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Love or Something or Other

In the supermarket the other night (sensing a theme developing here at BPR?), my wife picked up an US Weekly and exclaimed “Keanu Reeves and China Chow are dating!”

My first question was, I wonder if they discuss their racial identity, you know, given the fact that they are both multi-racial with Chinese heritage. This would likely make Keanu Reeves the biggest celebrity to ever be in a public Asian American romantic relationship. What a nerd I am.

I browsed the Internets for some evidence and I came across some, uhh, NSFW pieces of proof. Unfortunately, I am at W, so those pictures would be NSF me to link to. That’s why I put up that photo of Keanu, rather than of the newly-minted couple.

(Aside to IT department: I swear it was an accident.)

But yeah, it kind of got me thinking. What other Asian American relationships have we seen among prominent people? Rick Yune and Lisa Ling? Ming-Na and Eric Michael Zee? Helen Zia and Lia Shigemura? Dustin Nguyen and Angela Rockwood? Who am I missing?

Last 5 posts by giles

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11 Comments so far

  1. delia July 15th, 2008 12:29 pm

    Hmm. I’m at a loss… What about when Yul Kwon got engaged recently? His fiance is Asian American.

  2. eugene July 15th, 2008 1:15 pm

    What do you mean by prominent?

    Grace Park (of Battlestar Galactica and West 32nd fame) is married to Phil Kim, who isn’t very prominent.

  3. giles July 15th, 2008 1:23 pm

    i dunno what i mean.

    btw isn’t “grace park” and “phil kim” like the two most common names among korean folks. i know like 3 guys named phil kim.

  4. eugene July 15th, 2008 1:27 pm

    If we count Kiwi, Bambu, and Geo as prominent, then they count too right?

  5. giles July 15th, 2008 2:48 pm

    i don’t know. i think what i was thinking at the time that i wrote it was how often are there two romantic partners who are both known/accomplished in their respective fields at the time that they connect?

    so in that sense, no we wouldn’t include any of those guys.

    but i feel like such a nerd writing out my conditions for a prominent couple, which is why i avoided it in the first place.

    oh eugene, why hast thou forsaken blah blah blah…

  6. rage July 15th, 2008 4:15 pm

    Salman Rushdie / Padma Laksmi (living in NYC = asian american in my book)

    Wow. This is hard.

  7. eugene July 15th, 2008 4:19 pm

    They got divorced.

  8. giles July 15th, 2008 6:00 pm

    OH YEAH, rushdie/lakshmi! that is a good one because they come from such different fields! oh i guess they did split tho…

  9. rage July 16th, 2008 9:38 am

    Yah - divorced. But for a heartbeat, it was the talk of the nation.

    How about Jessica Hagedorn / John Woo?

    (Just kidding. Different John Woo).

  10. giles July 16th, 2008 12:35 pm

    my heart skipped a beat…

    so they’re a couple? (i know not THAT john woo…)

  11. rage July 17th, 2008 9:43 am

    Yeah - they are/were. My Asian American gossip is kind of old though…

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