mainstream as something that’s 100% in English, that’s gonna be played on top 40 charts every single day on the radio, but it can be something where it’s more accepted in general where it’s no longer niche or it’s no longer something that you have to explain every single time like what is K-pop to you know your friend so I think there’s definitely a potential for growth there and not just in music but also in film as Leslie said, you know, you had Crazy Rich Asians then you have Parasite, and you have Mulan coming out on Disney with and you know, all Asian cast trends like that is obviously very positive, but I hope it’s not just a blip on the radar where like, yes, right now, we’re very interested in Asians like this is a new thing like, like hibachi is the new thing or sushi is the new thing, or boba is the new thing. But I hope that it can continue and just become something that is just another music, right? Like it’s, it’s just music, it’s just in a different language or it’s just film it’s in another language and it can just be consumed as such. Not be considered a separate category. Oh, it’s foreign film or it’s foreign music and stuff like that. There is growing acceptance. And as people get more exposure to something, it becomes less of a thing that they’re scared of or nervous about, and more something that they can easily accept.

Angela Lin 35:19
Beautiful.

All right, this has been a really lovely conversation. Thank you for bringing the fire here. This have been a very passionate discussion as we anticipated. And so we’ll move into our closing section our Fortune Cookie, because we always like to end on a sweet treat. And we thought a fun way to end this because the two are massive BTS fans, and I believe you’ve both done some crazy things to see BTS. What is the craziest thing, or like the most you’ve ever done to see BTS live.

Diana Jin 36:01
In 2016, I flew to Japan so I could see their stadium show. From New York. And I think I stayed for only five days in Japan. But the main purpose of the trip was really just to see them live. And I think I bought the tickets through some third party courier person, because in order to buy tickets for the Japanese shows, you have to be part of a Japanese fan club. And then there’s a lottery if you’re in the fan club to even be able to purchase tickets. So it was a whole thing. I was working through Google Translate and emailing back and forth with someone who was Japanese and didn’t speak perfect English. And then I was trying to, you know, communicate payment and how I would get the tickets, but it worked out. So I did see them.

Leslie Kim 36:55
It’s funny, because it’s like, what’s the craziest thing and I feel like both of our things are exactly related. So maybe not that crazy if you’re an ARMY, but mine would have to do with a concert. So I went to Korea for the start of their Love Yourself tour, which is back in 2018. And I basically paid four times the ticket price to sit in literally the 10th from the row like 10 from the back row in a stadium of 55,000 people so basically they were like ants, but I was so happy to be there. It was great. It was one of the highlights.

Jesse Lin 37:29
Awesome.

Angela Lin 37:29
Thank you both for joining us. This has been a really fun conversation and Jesse and I knew nothing really going into this. This is like perfect, very educational.

Jesse Lin 37:40
And now we know something Yes.

Angela Lin 37:42
The surface level I would say

Leslie Kim 37:44
Join the ARMY guys. It’s very it’s very welcoming.

Angela Lin 37:49
All right. Yes, well, so if you like this episode, write us in at Telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com tell us if you’re an ARMY, tell us that there’s a different K-pop artist that you’re really into, share that love with us that we can connect everyone in this community together. And we will come back next week with a fresh new episode.

Jesse Lin 0:15
This week we’re going to talk about something that is a huge topic for all of us, dating. Dating is such a contentious thing. I think one of the first things that we wanted to chat about dating is this, like, inevitable question that you get, especially as a person of color when you’re dating other people, and they ask you, where you’re from? Thoughts?

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Angela Lin 0:40
I hate it. I mean, I hate it anytime anyone asks me that. But it is this funny thing because people always like dance around like they’re trying to like find the words to not be offensive and you’re like, oh my god. Well, I’m from fucking Orange County and then but I think what you mean is where my parents are from -Taiwan. But one of the things that’s interesting to me about this is like, it’s not just all white people, like, I also get this question from other Asian people. And obviously, it depends on like, the way they ask, but like, it can still be offensive. So like, I specifically remember in Chicago when I was in business school, and like a random stranger stopped me on the street. He was an Asian dude. And I forget how he opened it up, but he like clearly was trying to hit on me and either the first or second thing he said to me was like, oh, what are you? And I was like, excuse me? What? Why does that even matter? And why did you make that your like opening line. So bizarre.

Oh, my God, I have to agree with you there like, I also think the same way. I’m like, look, I get it. Like you kind of want to figure out like my ethnic background. But come on, like, ladies and gentlemen, take note on a first date. If that’s like something that you have on your list to ask someone and you have nothing more interesting to ask someone, that’s gonna be a hard pass for me. Like, first date should be like getting to know each other, like, your basic things that you like, and the person that you are. And those weird questions should come kind of like, after that’s my that’s my opinion. Because when I’m getting to know someone, like I want to know, like, their character, I want to know things that they’re interested, I want to know, like, all the things that make the person a person that is not necessarily like just your physical traits, because I can see you I know what you look like.

Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I think it like it’s a question that’s very easy and most commonly taken as something offensive. I do think there are like, natural ways to get at that question that don’t come off as offensive like if you’re already talking about, I don’t know your family or like your travels or something and like naturally comes up because you – or like you offer it up. Yeah, like is related to what you’re saying, then that’s fine. But like yeah, I don’t love it when people just especially when it’s one of the first things they ask.

I always wondering like, Why do people ask that? Why does that seem like so high up on like a list of like first date questions that people get asked.

I mean, the way I interpret it is like, it’s still a lot of like exoticism, even though, like Asians are everywhere now, but like, if you’re not a person of color, especially like the fact that you have an answer is like something kind of exotic. So I don’t know. But I do think it has to do with just like foreignness and like a curious way? I don’t know.

Yeah, I think it’s a very good way to ask the question if you’re trying to understand more about the person’s background in general, but they don’t ask you about necessarily like your childhood or like, what it was like growing up as a child of like first generation immigrants, like there’s no extension of the conversation where it appears to be like an interest about you and your life.

Basically what we’re saying is that if it’s going to come up early, it better be organic. And if it’s later that’s more more natural, probably after you’ve gotten to know each other better.

We just talked a little bit about this first question, which I don’t think either of us find particularly appealing, but one of the things that we just touched upon was the idea of being Asian as being exotic. And a lot of the times there is a lot of like fetishizing.

Yeah, I think it’s that one.

Jesse Lin 4:52
Fetishizing of the fact that you are an Asian person, and it’s very, very, very deeply uncomfortable when you go on a date with somebody who’s like super, super ultra into Asian things. For me personally because as soon as that happens like as soon as someone’s like, oh, I love to watch anime, I love to read manga, I went to Japan like three times in the last year. That’s like, “mm-mm”, a red flag immediately because then I’m like, okay, like are you actually interested in dating me as a person? Or are you just interested in like tokenizing me as another thing to add to your like shelf of Asia things? Which if I can’t make that delineation I’m out.

Angela Lin 5:37
Yeah, no, I feel you I think I’ve like as someone who rejected their Asian identity as like a younger adult right or young high school through like young adult life, and was always trying to date outside of the race. I think the concept of the yellow fever has always been at the top of my mind and it’s, it is a funny concept because if you think about it me wanting to date outside my race is almost like the opposite of yellow fever, like whatever yellow fever is but for like white people, because I was like exclusively excluding, you know, Asian people in what I was trying to date. But I didn’t really think about it that way until like, I examined it a bit more. But the irony of that is that then when I was looking to date, non-Asian people, I would always be on the alert of like, are they just into me because they have yellow fever. And I have dated people who like, you could classify as having had yellow fever. And it’s something that really annoys me because it’s just like what you said, it’s like, do you even seen or do you just seeing like someone else that like fits this standard that you typically go after that like helps you fulfill some sort of weird fantasy. But what I will say is that there are people that like actually do enjoy those pieces of like Eastern culture and it’s not just like a surface level thing so for example, my fiance.

l mean Ramon loves Japan that’s like his shit. But it’s not like he loves all of Asia and it’s not like he like is all about everything Asian it’s it’s a specific pieces of the Japanese culture that like he is really drawn to because it’s, it aligns with his personalities. So he’s like super Zen. So he like loves the concept of Zen and like keeping things minimalistic and blah, blah, blah and like meditates and things like that. So like, he like picks and chooses things about the culture that like resonate with him. And so, but I will like when I first learned that he was like all about Japan, I definitely was like, “ding-ding-ding”. But yeah, I think just like dig a little bit because I will say I was like very quick to judge with people who I like assumed have yellow fever. I think there are still a fair number of people out there who really do just have yellow fever, and they’re just gonna date all the Asian people ever because that’s just all they do. And they don’t have any appreciation for Asian culture in like a real sense. But there are some people that can defy that. I’m marrying one of them. I mean, I think both you and I have dated and continue to date people outside of our race, and that’s an interesting thing to talk about, though, because of how it relates to our identities and how our lives like parents have raised us and what their expectations have been on us in terms of like, our future partners and the futures that we’ll live together with these people, right? I definitely grew up with like really heavy expectations laid down on me by my parents in terms of who I should be dating and end up marrying and spending the rest of my life with and it’s been like, it was like, ingrained in my brain since I was in the like, potential age for dating. Maybe like 12 or 13. And they were like, you can only end up with a, their ideal was a Taiwanese, Mandarin speaking. Boy.

Jesse Lin 9:49
You know, it’s funny because I feel like we have pretty different parent expectations when it comes to dating or I just have like blinders on for most of my life regarding those expectations. But I feel like my parents didn’t talk to me at all about dating. Generally speaking, like, there was still an expectation set because I have older cousins. And I remember that obviously like, yes, like they want a similar race girl that can speak Mandarin. But the truth is that I feel like generally the family was like, pretty hands off regarding like, who they wanted me to date.

Angela Lin 10:31
Well, that’s nice. Yeah, that’s nice.

I will say, yeah, I think that I understand my parents desires enough to understand what they want out of a person that I will date, which is I think they want obviously, they want someone that will take care of you because at some point, they’re going to be too old and they want to know that you have a partner that will look after you and I think that’s like every parent wants that. And then the second thing is like, I think my mom is much more realistic than my dad and probably your parents and she, she understands that like, just probably not really a high chance that I will end up dating an Asian boy that can speak flawless Chinese. So she did tell me this one time she was like, it’s cool, like whoever you date, but I would prefer them to be like a very like bubbly gregarious person. And so from that perspective, like I kind of get it like she, she gets that there’s like this impossible thing. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to match up with somebody that’s like this ideal Asian expectation. But at least you can bring somebody into the family that’s like friendly, that’s willing to engage with you even if there is a language barrier. And I think that that’s what my mom has set the expectation as. And she wears the pants for my dad in the dating theory. So I take her word of like, what they both want.

Well, that’s nice that your mom has such a progressive outlet. I think my parents have had to shift their outlook because obviously I’m marrying someone and he is not Taiwanese or Chinese but I can empathize with where my parents were coming from of like, why they were trying to restrict me into that kind of a person. It was definitely language barrier and like cultural understanding. Like my mom had expressed to me that she wanted to be able to have like, deeper conversations with whoever I was actually going to be with versus like pleasantries, essentially. And I will say I like I always kind of blew that off until I met Ramon. Well, because his family doesn’t speak English so I have to speak Spanish with them. And when I first met them, and we were having conversations. I definitely could feel that where I was like, I have so much I want to say but I don’t know how to say it because I don’t have that popularity and so you don’t even like fully know who I am because I can’t express it. So I definitely empathize with like the original sentiment but it did feel limiting to me when I thought about like who I could end up with because love in general is such a like fickle and like difficult and numbers based thing. Like you have to date so many people to find the right person and you still might not find that right person after like dating a million people so to say that I could only you know, even have a certain small kiddie pool version of like the broader pool of candidates was something difficult for me to reconcile with at the time.

Okay, well, let’s talk about the whole like being able to relate thing because I feel like neither of us have really dated people have the same race. But I think that with the whole idea of relating, I do feel that when you are having a conversation with an ABC like yourself, there are so many more things that you don’t need to explain to them. And you have like this immediate connection where you can like, go through stories about things that are related to an ABC experience where you don’t have to, like build the foundation of it. It’s kind of like an inside joke, but you don’t have to, like establish a rapport to have that understanding. And I do find that that’s very refreshing because like, you can speak to someone who’s gone through the same kind of trials and tribulations and have an immediate connection there as opposed to trying to explain that experience to someone who does not have the same life experience. It’s like very hard and difficult.

