03.06 | saying goodbye amidst the palm trees

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
– Haruki Murakami

✉️ letter #57

I'm likely traveling around busy as all get out today. The whole week has been and will be spent commemorating my mom's passed siblings and, with that emotionally heavy a topic to carry around, I don't really have much else I can keep in my mind. Right now, I'm helping my mom clear out our Aunt Charlene's storage unit - Aunt Charlene passed eight years ago, but we only just sold her Maryland apartment and are finally sorting through her final effects. The rest of the week before, I've been in Los Angeles for my uncle's memorial service. He passed away a few days before the New Year after four years of treatments against lung cancer.

My mom was able to be with Uncle Daniel a couple of weeks before he left us - she'd flown from Shanghai to California to talk to him by his bedside while he was on the brink but still conscious, but had to leave back for China in order to make our Christmas plans. Our cousins were kind enough to let her plan an extra memorial service now in March so she (and we) could pay our respects, even if we couldn't be around for the burial.

Here's what I said at the service:

I want to share two core memories I have of Jiu Jiu.

The first is an amalgamation of numerous summers in Banning, California. Jon and I were living in Asia at the time, but every summer we headed to the Hacienda Motel, where we would sleep in an overstuffed room of hoarded treasures, and occasionally treasure hunt ourselves as we went with Jiu Jiu to one of the many flea markets he frequented for bargains.

And Jon and I spent those summers revolving around him with a kind of unfettered freedom, circling him as he fixed the pool pump for the hundredth time so that we could swim in the motel pool, or watching one of the many tapes he'd found at the market, or playing on the Nintendo he'd thrifted from somewhere.

He was constantly showing up with something broken and turning it into something the motel could kind of use, and he really hated to throw anything away. In my earliest childhood memories, Jiu Jiu was a bit of a cross between a magpie and Macguyver, always making something out of something we wouldn't have given a second look at, but hey, we often somehow ended up using it.

The second memory actually comes from relatively recently, about six or so years ago. I was living alone in a two-bedroom apartment in Shanghai and had made a pretty bad attempt at wallpapering one of the bedrooms. I think I'd put up the whole of one sheet and then, when it turned out a little crooked, had given up. I mentioned this in front of my mom and Jiujiu in passing, and they told me they both wanted to help me out.

So, they came over one afternoon, and I gave them the materials. I had to take a call and when I came back, my mom was taking a nap on the bed, and Jiujiu had almost finished with the entire room's wallpaper. He'd even improvised when he realized I didn't have enough, turning one section into an accent wall. That way I wouldn't have to buy more wallpaper. I made a joke about how my mom had come along to help sleep, and he laughed that that's just the way it's always been. He does the things - she's the moral support.

And I think that's the first time that I realized that his intentionality to help us with what the world had handed him was, in a sense, his love language. In the years since, the stories I've been able to hear have only confirmed this. I hadn't known, growing up, what Jiu Jiu's life had been like growing up, and how much he had also shared the activities of taking care of everyone else in the family. I hadn't realized how much pride he put into making do, how much getting a good deal was important to him not because it was a good deal, but because it was a good deal for us.

We're here now with his little sister, his wife, his grown children and grandchildren, comfortable and safe and marveling at what he was able to create with his own two hands. Jiu Jiu in my memory now is many things, including the quintessential American immigrant dream. Resourceful, hardworking, but more importantly always thinking about how to build a better life for his loved ones, and successful at doing so too. As we mourn him today, I want us to also celebrate that legacy and see that energy in his next generations. And I hope a little of it will rub off on me too.

🎼 the soundtrack | From the Start - Laufey

I keep looking around and thinking we're really spoiled for choice with Asian-American songstresses these days, but I don't know if it's just because my reference point is the early 2000s, when none of us could break into any creative field without first needing to do so some sob story about how our parents wanted us to be accountants.

Anyway, I don't want that to take away from Laufey, who is fantastic soulful jazzy pop and technically Asian-Icelandic(?), but anyway her album won a Grammy so you've probably already heard of her. In case you hadn't though, give it a listen. It's sunny and bright and feels like it'd go down well in a coffee shop decorated with a bit of bohemian rustic charm.

