 I think in order to understand a culture, you should learn the language and you should eat the food. And I think these Chinese restaurants around the world, not just in America, but also in Canada, Mexico, because this book, American Chinese Restaurant, that's edited by myself and Haiming Liu, it's not just a USA story, it's a, you know, it's a Latin American story. Chinese restaurants are all over Latin America, right? It's a huge restaurant. They have shaped and impacted Peru, Argentina, Chile, and these are not in the discourse. So Alan, the reason why I also wanted to edit this book was because every time I read, as an academic, I would read these like stories of racism on Chinese, you know, restaurant tours, you know, they weren't allowed, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that excluded Chinese people from coming to the US. That's true. And all these things are right. And I would read these things and they would mention Chinese restaurants as a way how the restaurant workers, I'm sorry, the railroad workers after they were done with the railroad, they couldn't go back to China, so they started Chinese restaurants. And I thought that was an interesting story and definitely interesting. But I, having been raised in a Chinese restaurant, knew that there are so many other stories of positive opportunities for these like poor Chinese people, but also interactions. So a lot of people don't understand that Chinese restaurants are safe spaces for lots of minorities. Jewish Americans during Christmas time, they go to Chinese restaurants during their birthdays, they go to Chinese restaurants. And so it is a space open to another ethnic group that, you know, lets them eat their food. And because it doesn't have that much dairy and they're open on Christmas, it becomes and it becomes part of their modernity, right? And it's not in the history. And I want to write about one day is the fact that African Americans were excluded in so many spaces in America, but not Chinese restaurants. So you have a lot of African Americans who just have these stories of going to Chinese restaurants, such as my Chinese restaurant in the Midwest, and having these like generational stories. And I think that those stories, I mean yes, there were racism, but those other stories of like this massive kind of like safe space, as you say, those are not really told in the literature. And so that's why I wanted to edit this book. I know someone's opinion may contradict yours. Where's my friend Alan? It's all about your perspective. Who are we and what is the nature of this reality? What's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sakyan. We are still on site at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. This is our second partnership with them. We are now going to be talking about American Chinese restaurants and so much more. We have Dr. Jenny Bond joining us on the show. Hello. Hi Jenny. Hi. Thanks for coming on the program. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited to talk about your new book and much more. I want to start with some of the questions that we love asking our guests. Do you think that we're really all one? Well Leslie White is a very famous anthropologist and he talks about energy and how we all have different energies, but we're all part of the universe energy. To some extent, I do believe that we're all interconnected and in terms of energy. I can send you positive energy, you can send me negative energy. I think that we are all connected energy. I believe that when you come into a room, your energy before you come into a room will affect the room subtly. I believe that all of us have energy wherever we go and people can feel it on a subconscious level. So much of what you just said about energy is super present from the initial moments of whether you call it the big bang or creation or all that is or whatever you want to call it source until now. And how this path of all coming from one until now has deep roots in interconnectedness. The air that I breathe in is the air phytoplankton and trees breathe out. I take a bite of an apple, it comes from the power of the sun. And so the lack of children understanding that feeling separate rather than feeling interconnected, would you say that those feelings of separation, like what indigenous tribes from around the world are trying to remind modernity about, would you say that's the root of many of our issues? I think there's many roots. But definitely the interconnectedness and nature is something that is a definite root of disconnected and I would definitely say that our electronics is one of the things like social media, the addiction to social media and also the addiction to our electronics is part of that root of making you feel disconnected. I live in California with Silicon Valley. There's many people who are spending multiple million dollars for you to stay on that app for as long as possible. And they're doing everything they can to keep you on that computer, on your computer, to like it. All these masterminds to make you feel, so it's for advertising to make more income for them. So that is, I think, one of the many roots, but definitely I would say this new kind of, you know, this new really huge change for humans that were constantly connected in a way that makes us almost disconnected is one of the roots. So yes. Very interesting. Yes. Yes. I like how you bring into the equation, especially on a time scale visibility here on the millions of years of human evolution. We're looking at just the very, very last 10 or so years of having these devices around