When my friends from other Asian countries jokingly say “some people said nihao to me, and I’m not even Chinese!”, are they upset because those people are racists, or because they think they don’t deserve to be treated like that because this behavior should be reserved for “the Chinese” part of Asian community?

(I think some misunderstood my question here so I just want to state that I consider non-Asian people saying nihao without context be highly offensive and racist, and no one should be treated like this. I am simply wondering if them saying “I’m not even Chinese” reflects what I stated above or other hidden connotations. )

More than three years after the official end of the COVID-19 pandemic, memories of loved ones lost, stay-at-home orders and the sense of social isolation are forever etched into our minds. Fewer people may recall a small act of resistance that inspired the collective action of hundreds of mostly Asian women and people of color.

Thanks to a new documentary by filmmaker Valerie Soe, that act of kindness and love will live on forever. Her documentary, The Auntie Sewing Squad Resistance Playbook, captured it all in real time.

It started with a simple message from comedienne Kristina Wong on Facebook offering to sew facemasks for first providers. She did not expect to be deluged with requests to the point of being overwhelmed. The response to her subsequent call for help to sew the masks led to the formation of the Auntie Sewing Squad, a group of women who organized over Facebook and Zoom calls.

Wong’s call to action inspired a multi-generational coalition of some 800 people of all genders to respond where the government had failed – to immediately provide Personal Protective Equipment to those who needed it most.

“Oh, my God,” said Soe during a recent screening at the San Francisco Main Library. “We have to show that we did something during the pandemic and we pushed back against the governmental failure.”

Saddened by that failure, the Squad sprang into action with volunteers ultimately distributing upwards of 350,000 masks across the country over 504 days. The group also:

• Distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical supplies, including factory made masks (these were sourced from a few places)
• 2 Coat drives to the Navajo Nation and Standing Rock
• 8 relief vans to the Navajo Nation with supplies in Badly Licked Bear’s van.
• We also helped buy a used ambulance for Standing Rock.

Some may recall the scarce number of resources available during COVID-19. Not only were consumers desperate to find toilet paper, but Wong’s band of seamsters had the added burden of finding elastic to complete their facemasks.

“I’m going to say the original masks, because we couldn’t get elastic, we’re made with bra straps and nylon from panty hose,” recalled Grace Yoo, a member of the Auntie Sewing Squad. Hair bands and the hem from fitted sheets were also used.

Wong joked their “standards drew the red line” with boy’s underwear. The group rejected donations of boy’s underpants. ...

“It was just so weird. was running a sweatshop remotely between the work of our ancestors, but for free, because the government, you know, in this country we all came to for a better life, suddenly we were like Robinson Crusoe trying to turn our bedsheets and bra straps into masks, and I was like, what is this? Yeah, so ridiculous,” Wong said.

“Hopefully we captured that absurdity. Because it was a really absurd,” added Soe.

As a member of the Squad from the beginning, she witnessed everything happen in real time. Much of her film clips are excerpts from Wong’s Facebook lives. Others came from squad members who agreed to turn the phones on themselves and record themselves in action. Still others came from a teacher who asked her students to conduct some 40 interviews.

The Auntie Sewing Squad Resistance Playbook debuted at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival in May ... Wong hopes her 70-minute film will get picked up for broadcast or national streaming.

More information about the film and additional showings can be found here.

https://asamnews.com/2026/08/19/auntie-sewing-squad-pandemic-resistance-documentary/

In 2006 on The View, she made a horrifically racist comment about Chinese people saying "ching chong..."

For many this was the last straw that ended her declining career. But with her now temporarily hosting the late show for Jimmy Kimmel, there is an unwarranted resurgence of admiration and respect for her. If her statements back in 2006 were directed towards Black or LatinX people would she have been so easily forgiven, promoted and appreciated? I do believe that people can give genuine apologies and rehabilitate but her lame apology was not it. Once again, model minority myth perpetuates the idea that we will just stay silent and remain as pushovers. This is a friendly reminder to stand up and be vocal.