Yeah, I can completely relate to that. I like you have not had like a serious relationship with anyone Asian but I’ve had dates and I’ve had, you know, casual whatever’s and I will say, yeah, I I can relate to what you’re saying about like not having to say anything. It’s like an unspoken connection that you already have built in just because you’ve had that similar lived experience as them. And it’s weird because it kind of gives you this false sense of like you know them or you’re like you’re like closer to them than you would otherwise be with someone else given the same amount of time of knowing this person. But with that said you and I didn’t end up with any Asian people but like I think there is value there is definitely value in sharing that and I’m sure that’s also why you and I have a bunch of Asian American friends. I mean, those are all relationships and I know for me a big part of it is like being able to relate to one another in our life experiences in the way our parents brought us up, you know, the experiences we’ve had and in life growing up and all that so I can see it for sure.

Do you think that like part of the reason….necause I’ve thought about this, I’m like, well, there are like very many attractive Asian men and I’ve always wondered kind of like, why none of them have fell into my dating pool and it’s not for – and I don’t believe it’s due to self selection. Because like, when I was on Hinge, I was like, everybody, everybody gets a like, everybody gets a like, but I’m wondering sometimes if it’s just that, like, it’s too familiar, you normally say like opposites attract. And so when you go on a date with somebody that’s like, has a very similar life experience. You’re kind of like, oh, it’s like dating me, and I don’t really like that.

I actually disagree. I think why it never worked out for me as I never found someone who was enough like me. Because I think I even told you this when we were growing up where I was like I could see myself ending up with like a like fate would have it I would end up with like a Taiwanese American who can speak Chinese. But they would have to be exactly like me like they would have to be ABC for sure. And they’d have to be, like, have a similar sense of humor and like be interested in the similar things and like, and feel like my equal and I didn’t really come across any of those people. There is one of them – people I’m like, thinking of it in my head that I didn’t end up dating at all, but I had a connection with. He’s like one of two Asian people that I was like, I don’t know, maybe I will end up with this person. And we only really hung out like twice, but it’s kind of what I’m saying of like you feel this false ish sense of like deeper connection and intimacy with someone when you have those shared experiences so not only did we have the shared like ABC experience but he happened to be very similar to me in like he worked in entertainment before he like was trying to do something different with his life and like they’re just like I forget all the other things but like there were many things where I was like oh my god are you me but like a dude that was like my kind of criteria loosely growing up was like, if I’m gonna end up with a Taiwanese or Chinese-American person, it would have to be because they’re like, exactly like me.

That’s so Leo of you.

So what do you think it will be like to date somebody that isn’t ABC that’s like straight from like, Taiwan or not, I mean, straight but like, you know, originally grew up in China or Taiwan or other Asian country and moved here like halfway through their life.

I think there’s a difference between someone who like just moved here within the last year, versus someone who lives here as still like a young enough adult that they have, like spent enough adult years in America, like, ingrained some of the Western culture into how they are. Because for example, like in our Pride episode we had Tong on as our guest, and she has been in America since like, masters, or whatever. And so, like many years of living in the Western culture, even though she was born and and grew up in China, so I think those are two very different kinds of people. Because, like, for me, when I was thinking about this growing up, I was like, I don’t think I could date someone who is like, fresh from Taiwan or China, because just culturally we’re very different. And it’s something that I always had to talk with my parents about, and they never understood because they’re from Taiwan. So they like don’t get it. But I was like, we would have nothing in common and they’re like, What do you mean? You’re both Taiwanese, I’m like, that is totally different. I’m American, like, yes, my blood and how I look, I am Taiwanese, but like, I have a completely different life experience from this person. So to think that we’re gonna, like, automatically hit it off is a little delusional. So that’s, um, and we yeah, we argued a lot about this, because they could not see eye to eye with me on it. But if it were someone who lived in America for a few years, and like, has been Westernized, I think that’s very different, because then they’ve, you know, adjusted and they’re American in that sense, like America is founded on immigrants. And then they like, you know, embed themselves into our little weird hodgepodge culture that exists here. And so, once they’ve had that experience of being in the West, then we have things to relate to.

Well, I think something interesting that you just mentioned, while we were talking about that was how your parents are saying like, oh, what do you mean, you have nothing in common? He’s Taiwanese, you’re Taiwanese? And that made me think about like how simple things were in the past that your that your compatibility is based, like, oh, did you grew up in the same valley that I grew up in, and we both are farmers. And we can trade goods and objects with the exchange of your vows. And that was basically it. Versus like, now, there’s girl there’s so many choices when it comes to dating, like, and we’re and we’re talking about dating kind of just within the general framework of like, monogamy, marriage and kids, but there’s like so many different kinds of relationship structures that exist now. And so many ways you can date people in terms of the relationship structure, but overall, like how you can even access dating in terms of apps or like how you can meet and see people, the like, combinations are just like, so mind boggling that I can’t even imagine. I cannot imagine putting one of our parents through that process now like I would pay $50 to see that.

That’s not a lot of money. I would pay more way more money than that.

Well you can match my $50, we can go up to $100.

Yeah, no, I hear you. And I would love to see that, that’d be fucking hilarious. But I also don’t think it’s, I think like, obviously, as you go back and generations it gets like simpler and simpler, of course, but I feel like even people of our generation who found their person, before apps and online dating became a thing would not know how to exist right now in like this type of modern dating world. Because technology has like completely shifted the way that you are dating to a point where like, you, you have to act way differently. You’re like, the way you have conversations is really different the way you would like filter people out of consideration is completely different. Because I have plenty of friends like, I’m sorry, I’m like, so happy I’m out of the dating game. It’s like the fucking worse. I hate dating. But when I was still dating, I had friends who were in long term relationships or like married. And they they would be the people who like never had to do apps or online dating ever. Like they had locked down their person prior to that. And I resented the shit out of them and they’d say things like, oh, I kind of wish I were single right now so I could like try out Tinder and Bumble and I was like, go fuck yourself. It’s not fun. Like you’re delusional if you think that this is like fun and games. You’re lucky that you were taken.

Jesse Lin 23:50
Well, I think that’s part of the difficulty that the modern world has brought to dating because it’s the idea that you can never be – the ease of accessing it makes it feel like you can never be satiated with one person. And I think a lot of people have this misconception regarding a relationship is that like, oh, the connection that you the initial connection that you feel with someone is what you ride in that relationship. That’s not the case, like a relationship is you make decisions to like, grow and nurture the relationship. And some of those decisions are disgusting and gross, and you have to like deal with it. But that’s like, part of being in a relationship. It’s not just riding, like an endless good wave to the end of the thing. And I think that’s what all these like modern dating concepts, relationship structures, enable, which is that you can easily move on to your next high basically, once you’re like over the initial peak of whoever it is that you’re dating. And that makes it like really hard to like evaluate the right person because you can be like, I’m totally in love with this person now. But I think I could be totally in love with this other person. Yeah. And the truth is that you could be in love with like a million people, you just have to like pick and choose which relationship you want to nurture.

Angela Lin 25:16
Cool. So this has been fun, but we’re going to make it more fun. So we’re moving into our closing Fortune Cookie section. And we thought, a fun way to close would be to talk about our shittiest most amusing, weirdest, whatever comes to mind, but one of those dating experiences.

Okay, so I haven’t had any dates where it was just like a complete dumpster fire experience. So I’m sorry if you guys are listening for that. But I did have a very, very sad stand up moment. And this was when I was studying abroad in Spain. And so we had been talking for awhile on the internet’s and he was like, let’s meet near the Goya statue outside the Prado museum. And I was like, okay, perfect. So I showed up there and I was like really excited because like, I’ve been going through a dry spell for a while. And I was like, I just want to see any man and any man to take me do something nice. And he didn’t show up. So I was just at the Goya statue by myself waiting forever. And this was like back in 2012. So this is like before internet phones were like, fully fully available. So I was just on like, a feature phone on fucking Orange with no balance. So I was like, couldn’t even check the internet. Like I was trying to like walk around to all different hotels and kind of get on my email being like, Hello, I’m still waiting here. It all turned out fine in the end, like he basically just overslept because he had just flown in. But yeah, it was like such a sad moment.

You did end up dating him right?

Jesse Lin 26:53
Yes, I did. It happened the next so we redid it the next day and it was fine. But at first I was like, well, this is just great.

Angela Lin 27:00
That is really sad. And I’ve just I can’t help but think that some of our listeners who are like a few years younger than us or way younger than us probably have no idea what you’re talking about that like you couldn’t get on the internet on your own. I also remember being in Spain when when I did my study abroad, and it was like, you got like 50 total text messages for the month.

Well, what’s your experience?

Yeah, well, I’ll give you a completely different experience from yours. It’s not a specific date but it’s a dating experience. And what’s funny is that this is with one of the like, two Asian people that I have had dating experiences with. So I only went on like two dates with this person back in New York like a very long time ago very, and I was like, not in a good place to be dating again. I was like fresh out of relationship. I was not very charming during these dates because I was just like, bitching about this other person essentially the whole time and like mourning about modern dating and so I don’t know why he liked me so much but he essentially got like, really into me really fast. He wrote me like novels of text messages after like the first and second date about, like, how much fun he had and how he’s gonna wait for me and he was going to be like, a good committing person because I was just bitching about like, people not being committal. But I was freaked out and then I wasn’t feeling it. So I texted him back. And I was like, look, you’re a nice dude. But like, I’m sorry this is like, I’m not even in a place to be dating anyone right now it’s not gonna work out. So then after that, he added me on both Facebook and LinkedIn. And I felt really bad because I just rejected this dude. So then I was like, fine. I’ll like accept you on both these accounts. But that was a mistake. Um, so like, I remember I like, didn’t think about him at all. And then just like every few months, I would get a late night notification like I would wake up in the morning but I would see the notification with a late night timestamp that he like randomly liked something on my wall because as Facebook like way back in the day when you like you actually post shit to your wall. But he would like something on my wall from like, months ago aka he was like scrolling through my profile months back to like, find out what I was up to in my life. And he would do this periodically, including because at one time I was just like, oh my God, why are you so obsessed with me? Like why do you keep bothering me so then I like clicked on his profile. He was engaged to someone at the time and he was still liking my shit in the middle of the night on Facebook. So I at that point, when I found out he was engaged, I’m like that’s fucked up. And I feel bad for your woman. So I blocked him on Facebook. And I was like this, I’m not dealing with that. And then lo and behold, like one year later or whatever, I then periodically it’s like once a year now maybe it hasn’t happened for a while now, but like it felt like it was at least once a year. But then I would see on LinkedIn, like this person has viewed your profile and I was like, bro, get over it. I’m not even that special, we like hung out twice, and nothing happened. I don’t get it.

Jesse Lin 30:32
Wow. I guess you’re like the one that got away for him.

Angela Lin 30:36
Apparently, but he didn’t know me. I don’t know. It was weird. And kind of stalkery so.

Jesse Lin 30:42
Okay, guys. Well, we hope you enjoy this conversation on dating. After 22 episodes, we’re taking a short hiatus so that we can recharge our batteries and try to regain our mental states which corona has terribly destroyed.

Angela Lin 31:01
I think the way that we’re planning on doing this moving forward is in these like, quote unquote, seasons. So like the season has been very long, because, frankly, Jesse and I did not think before far ahead enough to plan out our episodes and we just wanted to keep chugging along and pumping out good content. But in the future, we’re gonna do seasons more like this, where we like, have a set number of episodes, and then we need to take a little break, because if you want good content, our brains need to be relaxed.

Jesse Lin 31:33
So we’ll be back for you guys with more content and a new season in early September?

Angela Lin 31:40
Mid-September. So that’s our big news. But as always, if you enjoyed our topic today, or you have some juicy stories of your own on your dating stories, or the way that your parents kind of put pressure on you or whatever else, so we talked about today that you have your own personal stories about please write us in telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com the YOU’RE is Y-O-U-R-E. I’m extra pushing this hard because one of the things you want to do when we come back in our second season is we want to do another one of our reflections episodes where we do the listener spotlights. So we’re going to start collecting stories from you all again to feature next season. So please help us fill up our fodder of stories that we can pull from and if you like writing, we’d love if you could write us a review on Apple podcasts so that you can tell people why you love listening to our stuff so that other people will give us a shot because let’s be real, all of us base our decisions on customer reviews on Amazon. So please give us some good reviews on Apple podcasts so that we can get some new folks into our family.

Angela Lin 0:14
Today we are having a follow up to kind of like many of our past episodes, but I would say more directly Money, Honey, we are talking today with a very special guest, Keith Koo, about personal finance and estate planning and a bunch of other stuff in between. But before we get started, I think we need to introduce you to our listeners. And one of the starting bases we’d like to start with is, but where are you really from?

