API Female Community Leaders Star in FWN’s “The Vagina Monologues”
April 30, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - On Saturday, May 2, 2009, the Filipina Women’s Network (FWN) will present its first all-Asian American production of “The Vagina Monologues.” Community leaders Fiona Ma, Assemblywoman (D-12); Jane Kim, Vice President of the San Francisco Board of Education; Hydra Mendoza, Commissioner of the San Francisco Board of Education; Helen Zia, acclaimed journalist, author, and activist; and many others leaders in the Asian American community join FWN in its growing movement against domestic violence.
Performance Details:
When: 7:30p.m., Sat., May 2, 2009
Where: Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco 94102
Tickets: www.cityboxoffice.com (mention code “Asian Women” for special priced tickets) or call 415.392.4400
The brave souls of the FIRST ALL-ASIAN AMERICAN CAST OF “The Vagina Monologues” include:
* BAMBI LORICA, MD | Holistic Pediatrician; Physician Entrepreneur
* ELENA MANGAHAS | Chair, Little Manila Foundation
* EMILY MOTO MURASE | Executive Director, Department on the Status of Women, City and County of San Francisco
* EVELIE DELFINO SALES POSCH | Artist, Writer, Singer, and more
* FIONA MA | Assemblywoman (District 12)
* GENEVIEVE JOPANDA | Events Coordinator, Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce
* HELEN ZIA | Journalist, Author, Activist
* HYDRA MENDOZA | Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Education Advisor;
Commissioner San Francisco Board of Education
* JAJA BOLIVAR | Television Host, Singer
* JAN YANEHIRO | President, Jan Yanehiro Inc.
* JANE KIM | Vice President, San Francisco Board of Education
* DR. JENNIFER ONG | Optometrist
* JO-ANN AGCAOILI | Assistant Vice President, Bank of America
* LIA SHIGEMURA | Diversity Director, ABM Industries
* MAYETTE ALMAZAN, MD | President CEO, Specialty Center Inc.
* MITOS SANTISTEBAN | President, ABS CBN Foundation; Community Relations, ABS CBN International, The Filipino Channel
* NINA NGUYEN LAGAC | Marketing Director, Office Systems of Connecticut
* SHEILA CHUNG HAGEN | Legislative Aide, Supervisor David Campos, City and County of San Francisco
* SIWARAYA ROCHANAHUSDIN | Community Organizer, Save the Thai Temple
* SONIA DELEN | Senior Vice President, Banc of America Leasing
* TRICIA MARISTELA | Board Member, Healthy Ways
* VALERINE DE LEON | Dentist; Trustee, California Optometric Association
For more information, go to www.ffwn.org or contact Marily Mondejar at marily@ffwn.org or 415.278.9410.
Treeless Mountain
April 30, 2009
By Philip W. Chung
Writer/Director So Yong Kim’s feature debut In Between Days displayed the talents of a filmmaker with an ability to create a moody character study using the landscape and environment to say as much about the character as any line of dialogue could. It reminded me of the best of the Italian Neo-realists in that regard, but the film lacked the confidence of the early works of those Italian directors like Rossellini and felt slow and unsure. There was definite promise but I couldn’t embrace the film like I wanted to.
So I am happy to report that Treeless Mountain, Kim’s latest effort, is a huge leap forward. The strengths she showed in her previous film are still on ample display here but there is now a surer directorial hand guiding the proceedings.
Set in South Korea, Treeless Mountain focuses on two girls-seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) who are left to live with their aunt (Mi Hyang Kim) for the summer while their mother (Soo Ah Lee) goes in search of the girls’ father who abandoned them. Read more
Daily Dose & Announcements: 04/30/09
April 30, 2009
>> Modern Day McCarthyism: The Case of Duc Tan
>> New York Pharmacies to Use Chinese
>>18th Annual Kops and Kids Family Day at Serra Bowl
>> Cameron House’s 60th Annual Benefit Carnival
>> Philippine Government Readies Anti-Flu Capsules Read more
High Tech CEO Paul Chen Finds a Mission in China
April 30, 2009
By Gerrye Wong
When Paul Chen, who was well ensconced in the testing field for high tech companies in Silicon Valley, decided to move his company to China in 2003, he was unaware that this career path would lead him down a road to help China recapture its history. Chen’s Beijing office was right across from China’s famed Summer Palace and he always enjoyed looking out his window and seeing its serene park-like setting below. It was his favorite sightseeing location for him to explore with visiting family members and clients. His interest in Chinese culture and antiques was reborn during the past five years while he established the headquarters of his company, EMC Compliance Management Group in Beijing.