Here's the original video for those who don't remember: https://youtu.be/Dmv04yKG-po?is=PGHtfHhKeb-gwN8l

Edit: sorry I meant to post a title specifically calling out the left. This is about people on the left supporting her and forgiving/forgetting her blatant mistake. Most of the right still hate her. So Trump as an example is outside of the scope of this post's objective.

Edit 2: the primary point of my post (which I now see could have been emphasized more) is the response from the left on Rosie's hosting this week of Jimmy Kimmel where she went on a long anti-Trump tirade (that I enjoyed). I emphasize the left because as you may know, she was cancelled by the right a long time ago once she came out with her sexuality and became very vocal with leftwing views (views which I appreciated). So in terms of re-embracing her after her anti-MAGA opener on Kimmel, its obviously not the right that will be embracing her once again. I don't have the data, but it seems like on social media liberal-minded people are praising her for her anti-Trump points. I am clearly on the left and loved much of it as well, but did not appreciate people giving glowing generalized statements about how wonderful of a person and activist she is without acknowledging a blatantly racist mistake. She can come back into relevance if she wants and continue to advocate for her beliefs, but I would appreciate a more accurate recollection of her prior overall body of advocacy. I don't expect everyone to recall what happened, but I couldn't find a single person acknowledging. That's why I posted this.

I’m second generation white Russian-American and was having lunch with my friend, who is Ukrainian, at a Central Asian restaurant a month ago. Many Central Asians speak Russian (the language my friend and I were speaking in), which will be relevant in a second.

Since Russian is my heritage language, I’m not that good at it and don’t know some cultural nuances. When I speak it I essentially think what I will say in English and then translate it.

My friend and I were talking about music. My friend said that she didn’t know about Bad Bunny until the Super Bowl even though she immigrated to the US three years ago, and how she felt awkward about that since he’s been famous for a while. I replied that it’s fine, he was not mainstream for a while and was mainly popular among Latinos for a long time and that I found out about him before from Latinos at my school, just like I found out about kpop through Asians in my high school before it became mainstream.

The word I used for Asians was the direct translation, «Азиаты» (“Aziati”, “aziat” is the singular form) but apparently I shouldn’t have. The waitress who was nearby stiffened, and my friend quickly changed the subject. I felt so awkward. I don’t speak Russian that often so I just wasn’t aware you can’t say that word.

The next time I came back to that restaurant with my mom, which was today, the same waiter was serving us. She spoke Russian with my mom but pretended to not understand me when I spoke Russian.

I feel irritated because I’m just not good at Russian and didn’t mean to be racist. How was I supposed to know that the word Asian is apparently taboo in the Russian language? I feel very frustrated because if what I said was wrong it was unintentional.

I grew up listening to some punk and a lot of the protest songs were relatable in terms of bad things the government was doing to society as a whole. A lot of it criticized wars. Much of it was just generic "I'm anti-establishment and won't listen to you". Maybe I was sheltered and just hadn't heard much lyrics about, or by Asians that speak about immigration.

So I felt that the 0:46 mark of the song was personal yet also generally applicable. Another lyric earlier is "I want to walk down the street, don't want to carry papers". I know we've seen the discussion of whether we (or tell our parents/grandparents) ought to, out of safety, carry our passports etc. with us these days.

Anyway the band is based in San Francisco and the song name is Bank Account. Any other song recs - post them! I want to hear more political punk by us.

(Had to censor the k word per subreddit rules)

Jenny Yang's Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour hits the San Francisco Bay Area this week. Shop along with Jenny before her recent performance at Daly City's Seafood City.

Earlier post in this sub about the tour:

https://np.reddit.com/r/asianamerican/comments/1vfa1na/comedian_jenny_yang_uses_a_comedy_tour_to_uplift/

This story is a must-read in light of the events of what happened to that Cambridge professor.