us and using them all the time, pulling at them 150 times a day. The business plans. Years of our time, the business plans of the attention economy being tied to advertising. This is a very also interesting thing, you know, being able to query civilization's knowledge at my fingertips is also very interesting. So I'm really excited for the next wave of conscious evolution that comes and builds the next ways that we connect with devices because it will be much more around the interconnectedness and less so about profiteering on people's attention. Jenny, I'm curious, what are your thoughts about the overall purpose of reality? Why are we here? That's a deep question. We love asking the deep ones on the program. Why are we here? I don't know if I can answer for everyone on earth. I can only answer for myself. I think I'm here for a purpose. I have my own motto and I don't know about other people like why they're here. They probably have their own reasons, but my model is to create culture, to use my privilege of power to help oppressed populations, three, to create what I don't see and four, my last motto is reveal hidden stories. And so that's why I'm here and that's from living my life. That's my purpose of other people. I don't know. They have, I'm sure they have their own purposes. Let's go through those again. Those were really good. Okay. You want to create culture, create culture. Number two, use my privilege and power to help oppressed populations. Yeah. Use privilege and power to help oppressed. We all have our, we are both privileged individuals in a Western space. So here, where when we buy a cup of coffee, that same price is what 50% of people around the world make in a day. Right. And we're not the Vietnamese coffee pickers. You're getting poisoned and Vietnam to make that coffee bean to send it to Starbucks. So yes, that is something. So that's what I can do in my own little way because these are our brothers and sisters around the world that we want to help uplift these. This is us. We are one and working and feeling that rather than buying a third car, third house, third boat, watch, whatever, investing it into the art and entrepreneurship and science and spirituality of people around the world to come up and be uplifted, bring their unique gifts forward. Right. I love that one. Okay. Three. Uh, what was, uh, uh, so create culture, use my privilege of public. Uh, what was it? Uh, create what I don't see. So, uh, sometimes, um, I want to see things happen. I want to, uh, and it's maybe this is kind of, uh, goes into the model minority myth for Asians, but if I don't see it, I'll create it. So I believe I can create what I say. So if I say it, I can create it. And so, um, How else can you bring your unique gift to the world? If it's, you know, if it's not there, we have to manifest it. We have to see the next world that we're going to build and then build that. Yeah. So I've been wanting to be an anthropologist since I was eight years old. So since I was eight years old, I wanted to see the world. I wanted to see different cultures and, um, cause I, I watch a lot of Star Trek and, um, public forecasting. And so it was just like really fascinating. And so I, I could see those people creating culture, doing things, revealing, hidden story, my last one is, it's revealing, hitting stories. Right. And so it's particularly for, um, PBS, right? I saw a show where they, the interviewer interviewed a giant African tribe where they're very tall and then he just drove like, you know, I guess a hundred miles away and it was a, a pygmy kind of shorter tribe. And I was like, how's this possible? You know, my eight year old self is like, Oh my God, humans are so diverse. And it's so interesting. And then this kind of goes into my Star Trek love in that it's really kind of anthropology show in a way and that it real reveals a lot of different cultures and kind of being tolerant and of these cultures and how they have lots to, lots of value, right? And so that's like, within all these four probably has something to do with my, my sci-fi, uh, viewership. Yeah. Well, those are such for profound ones. And I hope that, um, those that are watching can also both relate to and resonate with some of the ones that you mentioned, cause I sure do. And then also reflect on our own purposes. What is our unique role here in the world? And if we haven't really established that yet, the importance of like writing it down and really reflecting on it on a daily basis, what our unique gift is to bring to the world. So crucial. Um, let's dive in. This, this was really interesting learning about this about you. You did another interview and you sent it over to me and I was reading it. And when I was hearing about this, um, so you were born in Hong Kong and then came here very young, three months, three months to the U.S. America. Yes. And then you grew up in Bellevue, Illinois, near Chicago. Yes. It's like a over an hour away. Yes. Okay. Suburbs, suburbs, working class suburb, yes. And then, um, you spent a lot of your time working in the, in a Chinese restaurant. Yes. Yes. Interesting. And so then this kind of spurred part of at least a good chunk of this American Chinese restaurants, most recently anthropological study that you're doing, um, of really this, like, uh, how in many ways, uh, Chinese diaspora come into very interesting social communities around things like these restaurants, which actually have, you were telling me almost 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. More than McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's combined. That