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Keith Koo 0:43
I think the question, where are you really from and something that especially in the United States, we get a lot, and it’s a question I got growing up in a predominantly Caucasian city, and I never really fazed me. So I would say, well, of course I’m from Alameda, California and they would say no, no, but where are you really from? Like, what does that mean? I’m from Alameda. So this is one of those really innocent kind of clueless things when you’re when you’re young growing up in a community where most of the faces are not Asian, certainly even back then. So, as I got older, like I see the differences where people were asking me like, where are you really from? And I’m like, I would then realize why they’re asking. I’d be very purposeful – I’m from Alameda, California. Where are you really from? And I would say, well, I think you’re trying to find out where my family’s from. My family’s from, is my family they were born in China. But then I go into very long descriptions that you know, for many generations of my family, my new my grandfather went to university in the United States before going back to China and then finding out more of my great grandmother went to seminary was one of the first women to graduate with a US medical degree in China. And then after my mom just passed away this February, doing some my own research, I realized that my great great grandmother through adoption is a Caucasian missionary from Michigan. So I can honestly say what I normally respond with. I know why you ask the question. I’m 100% American, I’m 100% Chinese, my family’s originally from China, but for many generations, they went to school here. And then I normally ask them, like, where are you really from? And they usually, usually, uh, you know, Caucasian Americans, they can’t exactly pinpoint that because their ethnicity is a blend of multiple ethnicities.

Jesse Lin 2:29
are your family story is like really interesting. Usually the immigrant trajectory is not so back and forth, at least, our conversations with other friends and stuff. So

Keith Koo 2:39
It’s a complex question, and I studied a lot of Asian American history in university. And so understanding the immigration waves. So you’ve got the 1850 diaspora where people were coming to work on the railroads during the gold rush and then the 1882 Exclusion Act until then the Japanese came up in 1906 gentleman’s agreement. Just on down these immigration patterns we don’t fit my parents technically fit into the 1965 Immigration Act, but they were here in the 50s and 60s. So they’re the beneficiaries of the Act, but they weren’t there because of the Act. Right? And then there’s the more recent immigration pattern for Asians in particular, as students in the 90s. And you see that particularly with mainlanders from China and then South Asians or Indians.

Angela Lin 3:24
Well, you are a man of many, many passions and works and things that you’re involved in. So why don’t you give the listeners a little bit of an overview of like, you know, your background, what do you do. You do stuff officially, but you have a lot of like side things that you do. You’re involved in the community. Give us a little overview.

Keith Koo 3:44
Well, thanks. I do do a lot of things. I think that the biggest thing is I lived an entirely corporate life I did the got out of university got into a big company got to another big company and another big company and another big company and made it to a corporate executive when I decided I finally wanted to follow my passion, start a consulting firm. So the consulting firm Guardian Insight Group does exactly what I’ve done in corporate. But now I do it for myself and I have clients. About four years ago, startup started coming out of the woodwork for help. And so helping these companies navigate a lot of things that people usually don’t even care about around regulatory questions and concerns. And so I really love getting into these projects that I don’t have to worry so much. I’m not really trying to necessarily make near term money off of it. It’s more of the investment of a startup and seeing where it goes. I do have a radio show and a podcast called Silicon Valley Insider. In San Francisco in Silicon Valley. The addressable market of radio listeners is 9 million people. The business networks that my radio shows are on happen to be over 50% Asian, including South Asian or Indian, and there were zero Asian radio hosts. And so they were working on me for about six months, and I was like I don’t want to do a show and he said no, no, we think you should represent and that really got to me. Well, what I told them was, well, your show is an Asian American show. I wanted to be able to do a show and happen to be an Asian American, but my show is not an Asian American. But most of my guests, two thirds of my guests, startup founders, C level executives, investors, VCs, they are women and minorities.

Jesse Lin 5:24
So I mean, we can just get started with the first time topic, which is the tie in with one of our most recent episodes regarding money and financial literacy. Our consensus is that most of our peers have lots of gaps in knowledge in terms of how to manage their own money and grow it for like their own use later down the line. It’s not something that’s really taught in the education system, or really by our parents, your background seems to suggest that you had a very different experience.

Keith Koo 6:21
I’ll start off with the Western education system, for whatever reason, we don’t teach personal finance. It’s actually quite a shame. And I was actually shocked. I didn’t realize that we didn’t really learn it until college when my friends are getting into 15,000-$20,000 in credit card debt. I said, how is that even possible? Here’s my story. My dad went to UC Berkeley for his MBA was one of the first Chinese people to get an MBA from Berkeley and then had lifelong employment at Kaiser Permanente, the stereotypical Asian thing. You’re either a doctor, lawyer, engineer, accountant, so my dad’s an accountant. Actually managed Kaiser’s his retirement funds from the early 80s till when he retired in the mid 90s. And my dad actually grew the fund from $250 million to $8 billion. It was in the mid 90s so like that’s wild. My dad was very – he was a tiger dad. But he was very good about injecting life lessons about personal finance to my sister, my older sister and I like for instance, I’ve been doing my own taxes since I was in eighth grade. My dad went to my room one day, and he’s like your sister already does this but the IRS tax code is written for an eighth grade level, you’re an eighth grader, here’s a tax return. It’s a 1048. I’m going to be back in about four hours. I’m going to check in on how you’re doing. And so I’ve been doing my own taxes ever since those days still do my own taxes. My dad instilled in my sister and I this understanding of personal finance that we assumed everybody got. I do a lot of mentoring so there’s a really well known free coding school in Silicon Valley college level. It’s an alternative education program and through one of my nonprofits, Asian Business League, we’ve been doing personal finance training for high schoolers for years and years and years. And in doing a career day for the high schoolers, I had this group From the coding academy come to speak about alternative ways of getting a software education. And when they heard our personal finance pitch like, can you teach our students this and these are adults, I believe there’s a weakness in not teaching personal finance in high school or as young people. And then in the college imagine you came from very humble means or alternative education. So either your family didn’t have a lot of resources, you don’t have that education at all, or a family how the resources have been sticking alternative path, alternative education track, right, you don’t have those skills. So imagine that you suddenly come out of one of these degree programs and you’re making 100-$150,000 a year. You think it’s great that you have access to this money but if you don’t know how to handle money, it’s actually more of a burden. Back before the dot com era MC Hammer built a very fancy house in the Fremont hills and that house cost $13 million. In the downturn in the mid 90s that house went for 3 million. Vanilla Ice was the opening act MC Hammer. I loved rap in the 90s right and he quit MC Hammer’s tour because Vanilla Ice had his entire career in 18 months right? MC Hammer made more money than Vanilla Ice but MC Hammer blew it because his dad wanted to get into horse racing. And so he went bankrupt. The funny story about Vanilla Ice for anyone listening his manager was from UC Berkeley. I was at its final $10,000 concert the week before Ice Ice Baby took off. He’s doing an Asian Business Association dance party. For 10 grand his, his manager was either Vietnamese or Chinese American, but that manager turned Vanilla Ice’s money into basically a generational legacy. He kept all that money, and he got all kinds of other stuff, but he never lost his money. So even though he had drugs and all the other things, he still had a money manager who knew exactly what he was doing. So you can compare the life between MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, right? And that’s what I want to let people know is that that can be you, you can either take the path of education or the path of ignorance and it will really affect the outcome of your life.

Angela Lin 9:52
To that point, since you do these training programs, and you’re like teaching the youth about this. I’m curious in your mind, like what are the key most important building blocks that a lot of people are missing right now?

Keith Koo 10:04
I think even before we get into what people need to sign up and learn, I think it’s a mindset. And I think it’s really difficult in the current climate we’re living in. And there’s a lot of people out of work and a lot of people that are living off government support. The very first thing and I think that this would be in any community is to have a plan to live within your means. I think Western culture especially gives you the thought that debt is good. I think oftentimes, when we talk about Asians in particular, education is highly valued to give access to education, do everything we can to get our children through the best education they can possibly afford. So the shifting conversation that says, hey, I might encourage my kid to go to junior college, but if they got into Berkeley, or Harvard or Stanford, they’re going. Whether people express or not, especially in Asian culture, there is a payback that’s in somewhat someone’s back of their mind. It might not be payback in terms of directly into the family, but whether this investment in my child is going to actually equate to what they come out with. Back to the concept of live within your means. Whether you’re a 10 year old, an 18 year old post college, always have that in the back of your mind that you need to live within your means. And then if you’re going to use debt, use that wisely. There’s a reason why when you are freshmen, they’re gonna offer you credit cards at the university, they still do that. But that once you start your career and you didn’t have a credit card, it’s almost impossible to get right? There’s a reason for that. They want to get you while you’re young, while you’re young, you still might be attached to your parents, you can’t do that much damage, but you get used to having that access to credit when you become a quote unquote, working adult, everything changes. So that would be like my first advice.

Jesse Lin 11:37
Piggybacking off of that from your trainings with younger people. What do you think are like the most common financial mistakes that people make?

Keith Koo 11:43
Well, I think it’s goes back to the mindset of instant gratification. We live in a digital world where I can get something off of Amazon and it might be delivered today. I think the thought of like, I can always just buy it now. I don’t have to worry about it till it’s later and I think that debt can be crushing. The mindset shift is different, when I speak to a very young person like still in high school, you can kind of help them see the value. You can do things like even to your child’s like I can give you one M&M now or I can give you three M&Ms a half an hour from now. Initially, most times I would say the child’s going to want that M&M right now, but when they realize they get more by waiting, you would hope that they would start to alter the behavior and have delayed gratification. So there’s a lot of discussion around like, do you really need that? Is that going to really help? Some of the high schoolers I work with, they already do like their own clothing resale, which I didn’t know was a thing. Yeah, they figured out that in order for them to stay current and fashionable, they will resell their clothing to somebody else who’s before the fashions over and that would give them money that can continue to expand and buy a new wardrobe. So I think those are pretty easy concepts to get ahold of when you’re young. One of the things back to the example is getting into my Intuit days, this is like still struggling post 2008 financial crisis. They didn’t seem to have financial goals. So for me it was very typical to get a job and then save up for a house and buy a house. I have folks that say I want to save for travel, I want to go to Europe, I want to go to Asia. I know that too right now is on hold because of COVID-19, but have a financial goal in mind. And it could be retirement, I want to be able to retire at a certain age, I don’t want to work till I’m 70 years or whatever. Having that mindset, then you can put a plan together of how you’re going to get there. I think the biggest thing I see is when people first start out, they don’t have a plan. And I admit my first plan when I graduated college was I was willing to blow like my first year on a car. I had that on my mind. Like, I’m gonna go I’m willing to spend up to my first year salary on a car.

Jesse Lin 13:34
That’s fair, I think because you have a goal, you want something personally and you’re saving towards it, which I think for maybe a lot of our listeners, though, goal setting is hard because people think that you have to save for something that’s like responsible or like has to bring you value in the future. And that’s not always the case like you can be saving for things like vacation, as you mentioned, or a car, at least from my perspective it’s not necessarily that you always have to be saving for something that has like future financial gains.

Keith Koo 13:59
Yes. And then also if you’re going to spend money spend money on things that you enjoy. I don’t remember the guys’ name off the top my head but one of the like financial gurus, he said that normally I’m very very cheap but when it came to outfitting my house for home theater, I spent a lot of money cuz I spent all my time worthwhile investment.

Jesse Lin 14:17
Do you have like an opinion or perspective on how people should be managing their finances now, especially people who might be like out of work, or having a really hard time finding an income stream because of the pandemic?