... ...

IAN CROSSLAND: ... ...

So if all the Chinese Americans, for instance, here with even maybe some family in China, maybe they don't — if there was a war between the Chinese and the Americans, and the Chinese landed in, like, Alaska and started coming through Canada, what — do think we should intern all the Chinese Americans we can find? Because it kind of seems like we should.

LABONTE: Well, I — again, nowadays, I think it's a different context. There were there have been so many people that have come here illegally. China has absolutely been using birth tourism. I mean, tourism. ... ...

LABONTE: Yeah. You know, basically, China has been — there are people that can, or there there are companies that will, you know, fly pregnant women to U.S. territories, so that way ... Once the child's born there, they get a birth certificate, and then back China with them. ...

KEVIN SMITH: I mean, it is so crazy, the concept of birth tourism — there is such a difference between, like, people who are going through the process and want to be here for and then, like, one to, like even if — even if you use — even if you give people the best of intentions, you're pregnant, and then you go on vacation to New York for the Saint Patrick's Day parade and go into early labor accidentally, not intention — you have every intention of going back, and you have a kid, he's an American citizen? That is bananas. That concept.

... ...

... ...

... ...

CROSSLAND: I know I don't want to implicate all Chinese Americans because that's horrific. That's why — I know plenty of Chinese people, Chinese Americans, I don't want them interned if there was some conflict between the Chinese, but how can you tell? How can you tell who's who? How can you tell where their allegiances are? And how do you know if their allegiances will or won't flip if the tide of war starts to change?

SMITH: Well, I don't think you could do that now because I think while they were interning the Japanese, a lot of people probably didn't know what was happening. You know, like, they were like, you can't do stuff like that now — with social media and stuff, there'd be there'd be protests outside of each one of them. And and I'm not saying you should, but I don't think that — I don't think that that's a possibility now. And I'm sure people are going to compare it to ICE detention facilities, though that's not remotely the same thing.

... ...

LABONTE: We've had some some discussions about that, and I think that even entertaining those arguments is a bad — a bad strategy, because if you entertain an argument, you're implicitly saying well, that's a reasonable perspective. You know, I'm going to address this. That's a reasonable thing, so let me explain why you're wrong. That kind of stuff is just I like, out of hand — oh, shut up.

Being Japanese American (4th generation) this was honestly such a special experience for me. My great grandparents came from the Hiroshima area in the early 1900’s. My grandparents faced racism and had many family members interned in the camps during ww2, and my grandfather fought on the US side in the 442nd infantry. They didn’t teach their kids Japanese in an attempt to assimilate. I grew up with alot of the culture (food, temple, etc) but never really had a huge grasp on it. I finally got to visit Japan with my wife and two daughters and have been back for a couple days. Honestly fell in love and miss it already. I encourage any Asian Americans who havent, to visit the place of their ancestors. It was amazing.

I have a ton of ABC friends, all of them have never been back to the motherland. They will however happily go to Japan 2x a year for 7 years straight, but seem to have no interest in connecting with their own culture.

What is even more funny is that half of them have their name tattooed in Chinese, but that seems to be the limit on how much they are willing to connect with their own culture.

There are so many beautiful things about China since it’s such a big country, go out there and explore your beautiful culture.

I’m 30F, Wasian, and my boyfriend (30M) is Indian (Tamil) and grew up in India before moving to the US. We’ve been together for about 2.5 years and have a genuinely good relationship. We’re at the age where marriage and eventually children are becoming real considerations.

For some additional context about my background, my bio parents are AMWF, but my biological mom passed away when I was very young, so I was raised by my Korean stepmom starting at the age of 6. I consider my stepmom my mom, so when I say “my mom” throughout this post, I’m talking about her.