is mind blowing. Cause we see those chain restaurants everywhere, but we don't think about counting the, the Chinese and there's all these different, the provinces in China have unique foods and so there's all this kind of stuff. Yeah. Over 13 regional food, like food cultures. Yes. Yeah. This is so interesting. So take us to, um, even in your, uh, in the, in the childhood, what is it, what was it like being a part of that, that node, um, in Bellevue when you were growing up and then how it relates to what your studies are today. So a lot of it, I think back now, but as a child, I didn't understand, but as a child, I, you know, I worked in the restaurant, I was six, seven, eight, uh, and our customers were a primarily working class Anglos as well as African Americans, primarily African Americans. How were you doing this at six, seven, eight? Yeah. Just take orders. Did you order, was this a family restaurant? Yeah, it was a family restaurant. Mom, dad, just like ran it. Yes, yes, yes. Cause that's how you did at six, seven, eight, taking orders. Yeah, of course. You like annual problem. Yeah. So I was a cultural broker. So my parents didn't speak English. And so I would translate for them, right. And I would write, you know, write down orders. And, uh, it was, I didn't really, I only realized now, but I would code switch and I would, I would translate that culture to my parents who, you know, cooked in the back. And I, I could understand how I had to change differently to each population that I served, right? So for African Americans, I was a certain way, Anglo-Americans, um, just like kind of things that, uh, you learn, uh, and then of course I would switch my, my, I'll switch my kind of like my personality, my parents. I'd have to be, you know, thoughtful and very within the Asian culture. I think similar to Armenian. You have to, um, I don't know how to say, but you have to be respectful of the family dynamic of your father has to be the, you know, the king, right. But it's a strange way to grow up because I had to translate for them. So I, in many cases, my father didn't speak English. And so I had to speak for him and do all these things. And not unlike a lot of immigrants around the world, you have to be translators. Like you, you're a translator, you're a cultural broker. And so I, I like this word cultural broker. Yeah. It's so interesting that you were taking these orders and you're like dealing with one, uh, and it's not even one. It wasn't just the American melting pot. You were dealing with a bunch of cultures, um, you're taking their orders in English, but a bunch of different cultures. And then you were doing a really, this is an interesting process for young kids, especially to go through with the neuroplasticity that they have, their ability to switch all of what you just took in to, then was it, was it Mandarin? Was Cantonese? Cantonese. Cantonese. Yeah. Sort of Cantonese. Yeah. Interesting. So then you try, you disseminated that in Cantonese. Yeah. And then I went to Catholic school, like Catholic school has its own regime. So, uh, I would go to Catholic school every day and, you know, we'd go to church in the beginning and a night and, uh, it has its own cultural norms. Our teachers were nuns and priests. And so I had to change again for that, for that environment. Yeah. Yes. You're switching between environments like that at a young age. Yeah, four different cultures a day, I guess. And that will really quickly, um, open up, uh, a kid, uh, uh, an understanding of, uh, cosmopolitan dynamics, um, openness in general, um, trying to, uh, you learn, uh, a lot more about, uh, other people and walks of life, gain more empathy and insight into that. Let's xenophobia, these types of, these types of things. I didn't think I realized as a child, I just, I just switched. Likewise. We never, we've really never. You just changed. That's how it is to survive. You become like, it's like mid 20s, 30s, 35, like the 30s. You kind of realized these most profound things that happened to you when you were young, that kind of shaped, and then you like call your mom and dad or whatever, and you say, like, thank you so much. That, that called it happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, thank you. You worked so hard and you kind of instilled in us, you know, a work ethic. So then, so then there was a dynamic there that was happening where it was kind of like, uh, a, a central point to a Chinese community in Bellevue as well. There's no Chinese community. There wasn't zero. So I was the only unicorn there. Yes. And the school as well as the whole cities. Oh, in the whole school. Yeah. And the whole city as well. And the city. Yes. I've never seen anyone over 10,000. Yeah. Yeah. More people. Yeah. I've never seen anyone Asian until I was, uh, you know, later on, seventh eighth grade. Yeah. So it was, so then feeling, I didn't realize this, right? And so I identified with African Americans because in the Midwestern, there's only two. There's only Anglo or African-American. And so cognitively, I saw, I kind of thought I was African-American until first grade and I said, mom, we're black. I'm black. And she's like, no, you're not black. And I was, she's like upset. I'm like, but I, I know I'm not like everyone else. But, uh, she said, you know, we're Cantonese, but, uh, yeah, wow. So, but I think this is a very common thing for Chinese restaurants in America in that, um, uh, you sort of, you, your, your clients are certain people and then how you, you navigate spaces and then you start identifying the people that you serve. So, yeah. Well, okay. So