Category Archives for To English

Anchor babies and double-no parents

This virulently xenophobic full-page newspaper ad from Hong Kong caught my attention yesterday. What’s most interesting about this is that the anti-foreign sentiment is directed at Mainland Chinese:
Here, the Mainlanders are depicted as locusts. The image of the locusts on Lion Rock is juxtaposed with an image of Hong Kong’s skyline, symbolic of the city’s wealth and development.

The following slogans are in largest type:

  • 你願意香港每 18 分鐘花 $1,000,000養育「雙非」兒童嗎？ (“Do you agree with Hong Kong spending HKD 1 million [USD 129,000] every 18 minutes to take care of ‘shuangfei’ children?”)
  • 香港人，忍夠了！(“Hong Kong people have had enough!”)
  • 反對中共殖民！杜絕「雙非」孕婦！(“We oppose colonization by the Chinese Communist Party! Put an end to ‘shuangfei’ pregnant women!”)

“Shuangfei” 「雙非」(lit. double-no) means that neither the father nor the mother is a Hong Kong resident. This terminology can be compared to the “anchor baby” discourse in the US—local people accuse visitors and undocumented migrants of giving birth in their hospitals so that their children can have a favorable passport and access to the other privileges of developed territory citizenship. Though Hong Kong has been a part of the People’s Republic of China since 1997, under the “one country, two systems” policy it has its own passport, which allows for more freedom to travel than the Mainland passport.

I was struck by the similarities between the rhetoric in this poster and the “anchor baby” rhetoric in the US.

Because the US grants citizenship via jus soli, all children born in the US are given US citizenship, regardless of the citizenship of the parents. While the targets of “anchor baby” discourse are usually poor Mexican or other Latin American women, wealthy Mainland Chinese mothers have also been accused of taking advantage of US citizenship rules.

Continue reading →

Do U Cry 4 Me Argentina? (아르헨티나여, 나를 위해 울어주나요?)

En castellano: Película sobre los coreanos en la Argentina: Do U Cry 4 Me Argentina?

A few days ago I wrote about the alienation that Korean Argentines feel from the rest of society. It turns out that there’s a whole film about this sense of rejection: Bae Youn Suk‘s 2005 directoral début, Do U Cry 4 Me Argentina.

Translated from the Vimeo page for the trailer:

The movie tells of a group of young Korean immigrants living in Buenos Aires: their daily lives, their desire to overcome the challenges of immigration, and the host society’s rejection of their attempts to integrate.

Translated from Diasporas de Asia Oriental:

Do U Cry 4 Me Argentina presents the problem of developing cultural competence in two cultures, which children and youth encounter in situations where they are forced to choose between belonging to one culture or another.

Translation of the Spanish subtitles: Continue reading →

Blackness, gender, and class in Asian entertainment

A few months ago I came across this music video by Jero (ジェロ), a Pittsburgh-born Japanese-African American who became famous in Japan for singing traditional enka music, which he learned from his Japanese grandmother. Despite the fact that Japan is a very homogeneous country, Jero seems to have received a very positive reception there:

Jero’s success as an enka singer means that he has cultivated an appeal not only to the young consumers of pop culture, but also to the older generations that are the core audience of the enka genre. Presenting himself as dignified and well-educated, his excellent Japanese, superb singing voice, and devotion to the memory of his grandmother has won over the hearts of many senior enka enthusiasts and effectively disarmed many of the stereotypes of foreigners hung onto by older generations. And for younger listeners who wouldn’t ordinarily find the enka genre exciting, Jero makes things interesting by virtue of being a foreign enka singer with hip-hop aesthetics.

Playing up his family background and education seem to be central in Jero’s ability to gain acceptance among Japanese audiences. By breaking preconceptions about black people (black men in particular) and emphasizing his Japaneseness, it appears that Jero has been able to gain in-group acceptance while still holding on to the markers of outsider status that make him unique and marketable. Continue reading →