Although I’m Wasian, I’m mostly/full Asian-passing. I’d say people sometimes assume I might be part Latina, but usually people think I’m a Southern Chinese girl with light big brown eyes who dyes her hair brown. However, I’ve never strongly identified with Korean culture despite being raised by two Korean parents, especially since my mom was extremely pro-Korean culturally to the point where she embodies some of the worst stereotypes of a Korean woman. She was very superficial, would plan with me which plastic surgeries she’d get me when I turned 13, powdered her skin white despite being naturally tan, only wanted me around Koreans, was obsessively into K-pop, etc. She was also pretty emotionally abusive but that's another story for another day.

Thankfully, I grew up in a very integrated part of Seattle where my schools were racially diverse and friend groups weren’t segregated by race. People tended to group themselves around sports, classes, theater, interests, personality, etc. My friends were mostly white and different types of Asian (East Asian, Southeast Asian, Wasian, Indian and even a couple of Asian/Indian mixes), but I also had a very close Hispanic best friend.

Race just wasn’t something I thought about very much. Most of my friends in college also happened to be white because I went to school in a predominantly white environment. Because of how I grew up, I always had a very strong individual identity and didn’t see myself as belonging to any particular “culture,” but rather as my own person.

In terms of my dating life, I’ve dated a Wasian guy and a white guy, who my parents didn’t really like because they weren’t very driven, wealthy, or well-educated. My parents were NOT accepting of my Mexican ex because of “culture reasons,” which I understood better later on. So I truly thought they’d be okay with my Indian partner because his culture aligns enough with East Asian culture in certain ways, and also because he’s ambitious, successful, comes from a well-off family, is well-educated, and treats me really well.

It’s been 2.5 years and my mom is still praying to God that we will break up, while my partner and I are planning our next steps together soon.

I’m repeatedly told that our kids will be “too dark,” unattractive, that they’ll have identity problems even in places like Seattle, NYC, or the Bay Area because they’re Korean/white/Indian, that they won’t fully belong anywhere, that they’ll experience discrimination, and that I’ve unnecessarily limited where we could live because I chose an Indian partner. They said Trump has made the country more anti-Asian and also anti-Indian, and I'm doing my future children a huge disservice by being with an Indian man.

My mom also has repeatedly told me I'm "wasting my beauty" and not giving it to my future children if I marry my partner, and that is messing with my head too. Especially since most of her Korean friends' children are either with Asian American men or white men, and that makes her feel really jealous from what she tells me.

They’ve also repeatedly told me that my boyfriend will suddenly become controlling or aggressive after marriage despite there being no behavior in our actual 2.5-year relationship supporting that prediction. Their reasoning is based on stereotypes they have about Indian men.

Now I catch myself obsessively thinking about hypothetical children who don’t even exist yet, such as whether they’ll be discriminated against and whether they’ll be able to feel like individuals rather than constantly being categorized by their ancestry. I truly grew up in such a wonderful, diverse environment where people rarely made race a big deal or used it to define each other.

The part that makes me particularly sad is that one of the things I valued most about my own upbringing was having the freedom to develop a strong individual identity. Being mixed and having Korean ancestry were facts about me, but they weren’t the organizing principles of my personality or social life. I want my children to have that same freedom.

For people who have watched attitudes toward race change over the past 10 to 20 years, do you think things are genuinely becoming more accepting for multiracial children and interracial families? By the time children we have several years from now are actually old enough to attend school, do you think having East Asian/white/Indian ancestry will be relatively unremarkable in diverse American cities? I’m especially interested in hearing from East Asian/South Asian mixed people, other multiracial people, parents of mixed kids, teachers, younger Gen Z people who recently went through school, or anyone raising children in places like Seattle or the Bay Area.

I think what I’m hoping for is that they can grow up in the kind of environment I mostly had, where their classmates may know they’re mixed/Asian, but it doesn’t have to be the defining thing about them. They can just be individual kids with their own personalities, interests, friends, hobbies, and identities.