then what was it that then made this, so now it kind of makes sense that you had this upbringing that catalyzed a lot of your interest in doing anthropological research on the specific thing. But now with these findings, I mean, this number is staggering in the first place, 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the years. That number is staggering. Well, all over the world, it's like one of the number one restaurants. It's not just in America. It's all over the world. There's Chinese restaurants, right? Every country. Whereas like, for example, I probably only recently became used to seeing like an Ethiopian restaurant or something on the streets. And the food's incredible, but it's much less common though. Way less common. Yeah. Or, you know, even me talking to someone recently about like German or Austrian food, right? And they were just like, well, what does that taste like? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. There's such a familiarity with Chinese food. There is. It's interesting, China's spending billions of dollars to push their hard cultural power around, you know, trying to develop their language schools all over the world. But in a way, their poorest members from China, they're migrating around the world is, you know, by surviving and selling different Chinese food is like kind of providing soft cultural power in a way. Yeah. Even though it's not directed by anybody, it's, but it's a way of similar to Korean K-pop, like BTS. That's like Korean culture, a soft power. So, but that's kind of, you know, planned a little bit. But this is an unplanned kind of just cultural dissemination. Yeah. This was also an interesting point. You, you talk about it like the relationship between food and society. Yes. I really like it phrased that way. Well, I think in order to understand a culture, you should learn the language and you should eat the food. And I think these Chinese restaurants around the world, not just in America, but also in Canada, Mexico, because this book, American Chinese Restaurant, that's edited by myself and Haiming Liu, it's not just a USA story. It's a, you know, it's a Latin American story. Chinese restaurants are all over Latin America, right? It's a huge restaurant. They have shaped and impacted Peru, Argentina, Chile, and these are not in the discourse. And so, Alan, the reason why I also wanted to edit this book was because every time I read as an academic, I would read these like stories of racism on Chinese restaurant tours, you know, they weren't allowed, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that excluded Chinese people from coming to the U.S. That's true. And all these things are right. And I would read these, these things and they would mention Chinese restaurants as a way how the restaurant workers, I'm sorry, the railroad workers, after they were done with the railroad, they couldn't go back to China. So they started Chinese restaurants. And I thought that was an interesting story and definitely interesting. But I, having been raised in a Chinese restaurant, knew that there are so many other stories of positive opportunities for these like poor Chinese people, but also interaction. So a lot of people don't understand that Chinese restaurants are safe spaces for lots of minorities. So Jewish Americans during Christmas time, they go to Chinese restaurants during their birthdays. They go to Chinese restaurants. And so it is a space open to another ethnic group that, you know, lets them eat their food. And because it doesn't have that much dairy and they're open on Christmas, it becomes, and it becomes part of their modernity, right? And it's not in the history. And I want to write about one day is the fact that African Americans were excluded in so many spaces in America, but not Chinese restaurants. And so you have a lot of African Americans who just have these stories of going to Chinese restaurants, such as my Chinese restaurant in the Midwest, and having these like generational stories. And I think that those stories, I mean, yes, there were racism, but those other stories of like this massive kind of like safe space, as you say, those are not really told in the literature. And that's why I wanted to edit this book. 20 chapters. It was like a lot of chapters all over the world. Well, so that's a really interesting nuance and actually a point that again, like you're describing is not necessarily highlighted, especially in terms of like mainstream news of so few people are going to want to talk about this, this space for the Chinese restaurant, for Jewish people, for African Americans to be able to come and enjoy at times when maybe they couldn't otherwise. And that's really nice. And then that's probably only one of so many other examples. Yeah, yeah. So give us these other examples. Well, in Latin America, right? The it's a there's lots of people of the high population, but it's also working class population. And so particularly in Chile and Peru and different spaces, they actually provide a cheap, affordable and delicious food source for masses of people. Right. And so that is something often not talked about how the price point of Chinese food is actually not expensive. Right. I mean, there's higher ones that having Lee talks about in P.F. Changs is like a nicer brand. And there's like all these very high, high restaurants in Hong Kong and Shanghai, but in Latin America all over are inexpensive like the United States, like in Canada, are inexpensive, relatively, right? In others. And that provides a lot of people food at a great entertaining price, low