boston progress radio

That’s a review of the General Tso’s chicken at Peng’s Restaurant cited by this wikipedia article on this culinary dish of enigmatic origin. As much as Randall Park’s THE FOOD pulls my curiosity towards considerations of the roots of “Orange Chick-un“, the mystique of General Tao/Gao’s chicken remains, to me, untoppled. Then again, maybe someone like Jennifer 8. Lee has already decoded this one too, but I’ve uncovered no leads on anyone with the backstory…

Do you have any stories of General Tso’s chicken? An explanation of its creation or moments of it satiating excruciating hunger perhaps?

Indeed. Just watch it. I had to replay this at least 5 times in one sitting to comprehend 90% of its awesomeness.

I bought Iris Leu’s latest album Husabo shortly after it was released in 2009 and listened to it heavily for several weeks, then got completely swept up in Alfa’s album Second Skin. Recently I rediscovered the wondrous feel of Husaboo’s tracks while browsing my digital music library and thought about the impressions I should have shared earlier and more…

While completely enthralled by Iris Leu’s song “Ambitions” from Permanent Transient back in late 2008, I yearned to hear more of her unique and entrancing instrumentals and lyrics. Then in early 2009, Hushaboo completely satiated those cravings. Iris Leu’s voice seems to imbue her lyrics with a feeling of distinct maturity and poetry; combined with a piano at the forefront of the instrumentals, her words take on stunning emotional dimensions. The songs I listen to repeatedly in this album are “Ipso Facto”, “The Red Bird” and “Twentyone”, and I love how “Manifesto” has an ethereal feeling to it.

You can listen to samples from and buy songs in Hushaboo through iTunes and Amazon.

Here’s a video of Iris Leu performing “The Red Bird” live:

Tags: hushaboo.

We sat down last month with Boston-area artist Lillian Chan, who is a professional MIMOBOT designer and creator of the comic “ah-Lin!” for New England’s Chinese-English newspaper Sampan.

Featuring the voice of a young Asian American woman protagonist, ah-Lin captures a perspective that has not been much explored in the comics world. Lillian has a passion for character illustration and brings that specialty to both her MIMOBOT and her comic art work.

Click the link to listen to what this self-described “doodler and dreamer extraordinaire” has to say about character design, her comic, sources of inspiration, and life as a professional artist. Catch some glimpses of her creative process through the slideshow that runs with the interview. To learn more about Lillian and her work, you can visit her website at: www.lillianchan.com.

Photos taken by Brian Chan (Chosetec.Darkclan.net). Music courtesy of Charles Kim (myspace.com/ChuckyKim). Edited by Sudo.

 Doodler and Daydreamer Extraordinaire Lillian Chan (audio interview) [27:27m]: Download
 ah-Lin! Walkthrough with Lillian Chan (iPod/iPhone-compatible video) [4:52m]: Download

Tags: comics, Interview, pod.

I’m getting married this year, and now that our wedding date is fast approaching, there are some concrete tasks that we’ve started working on.  Yippee!!

One that we were recently talking about is finding passages to have read at our wedding ceremony.  We’d like to include the voices and words and talents of folks from the API* community… but, those aren’t as easy to find as you know, that 1st Corinthians passage (yes, I googled it) about how love is patient and all that, or any bits from Shakespeare, or you know, the Beatles.

Ironically, that very night, I read a passage from Lac Su’s “I love yous are for white people.”  And, well, it was definitely a passage about love, but it was definitely not quite wedding ceremony material.

Are there any readings/poems/lyrics by Asian Americans that you think would be great for a wedding ceremony?  Won’t you please, please help me?

Tags: Love.

A month or so ago, I went with my future stepdaughter and fiancée to watch the Laurie Berkner Band, live in concert. We listen to the Laurie Berkner Band almost exclusively in the car. It pains me when I put in a Blue Scholars CD (yeah, I still buy CDs) and I’m promptly told that it isn’t kids music.

Thankfully, Laurie Berkner’s music is generally very catchy and up-tempo. She’s released five albums, which include such hits as “I’m Gonna Catch You,” “We Are The Dinosaurs,” and “Victor Vito.” I’m not ashamed to admit that I can sing some of her songs. Overall, the concert was fairly enjoyable. However, one thing bothered me about the show… the whole auditorium was filled with white people. There were no Asian people, no Black people, no Latino/as.