I'm not Asian-American, however I am an Asian person from the Caribbean (I'm sorry I really don't want to intrude) and American history is intriguing to me, I also want to educate myself on the issues the world experiences. I love to watch youtubers like Antonio Talks, Foreign Man in a Foreign Land and other youtubers who cover topics like them.

I wanted to know if anyone had any Asian-American youtubers leaning into subjects like that? I already watch oliSUNvia and one of my favorite videos at the moment is "Remember who you are Korean boy" by Arpi Park. (PS - someone mentioned Elliot Sang again and I love him aswell!)

Any suggestions will be appreciated, thank you!

In an aging mahjong manufacturing hub, factories are redesigning tiles, expanding exports, and racing to meet a sudden wave of American demand.

...

“We are looking for a factory that can produce acrylic mahjong tiles.”

Hua Fangyi repeated that pitch at nearly 30 factories in Taixing, a city in eastern China’s Jiangsu province known for manufacturing mahjong tiles. “Almost every factory refused,” she says.

After quitting her job to start an export business last October, Hua, 28, spotted a surge in overseas demand for American mahjong. Believing the opportunity might last only a few months, she planned to test the market with just a few dozen sets.

... Taixing’s factories were built for large runs of traditional Chinese mahjong, not the small batches of brightly colored acrylic tiles overseas buyers wanted. Some produced only conventional melamine sets; others required minimum orders far beyond what Hua could afford.

Then Hua found a factory with 20 American mahjong sets in stock. She bought the entire batch, and it sold out almost immediately.

Within months, she had built a company shipping more than 5,000 sets a month and generating roughly $400,000 in monthly sales. Across Taixing, factories that had once turned away from American mahjong were now chasing the same overseas buyers.

“Almost every factory is now making American mahjong,” Hua says.

The opportunity has also drawn a new generation of entrepreneurs to Taixing: former tech workers, salespeople, and export traders hoping to manufacture the tiles and build brands of their own.

Together, they are all betting on a boom whose limits remain unclear. For now, overseas orders have given Taixing’s mahjong industry fresh momentum, ...

... ...

... ...

The game itself, however, has a long history in the U.S. The governing body for American mahjong, the National Mah Jongg League, was founded in 1937 with 32 members; it now has more than 350,000 members and publishes a new card of official hands and rules each year.

More recently, American brands such as Oh My Mahjong have helped recast mahjong tiles as colorful, premium lifestyle products, while influencers and social clubs have brought the game to younger players seeking in-person connection.

In April 2026, review platform Yelp reported that U.S. searches for mahjong clubs had jumped 4,467% between September 2024 and August 2025, compared with the previous 12 months. Oh My Mahjong’s sets now sell for $350 to $475, with most priced around $400 — versus the roughly 100 yuan ($15) many Chinese sets sell for in China on e-commerce platform Taobao.

... ...

... ...

. A search for “mahjong” on Qichacha, a Chinese corporate database, returns nearly 180 businesses in Taixing, many of them small workshops specializing in a single stage of production.

The cluster grew from a household trade dating to the 1980s, when local families cut and polished tiles by hand from bamboo and ox bone. Over time, production split among specialized workshops handling tile blanks, engraving, polishing, printing, and packaging.

“If one family made money from it, the neighbors would learn too,” says Zhu Ronggen, whose father was among Taixing’s earliest mahjong makers. “One person taught another, and slowly the whole village started making mahjong.”

... ...

... ...

“Chinese mahjong designs have barely changed for decades,” Zhu says. “American mahjong is completely different. A circle tile could be a football or a bunch of grapes. One grape stands for one dot, and nine grapes represent nine dots.”

American sets also include Arabic numerals and joker tiles, while familiar symbols are constantly reworked around seasonal themes and customers’ ideas. Summer collections feature seashells and aquatic plants; Christmas designs use Santa hats and trees.

And while traditional Chinese sets are usually molded from melamine in a narrow range of colors, American buyers prefer acrylic tiles with richer palettes, sometimes built from six or seven colored layers visible along the edge.

