John Luk Story and Mall Strategy

Luk started off as an emergency room nurse.  He even worked his way up to becoming head nurse.  Then, after noticing the lack of Asian groceries stores and banquet halls in the Santa Clara Valley, he gathered resources and partners to launch Milpitas Square. While we liked going to Lion Plaza, Milpitas Square is a massive Asian oriented developed on a scale we had never seen before. It situated itself strategically in Silicon Valley’s Golden Triangle.

Luk focuses on two things for developing an Asian themed mall – an anchor tenant and banquet hall facilities. Ranch 99 was the key anchor for Milpitas Square. Incidentally, he was involved with Lion Plaza also. He also worked with an older center in Newark (not far from where I grew up) and brought in a Ranch 99 and a banquet restaurant.  I have been to both.

Willow Lung-Amam Paper on Asian American Malls

The history of Asian malls in Silicon Valley is an interesting one. The growth and evolution of these malls reflect the changing demographics and economic realities of Silicon Valley.  If you are interested in more detail, I recommend this paper from Willow Lung-Amam on Asian mall evolution in the Valley. Note that if you can’t access it, JSTOR provides an overview here. Lung-Amam also talked about some of the challenges to open Asian malls, such as opposition by local residents, in her book Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia.

The John Luk interview and Lung-Amam’s paper resonates with me because I lived this history. These Asian malls are places near to me that my family and I still go to. The paper also discusses the challenges of urban Chinatowns as suburban dwellers like myself have little reason to go there.

One area that the interview and paper didn’t cover is how the catering to Asian customers doesn’t just happen at dedicated Asian malls. I have talked about how mainstream malls like Valley Fair and Stonestown Galleria have remained viable by catering to Asian American customers. Perhaps a future paper from Lung-Amam will cover this developments.

(photo credit: Nandaro licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)

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Years before KPop Demon Hunters had wide swaths of America singing in Korean, one mainstream cartoon had a show were characters would speak almost totally in Korean. Adventure Time‘s Lady Rainicorn had the vast majority of her lines in Korean! I never watched Adventure Time as it first came out in 2010, years past the time when my kids would watch cartoons a lot. Looking at the clip above, I wish I did!

The voice actor who does Lady Rainicorn has an interesting story, as she relates (4:59) in the video below. Niki Yang was originally a storyboard artist on the show. As she was fluent in Korean, they decided to give a character lines in Korean. What ended up being really funny is that they never subtitle Lady Rainicorn’s lines! Her Korean is often very blunt and adult.

Korean was chosen for the show as in 2010, it would seem very alien to American viewers. How times have changed! To see a translation of Lady Rainicorn’s best quotes, look here.  Adventure Time streams on Hulu, Disny+, and HBO Max.

(picture credit: Fred Seibert by CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Given how AI, tech billionaires, and social media have huge mindshare these days, Silicon Valley is an incredibly hot topic. I can just see someone pitching a show about striking back those giant corporations and tycoons.  The upcoming show Cupertino fits that profile.  It also seems to be expert in magic, as it has made Cupertino Asian Americans disappear!

As an Asian American living in Silicon Valley, I think of Cupertino mainly in three areas: hypercompetitive high schools, resulting high housing prices, and great Asian food! Apple comes in fourth. Cupertino is a majority Asian American city, where Asians are 70% of the population. That high percentage has lead to some pretty good eating there. ChonkyABG covers a few spots in Cupertino. I embedded the first part of her two part series on Cupertino Asian food below.

To be fair, it is just the teaser trailer, and the series might actually reflect the real demographics of Silicon Valley. Then again, it might not. If you are still interested in seeing the show, Cupertino will premiere on October 10, 10 PM and 9 central on CBS.

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I get a newsletter from the ASPIRE cancer study, and their last message included a link to this Newsweek article about the rise in Asian American breast cancer  Not too long ago, doctors were once skeptical that Asian American women would have breast cancer. Now, Asian American women have the fastest growing rate of breast cancer. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) are trying to find out why, and one of the lead investigators presents data on the issue in this talk (video embedded above). In addition, you can help these researchers.

Dr. Scarlett Lin Gomez points out in her talk that immigrant Asian Americans were once less likely to get breast cancer.  Now that has reversed. She also makes the case that not only Asian Americans experience increases in breast cancer but so do Asians in Asia.

I mentioned that you can help.  The CRANE study (Breast Cancer Risk and AsiaN AmEricans Study) wants Asian American women with or without breast cancer in the Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Mateo, or Santa Clara to sign up for the their study. Also, note that Stanford’s Center for Asian Health Research and Education hosted Dr. Gomez’s talk. They conduct a number of webinars on Asian American health, including an upcoming one on Gastric Cancer Screening on September 22.