price and particularly for students and the work. And that's mass, it's kind of like ramen. It's like, you know, cup of noodles. It's like it mass feeds a lot of people. And that's what it's done. It's it's really good. And it's it's kind of giving it a taste of, you know, globalization to people in, I guess, the Caribbean islands, you know, Chinese food and, of course, Africa, another way. There's a lot of Chinese restaurants now in Africa that are, you know, soft power of, I don't think it's intentional, but, you know, they're surviving in these different African countries with Chinese restaurants. Yeah. Whoa. So another part of this is these more on the end of more affordable prices that also feed quite a lot. So you can have the collegiate students or you can have people that gain the ability for, you know, $10 an entree, US dollars here in the states that for an entree can maybe even share that amongst the two people or have half of it at home later or whatever and get a taste of the cuisine as well as an interesting point too. Kind of a globalization. They feel that they're experiencing other culture, yeah, different thing. Yet another part of this is the actual community that's formed around the Chinese restaurant itself in terms of the dynamics of if this is like, like in this example, maybe in, like for your mom and dad, for them starting their restaurant, there were no really other Chinese people in Bellevue. Yet it's interesting to think about these other pockets where the restaurant, that Chinese restaurant actually maybe became like a hub in sometimes for other families to come. Yeah, definitely Chinese families and you guys could meet and like get to know each other then. We didn't have that experience, but I've read about those people. My cousins lived in another state of Missouri. We rarely saw them, but when we saw them, they also own a Chinese restaurant. I think it can be a hub for, I've read, you know, for other Chinese, I didn't experience that myself, but yes, a lot of Chinese restaurants have double menus. And so a double menu is there's a rest, there's a menu for Anglo Americans, which would be like orange chicken, broccoli and beef. And these are things that are not found in China. I was just about to ask you this question next. They're not from China. The cuisine difference is big. Yeah. This is very Americanized. It is Americanized, Canadianized. Yeah, because we don't have like Beijing Kaoya. Like I love it when I was there, but we don't have that Beijing roast duck. We don't. Okay. Or we don't like really, I've never eaten at a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. where it's been like, you know, Beijing roast duck is on the, you know. I think you went to Pan Express, I assume. Do they have roast duck at Pan Express? No, no, no, it's like a chain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's super, like those ones you were just listing was that. And I love like the more authentic like, yeah, like a tripe was another one. The cow's stomach was another one with peanut sauce on it. Yeah. It's like a bunch of interesting varieties that are totally not on. So that would be on the Chinese menu. On the double menu. And so the American menu would be orange chicken, right? And there's no orange chicken China. That's an invention in America. And forging cookies. There's no forging cookies in China. None. The not one in China. It's they would generally wrote a great book on that great wonderful TED talk, which talks about chop suey. Chop suey is a bit chop suey just literally means leftovers, right? And so they're serving this thing to survive in America called chop suey. It's called leftovers, right? And so that's a thing. Chop suey means leftovers. It does mean leftovers. So you say, oh, if you go to China, you're like, can I have some leftovers? They're like, what? But there's so many Americans who love chop suey, right? And they say, oh, can I have chop suey? And I've noticed in Canada, they had this thing called Chinese pie, which is equivalent to just shepherd's pie, which is just potato on top. But they call it Chinese pie. And it's not from China. Potatoes are not from China. Chinese people don't rarely eat beef because that's their number one worker. Why do you want to eat your worker like India? You don't want to eat your work. So they don't really serve beef. And then so there's no, this Canadian Chinese pie is not Chinese. And so it's, yeah, that's the double menu. Yes. And broccoli has never been grown ever in China. So there's- Broccoli's never been grown in China. No, no, they have their own broccoli. They have Chinese broccoli. That's a long stalk. The long stalk. Yes. I remember those. That is Chinese broccoli. Those are really good. I like those. Broccoli's from Italy. They don't have the little guys. They don't have the little guys. Yeah. Big broccoli pieces. Yeah. So that in itself is interesting. I think Chinatown was next to little Italy at one point in New York. So maybe that, I don't know the origin, but something must have happened where they started this because Chinese food in America is used with American ingredients, right? So it's American ingredients, right? Americans love fried and crispy things with lots of sugar on it. And so those are American pallet points, right? And then they love beef in a huge quantity and then broccoli. So yeah, those are American items. So it's kind of like, I'm kind of wondering if you're gonna ask me about authenticity. I mean, yeah, this is where this kind of, this is where this part of the conversation is for sure heading. It's interesting when