ECMG, Chen’s company, is an accredited test lab with sites in Sunnyvale, CA, Taipei and Taichung, Taiwan, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Each office/lab location provides EMI/EMC/RFI, electrical safety, mechanical, environmental tests and certification services to domestic and international clients. In layman’s language, Chen adds, “Our company provides services to keep products from less interference to communication systems and safer to use plus energy saving and environmental friendly. There are growing laws and regulations in each country that manufactures must adhere to.” The Taiwan born Chen moved to America as a young student, receiving his BS/MS degrees in EE and studied Laser applications. In the future he hopes to find time to write books on compliance and environmental management.
In 2007, Paul Chen met well-known Taiwanese antiques collector, Mr. Su Guo-Hsin. In Mr. Su’s home library, Chen was shown a wall size painting amongst Su’s collections. He recalls, I recognized the major objects on this painting were of the Summer Palace, and learned that this painting, circa early 1900s, was a depiction of how the Summer Palace grounds and buildings were designed over 100 years ago. He immediately researched the history of the painting.
Paul Chen learned that, as history tells it, in 1900 the Eight-Nation Alliance was an alliance made up of Austria, Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States whose armies invaded China to put down the Boxer Uprising in August 1900. Their troops were sent to China after the Boxers attacked and murdered Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries across Northern China before converging on Beijing to besiege foreign diplomats and civilians who had taken refuge in the Legation Quarter. After a first landing failed, the Alliance armies eventually lifted the siege. However, those troops then looted and pillaged the capital.
Chen said he further learned that this painting was cut, folded and looted from The Summer Palace during that 3-day mass robbery. It only appeared 70 years later in a Chicago Antique Shop, Nagatami, Inc., acquired from a Boston Museum of Art. In 1974 it was sold to Mr. Byron Harvey, who in 1978 resold it to Mr. George Chamberlain of Scottsdale, Arizona. Following her father’s death in year 2000, Ann Chamberlain sold the painting to Mr. Guo-Hsin Su who met Paul Chen through a business associate and happened to show Chen the painting. Excited at the prospect of returning the painting to its rightful place in The Summer Palace, Paul Chen contacted the Director of Relics Department of The Summer Palace, where an evaluation meeting with six experts was held in March, 2008. Deemed authentic by the experts, this Ming art piece, Chen strongly believed, should come back to The Summer Palace where it once belonged. “This painting shows the original landscape and structures which are important information for those doing restorations. The China Relics Department of the Summer Palace is fully supportive of my effort and has planned to budget for the donation ceremony. The Summer Palace Relic Department is planning the donation appreciation acknowledgement process and this painting will be displayed in the main cabinet of Wen-Chang Yuan,” continues Chen.
When Chen learned Mr. Guo-Hsin Su was planning to consign the painting to an auction house in Hong Kong, Chen recalls, “I convinced him to consign this painting to me instead. In return, I guaranteed I would somehow collect the same amount, $1.2M, that the auction house had estimated they could bring in an auction sale. Immediately in good faith, I paid Mr. Su $200K as the first donor installment for this painting. My goal, now, is to find other donors who believe like me that the painting belongs back in The Summer Palace and are willing to help us purchase the painting to be donated to its rightful place.”
Chen excitedly goes on to say, “The Museum Directors, of course, are excited at this prospect, as am I, but we are in need or other philanthropic donors who can make this transition happen. We are still looking for donors to help us fulfill our goal of raising $945,000 to bring the painting back to the Summer Palace.
Presently there are plans for an official donor ceremony to be held on October 1 (The Chinese 4th of July, China’s Independence Day) to commemorate The Summer Palace’s 60 year anniversary. The donation of this painting to the Summer Palace would be the highlight of this celebration. When this gift is made, officials of the Beijing Summer Palace will honor their promise to all donors that a plaque with their names will be permanently displayed in front of the painting, and the names will also be listed in The States Historical Registration.
A very determined man, dedicated to this mission, Paul Chen says, “This painting was from and belongs to The Summer Palace in Beijing” For those similarly inclined wishing to join Chen in his goal.