Keith Koo 14:29
I think my biggest advice would be one, don’t get down on yourself. This is a we hope a once in a lifetime economic event and that getting through the event in the near term might seem daunting, but getting past it people generally come out stronger. I think also that I think people get tied to what they’re used to. I’m not saying you should move, but there are different living situations. So I think people get really fed up about, hey, I’m in Silicon Valley or New York, right or these expensive locations, Washington. Seattle, there are alternatives to being where you’re at. But it will cause other considerations like can I live in another city kind of another state. If you think about where you could live and what you could do, especially with work, hey, Facebook just announced that they’re going to hire 50% outside of California, and 50% remote. So that opens up a lot more possibilities. So that would be the advice is don’t get stuck. My show I have a segment after every show called the pivot and it could be a transformation of a company, it can be a transformation of an individual, their story. I worry about Asians in general, especially those that have Tiger parents life was very prescriptive. And when you don’t have that happen anymore, what do you do next? I think the biggest transition I would just talk about in general between east meets west, I help a lot of career minded folks and east meets west or West meets east and there’s two parallel paths. The traditional east meets west if you go back to how a company in China operates. It’s really hard to get into university, the top university, you get out of the cohort 10 to 20 people in a working group and you work for a supervisor, and every few years as your supervisors rise up the ladder, they pick the few people to be their backfill replacements. And that happens all the way up to you reach the top. And so people tend to really just wait in a call to corner like my father. They do a job, they do a great job, but they wait for that promotion, they wait for that promotion. The western mindset of leadership good or bad, as we call it, the shooting star mentality. It’s a personality driven culture, you might be a really talented executive with no charisma, or you might be a really charismatic executive with no content. And you might be let go or transition down within a year but we call it the shooting star because it doesn’t matter because once you land and you hit it big at one place, then you know your career is kind of set that is antithetical to the way that most Asians are raised. So tying this all together in terms of early, mid and late career. In early career discussion, having the self awareness that whether you believe that there’s institutional glass ceiling or not that you’re entering the environment that you are in essence a minority. It’s harder here in Silicon Valley in San Francisco or 60% of professionals are Asian but only 10% make executive and above. We talked about a study done by two former Cisco executives that I know very well. They’ve been tracking this for now almost 12 years and they do it for all ethnicities. We talked about a leadership parity index. Systemically it says that Caucasian males executives used to be almost at 2.0 like 12 years ago and they’ve gone down and Caucasian women have improved but all other ethnicities black, Latinx and Asian have either remained stable or in the case of Asians, we’ve actually gotten down in leadership. With Asian male executive, I think it’s 0.6 an Asian female like at 0.4 or 0.5. And so be aware that the reason why there’s only 10% executives to 60% population of workers, it has a lot to do with I believe with cultural upbringing and the way we’re trained, you will get very discouraged if you’re going to wait around. I think that’s the biggest difference. I think about what my dad wanted for me and what I did, I was definitely more of the take control and be active in my career. And so for me it was when the opportunity arose and I felt that I had enough job content to take the role, I took the calculated risk, and I stepped into it. And that’s a very different mindset than most Asian Americans.

Angela Lin 18:12
So can you talk a little bit more about that? Because as you described your career like you have climbed quite a bit and like you hit that executive level and then now you’re doing your own thing. I’m curious, like, how did you navigate breaking from the way that your dad brought you up to to think about the corporate world what you were seeing the other Asian people doing? What was it in you that was like, I’m not going to follow this norm, and I’m gonna do things my own way.

Keith Koo 18:38
I think there’s two parts of that. The first part is my dad wanted me to either become an accountant or study finance. My dad’s plan was you’re going to do this, this and this. Well, I’ll be very, very frank. I’m not the typical Asian where I’m going to, you know, basically nail the CFA exams. So then I had to think about well, what career paths do I want that’s not doctor, lawyer, engineer or accountant. I actually intentionally picked more roles related to soft skills. And that’s with relationship management, and then operations and deals, you don’t find actually many Asians in these roles. Once you pick a career where they actually value for your domain expertise and you’re unique, then you kind of have a better way of setting your path, because you’re going to be sought out for that skill set. And that’s what becomes a differentiator.

Angela Lin 19:25
So on your show, because you mentioned that you have been able to bring on guests that are largely minority and women, which is amazing. But we also have that juxtaposed against this, like very small percentage of minorities and women in the management level. So we’re curious, like, do you find it difficult at all to book these guests? Or is it that the Asians and the other minorities like yourself that have like chosen to go against the norm have this like magnetic connection to each other and start gravitating towards each other, and you just have this network already of people that are like minded.

Keith Koo 20:04
It’s a combination. So I said earlier that my shows had like two thirds women and minorities. But I’m not intentional about that. What I focus on are stories. And so what happens is my corporate life, I was doing lots of technology deals. And so I’ve done deals with almost every major technology company. And what happens is you develop a good network. And so a lot of those people then become startup founders. So what I think happens is, we all get on our routines. And I think when you think about normal stereotypes of even startup founders, there’s a term called the blue flame. So the blue flame is a stereotype in Silicon Valley. If you Google it, it’ll say it’s two Caucasian male founders single after college dropped out of the PhD program. This is like the Google founders, the Facebook founders, the Yahoo founders, right. And then sometimes it’s a Caucasian male and an Asian male. And this is really not politically correct now, especially what’s going on with the current climate but up until February like people celebrate this, that this is like the perfect startup combo right? Back to my shows guests it’s more of the latter part of what you said, which is like people with like mindedness that I’m trying to highlight stories. But really the startup world, while investors might be identifying with this blue flame concept there are startup stories everywhere. And that’s what I’m trying to highlight. The issue that I have with Asian Americans, and it’s the issue in society in general with the whole George Floyd incident, there’s that term white adjacency. I think Asians automatically got lumped into white adjacency. And if you think about comparing it to the startup ecosystem, there are definitely startup founders of color, definitely start founders of black indigenous people of color, and I work with them, but there’s not a lot of them. And so the key is, how do we get more people are comfortable with starting their own thing to actually take that risk. And as they have good products and concepts, they interact with people who are colorblind in the situation, they will then get access to the funds and everything else, because people get really used to their routines. And so if you’re a venture capitalist and you’re used to funding a certain profile company, you’re good to keep funding that profile company, you have to actually get disrupted to feel like you can go beyond that.

Angela Lin 22:04
So break the mold people, it’s time to take those risks. That’s the takeaway here.

Jesse Lin 22:10
And related to the ideas of like soft skills, and being more vocal for yourself, what do you think has helped to really build those skills and become an advocate for yourself? Because I think at least for myself, when I first started out, I had that mentality that I was just kind of gonna put the pedal to the metal like put the hours in and then like, have a soft conversation about the amount of output that I was making to try and pivot that into like the next thing but I think as I’ve grown in my career, I found that that’s like not enough. You have to be like very, very loud, about, like, what you’re doing the results that you’re achieving. So do you have any advice for our listeners about how they should go about trying to do that for themselves?

Keith Koo 22:49
This is a double edged sword for Asians and for women too. Western leadership style – it’s almost expected to be bold and brash, kind of go guns blazing. I think for Asians, you kind of got to build up to that notoriety. So for me, I’m not the guns blazing person. That’s not my brand. But I am known as extremely blunt in business, we joke about it in the startup world. Sometimes I come across a little bit of Simon Cowell, because I might be smiling. If you ask me to tell you exactly what I think about your business idea, I will tell you exactly what I think. The difference with Asians you can’t start off like that. You got to build up into that brand. And so I’m going to switch it around. I don’t think it’s so much what the soft skills is. I think it’s how are you going to develop your persona and your influence? And what are you going to be known as. Through our nonprofits – we did three nonprofits, Asian Business League, Asian Leadership Alliance, which is a collection of Asian employee resource groups from companies and NAP San Francisco, we had a personal branding event with Karen Kang. She’s talking about personal branding. So along these lines of soft skills, it’s develop your consistent brand of what you want to be known for. And through that, develop your strategy and how you’re gonna get promoted.

Angela Lin 23:55
Keith, I think you’re my spirit animal because I love what you said it definitely echoes the way that I’ve kind of built up my own persona at work. Personal branding is a like fascinating topic. My last job, I was in a position where I didn’t like directly manage people, but because I worked in consulting as well. So I did projects where I was like, informally managing groups, and a lot of those folks were younger, like the first job out of college, they don’t really know how to navigate the corporate world. And what I found was that they don’t often think about the concept of personal branding and what reputation they’re trying to build in order to influence or direct, their career path a certain way. And that’s understandable, given that it’s their first job, but it’s just like very interesting because a lot of the conversations I would have with them is they would see the way that I carry myself in the way that I was able to influence like my managers, for example, and they’re like, how do I get to that kind of level because they haven’t thought through like, what do I need to do to craft that for myself?

Keith Koo 24:59
Yeah, I think you’re usually brought up in a structure my own family included where you don’t question authority. You can’t question decisions that are being made and you don’t have a voice. And then you get into the western corporate world and inherently embedded they know that about Asians. But at the same time, in order to thrive in the Western world, you have to bring up ideas, and you have to show how you’re adding value, but you can’t do it in a boastful or bragging sort of way. But here’s my suggestion on that. If you have the opportunity, especially in your early career, before focusing on money, figure out what leaders you align to, you can find leaders that like you. So that’s kind of what happened to me as I look back is I had a career path and then I impressed certain leaders in other divisions. So that’s why I don’t have I don’t have a linear career path. They’d asked, hey, do you want to work for me? And so I learned way more from the people that wanted me to come over and took me under their wing, and that was probably worth more than any near term financial opportunity.

Angela Lin 25:55
So I think our conversation has naturally flowed in a bit of a like chronological sense of your path along life now we’re going to transition into a further phase in life, which is another area that you have like some passion for helping people with, which is estate planning, right? This is also something that you’ve been mentoring and coaching some folks about. The closer reality for us to think about is our parents, right? Because they’re, they’re older and thinking about the eventual time that we have to say goodbye, which is very sad, but we need your advice. My dad literally will not write a will, like he’s just gonna verbally tell me all the things I’m gonna have to remember all of them somehow. So, like, we want to hear more about what you do there and how you would advise us to approach our parents with being a little bit more strategic with how they’re thinking about this topic.

Keith Koo 26:46
Yeah, this is great. I don’t have any work around estate planning. The passion around it is my parents just passed away and we realized that our dad being the way he is as a planner, he wanted to plan everything always. So funeral arrangements he planned everything already. My sister, I really had nothing to do. So this passion of ours is we know, especially in Asian culture, the passion is getting people to understand and educated on these options. What normally happens is you should at least have a trust, no matter what your parents should have a trust. I’ve developed all these connections in especially here in Silicon Valley in the Bay Area, and then I have reach nationally. If you need help with this, just come hit me up and ask me for help because we like empowering people. A trust does a few things a trust protects your financial assets from probate. Probate is this process when you don’t have a will or a trust that will eat up a certain percentage of your estate just because of the administration and it’s going to lock up your family’s funds. So like if they needed to make a mortgage payment on their existing property that might be at risk because you can’t make a mortgage payment anymore. So a living trust a trust or revocable living trust, all these terms, that is a minimum is something that everybody should consider. And then when you do your living trust, if you have an attorney that incorporates everything that that also gives you which is equally important durable power of attorney so that you can actually make decisions on behalf of your parents, if that’s what they want you to do. Your parents can actually decide what level of treatment they want. In the medical universe, there’s always this distinction between life saving measures and quality of life measures. So you could be resuscitated but you might be a vegetable, but because you didn’t express your wishes, the medical team that find you in whatever condition you’re at, they’ll do everything they can to keep you alive. Now, arguably in a vegetative state, and you’re 80 something years old and 90 something years old, my personal decision would not to live in a vegetative state. So durable power of attorney, is this financial decisions, medical decisions. Advanced Directive is how do you want to be resuscitated or not resuscitated. And then if you have children, there’s guardianship so you can see designate who you want. Now, I’m not an attorney. And again, I’m not saying I do any of these services. I just think it’s really important for the community, any community, especially Asians that they are aware of these things. The premise of most Asian families is that we don’t want to be a burden to our kids.

Angela Lin 28:55
Do you have any go to Chinese speaking people who could help?

Keith Koo 29:01
So this is good, this is really good. As a passion project, my sister and I are actually thinking of putting together some type of community platform together that really focuses on the questions that you’ve asked. Because like when you think about attorneys they’re like McDonald’s, they want to get you in, get out, get your documents and gone. Talk about financial planners, they want to be there to take on the assets. They don’t want to get into the messiness of this. So we’re actually going to come up with something that’s going to serve the community and it will most likely have language options. So I’m assuming that you and your family would like this service.

Angela Lin 29:30
Yeah, well, I’m gonna push it on them when it’s available.

Keith Koo 29:34
Along with that, then when you think about estate planning estate has to deal with when you die. I think there’s so many other areas that is almost taboo to talk about in Asian culture. You don’t talk about money, which is why you don’t have personal finance education, because your parents want to talk about money. It’s bad luck, or it’s not polite, or we don’t tell people about our financial situation, even people that we pay to manage our finances. And then you talk to you about death that’s taboo because there’s bad spirits, there’s bad omens, bad luck. Or it’s also impolite and disrespectful because you’re waiting for me to die. It’s kind of like, I get it. I have all these conflicting cultures in me, right? What are you gonna do when we talk about elder care senior care, the Asian model is to go live with you in your house and you’re gonna take care of them. But when you have a two income earner and you’ve got your own kids, that doesn’t become practical. So what are the options out there for you? Right. And so we’ve talked a lot about senior care, elder care as well. I know we said it’s estate planning, but it’s really about this concept in the Western world that we spent 18 years raising our kids, we spent 19 years taking care of our parents on average. That’s a statistic. That’s a real statistic. Yeah, that’s a that’s a measurement.

Jesse Lin 30:40
When do you think it’s critical for a younger person to start thinking about estate planning and setting these administrative things up?