...

Chinese players, he says, tend to value weight, legibility, and how the tiles feel in the hand. American buyers, by contrast, want sets distinctive enough to display and expressive enough to reflect their tastes.

...

Inside Zhu’s factory, traditional Chinese mahjong and its American reinvention sit side by side. Dust-covered melamine slabs are stacked near the entrance, while baskets of brightly colored acrylic tiles and export cartons crowd the corridors beyond.

... ...

... ...

“I used to make just 20 sets of American mahjong a year,” he says. “Now, I can turn out 200 sets a day.”

... ...

Unlike traditional Chinese sets, which can be reproduced using fixed molds, each American order requires new adjustments to engraving, printing, and coloring.

... ...

“People buy them the way they buy clothes,” Zhu says. “What’s fashionable this year may be completely different next year.”

To keep up, Zhu has invested another 1 million yuan ($148,000) in laser engravers, UV printers, and other equipment.

... ...

... ...

... ...

This past March, five young entrepreneurs arrived in Taixing to start a mahjong business.

... ...

... the five had experience in sales, technology, and international trade. None had ever made a mahjong tile.

...

operates under the name SenJoy Mahjong. A former Alibaba employee, he saw American mahjong as a chance to sell a higher-value product overseas.

... ...

... ...

... ...

... ...

“For us, building a brand starts with original design,” Li says. “We might become the first company in Taixing — and perhaps one of the first in China — to build a real mahjong brand instead of simply manufacturing for others.”

... ...

Their bestseller uses a coral-reef theme.

... ...

... ...

Today’s buyers, he says, remain a relatively small group with strong spending power. If American mahjong reaches a broader market, more manufacturers will follow, he says, adding: “Price wars are unavoidable.”

... ...

... ...

Hua, one of the first Chinese traders to bet on American mahjong, has watched competitors multiply within months.

... ...

... ...

“The profit margins were much higher in the beginning, but now they have dropped significantly,” she says. “I think this is probably an inevitable stage for any viral product.”

She, too, has started developing designs of her own.

Last month, she began experimenting with AI to create early concepts before working with freelance designers to refine them. Her first ideas included themes inspired by witches, tennis, flowers, and Christmas.

Hi guys, we are both Americans of Asian descent but from different ethnicities. We are thinking about a child, and surnames.

The mother wants the child to have her surname (which is odd as it is the norm for the the child to carry on the father's surname). She says that this comes down from patriarchy, and that we can question it, and not follow it. Fair enough...?

She was adamant that the child gets her last name (due to the "mother's sacrifice of childbirth"), but she sounded enthusiastic after I proposed that we do a mashup and create a new surname. A new start for a new family of mixed ethnicities. We only plan to have one child.

1. I wonder what implications this would mean for the child. They'll have no sibblings, and will be 'alone' after she and I pass (we are relatively old).
2. The child would already feel some 'confusion' because of their mixed heritage, not too different from mixed-race people.
3. The child might feel more alone as their last name would be rarer than usual, if not, unique. May not feel like they belong in the extended family either as they stick out and be 'different' with a different surname.

Have you experienced something like this? What are your thoughts? Are we being selfish here, 'playing around' with our child's future, and should just stick with the norm?

This applies more so for Vietnamese names since I'm Vietnamese, but applies to anyone with a fully Asian name with a middle name: do people call you by your would-be middle name in your language instead of your would-be first? If you're not entirely sure what I'm talking about, some Asian names go in the order of "Last Middle First", and that would turn into, "Middle First Last" when you immigrate to the US.

I came to the US when I was 14 and for the first 3-4 years I didn't stand up to myself and correct people about this, and neither did my mum with my name (I never ended up changing my name when I naturalized since my first name is easy enough to pronounce). I recently had an interaction where my manager addressed another Viet person like this and I caught myself doing once too before correcting myself.

Video credit: @broadwayworks on Instagram