Hello everyone,

I am sure everyone is aware of all the things that have been happening in the social media sphere. From Alexandra Wallace’s racist rant on YouTube, to the insensitive content distributed in the micro-blogging world regarding the recent events in Japan. While I am just as offended and disgusted as most of you, I think we all need to do one thing: step back, think, and look at the big picture. Because it is so easy and fast to send out a single tweet, or a status update on Facebook, it is easy to let emotions get the best of us and say something irrational in that moment.

While I can understand how messed up it is for people to mock our race and take light of a situation as catastrophic as the recent events in Japan, sending death threats as well as hate message does not make us any better as a community. I say this not because we “need to set a good example”, fuck that, we can be whoever the hell we want to be. This is about educating mainstream media the culture and values we cherish as Asian Americans. This is about us growing as individuals. If this is how we react to something as small scaled as this (from a bigger perspective off course), then how will we react to things in the future? Imagine this, if you were employed at work and a colleague mocked of your race, I can almost guarantee a death threat on any level as retaliation is just as a serious offense. Before we grow as a community, we need to learn to develop ourselves as individuals. Especially as young Asian Americans, who are so proficient in all the social media avenues, we tend to forget how much reach we really have over the internet, and how a single negative “tweet”  or video can influence so many people. We are the future, the way we impact the world is in our hands. And not to sound cliche, but “with great power comes great responsibility”. I urge all of you to realize that power and remind yourself to use it wisely. In the words of Gandhi: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” We have the ability to make those changes, and they start with YOU.

- Benny Luo

A lot has been happening for the past few months. Hense my incredible lack of updates. Obviously I haven’t abandoned this blog, I have just been involved with so much stuff that it is tough to find time and energy to keep up with a regular personal blog schedule.

So my partners and I have recently launched TheOtherAsians, read the last post if you want details on what it is exactly. I didn’t really have much expectation of how successful the launch would be, but I must say that we did REALLY well. My goal was to get 1000 hits on first day and we overshot that goal by a HUGE margin. I would like to thank everyone that have continued to spread the word about us because you all made this happen.

The involved I get with this project, the more surreal the experience feels. For a lot of the people that we interviewed, these were the types of people who I saw on TV/Movies and listened to their music as I was growing up. Never would I have thought I would be able to meet people like Parry Shen, the lead actor of Better Luck Tomorrow, Lynn Chen from Saving Face, and Natalise. These individuals have been pivotal in getting Asian American’s recognized in mainstream media. The level of support that we have been getting from everyone we meet/interview has been AMAZING as well. I feel very blessed and humbled that these individuals who have achieved so much would go out of their way to help us grow.

I would like to address some criticism that we have been getting though. I know that we target only Chinese/Taiwanese Americans, yet we call ourselves “TheOtherAsians”. I understand this is kind of confusing and shows lack of direction on our side. And quite frankly, I am completely aware of it and we are slowly working on branding ourselves a bit better. The reason why we targeted Chinese/Taiwanese American in the first place was that we saw that there were so many blogs out their that addresses other Asian races, but none specifically for Chinese/Taiwanese Americans. However, we wanted to give the magazine a name that would allow us to branch out in the future if we needed to (it would be nice if we became an Asian American Blog ya know? haha). To be perfectly honest though, I have absolutely no clue where I really want to take this magazine. All I know is that it looks cool, people like to read it, and people support us. So, I hope that all of you guys continue to support us as we build ourselves as a brand and work out the kinks we have.

I also attended Banana 2 gathering yesterday, which is a conference were Asian American Bloggers get together and talk about how to improve their blogs and talk about general Asian American issues. There was a great panel of people including Gil Asakawa of Nikkei View, Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man, Steve Nguyen of Channel APA, and more. For those of you that didn’t go, you definitely need to check out Banana 3 in the future. For the price you pay ($15 or students, $20 for regular), you definitely get your money worth. They include a nice gift bag for you, breakfast, lunch, and an afterparty with awesome hors d oeuvres. Apart from that, you also get the opportunity to network with some of the most influential Asian American bloggers in the industry.

As a lot of you probably know, I have been working on multiple projects lately, which is probably the reason why I haven’t really been updating as much. Anyways, I have had the pleasure of working with awesome people in this new blog I am going to launch on February 3rd. The idea was originally brought up by my friends Melly Lee (MellyLee.com) and Julie Zhan (Pacific Rim Video), they wanted to create an Online Magazine (Asian American Blog) which featured current/upcoming Chinese & Taiwanese American’s pursuing their dreams, whether in entertainment, business, medicine, etc. I immediately thought this was a great idea especially since there are many outlets right now like AllKPop or BakitWhy that do a great job updating us on Korean and Filipino industry news respectively. Why not make one with focus on Chinese/Taiwanese Americans?

My personal goals for this blog is:

• To inspire Asian Americans to find a pursue their passion regardless of parental or societal expectations.
• To showcase upcoming/current talent with intention to propel them further to the pinnacles they plan to reach.
• To break mainstream stereotypes about Asian Americans (you guys know what they already) and help give them a bigger voice in mainstream media
• To have the opportunity to partner up and work with two great people I know!

I would like to personally thank both Melly Lee and Julie Zhan for helping to making this happen. This would not have been possible with out you guys! Lastly, I would like to thank all the talented people we have interviewed for taking the time out of their busy day to hang out with us!

Check out the site here at http://www.TheOtherAsians.com and stay tuned for our first post on February 3rd!

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