I asked myself why? Why were there were no people of color at this event? Was the music culturally inaccessible? After all, I would imagine we would see more POCs at a Disney-themed event. Though let’s not be fooled. The reason Disney showcases people of different ethnic backgrounds in their animated films is really to get more money from more people—it isn’t about diversity, it’s about money.

So the reason I came up with is that people simply don’t know her. It also got me wondering: where are all the POCs that do children’s music? I have to admit ignorance here, so please help me out! In particular, where are the Asian American pop musicians that make music for children? And no, Yo Yo Ma doesn’t count. Maybe if Asian American children are exposed to Asian American musicians at an early age, it will be natural for them to believe that they too can be musicians. After all, there are many Asian singers in Asia. Well, not really… because “there are no Asians in Asia.”

Tags: children's music.

On Friday, January 8, the 46th or so East Meets Words Open Mic took place once again at the East Meets West Bookstore. Now, due to general busyness in my non-public life, I had been unable to attend the open mic the last 2 or 3 months. And, in fact, I didn’t really want to go to this open mic simply because in my head, I felt that the vibe was going to be different.

Luckily, I was wrong.

Despite the frigid New England temperatures and light dusting of snowflakes throughout the Boston Metro area, the Open Mic was great. This month, we had an especially great bunch of folks featuring: students from UMass-Boston who had participated in a spoken word poetry and storytelling performance class taught my Giles Li. But they weren’t the only ones who brought energy to the space.

At 8:45pm or so, the show got started. The yellow and orange lantern were all that lit up the eager faces of the attendees. When the host of the night, Dave Kong, stepped up to the mic, it was instant joy. Dave brought a balloon ride full of exuberance and cheerfulness and I was immediately uplifted. That set the tone for the rest of the night. Of the performers during the open mic, I was impressed by Nima, who belted an original song “Cook It Real Slow” in a cool baritone while playing an acoustic-electric guitar. Beat Collective, though not in full force, was nonetheless very entertaining. Amon was at his freestyling best—despite just walking in to the store, he busted out some creative rhymes using words tossed out by devilish members of the audience:  “onomatopoeia”, “dentures” and “avocado.”

Next up were the features. I don’t remember what everyone said during their pieces—chalk that up to a failing memory—but I do remember some of the performances. Matt Seto kicked off the feature set by performing a piece about an absent father who had a son who kept waiting for his return. Abel Cano did a performance about a human auction for Latino folks. The piece was comical, yet was also very disturbing due to the use of stereotypical imagery of Latino people. Sonca Lam spit a heart-wrenching, yet very honest piece about being raised by a single mom. Molly Higgins performed a piece about the women in her life who she loves, whose values are still “under construction”. It reminded me that life is a journey often without apparent direction. Finally, to wrap up the night, Laurence Louie, inspired by an experience on the T where a few African American kids pulled the emergency brake to be funny, offered us his opinion about why these kids shouldn’t be blamed for their behaviors.

All in all, the night was truly amazing. Since I had been absent from the scene for so long, I had forgotten how inspiring it can be to just listen to the music and words of people sharing their stories. I encourage any of you who have not attended the open mic recently, to come down and give it a shot. And for those of you old-timers, who haven’t been in the space for awhile, you should check it out too. The names and faces may have changed, but the spark and magic are still there. See you next month!

Tags: Open Mic, Recap.

I want a Japanese girlfriend.”

How many times have I heard that from classmates? And for reals too. Sound familiar? You may have heard similar variants in other Asian language classes.

I remember one time I was in recitation, and some guy was going on about how that was his motivation for taking the class and becoming proficient, bemoaning the fact that there weren’t many ways to meet Japanese girls around our university campus. The recitation instructor—a student from Japan—remarked that there are a number Japanese American students in the student population and a number of Japanese Americans in the area, to which he quickly and bluntly replied in Japanese, “They aren’t really Japanese.”

There was a lot going on there, and I didn’t know how to even begin dealing with it, so I didn’t try. Maybe I should have. Ever encountered something like this before? What did you do?