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Why Filipino Americans? The study authors speculate that this is may be from Filipino American’s high incidence of hypertension, which correlates strongly with cognitive decline. I personally know many Filipinos with hypertension, an I am one of them!

Data for this study was taken from the Kaiser Health Aging and Diverse Life Experience (HANDLE) project and LifeAfter90 longitudinal studies. One actionable item from this study is that if you have hypertension, get it under control. I have had to do that myself.

(photo credit: Phlsph7 adapted by The Anome, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

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Earl’s Court Jollibee

After a 15 year absence, Jollibee returns to San Francisco! I remember the old on 4th and Howard. The return of the America’s best fast food fried chicken was not easy. The company had applied to open a store in 2020. They had to run a gauntlet of regulations and permit approvals that delayed opening until late July. Some articles held up Jollibee’s struggles with the city bureaucracy as an example of what is wrong with San Francisco.

While it’s great that Jollibee has opened in an area of San Francisco that could use more businesses, would I have waited hours for it?  No.  That might be because I live close to a Jollibee and have a few I can  choose from!

To get a thorough overview on this story, from why Jollibee is a big deal for many Filipinos to the ridiculous permitting situation and to reforms that the new mayor has made to prevent that situation from happening again, I suggest you check out the podcast embedded below. If you just want to eat at Jollibee San Francisco, it is located at 934 Market.

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As a fellow Duke alum and a founding national board member and Duke Northern California Duke Asian Alumni Alliance chapter founder, I follow Duke’s most famous Asian American alumni (and possibly most famous?), Ken Jeong, religiously. Recently I saw that he had shared on social media a podcast interview with Ken Jeong and Tran Ho. The podcast series is titled “Plus One with Lisa and Morgan” about:

“Plus One with Lisa and Morgan takes a unique look at celebrity by putting the “plus ones” front and center. What do you do when your significant other is just a little too significant? We’ve all been there. A spouse, best friend. co-worker… you know the people who always manage to find their light. Each episode, Lisa Joyner, married to Jon Cryer and Morgan Walsh, wife of comedian Matt Walsh, bring the Plus+One’s out of the shadows to share incredible stories of who they are, what they do and how they play a best supporting role to their famous counterparts. Then we hear from the famous, in their own words.”

So it was super interesting to hear from Ken’s “Ho,” her experience meeting and building a life with Ken:

“This week on Plus One, Lisa Joyner and Morgan Walsh welcome Dr. Tran Ho—family physician, breast cancer survivor, humanitarian, and wife of actor and comedian Ken Jeong.

Tran shares how she and Ken met while working as doctors, why she encouraged him to leave medicine to pursue comedy full-time, and the unforgettable first date that started it all.

She also opens up about being diagnosed with aggressive triple-negative breast cancer shortly after giving birth to twins, and how humor, resilience, and the support of family and friends helped them through one of the hardest chapters of their lives.

Later, Ken joins the conversation to talk about what it’s like being Tran’s plus one, why she’s the funniest person in their family, and the partnership that has carried them through every stage of life.”

I still have yet to meet Ken – that is my ultimate Duke alumni goal!

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This interview by former WNBA (and fellow UCONN alum) Sue Bird from late June with WNBA’s Kaitlyn Chen of the Golden State Valkyries appeared in my YouTube feed recently. I think this is the longest interview I’ve seen ever with Chen since she’s been playing in the WNBA:

“In this episode, Sue chats with Golden State Valkyries guard Kaitlyn Chen (who happened to be calling in using her backcourt partner Veronica Burton’s iPad!). Entering her second WNBA season, Kaitlyn reflects on her unique path to the pros—from anchoring a dominant program at Princeton to playing a more strategic role on UConn’s championship team alongside Paige and Azzi, and navigating the emotional roller coaster of her rookie WNBA season. Kaitlyn shares what it means to be the first Taiwanese-American player in the WNBA, playing under the league’s first Japanese-American head coach, Natalie Nakase, while embracing the passionate Bay Area fan base. She also breaks down how she handles the fast-changing business of the league, finding her voice as a leader, and maintaining an aggressive edge on the court against the “talls.”

I’ve seen Chen play since her debut with the Golden State Valkyries but have yet to meet her one-on-one to interview her. The Taiwanese American community is pretty small and well connected. It didn’t surpirse me to find out when Chen was starting off in the WNBA that a Love Boat friend of mine actually went to medical school with her mom.

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