Keith Koo 30:47
Certainly, if you’re getting married, you should be thinking about it. When you do a living trust, you can actually plan ahead for when you have kids, or if you have multiple kids, like you can actually set like I’m gonna split this 50/50 between my children. If you have any assets, if you buy a house, for instance, you should definitely think about it at that point in time because you don’t want all the things you worked for in life to suddenly be getting extra taken out of it just because only because you didn’t have a will or trust the government gets an extra percentage of your estate when you’re gone, because you didn’t have anything set up.

Angela Lin 31:16
Okay. Yes, Dad, please.

First of all, thank you. This has been amazing. I think, since you’ve heard some of our other episodes, I think this is maybe the most informative so we’ve ever had. So thank you very much for joining us. We forgot to mention that the way that Keith and us got connected is that we are all part of this Asian Podcast Network so shout out to Jerry for bringing us all together. To close out we are now moving into our Fortune Cookie closing section because we like to end on a sweet treat with something fun and to share with people our biggest flops that we’ve had with working on our podcast. So one time we had a guest on and we talked for like an hour and a half. It was a really wonderful conversation. And we had her drop off before we stopped the recording. And we only found out after that happened that that deleted her entire recording for an hour and a half. And we were able to recover it but there was a huge panic. But that for sure is our biggest flaw because we had a mild heart attack thinking about the time and energy lost.

Keith Koo 32:30
I see. So I’m a little bit spoiled because I have a radio show and my radio show is – my radio show results in a podcast and my radio show’s recorded. And so I have a professional sound engineer that fixes everything. So I would say that my normal flops would be where I mis-track when the guest is going to air kind of like what I was doing earlier in your show. So I lose track of when the show’s going to air and it’s not usually in sequential order. So I might mix up like who’s up next or – so I’ve done stuff like that where like oh, my next show will be so and so and it’s not so and so because of that. So that’s most often what I screw up.

Angela Lin 33:07
Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you?

Keith Koo 33:09
The easiest way to get ahold of me is just email me at Keith@svin.biz. My radio show Silicon Valley Insider, you can subscribe to it on any major podcast platform. You can also go to svin.biz to find out more about me and it’s been great to be here. So I thank you, Angela and Jesse. And I hope we get to do it again sometime.

Angela Lin 33:30
Looking forward to it. Thank you. So if you guys enjoyed this episode, please write us in because as we mentioned, this is a very different type of episode. And I think if you’re interested in us bringing on more guests like this, definitely tell us because this is the type of stuff we’re trying to work into the way that we’re thinking about future topics and future episodes. So email us your feedback at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com the YOURE is Y-O-U-R-E.

Angela Lin 0:14
Today we have a super special topic. It is legacy and children. And we have special guests with us to help us with this topic. We have Katherine and Mark Kim from the Mom and Pop podcast. Obviously, you will be the best at giving the overview of your own podcast, but we felt like this is a perfect topic to do a crossover with you because this is like your bread and butter. You guys are young parents and Asians have a certain amount of pressure on us for kids and our futures. So we felt like you guys would be perfect guess for this topic. But why don’t you give your own version of your intro?

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Mark Kim 0:57
Yeah, sure. We started this podcast, Mom and Pop podcast. The idea came from just we always have these interesting conversations. And we always want to start a podcast as a hobby. Just mom and pop just us two. We’re just talking about parenting topics, whether it’s hospital visits, or the first trimester. We recently moved and with a baby, you know, that’s pretty complicated in itself. So yeah, we thought it would be fun to do that. So we’ve been doing that for like, two, three months now. That’s been fun.

Angela Lin 1:25
Katherine, tell us about your baby that you’re holding right now.

Catherine Kim 1:30
Situations a little crazy. Every day is a different rhythm. There’s nothing predictable and there’s no patterns to follow. But Valerie is almost a year old. Her birthday is coming up in August and there’s just a lot of transitions going on with her from like transitioning down from tuneups to one eating solid foods, weaning off of breast milk and going to cow’s milk and all that stuff. So

Angela Lin 1:58
Oh, it’s a whole new world I don’t like just I think Jesse and I are like what are these words they’re saying. So for the listeners just a heads up that like they are real live parents and Valerie is in Catherine’s lap right now so if there are baby noises or people having to be excused here and there just excuse that because this is real life y’all.

Mark Kim 2:23
Yeah, we don’t have a nanny or someone to help us so just please bear with us, yeah?

Angela Lin 2:28
Hashtag millennial.

Jesse Lin 2:30
It’s ok because she’s so cute.

Angela Lin 2:33
So I think the way that we wanted to go about this episode is that obviously you guys are the resident experts for this particular topic because you actually have a living child. My perspective that I’ll be providing is someone who is about to get married and is planning for children in the near future. And because Jesse does not want to partake necessarily in any of the above. He’s going to be our kind of emcee for today and hosting the questions.

Jesse Lin 3:06
Yeah, I’m like the most junior along this path of all you. But I do have a cat so I am raising a living creature.

Angela Lin 3:15
That’s true, maybe you’re ahead of me then because you were already caring for a living being and I’m not.

Jesse Lin 3:59
First off, we wanted to ask you guys why you wanted to start a family.

Mark Kim 4:04
I mean, I think for me personally, like family is a big thing. Not just the idea of having kids, but spending time with my parents spending time with extended family at times. So I guess it felt natural because we had been married for like 3-4 years and also seemed like the next step. In a sense, I don’t think there was like a aha moment it was kind of more of a this is what’s next we both want this. And it feels like right, like timing wise and like, financially wise,

Catherine Kim 4:31
I’ll say that for me. My parents worked all day always working around the clock. So that left me like home alone, quite often. And I just felt like kind of lonely growing up and always wishing that I had a bigger family especially because my brother’s seven years older than me. So I always thought like, I want my family situation to be way different from, you know, what I had grown up with, and I thought, somehow my life would be a little bit more fuller If you know I just had children of my own.

Jesse Lin 5:02
So Mark, you mentioned like, you guys didn’t really have a moment where you were like, We know we want to have kids. It was just kind of like series of things coming together. That being said, like, was there a point where you’re like, Okay, like we’re now this far into our marriage? Do we feel like we’re ready to embark on the next step? And if so, like, what was kind of the driving force behind that?

Mark Kim 5:25
Yeah, financially wise, I think we wanted to make sure that made sense. And I think health is always a thing. So you know, not wanting to wait too long to have children. That’s something that we considered as well.

Catherine Kim 5:37
I think as a kid, you always think like, oh, I want to be a young parent. So I’m gonna get married at like, 22 and then have a kid like 24. And then, you know, you never like consider the career aspects, right? I think especially with our generation, and there’s this huge emphasis of going to like grad school and then getting like an actual paying salary. There were career milestones that we had to hit and In order to feel like let me get to a place in my career where if I had to raise children for a little bit, I could come back to my career without having to start all over again. And then kind of like fight for my job back.

Jesse Lin 6:15
When you guys finally realize you’re like, Okay, cool, like, we’re ready to do this. Like we’re ready to have a baby. Who were the first people that you told?

Catherine Kim 6:25
Oh, good question. I think it was Mark’s mom, my mother in law. Because I’m whipped by her.

Mark Kim 6:42
Yeah, but that is true. One of the first people we told after we found out was my mom and my dad. I don’t know if he was there. Okay, so

Catherine Kim 6:50
I actually had an approach to telling people when I was ready, I saw it. I don’t remember who was the first person and I was like, if I just casually tell people then maybe I’ll be less stressed out about the fact that I’m trying.

Angela Lin 7:03
I actually do remember Catherine very casually telling me that you guys are gonna try soon, because she and I went on a road trip together and yeah, she was like, this is gonna be so fun because it’s gonna be like my last time to binge before we’re gonna have kids I was like what? Okay. Catherine. What was the biggest surprise that you had during the birthing process that you did not expect prior?

Catherine Kim 7:35
I really badly wanted to go through vaginal labor. But since Valerie was breached, I had no options. I had to do c-section like they always say c-section is a major surgery. And it’s exactly – like I was surprised to figure that that that it really was like a major surgery, because the whole process of it is really jarring. You don’t imagine giving birth to a baby in a real surgical room. So it’s just like bright lights everywhere and you feel like you’re on this TV show about to get like, like cut. But then, um, the surgery only took like five minutes, and then they glue you back together, which is like another two minutes. And it just happened so fast. Even though it’s a scary process, you have to be like super positive and keep telling yourself positive things because there’s no good and kind of scaring yourself or stressing out about it. And I keep telling like friends who are pregnant, like I’m like, just stay positive, like you don’t want to be stressed out and you don’t want to think of all these outlying stories.

Angela Lin 8:43
Mark, how about you as the non birth giver? What was the biggest surprise that you had about that process?

Mark Kim 8:51
So the process is so weird, like I literally walk in the room sit next to her and then five minutes later the baby’s born. I’m like, just happened. Just hear a baby crying. Yeah, it’s kind of like 10 feet away cuz they took the baby out like that come here and cut the umbilical cord. I’m like, Wait, what? What is happening? Like, like, okay, I’ll cut it. And then it doesn’t hurt until like, an hour or two later. I’m like, oh my gosh does happen like wow, that’s our baby, you know, like, so c-section is just like a weird experience. Very weird.

Unknown Speaker 9:27
Hey Catherine, one question I have for you because I – like Mark you mentioned one of the factors for why you guys decided it was time was like, biological right for Catherine and like, obviously that drives a lot of my thinking because I’m now on your guys’s age when I’m not pregnant yet, right? But I haven’t had that point in my life where I’m like, I have baby fever and I’m like, oh my god. Babies are so cute and I need to have a baby. And I don’t know if that’s a real thing. Like, if you had baby fever at some point, I was like, this is the time or if you’re just like, no, this is just practicality.

Catherine Kim 10:06
I think I had enough mutual friends that had young children where I’m like, well, gosh, I’m really getting older, and they’re gonna, it’s gonna be so nice for them. They’re gonna be nice and young when their children are graduating from high school and don’t get to enjoy retirement like you know, so it was a combination of the biological factor but when I I did have enough like, friends with children where I did, I did get that baby fever a bit, especially because my sister in law is our age 30 and she had already had a kid at that point. And then there was definitely like in-law pressure to add my brother to everyone was like everybody has a baby in our families. Like you guys are the last one.

Jesse Lin 10:50
Once you guys got married, what was it like? Like were your folks kind of just like on you on having the children next.

Mark Kim 10:57
I think like my parents or my mom, especially she like really values financial stability. So until that was something that we felt like we had and felt comfortable, like she would not push it. So she’ll say stuff like, Oh, you know, you got to make sure you get your masters. Yeah, it wasn’t a pressure right away. Maybe we didn’t hear it until like a few months or a year to a year before we actually start trying. We felt some pressure, but not that much right?

Catherine Kim 11:25
I disagree. So I don’t know if this is necessarily an Asian thing or a Korean, that when it’s a circle of just women like you, you can imagine, like your elder motherly figures kind of like, hey, it’s about time, like you’re turning thirty. And in comparison to like our other family members, we were a bit more financially established so everyone kind of kept prodding at me like, hey, your life is nice. Like you both have have incomes and you can support a child obviously financially, like why haven’t you been talking about it? And I think another weird thing that came up was like, we could have mutual friends and then they tell us like, hey, your brother and sister-in-law was asking us when you guys are gonna have a kid and I’m like, well, that’s odd. Like, why wouldn’t you just ask this directly but yeah, I didn’t know like, I feel like every I felt like everyone tiptoed around us for sure family wise. But my mom was super aggressive and she was kind of like, you’re turning 30 and I’m getting you this oriental medicine and it’s gonna like make your eggs fertile.

Jesse Lin 12:47
You know, based off of the pressure that you guys are kind of felt. What do you guys think of this idea of Asian families pressuring their children to carry on this like legacy like you have to have a blood related child kind of above all as kind of a way to respect and honor your parents and like your larger family.

Angela Lin 13:07
Pass down your last name and all that.

Mark Kim 13:10
So I have an older brother. So technically he’s the one that would carry the family line. So they had a daughter first, and then they had a son. So it’s like, whoa, okay. I think it was a little like there was meaning behind it, because my dad is the only one in his family that had sons. So my brother having a son, it was sort of like, I don’t think we talked about it. But it was sort of a, you know, like, okay, we have that that happened. So that’s cool.