Chen’s contact numbers are paulfchen@gmail.com or +1-650 279-6789
Chinese American Hero: Tsung-Dao Lee
April 30, 2009
Chinese American Hero: Tsung-Dao Lee
Name in English: Tsung-Dao Lee
Name in Chinese: 李政道 [李政道]
Name in Pinyin: Lǐ Zhèngdào
Gender: Male
Birth Year: 1926
Birth Place: Shanghai, China Read more
Daily Dose & Announcements: 04/29/09
April 29, 2009
>> Finding Justice For Fong Lee
>> “The Vagina Monologues”
>> South Korea: New Dogs, a New Trick
>> North Korea Threatens to Enrich Uranium
>> China to Let Taiwan Participate in U.N. Body
Chinese American Hero: Samuel Chao Chung Ting
April 29, 2009
Chinese American Hero: Samuel Chao Chung Ting
Name in English: Samuel Chao Chung Ting
Name in Chinese: 丁肇中
Name in Pinyin: Dīng Zhàozhōng
Gender: Male
Birth Year: 1936
Birth Place: Ann Arbor, Michigan Read more
Daily Dose & Announcements: 04/28/09
April 28, 2009
>> San Francisco Taiwanese American Cultural Festival
>> APALC Applauds Senator Feinstein’s Assistance on behalf of an Asian American Same-Sex Couple
>> Get Screened for Hep B!
>> “Ten to Life”
>> Preston Ni Presents on Human Behavior Read more
Chinese American Hero: Daniel Chee Tsui
April 28, 2009
Chinese American Hero: Daniel Chee Tsui
Name in English: Daniel Chee Tsui
Name in Chinese: 崔琦
Name in Pinyin: Cuī Qí
Gender: Male
Birth Year: 1939
Birth Place: Henan, China
Profession (s): Physicist of electrical properties of thin films, microstructures of semiconductors and solid-state physics.
Education: BS, 1967, Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. Ph.D. in Physics, 1970, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
Awards: 1998, Nobel Prize for Physics, and Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics; 1984, Buckley Prize for Condensed Matter Physics. 1982 - Present: Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Contribution (s): Was a pioneer in the study of two-dimensional electrons at Bell Labs since 1968. Discovered the fractional quantum Hall effect (Nobel prize) shortly before appointed a professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton in 1982 and has been since then. In 1998, along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Robert Laughlin of Stanford, Daniel Tsui was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Publications: L.W. Engel, Y.P. Li, D.C. Tsui, “Quantum Hall effect from finite frequency studies” Phys. B. 227, 173 (1996).
C.J. Chen, C. Kurdak, D.C. Tsui, and K.K. Choi, “Separation of partition noise from generation-recombination noise in a three terminal quantum well infrared detector,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 68, 2535(1996).
H.L. Stormer, W. Kang, S. He, R.R. Du, A.S. Yen, D.C. Tsui, L.N. Pfeiffer, K.W. Baldwin and K.W. West, “Composite fermions: their scattering and their spin,” Physica B 227, 164 (1996).
D. Shahar, D.C. Tsui, M. Shayegan, J.E. Cunningham, E. Shimshomi, and S.L. Sondhi, “The nature of the Hall insulator,” Solid State Commun. 102 (1997).
D. Shahar, D.C. Tsui, M. Shayegan, E. Shimshoni, and S.L Sondhi, “A different view of the quantum Hall plateau-to-plateau transitions,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 79 479(1997).
S.H. Song, D. Shahar, D.C. Tsui, Y.H. Xie, and D. Monroe, “New Universality at the magnetic field driven insulator to integer quantum Hall effect transitions,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 2200(1997).
C.C. Li, L.W. Engel, D. Shahar, D.C. Tsui, and M. Shayegan, “Microwave conductivity resonance of a two-dimensional hole system,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1353 (1997).
JAVA RECOGNIZES THREE GENERATIONS OF JAPANESE AMERICANS IN THE US ARMED FORCES
April 27, 2009
Rosslyn, VA - Three Medal of Honor recipients, six cadets representing armed forces academies, four flag rank officers and six World War II veterans were recognized in a special Japanese American Veterans Association luncheon in the packed private room at the China Garden Restaurant in Rosslyn, Virginia on April 14, 2009. President Bob Nakamoto said, “The WW II Nisei generation settled the question of loyalty once and for all and the armed forces subsequently offered unlimited opportunities to compete for any position and rank. Seventy-seven Asian Americans, 37 of whom are Japanese Americans, have attained flag rank and four of them are represented here today. They have demonstrated they can compete with the best of the best. The cadets represent our new generation of Asian American future leaders in the armed forces of America and they are challenged by unlimited opportunities.” Nakamoto presented each Medal of Honor recipient and each cadet with an inscribed Commemorative JAVA coin. Read more
Daily Dose & Announcements: 04/27/09
April 27, 2009
>> NAPCA Helpline Wins 2009 “Innovative Program” Award
>> New Online National Japanese American Community Directory
>> California’s API domestic violence organizations encouraged to apply for Verizon Wireless grants
>> Be a Voice. Be Heard.
