tradition

A FURORE has erupted over a new mini-series about the deadliest sniper at Gallipoli, Chinese-Australian Billy Sing, who is played by a white.

This portrayal in the The Legend of Billy Sing has been attacked by Australians of Chinese ancestry as a betrayal of their heritage, robbing them of a rare historic hero.

Director Geoff Davis has cast his son Josh in the lead role, while Sing's Chinese father is played by the veteran actor Tony Bonner, who came to prominence as a blond-haired helicopter pilot in the Skippy TV series.

Sing, born in 1886 at Clermont, Queensland, to a Shanghainese father and an English mother, moved as a young man to the canefields of Proserpine, where he became a keen cricketer, kangaroo hunter and a crack member of the local rifle club.

The federal government, which barred a grieving daughter in China from coming to British Columbia for her mother's funeral, has since denied her two subsequent requests to visit the gravesite.

Xiu Lan Huang's nephew said her Canadian relatives are baffled and outraged over what they see as an unjustified lack of compassion. 

"How is it that they are not able to feel a daughter's pain?" asked her nephew Jason Ma, who lives in Richmond and works as a support analyst for Worksafe BC.
"There is tremendous shame for her not to be able to be at her mother's funeral."

VANCOUVER - Vancouver's Chinese community had a defiant message for Winter Olympics organisers when it was suggested they should cancel their longstanding Lunar New Year parade - 'no way in hell'.

The city's 36th annual parade, which will usher in the Year of the Tiger, will go ahead as planned on February 14, two days after the start of the February 12-28 Olympics.

City councilor Kerry Jang said there had initially been suggestions from VANOC, the Olympics organising committee, to either cancel or postpone the parade "over security and other concerns".

"The Chinese community said ‘no way in hell'," said Jang, a third-generation Chinese-Canadian.

"They went to city hall and said ‘forget it, we're having it'. So we had a compromise."

He said he was expecting about 20,000 people or more to attend this year's festivities which will start earlier than usual.

Thursday, January 28 2010
8pm @ Orpheum Theatre
Tickets at Ticketmaster.ca 604-280-4444
$42-$54

“Powerful, dynamic and unique” -Time Out
“Extraordinarily talented…incomparable muscular zeal” -Chicago Tribune
“This is a show of rare excellence … Run, don’t walk to the box office.” - Edinburgh Evening News
“(It’s) an evening of rhythm, beats, sweaty bodies, melody, dynamic shape, and extraordinary precision.
Tao is inspiring, uplifting and theatrical.” -The New Zealand Performing Arts Review

China is moving to take back one of its own — even if it is legend. Mulan is the Middle Kingdom's gender-bending heroine, its Joan of Arc. The character from folktale is a daughter who disguises herself as a male soldier to take her father's place in the conscription army. The problem for the Chinese is that, since 1998, the definitive version of the story has been Disney's.

Indeed, because of the animated Disney film, the character Mulan has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Chinese culture worldwide. Baby girls adopted from China have been named Mulan by their American parents. Disney has staged musical versions of the movie Mulan from Mexico to the Philippines. And posing for a photo with Mulan is a must for hordes of tourists at Hong Kong Disneyland. (See China's long road to prosperity.)

Transcript - REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT AAPI INITIATIVE EXECUTIVE ORDER SIGNING

East Room

3:46 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Well, good afternoon, everybody. Please be seated. Welcome to the White House. I'm glad you could join us today as I proudly sign this executive order reestablishing the President's Advisory Commission and White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

Now, when we talk about America's AAPI communities, we're talking about the industry and entrepreneurship of people who've helped build this nation for centuries: from the early days, as laborers on our railroads and farmers tilling our land, to today, as leaders in every sector of American life, from business to science to academia, law and more.

Chinese film “Weaving Girl” grabbed the second highest prize at the closing ceremony of the 33rd Montreal World Film Festival Monday.

“Weaving Girl,” directed by Wang Quan’an and leading actress Yu Nan, tells about the struggled life of a textile factory woman worker. It won both the special Grand Prix of the Jury, the runner-up prize, as well as the International film critics prize.

Hokubei - On Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 8-9, the 36th annual Nihonmachi Street Fair takes over San Francisco’s Japantown.

The fair celebrates the diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander communities here in the Bay Area, and has established itself as a summertime tradition in the city.

This event is organized entirely by volunteers, who work with non-profit community service organizations to offer Asian food booths, a broad assortment of arts and crafts vendors, and even a Children’s World activity area, where kids can learn Asian crafts and games.

That commitment to community service is what gives the Nihonmachi Street Fair a unique perspective among Bay Area urban festivals. The fair’s broad goal is to support the programs and services of non-profit organizations.

NEW YORK (26, 2009) – Asian CineVision (ACV) announced the award winners of the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) tonight at Chelsea’s Clearview Cinemas in New York. Executive Producer Liliana Chen bestowed the honors to five filmmakers as part of the Festival’s closing ceremonies.

First announced was Iemi Hernandez-Kim, director of the short film Ayi’s Story and winner of the One to Watch award, an audience voted award that recognizes talent in filmmakers under the age of 21. Ayi’s Story follows the journey of a teenaged girl from Brooklyn to numerous destinations in China, capturing her experiences in documentary and video-journal style.

Kim Snyder, director of the short film Crossing Midnight, won the award for Excellence in Short Filmmaking. Her documentary on the efforts of health workers to treat Burmese refugees deals with the issue of human rights through the lens of medicine.

Inter-Asian.org - AsianAsian academia(s) is an exploratory investigation into specific dilemma(s) faced by intellectuals in Asia not only in the advancement of social theory and critical knowledge but more importantly within the confines of institutional and political regimes that define modes of knowledge production, regulate social reproduction within the system and entangle knowledge itself into webs of societal relevance. No academia in the world is an ivory tower, yet we seem to think that such an ideal exists or is possible. Intellectual histories are written as though thought can be read and understood in its own terms.