Catherine Kim 13:38
I definitely remember your brother at one point was like, I need to have a son because him being the only like the oldest son of the only son to have a son blah, blah, blah. He actually had to fly to Korea to hold your grandmother or grandfather his portrait in their funeral procession And I think he felt the weight of being the the legacy. I mean, he has a lot of pride and being that guy in the family. Us being the younger children, we never realized like that that’s a thing. And that people really care about it. But I do remember your brother placed a lot of importance in that. I also remember, my dad had like, growing up, told me like, you’re the girl so you’re not carrying my family name, which means you’re not entitled to like whatever I need in this life or whatever. But when I got married, my dad was like, hey, I hear like people are keeping their maiden name and their last name, and I think he was feeling pretty proud of me at that point. And he was like, why don’t you go with Chang-Kim and I was like, that sounds like shank him. No sexy as it sounds, I needed to kind of neutralize my name.

Unknown Speaker 15:09
The girl piece is funny and I think I relate to that. But I feel like it was always known that like you’re gonna get married off so like you don’t carry on the family name. So you’re not you’re like somewhat lesser to that point, right. But for me it was interesting because I feel like my importance changed when my brother came out as gay, because that like shifted a lot of things in their minds because he’s also seven years older than me, but he’s the eldest and he’s the son. So he theoretically is supposed to, like propel forward the Lin family into the future. But I think they had like a very narrow view of what that means, like passed down the family name, and they’re like, well, you’re not going to have kids of your own like blood kids. From there they’re like Angela, you you’re the only one who’s gonna like have children that are biologically ours of like grandkids so then there is this like newfound pressure on me even though I was like somewhat discounted because my last name was gonna change. But like because of the blood factor, they were like, well now you’re our only hope.

Catherine Kim 16:19
Yeah, definitely a real thing. And I I’ve heard of a few friends of mine who had some like the same situation as yours. And even with my brother, my mom, kind of like his wife wasn’t about well, now ex wife wasn’t about to have children or get pregnant, because she was really scared about it and like, just didn’t want one and then my mom kind of forced her to go through IVF or not forced her to but she was like, if I’m going to get pregnant, then I’m going to get like IVF done and my mom was like, like, I’ll foot the bill. As long you have a kid in our name, like, I’ll pay whatever it takes to make sure kid comes out.

Angela Lin 17:05
Kind of crazy. Why do you think Asians are so obsessed with like propelling our name forward?

Unknown Speaker 17:13
I think there’s a fear a little bit of like the family being forgotten, because there’s like this cyclical expectation that there will always be someone there to be like, thinking of the family, venerating the family, like carrying on the fact that the family exists. And when the name disappears, I feel like a part of that disappears, right? Like you no longer belong to this line of people who stretch back to like, however long ago, it just kind of vanishes. So, I think there’s definitely some, at least from my perspective, I feel like there’s some fear around that that people will just forget, like all these ancestors and forefathers and all that.

Angela Lin 17:49
Yeah, kind of reminds me of in Coco the movie when they’re like, Well, once the last person living on earth doesn’t remember you, you’re like forgotten forever from this world.

Catherine Kim 18:00
You know, just as the perspective of being someone’s child, I remember my mom kind of pushing me to be great at piano, like prodigy status at piano so that she could write books about and get famous. My mom was kind of greedy in that sense. But also, I think it was absolutely what Jesse was explaining right now that some there’s something in her that was like, I don’t want to be forgotten. I want to be remembered for something great. So while I’m saying that I don’t feel that way with Valerie, like I don’t want to push her into doing anything that she doesn’t want to do, you know?

Angela Lin 18:41
I’m curious how you are thinking about perpetuating the Korean tradition with Valerie in terms of both like, the language as well as any traditions, customs, rights, those kinds of things. Like how important is that to you in passing those on to her?

Mark Kim 19:02
I feel like it’s important to keep some of it as much as possible, right? Like, I’ve had to kind of expect her to speak Korean to us because we don’t speak Korean. Her Korean is actually going to be probably pretty terrible, but, you know, hopefully she’ll still be able to communicate with her grandparents. Hopefully, you know, there’ll be times where when we celebrate something like Korean, like New Year’s Chinese New Year’s, we do that and eat like this rice cake soup. New Year’s, we also do like the bowing to the elders and you know, showing them honor and respect something like that, even though that’s not something we might have thought too deeply about when we were little, like now I appreciate it more. So that’s something we would want to, you know, like teach her and keep that going. You know, I also want to be able to travel to Korea and like have her hopefully she’ll appreciate stuff like that, you know?

Catherine Kim 19:52
I also have like fun memories of going back to Korea because my mom is from the countryside, and I loved Feeling similar immersed in the Korean culture. But I realized that that would be unrealistic for Valerie because I don’t even keep in touch with my cousins in Korea. So I do want to put her in like Korean, like traditional Korean dancing like not Kpop dancing, but I hope that I can at least do some thing to make sure that she has a sense of identity within the Korean culture.

Jesse Lin 20:27
As you mentioned, raising a child is a very difficult thing. And we kind of – Angela and I have discussed before – that there are like many life things that we feel like our parents did not fully prepare us for. So when you guys did have the baby? Do you feel like your parents were able to impart like any helpful things?

Mark Kim 20:46
Yeah, you know, I can’t think of anything specific that they taught us or taught me. Yeah, I would say it’s more like implicit lessons. You know, like my dad always wants us to eat together to for dinner together. Every night, you know, like, there was no eating by yourself at the computer or TV or whatever. It’s like, no meal times are family time. Just so you can at least take a break from our busy lives and so something that we picked up so we don’t even now when we eat we usually eat together even though the baby’s there and we’re like, kind of juggle eating and feeding or taking care of her. So that’s something that maybe I picked up.

Catherine Kim 21:26
I feel like you’re coming from a male perspective. From day one of when Valerie was first born, it was like a nightmare of like so many different kinds of advice, like I had just, like delivered her and I remember holding her and my parents saying like put her down. You’re going to teach her a bad lesson of being too dependent on you. You’re not going to let her cry it out. She’s going to like want to be in your arms all the time. And like, it was like day one. I remember my cousin in law was like, kind of like, hey, brace yourself, because you’re gonna get advice from your mom and your mother in law that’s gonna like break your pride in ways you never knew that was going to happen.

Jesse Lin 22:22
Did your parents share anything like superstitious things you should like avoid when raising a child or like that you should be aware of while raising a child.

Catherine Kim 22:31
Oh my gosh, this one’s a weird one. And I don’t think it’s that weird but my mom kept telling me to take my temperature. Because when your body temperature is like when your body is ovulating, apparently it like peaks, like a higher temperature or something weird with the temperature fluctuation so I don’t know if that’s like a an Asian thing, but like it’s out there. And I got weirded out because I know she bought me a thermometer stick up my vajayjay or…

Angela Lin 22:59
Oh I thought you meant like you’re general body temperature..

Mark Kim 23:10
I don’t remember if this was like right before she was born or right before we got married but I think like it’s a thing. Probably an Asian like you don’t want to go to like a funeral or something that’s like negative or you know like something sad or depressing right before like a happy event because that will bring that bad juju bad voodoo or whatever bad vibe? So it was either our wedding or but anyway, my mom didn’t go to like an important like my mom my grandma’s funeral because it was in Korea. I think it was like a month a few weeks before our wedding and it was just like, like she didn’t want to over stress her body. And I think it was like, part of the reason like oh, we don’t want to go to a funeral right before someone’s wedding.

Catherine Kim 23:56
When Mark’s cousin passed away, everyone did like one more last goodbyes, they let everyone kind of say farewell to her and I remember my other cousin had a baby and and our autn was like, you can’t bring the baby in. There’s something in the Asian culture where you know babies and, and death like I don’t even think that babies are allowed at funerals, maybe?

Angela Lin 24:20
Maybe it has something to do with both being too close to, like the portal of life opening and closing, I guess.

Jesse Lin 24:31
So let’s talk a little bit about Valerie. Did you guys give her a Korean name? We did her Korean name’s Eun-Ha. It just means galaxy. So I know like Korean culture, like there’s two different options of like how to come up with names. It’s either like go with just a regular Korean name, no Chinese meaning Chinese characters. And then there’s the other option of having like Chinese characters that like give a different meaning to the person’s name. But yeah, we picked Eun-Ha because her cousin is Min-Ha her other cousin at Yoon-Ha. So we’re like, oh, let’s keep the HA syllable like consistent with her two girl cousins probably. And then we just liked it. We were like, oh, it sounds pretty.

You guys just like kind of figured out what you wanted and picked it based off of like how it sounded? There wasn’t like a more elaborate process of finding someone to help do that for you?

Mark Kim 25:22
For guys or for sons, there usually is more of a process.

Catherine Kim 25:26
It’s kind of elaborate and basically your tribal surname. So like Mark is Kim, and there’s like a million different Kim clans and according to his clan it like depends on what generation he is in, that will decide like one of the syllables of his name. So if Valerie were to have been born as a boy, she would have had Jin in her name.

Jesse Lin 25:51
And speaking of names when you pick the English name for her, did your parents have any opinions on that?

Catherine Kim 25:58
Oh my gosh. Yes, my mother. If we had a sudden I was thinking, oh, maybe Joshua because Josh is kind of cute. And she goes, oh, that’s too common. No, it’s too many Joshua Kim’s in this world. I’m like, okay, like, what’s your idea? She’s like, well, I was thinking if you have a girl, maybe you can name her Grace, Grace Kim. Excuse me. I’m about to slap a hoe here.

Angela Lin 26:45
So we’re gonna move into our fortune cookie closing section because we always like to end on a sweet treat. I think you’ve already imparted a ton of knowledge about birthing and raising kids that certainly Jesse and I knew nothing about but what we thought would be a fun close is if each of you wanted to give one tip that everyone should know about raising a baby that you’ve learned in this past year.

Mark Kim 27:15
I think my tip would be like, well, maybe kind of two tips like your mileage may vary. And what I mean by that is like your experience and your kids experiences like can be totally different from other people. So don’t get too caught up in like comparing our my, why is my kid not XYZ yet, or why is she sleeping, you know, like less than this or whatever. So just to kind of accept that everyone’s so different, you’re different and your baby’s different, and you’re not going to be perfect. So yeah, just try to be flexible and kind of roll with the punches. You know, a roll with it type of thing.

Angela Lin 27:51
Ok, Catherine?

Unknown Speaker 27:52
Super cliche, be kind of yourself, huh? Cuz you’re always gonna find yourself like trying to like compare comparing you as a parent to other parents and at the end of the day because every child is different, like don’t beat yourself up over things like oh your baby’s not sleeping through the night or you know whatever like you’re not feeding your baby right or whatever and like if you keep feeding yourself into all the negativity then you can’t be your best self every day. So I would say and sleep when you can.

Angela Lin 28:26
Catherine Have you thought about becoming a mom Instagram influencer? Because I feel like if you put up motivational quotes out every day, you’d get a ton of followers

Mark Kim 28:38
Be kind to yourself

Catherine Kim 28:40
That’s the dream for a lot of mom like Facebook mommies out there, including this one. I’m reading like news feed things for moms. What job can I do to work from home but watch my kid at the same day, like on the same time and I’m like Instagram influencing?

Angela Lin 29:02
Well now, every job kind of. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us, like I said, very informative because we know nothing about this entire world so great to hear from your real life experience. Do you want to give any final plug for your podcast? Where can people find Mom and Pop podcast?

Mark Kim 29:25
So we haven’t figured out all our marketing. But I think if you Google Mom and Pop podcast, we should be on the top 25 hits up there. Google that Mom and Pop podcast and you should be able to find us on Spotify or iTunes and I forgot to mention, but we are just a mom and pop trying to figure out this parenthood thing. That’s what our podcast is about.

Angela Lin 29:50
That’s your tagline, huh? I feel like I hear it in every episode.

Mark Kim 29:53
Yeah, we start with that every episode, just a mom and pop.

Jesse Lin 29:58
Well, thanks again you guys are joining for those listeners. Obviously you can’t see but they were amazingly juggling the baby in the background and recording this. So it was amazing to watch while also recording this.

Mark Kim 30:12
We have to talk about this on our next pod: recording a podcast with the baby, cause we usually do it when she’s sleeping, but this is the first time we’ve done it.

Angela Lin 30:21
Yeah, this is real life. Yeah. Okay people if you like to this episode or if you have experience as a young parent or you have questions for young parents, please write us in at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. That “you’re” is Y-O-U-R-E, maybe we’ll get our resident experts Mark and Katherine to reply to some of your top questions. So let us know. And as always, please please please rate us five stars on Apple podcast so that we can keep getting that love. Come back next week for a new episode as always.

Jesse Lin 0:16
This week, we’re going to talk about something that I think not a lot of people like to think about, but we have thought about. So this week we’re going to be talking about death. And to start off, we will want to revisit a topic that we brought up briefly in our last episode related to past life regression. Take it away.

Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)

Angela Lin 0:39
Yeah, so for those who did not listen to last week’s episode, or don’t know what past life regression is, this is basically a technique where a hypnotist puts you in a trance, and then you’re able to remember your past lives. So last time I talked about this book that I I read that is like one of my favorite books, honestly, it’s called journey of souls by Michael Newton. And it’s written by him. It’s he is a hypnotherapist. And what struck me is that like he approaches it from like a skeptics point of view. So he like his intro, he talks about, like how he wasn’t particularly religious or believed in like, afterlife things very much and he like stumbled into past life regression by accident. He’s trained in hypnotizing people as part of just regular therapy. And I guess in one of his sessions, where he hypnotized one of his patients, they like accidentally regressed into one of his or her past lives. And I distinctly remember it was like super interesting because this patient was like, had been suffering from like a chronic pain in their life. Leg for like years and years and years and when they went to a bunch of doctors and specialists, the doctors like there’s literally nothing wrong with you like we took CAT scans and like nothing. We’re not seeing anything that could explain why this pain is here. There’s like chronic pains, it might be mental and that’s when they like or for them to see a therapist and whatnot. And so like that’s how this person ended up in Michael Newton’s office. And so he put them into a hypnotic trance just to like, try to get to the bottom of this pain. And that’s when this person accidentally, like regressed into a past life where it was like, they were someone from like, I don’t know the 1700s or 1800s or something and they got shot in the leg. And in like the exact spot that this person kept complaining that they had this like chronic pain. And so after discovering the like, source of the pain, Michael Newton was able to like help them erase the memory of or like ease the memory of this, this experience from the past life. And so when they came out of the trance, their pain was gone, because it was like it was sourced from like an experience from hundreds of years ago from like a whole different life.

Jesse Lin 3:21
That is extremely woowoo. So he like believes that they are that his patients are actually regressing to a past life. It’s not like a situation where he doesn’t believe but he thinks that the effects are significant enough that he wants to continue doing that regardless of whether or not the past life component of it is legitimate or not.

Angela Lin 3:47
I think it was enough that he got interested and digging deeper into the past life stuff. And then now he like specializes in past life regression, like he doesn’t do any other therapy anymore. He’s he only does this. And so that’s like a one off story, but his whole book, he’ll like give you this broad insight that is based off of like hundreds or thousands of cases. And then he gives you a transcript of like an actual patient session that like gives you more color and detail into that insight.

Jesse Lin 4:18
Actually, I’m curious, would you go do this if it was available to you?

Angela Lin 4:21
I don’t know. Because I don’t know if I’m ready to know that kind of stuff. I’ve always been one of those kinds of people that like, I’ve thought very often in my life about like, if one little thing had been different in my life, like, how much would that have impacted on anything else in my life? And so, this definitely follows into that thinking where if I were to go and learn about what my past lives were like, or what I’ve been struggling with, like, life after life after life and still haven’t nailed as like this eternal soul, I think it would probably change how I like go about my, my daily life and I’m like, not necessarily great way. So I don’t I don’t know if I would want to do that, would you?

Jesse Lin 5:07
I don’t think so either. I think for the same reason that I’m nervous about using hallucinogenic substances and things that are, like more intense from that perspective, because I’m worried about what kind of insights it’ll bring up. And from a lot, you know, and from a lot of the reports of people who are going on those trips, like some of those insights can be very, very life altering. And so I’m concerned that it would like alter my life in a way that I wouldn’t want. So I’m kind of the same thing like, firstly, I’m very skeptical of it, but secondly, I would also be very scared of what I would find right like, and also you just don’t want to find out that in your past life, you were like, a murderer or something like that. Like that would be like a terrible thing to like, find out about yourself.

Angela Lin 5:57
Yeah, but then you’re not a murderer. Now so you drew then you can see that you had progressed so much that you reincarnated into like a much better human.

Jesse Lin 6:09
In the book does he describe like how reincarnation works based off of the experiences with the patients?

Angela Lin 6:15
He talks about how the real and the eternal world is the spirit world that like, has existed forever and will continue to exist forever, like life on earth is just temporary and is like finite. And so when you die, your soul is released back to go back to this eternal world. And the purpose of each soul is essentially to like continue to better itself. With each reincarnation, you are going in with a purpose of like, these are my flaws, or these are my challenges that I am trying to work on in this upcoming life. So It’s just like an endless process of choosing to go back into human lives to work on these flaws.

Jesse Lin 7:09
And so in the typical reincarnation cycle, I feel like every time you’re reincarnated based off of your deeds, you’re supposed to move like upwards in the chain, right? You go from like, an insect to a dog to like a pony and then to like a poor human level, blah, blah. So in this like cycle, it isn’t like that. Right? You can be like, whatever depending on what you want to refine.

Angela Lin 7:31
Yeah, I think there’s some vagueness in what he found, like they kind of alluded to that there’s a possibility to reincarnate to lesser, like less developed beings than humans. But there wasn’t a sense of like, now you’re, like, tarnished and you’re not allowed to try anymore. I think the whole concept is that like everyone should try and continue to better themselves,

Jesse Lin 7:58
I guess to bring it back to the topic at hand, do these past life regressions like help people deal with death? Like did he do any sessions with people who are like end of life and like really struggling with that?

Angela Lin 8:09
I don’t think I read anything specifically about people with end of life. But since you brought up psychedelics earlier that has proven to help people who are close to death. So like cancer patients, they have been able to come to terms with the concept of death much more easily after those psychedelic experiences. And when you talk to those people, it’s because they have realized that they are part of something bigger, there’s crossover and that’s part of why I like really bought into this book because I was doing things drug therapy sessions and I had already had some of those experiences so they are able to not fear death because they know that this is a temporary body and they’re like everything is connected and we’re part of this bigger thing and so the idea of dying doesn’t scare them as much because then they know that they’re going back to this thing and that is like part of everything

Jesse Lin 8:57
You have done this like more intense hallucinogenic experiences. Did you confine any aspect of death? Like you still have a fear of death? How has that changed for you?

Angela Lin 9:07
I did confront death. There was actually a part of my ayahuasca experience where I was taken into like the underworld and I was like guided by like a bunch of demons and devils and ghosts and like scary shit. And it was scary to like be following them and to go into this hellscape essentially. But once I got there, it actually was just like calming place and there wasn’t anything scary there. I think I saw my soul just like a glowing orb there that I knew was my soul. I think it just like reaffirmed to me that death can be scary and the fear of dying can be scary, but like just remember who you really are. That was like a very revealing experience, but I have to keep reminding myself of that. So if I’m in a situation where I’m like, on the edge of a cliff, yeah, I’m going to be scared to like die doesn’t change. I think there’s a disconnect there. But how about you, is fear of dying something that like you’re constantly thinking about? What’s going on?

Jesse Lin 10:04
What I’m afraid of is like the absence of experience rather than pain or like loss of people or whatever. Because there’s no guarantee right? Like, once you pass, you could go to this realm that you’re talking about, or it could be something that’s more aligned with any of the religions that are currently being practiced right now, but you don’t know. So I definitely do have, I think, a healthy fear of dying, but I also don’t think that it impacts me as much as I think it does. It’s not like I curtail any things that are risky because of this.

Angela Lin 10:33
I don’t think I’m so much afraid of me dying as like, more recently, I have been pretty afraid of my parents dying. It’s a very real thing that’s like going to happen in the near future because they’re older. My brother’s seven years older than me. My mom had me when she was almost 40. So it’s pretty scary because you have to just like come to terms with reality. I think death is something that like no one wants to talk about. But in order to like first of all, prepare For the eventual that’s going to happen and like get your things in order from like a very logical sense, you do have to talk about it. And then from another sense, you have to acknowledge it so that you appreciate the time that you have left part of my like psychedelic experience when I was like thinking about my relationship with my parents and wanting to like men that more a big piece of it was thinking about their age, and like just how many years are left and a lot of regret about the years that have been lost because of not having great relationships with them prior. Yeah, I don’t think a lot about my own death. But I do think more frequently than I ever used to about theirs.

Jesse Lin 11:38
Dying and death is like not something people talk about. And even the entire process of like passing is quite complicated, and no one really explains what you’re supposed to do. How are you supposed to get a funeral plot, who arranges the services and like what happens if you die in your home? There’s a lot of big questions around that. So if you were to pass how would you like people to handle your passing?

Angela Lin 12:04
It’s kind of hard to say I feel like I am at the same time someone who likes attention because I’m a Leo and I like it’s part of my personality but at the same time I don’t like people making a big fuss about me. I have like this dual self here. And so when I think about death, I don’t really want to make it a big thing. I want people to pay their respects they want to pay because they you know, want to honor my life and the relationships we have. I don’t want it to become this like huge thing and like people to be just like so, so sad. And I haven’t thought about it very much. But I feel like I would probably prefer to be cremated versus buried because I feel like being buried and I’m just being facetious here but like, I feel like being buried it’s just for your vanity sake. What is the point of having your body in this like pretty case that like can’t then disintegrate into the earth, you’re just like taking up space. Versus like cremation or just dust so like someone could keep you on their mantle piece forever or they could spread your ashes somewhere and then you just like go back to the earth right? You’re not taking up space and like hurting the planet more. That’s part of my thoughts about it. And also from a practical standpoint, cremation is like a lot cheaper and like you take up less space, it’s just like a lot of things. I don’t need to be immortalized in death with like, fancy burial and like a coffin and all that shit.

Jesse Lin 13:31
Good to know. Let this be your last will and testament.

Angela Lin 13:35
Ramon?

Jesse Lin 13:38
Have you thought about it? I have. I think I’m in the same boat as you in the sense that I don’t want people to be like despairingly sad at the funeral. I would prefer a funeral be more of like a celebration of the person that I was and my people gathering to think about the good times that they had with me as opposed to like, be really sad. I really like the idea of like a New Orleans funeral where they have like the jazz band. It’s very like it’s kind of like a party for the person that’s passed. That’s kind of like at this point in my life what I think I would like when I pass and then in terms of like disposal of the body I don’t really know I don’t have a really opinion on that I feel like usually disposal of the body opinion is like more on the family because it’s like there’s a cost associated with it and then like, oh, if you get somebody ashes who’s gonna hang on to them, but I saw these like really interesting pod coffins. They’re meant to be like, buried under a tree and the coffin like will disintegrate over time so that you will basically be like, absorbed into the roots.

Angela Lin 14:39
So it fixes my issue with traditional coffins.

Jesse Lin 14:42
Yes, but I think that would be like a really cool way to do it.

Angela Lin 14:46
The cremation versus coffin thing though. I think it’s interesting because I think you’re right that a lot of it has to do with the family decision, but from like, because we’re always talking about East versus West, like looking at the contrast between the two cultures I do think it’s like very significantly skewed towards cremation in Asia. I don’t think anyone does coffin burials in Asia. I wonder if that is cultural thing in terms of having to do with spiritual rites and all that stuff and or if it’s just a space thing, like there’s not a space in Asia.

Jesse Lin 15:19
That’s what I was to give out to this space on the economics of it, because like, it’s expensive to bury someone like, well, you have to have the coffin you have to prepare the body, then somebody’s got to dig the hole, then you got to fill the hole versus cremation. You just like, hey, you go in an oven and there you go. Your parents have purchased plots for the purpose of placing ashes?

Angela Lin 15:41
I assume. So they’ve talked about cremation interests and their thoughts have also changed over time. I mean, they have to settle on something because like you said they did buy plots just like your parents bought plot, but like they used to talk about wanting to be brought back to Taiwan to be like, buried with their family plots, but I think they ended up buying the California plots because it’s like, just the reality is where they live most of their life and where it’s likely to happen.

Jesse Lin 16:09
Well, I think they’re also thinking about like, once they have passed, like how likely it is that we would visit them, you know, if they were buried in Taiwan, like once every few years, maybe.

Angela Lin 16:17
But also, if they were brought back to Taiwan, they would be buried with their families, and then everyone else in Taiwan would go visit them, and we would still go, just not as frequently.

Jesse Lin 16:27
Well, you guys are slightly different. Because there’s two of you, there’s you and your brother, but for my parents, it’s just me. I feel like that was part of their decision because I’m the only like a real descendant to visit though. The truth is, I don’t even know if we have like a family plot. And that might also be a reason why.

Angela Lin 16:42
Yeah, my dad has one his side of the family and they used to talk about he would be very there and then my mom would have to be buried there too, because women always follow the man. But yeah, that that has since changed because of this LA plot.

Jesse Lin 16:58
Have you talked to parents about what they want to do?

Angela Lin 17:01
Bro. They talk about it all the time.

Jesse Lin 17:03
They’re like preparing you.

