07/07/2020
Welcome to Chinatown 2.0, a new video podcast hosted by Ling Richard Yan!
This show will focus on first generation, high skilled immigrants in the knowledge economy. I call them Chinese knowledge immigrants. And each episode is an interview with one Chinese knowledge immigrant. The interview can be in English or in Mandarin, but most likely English.
This means folks that typically came to the US for education, maybe at high school, college, or graduate school level. And they are now making a difference in their professional areas. They’re at the top of their game. I’m talking about fields like entrepreneurship, tech, finance, academia, medicine, law, real estate, and so on.
Since they spent their earlier and most formative years in China, their world view and value system are very much informed by their education and upbringing in China.
They also generally maintain a huge network of friends back in China. Their spouses tend to be Chinese, and their closest friends here have similar background as them. They check WeChat for Chinese news on a regular basis. Maybe their career brings them back to China often. Some may have previously worked in China. News about China-US trade wars is interesting to them not only because it affects the stock market.
I think it’s accurate to say that many of them would consider themselves Chinese first, American second.
The interview will be a casual and unscripted conversation. I hope to go beyond the guest’s background and experience, and talk to the guest in detail about hot button topics of the day.
So why make this show?
Well, the show serves at least three purposes. First, it’s about capturing stories. Many of our guests will have lived through unique circumstances. For example, some will have lived through extreme circumstances like China’s cultural revolution and arrived in the US not speaking much English at all. Some have done well in professional areas where there aren’t a whole lot of others that look like them.
Second, it’s about common struggles. We all need to decide whether and how to teach our kids Chinese. We look at China’s changes in recent years and development of our friends back home. And wonder what it would’ve been like if we went back to China. We all deal with circumstances in America that affect China and Chinese people, like the US government’s policies and narratives on China.
Third, and most importantly, it’s about creating a community for Chinese immigrants. I hope this content will be a source of inspiration, discussion, and friendship for every Chinese knowledge immigrant out there. There’s no centralized, curated media for our kind. No place to craft a joint narrative. Or a forum for intellectual exchange and debate on topics particularly relevant for us. Sure, there’s 微信群 and 朋友圈. But they are cluttered with irrelevant information. And they aren’t set up for long-form serious discussions. They just don’t have the DNA for what we’re trying to accomplish here. I hope this podcast is one step towards creating that ultimate platform.
Let me wrap up by explaining the reason behind the name. The term Chinatown doesn’t evoke the image of Chinese knowledge immigrants. But the way these immigrants have established themselves in many critically important areas such as business, tech, finance, academia and law, and the way they create this new powerful social class, is like creating this new metaphorical city of Chinese knowledge immigrants.