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

• Plastic recycling in the United States hovers at around a paltry nine percent. Now a "microplastics microfactory" concept in Arizona is seeing if it can amp it up using local waste plastics to create recycled goods that can be then also used locally. [Inside Climate News]
• In a real foot-in-mouth moment, the CEO of ExxonMobil said that the reason we're not on track for net zero by 2050 is because consumers are too price conscious. [Mother Jones]
• Meanwhile, Shell has launched a "clean energy startup" that really is just hiring people to improve oil and gas outcomes. Tricky tricky. [The Guardian]
• Some folks from the Eurasia Group feel there's room for hope in the climate engagement space between the United States and China. Fingers crossed, we really need some good news on this relationship front. [The Wire China]

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

I'm compiling this list on Super Tuesday, which I'll be checking in on throughout the day even if I kind of already know what the results are going to be. I don't know if Trump's likely sweep of the Republican Party is less about the American populace than the Republican Party's inability to put up a half decent candidate with enough charisma to get anyone even mildly interested. And I don't know if Biden's pretty much ordained nomination is less about the American populace than the Democrats' insistent dampening of younger promising political careers in their party. I suppose we'll all find out when the number of actual voters come in. I'll be reading Five Thirty Eight out of habit.

No matter what the outcome is though, I want to implore like I did post-2020 that everyone give the Presidential Election the importance it deserves (we really don't need more conservative judges on the Supreme Court) but to not forget that the real work gets done locally. Know what your county stands for. Know who your representatives are. Know who your local senate and assembly members are. If you have no clue about any of those, all you need to do is input your address on Ballotpedia to get started.

• If you're in New York City at the end of March and want to chat with one of my favorite people - our former The China Project Managing Editor Anthony Tao, he's doing an event with Young China Watchers on Sunday, March 31st for his new book of poetry. RSVP here.
• Riken Yamamoto has won the Pritzker Prize in Architecture for 2024. His work, especially on the concept of blurring private and public spaces, is absolutely fascinating. I would love to devote more time to him in this newsletter in the future. In the meantime though, here's something fabulous he created via [Dezeen]

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

Netflix unfortunately has cancelled The Brothers Sun, which makes it one of two recent Michelle Yeoh-starring vehicles that apparently could not be saved for a second season by the buzz generated a bunch of buzz from the Asian-American community. Since Netflix (or Disney, which cancelled American Born Chinese) is pretty opaque about its decision making process, it's hard to tell why The Brothers Sun didn't make it - you can probably guess what certain corners are grumbling about though.

To be honest, without the news that it wouldn't get a chance, I'm not sure I would've recommended it in this space until I was safely enjoying its second season. While I found The Brothers Sun watchable, I also can't really say I thought it was good. Character motivations were often awkwardly sketched, plot points felt sometimes farfetched and sometimes unearned, and in general the dialogue stunk of the issue I have with a lot of series written by Asian-American guys: all they wanted to do was create a typical American action blockbuster, but with like... Asian flavors.

Since I'm not actually a big fan of typical American action blockbusters, the kung fu and references to lurou fan or egg tarts can really only hold my attention for so long.

And yet, I am sad to see it go. It was fun to see the California I spent so many summers in (Monterey Park, San Gabriel, Arcadia, etc.) depicted in so much detail. And just because it's not my favorite genre doesn't mean that Asian-Americans ought not have American action blockbuster series they can see themselves in. I wouldn't have minded watching several episodes of Mother Sun's machinations within the Taiwanese mafia.

Speaking of Taiwanese mafia, some somewhat related anecdotes: the Father Sun was a classmate of my uncle who's funeral we just attended. My uncle had been in a gang in his youth, called "Little Plum Flower" - the name sounds a lot less cute in Chinese and refers to the national flower of the government. I found this all out the one time we went to the original Din Tai Fung in Taipei, when my uncle saw the owner and exclaimed "I knew you! Weren't you part of so and so gang? You protected us, the Little Plum Flowers," which led to a good half hour of reminiscing about Taiwan back in the day. They explained that it was common for young boys to join gangs back then - they needed numbers to protect themselves on the streets of Taichung, because all the mainland army kids would get bullied by local Taiwanese kids.

I had wanted to work that into my eulogy too, but it didn't really fit. So I'm slipping it in here.

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