Angela Lin 17:04
It’s part of why I think about it all the time. Yeah, they are preparing us, me and my brother. And like the first time they brought it up. I was like, I don’t want to hear this. Like I was so pissed off.

Jesse Lin 17:13
It is a little morbid.

Angela Lin 17:14
It’s super morbid. They brought it up a few years ago for the first time and I was like, you’re still young. They were younger than I think like early 60s or whatever. I’m like, you still have lots of life left. Like please stop talking about this with me because I was like, I don’t want to deal with this. This is sad. But like little by little they’ve been talking about it more my dad for end of life care. His thoughts are the same as my thoughts on end of life, which is he’s like, I don’t want to be a burden when I start deteriorating. Don’t take care of me pay someone to take care of me. And then when I’m at a point where I’m just like, useless and like a vegetable, essentially, if that were to ever happen, just pull the plug like I don’t want to be a burden on anyone. And I have similar thoughts but I’ll add a like different layer which is I don’t want to be a burden to anyone but I also have like selfish thoughts when I think about that, which is like if I’m a vegetable, I am not enjoying life anymore. What is the point of me living just to breathe through tubes and to like not be able to interact with anyone and like say anything to the people I love or like do anything that I want to do just to like stay alive. So my thought is like, as soon as I’m not healthy, and I’m just like miserable, just fucking kill me like I’m over it.

Jesse Lin 18:30
Well, you can’t do that here. No one will help you with that here. But maybe if you move to like Norway or something where they have like assisted suicide. Yeah, I don’t think my parents have really talked about it in that level of specificity but they’re also not as old as your parents. They have mentioned like trying to retire in one of those live by yourself but assisted nursing is available kind of situations like Leisure World and Laguna Hills. Laguna Hills is basically one large retirement community and there’s a very coveted retirement home area called leisure something leisure hills, I don’t know, you buy basically like a share and you can live there or until you pass and there’s just like assisted care people there. So you’re not like in a nursing home in the sense where you don’t have any autonomy but you do have the security of like somebody being there to help you. But yeah, that’s what they’ve mostly talked about. They haven’t really said anything about what happens if they’re like really sick and can’t live, you know, full life, but I imagine it would be very much to say we’re just like, pull the plug. I feel like we all very Asian people are very practical about these things where it’s like, you know, if I’m not enjoying my life, and I’m gonna be like, I see a huge burden on you. You might as well just, you know, let it go. And we’ll see you another day. I haven’t really thought about it for myself. Personally, I think it’s probably the same as you but I would just want to have you know, somebody really smart certify that I’m actually like, dead dead before they pull the plug. That’s like one of my greatest fears related to dying is that I’m just like, locked in and I’m not actually dead. I can still like think and they’re like, okay, like goodbye. Yeah, if I’m like fully vegetable, and like not aware. Yeah, I think you could just pull it.

Angela Lin 20:06
Oh, no, that’s different for me if I can’t move my body, but I can still think I don’t want to live.

Jesse Lin 20:13
I mean, I’m also hoping that that by the time that this decision has to be made, there’ll be like medical miracle to like replace my body or something like that.

Angela Lin 20:21
Totally Westworld will have come to life and we can just become robots. I don’t know.

Jesse Lin 20:26
No, I don’t I don’t necessarily want the plug pulled. If I’m still like, cognizant of stuff.

Angela Lin 20:32
I just, I only want to be alive when I can enjoy life.

Jesse Lin 20:36
I think you can still enjoy life without full mobility. Stephen Hawking enjoy his life.

Angela Lin 20:41
I know, I thought about him immediately when I said that, but I also am like, am I gonna have a dedication to learn how to like re wire everything to communicate with people like he does some crazy shit with his eye movements to be able to like speak, and like do other shit and I just I don’t know

Jesse Lin 20:59
Have you in all this started any estate planning?

Angela Lin 21:04
Why I have nothing to plan I don’t own anything like what do you own thing? What do you have to plan like what is this?

Jesse Lin 21:12
I mean I don’t personally have anything I don’t have a will or anything but with all my money stuff I have like clear beneficiaries.

Angela Lin 21:19
Oh yeah.

Jesse Lin 21:20
Cuz like in the situation of your untimely demise The last thing you want to do is to have to like fight people for the money that should go to your family.

Angela Lin 21:30
Yeah, my like, few thousand dollars I own I guess.

Jesse Lin 21:34
Well you have like retirement savings and stuff, right?

Angela Lin 21:36
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Jesse Lin 21:38
I think my parents recently told me that they actually started to like do their will and stuff.

Angela Lin 21:43
I hate talking about it, but I think it makes sense for our parents age. One of the infuriating things my dad keeps doing though, is when he had this family meeting about like their eventual departure. He was like, verbally discussing all of his assets so we knew they existed. And we’re like, you’re doing like write this down, right? Like in a will. And he was like, no. And we’re like, are you fucking kidding me? And he’s like, No, I’m not writing any of this down. And we’re like, Why? Why would you make this like harder for us? And he’s like, you’re just gonna go to China and Taiwan. They’re gonna help you out. You’re gonna tell them you own this thing, and then they’ll help you figure it out. I’m like, this sounds terrible. Why would you?

Jesse Lin 22:21
Is that how it works?

Angela Lin 22:23
No, it’s not, it’s so infuriating. I don’t know. He just he won’t give us written shit, which is like super unhelpful. Because I’m like, you know, when neither of our Chinese is good enough to like, know who to contact and like…

Jesse Lin 22:35
…but you can’t even claim that without…

Angela Lin 22:37
Exactly I’m like, how am I gonna prove that this is a you own it. It’s like, you’re just gonna, you’re my daughter there. It’s my name. I’m like, oh my god.

Jesse Lin 22:48
Well I’m thankful to say that I think my parents actually are going to write something down.

Angela Lin 22:53
Well, that’s when our parents die, which is woof. But have you ever thought about the future of when we’re old and what space future we’re gonna live in at that point, like, have you ever thought about what it’s going to be like in the world when you die?

Jesse Lin 23:11
I think it will be like technologically very, very different. What that will look like I have no idea. But I think it will be like a dramatically different, but I don’t know if that will change anything about how I want to pass though. What about you?

Angela Lin 23:26
I agree. I don’t think any technological change would affect my thinking on like, I don’t want to be a burden. Just cremate me pull the plug, like all that shit. But I think one thing that’s interesting when I think about longevity, that is something that has come up a lot. And like Ramon is kind of obsessed with increasing our longevity so that we can like enjoy life for as long as we can…

Jesse Lin 23:52
With life extension?

Angela Lin 23:53
…not life extension, like you’re going to live to 150 but like most people don’t live to as old as humans are capable of living to, because they ruin their lives with like the diet and like bad habits and shit. So we’re like taking supplements and stuff that are supposed to like help with longevity and whatever. So it doesn’t affect my thinking on how I want to pass. But I do think the like advances in science with the ability to like improve your longevity, I think that will affect when we become closer to end of life as compared to our parents. Like I think we’ll probably live much longer than our parents lived and like be healthier and more active than they were at similar ages, which is gonna be something like totally different.

Jesse Lin 24:37
I think I agree with you. And that’s probably the only thing that I would add is that I feel like given how things have changed so rapidly once we get to what we would consider like natural end of life, thinking about it now like maybe like 80-85 I think we’ll have more of a choice as to whether or not we want our lives to continue forward or if we want to pull the plug because of all of the life extension and like longevity things being researched right now. Yeah, who knows, maybe you’ll get to 85. And you can like die or you can watch everything replaced and live like another 15 years, it will present a choice, right? Because then you can decide truly like if you want to pass or if you want to live more years,

Angela Lin 25:16
That topic of like how long humans are going to live and our ability to live longer now and like our continued ability to live longer than previous generations is something that Ramon and I have talked about and it’s a really like interesting topic because you can look at it either from like a you as an individual standpoint, where you’re like, of course, I want to maximize my longevity and how many good years I have left on this earth or you can look at it from like a community standpoint where it’s like the more people who live longer, the more of a burden we have on society to like take care of these old people. And also how many years can you fund your life after retirement because retirement money is based have projected like number of years, you’re going to continue living after you retire. So if you keep living way beyond that you might have no money left.

Jesse Lin 26:08
Honestly, I haven’t even thought about that. I mean, there are definitely a ton of huge questions around that. I think for me specifically around the like morality of it, aside from all those things you mentioned, living longer also means that you use up more resources on the earth for that should have been saved for other people. It also probably will create like a huge class divide for those people who can afford to do that. And I think there will be a lot of interesting questions about that when we’re at that age where we’re like, gonna decide what we’re going to do. So you know, don’t forget to iMessage me your decision when you’re like 85

Angela Lin 26:44
Um, iMessage won’t even exist so I’ll just like send a telepathic message.

Jesse Lin 26:51
Oh, do you want that? I don’t think you want that. I’ll be like Angela sending you a million things all the time.

Angela Lin 26:58
No Block, block block. Well, so big question when you die? Do you think you’ll feel fulfilled when you’re on your deathbed?

Jesse Lin 27:06
I haven’t really thought about that. But I have thought about like, what if I just randomly passed now, you know, like, would I feel complete would I feel like I’ve accomplished all the things that I’ve wanted to, I think the answer to that is like, no, I don’t feel complete right now. But I feel like if I did pass, I wouldn’t be like mad about it. You know, like, I’ve found love with people. I’ve met really great friends. I’ve done a pretty good job with my job. I feel like I think when I guess the age, I’m going to pass I will feel fulfilled in the sense that I probably will feel like I have seen everything and done everything. Is that like the fulfillment that people are thinking of when they think of like, am I fulfilled at that in the life like you’re thinking about, like, most people are thinking about like, oh, you know, I felt like I’ve left like this legacy. I think I’ll just be fulfilled in the sense that I’ve experienced many, many things that I’ve found it enjoyable and fun and pleasurable and that’s enough for me

Angela Lin 28:04
Fulfillment that’s objective you don’t need to go by what other people think fulfillment is. Those things like legacy and leaving behind an empire whenever like those are vanity things. That’s just like someone’s idea fulfillment is that it feeds there prideful image of like, you know leaving behind that kind of legacy but at the end of the day, it is like the love that you have and the experiences that you’ve had that make up what a life was. So I don’t think you should feel anything about like not being obsessed with leaving behind a legacy or any other dumb thing that.

Jesse Lin 28:44
I just mentioned it because I feel like if you had asked me like my early 20s I’m like, Yes, I want to die like Bill Gates in my fortune, Hugh Hefner in my surroundings, like that kind of situation where now I’m kind of like, you know, I just want to like enjoy what I can enjoy and I feel like if I can maximize that by the time that I’m like super old, I’ll probably I’m okay with moving on. Like I’ve done everything that I plan on doing. What about you?

Angela Lin 29:06
I agree, I think I’m also focused on just making sure that my life was full of the experiences that I wanted to have. And I think I’ve done a good job thus far of like saying yes to the things that would have given me those kinds of experiences thus far that I’ve been presented with. I think I’m actively figuring out how to like free up more of my life for personal fulfillment, like sooner. So we talked about personal finance last week, right through investing and like, I’m continuing to learn more about that so that I can hopefully retire earlier so that I have more of my good years to like, do the shit I want and to not feel like I have regrets later on.

Jesse Lin 30:20
This week’s fortune cookie is also going to be related to death but kind of funny. So we wanted to talk about the best and worst ways that we would want to die. So I will go first. I think the worst way to die is to actually not be dead and be aware that you’re not dead and to have someone pull the plug – I don’t want that, that’s bad. Like a good way to die…I’m gonna say I’m pretty colored, but I would probably drop some kind of substance and just like peace out guys. That seems like a pretty decent way to die. Right?

Angela Lin 31:01
I mean, you’re choosing it. Yeah,

Jesse Lin 31:02
Yeah, you’re choosing it. You’re having like, hopefully a really great adventure and then you just pass.

Angela Lin 31:09
I see okay, okay. My worst way to die I have always been torn between two. I’m torn between drowning and burning alive in a fire. The thing in common is that they’re very slow deaths in a drowning one maybe theoretically like timewise it’s fast but it will feel like forever and then burning is like fucking awful because people will have like full body burns and shit that like still live right so like it takes a lot to die. Best way to die. I don’t know why you didn’t just say this dying in your sleep. That’s my ideal way to die. I don’t even know what happened. Like just I’m sleeping and I’m old and I just die like, great.

Angela Lin 31:52
So this is a very different kind of episode. Let us know what you think. Let us know if you hated it. Let us know if you loved it. Let us know know how you think you would want to die or to be sent off or any of the stuff that we covered today. So write us in at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that is Y-O-U-R-E. And as always, please rate us five stars on Apple podcasts if you have not already.