>> Wells Fargo Reports Record Giving of $16.7 Million to Bay Area Non-profits
>> “The Filipinas Magazine Show” Read more
Chinese American Heroes: Roger Yonchien Tsien
April 27, 2009
This is Week 6 of AsianWeek’s salute to Chinese American Heroes and this week we are honoring great minds that have won the Nobel Prize.
Well, even though Chinese Americans are only approximately 1.5% of our national population, we have seven (7) Nobel Prize winners. One of the most famous has already been introduced in week 1 of this special series of reports, and he is Dr. Steven Chu, now our Secretary of Energy and former Director, UC Berkeley Lawrence National Laboratory. In 1997, Dr. Chu received a Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. He is the second Chinese American to be appointed to a Cabinet position after Elaine Chao, former Secretary of Labor.
Later this week, we will present the biographies of Dr. Roger Tsien, 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. Daniel Chee Tsui, 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, Dr. Samuel Chao Chung Ting, 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics, Dr. Tseng-Dao Lee, 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Dr. Chung Ning Franklin Yang, 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. One other to note that we are still writing about is Dr. Wei Min-hao, a leading researcher with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shares credit for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with former Vice President Al Gore.
There is another Nobel Prize winner in chemistry named Lee Yuan-tse, but Lee returned to Taiwan to serve as President of Academic Sinica, and later as an advisor to President Chen Shui-bian. In order to hold those high positions he had to relinquish his US citizenship. One of our Heroines is Dr. Wu Chien-hsiung, a brilliant physicist who mentored Tseng-Dao Lee and Chung Ning Franklin Yang, both of whom eventually were awarded as Nobel Laureates. Dr. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project and played a key role in developing the atomic bomb. If she were not a Chinese American woman, she might have been considered for a Nobel Prize.
Please visit our other heroes and heroines at www.chineseamericanheroes.org
Chinese American Hero: Roger Yonchien Tsien
Name in English: Roger Yonchien Tsien
Name in Chinese: 钱永健 [錢永健]
Name in Pinyin: Qián Yŏngjiàn
Gender: Male
Birth Year: 1952
Birth Place: New York
Current location: San Diego, California
Profession(s): Scientist, Professor
Education: Bachelor of Science, Chemistry, Physics, Harvard University, 1972; Ph.D, Physiology, Cambridge University, 1977; Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, 1977-1981
Awards: 1968, Winner, Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now the Intel STS); 1991, W. Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology, Columbia University; 1995, Artois-Baillet-Latour Health Prize; 1995, Gairdner Foundation International Award; 1995, Basic Research Prize, American Heart Association; 1998, Award for Innovation in High Throughput Screening, Society for Biomolecular Screening; 2000, Pearse Prize, Royal Microscopical Society; 2002, ACS Award for Creative Invention, American Chemical Society; 2002, Christian B. Anfinsen Award, Protein Society; 2002, Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences; 2002, Max Delbrück Medal, Max Delbrück Centrum für Molekulare Medizi; 2004, Wolf Prize in Medicine, Wolf Foundation; 2008, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Contribution(s): Dr. Roger Tsien shared the 2008 Nobel Price in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie “for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.” Their breakthrough discovery was originally isolated from the crystal jelly, a common form of jellyfish. GFP is what makes the jellyfish glow green in the dark. The same glowing property can be added to any cell protein enabling scientists to mark and track individual molecules through a live organism. Dr. Tsien’s work was to research and mutate GFP to allow scientists to add a palette of different colors beyond green. With red, blue, and other colors scientists could then follow multiple proteins simultaneously and study the effects of protein modifications. Dr. Tsien made the protein even more useful by creating versions that change colors as conditions change. If one color-tagged protein interacts with another color-tagged protein, a different color appears. Although the public has mostly seen this technique described in humorous terms such as in making the brains of mice glow in the colors of the rainbow and green glowing pigs, the serious research possibilities opened up by this technique are immense. It has enabled scientists to study the effects of manipulating DNA at the cellular level allowing the real-time study of Alzheimer’s Disease, cancer, and other diseases as well as aiding research into stem cells. The future of medicine and other life sciences has been opened up by this work to the world.
Publications/Patents:
“A New Generation of Ca2+ Indicators with Greatly Improved Fluorescence Properties” by Grynkiewicz, G., Poenie, M., and Tsien, R. Y. (1985) J. Biol. Chem. 260, 3440-3450
Numerous publications, see UCSD site: http://www.tsienlab.ucsd.edu/Publication.htm