you're talking about designing for this pallet, well, as much as, you know, loving fried foods and having like sugar, like orange chicken basically, right? It also kind of reminds me of like, you know, if you ever, maybe you're like fasted for a couple hours or if not maybe even quite a bit, you've intermittently been fasting and then you eat a vegetable of some sort, even like a carrot or a tomato, whatever you eat, right? You eat some sort of vegetable, even a spinach leaf, it really doesn't matter. When you eat it, your pallet is like so, there's been a delay with the fast, that your pallet almost tastes the sugar in the actual vegetable, right? It tastes how sweet the carrot is or the tomato, the spinach leaf, et cetera. And training our pallets to respect that is very important if we want to live healthy on a day-by-day basis, if we wanna live with a good lifespan as well and a health span, both of those things. And also just, I mean, you can really just, it's a good way to do this experiment is to take something like, you know, a piece of chocolate or something and take that piece of, after you eat the first spinach leaf, right, you ate that, you tasted how sweet that was, then you take the piece of chocolate, you know, put that on your pallet and try that and then you're like, wow, that was so much sweeter. Then if you go to the spinach leaf afterward and you taste the spinach leaf, it doesn't taste sweet at all. Right. And so it's because we have this, this long process of training our taste buds towards these things that we can also repatter in our behaviors towards more healthy decisions. So I appreciate you pointing that out because it also hopefully enlightens us to, because, you know, how do you feel after you eat a plate of orange chicken versus how do you feel when you have, you know, more vegetable on your plate? And I mean, those are really interesting comparisons, but yeah, so the authenticity is also a big one because, you know, just coming back from China in September, I loved, loved the food, the hospitality, it was incredible. Spent lots of time in Beijing, spent time in Hangzhou, spent a little bit of time in Shanghai, loved it, loved it. And interviewing professors at Beijing University and Wesley University in Hangzhou, just was lots and lots of fun and it was the level of immersion into Chinese culture at the most, like deepest root level of the psyche, of the philosophies, of that type of stuff is very important. Instead of seeing like the worst thing to do is just to look at like mainstream news and take some sort of a distorted image of what a whole thousands of years of culture actually is. So that's probably a big takeaway that I make, but also just like that actually speaks to authenticity as well in terms of just people themselves. Like, you know, I would never just try and like, like walk into whatever, even if it's a Chinese restaurant or if it's any culture's restaurant and just try and come in with an image of what that restaurant is based on mainstream media versus based on my own experiential ability to ask you questions about who you are, where you come from, what the culture is, what you love to do in life, what your deepest thoughts are about the nature of this reality. So there's always a better way to get to what I think are the roots of people rather than what looks like distorted images in the media sphere. So if something I talked to a chef, who's traveled in the book, I interviewed a chef, Martin Yan, and he, we talked about authenticity a lot because that's always the critique of these Chinese restaurants around the world that they're not authentic, they're not in China, they're not, they're kind of these orange chicken, you know, fortune cookie things made up, right? But I think we both agree that these places were places of survival. And so these different communities, this is what the people wanted to eat. They do not want to eat cow tongue, right? Or the stomachs, right? So this is what they had to serve in order to survive. And a lot of times they didn't work, they didn't get paid, like for instance, I was never, my sister and I were never paid, right? We just worked for our parents all the time. And my mother was also working there, she also didn't get paid. And so you're doing this to survive. And so that is what your clientele wants. And so that's what you have. And I respect my parents for doing this. They didn't have a culinary background, they just went into Midwest and opened a restaurant. But it enabled us to survive. I have a PhD, all my cousins who have, they all have doctorism and upper degrees. And all of our family members are, well some of them were Chinese restaurant workers and owners, and so enabled us to survive into the next generation. Yes. Do you see other sorts of macro trends around the way that during diasporic moments that families create restaurants, what they know, they know their food. So they make the restaurant so that they can use it as a mechanism of survival and also sharing culture. Is that like a frequent macro? I think so. It's like, I think Jennifer Lee talked about it. Chinese food is like a free app that everyone can get. And it's spread like Lennox, it's like everywhere. I mean, over 50,000, that's a lot of restaurants, right? And so that's something, I think being Chinese, that's your cultural right. You have your cultural rights to your food. And so that's something you know, right? You know your language and your food. And that's something that you could, I don't want to call it sell, but it's something that you can use to survive. And I think that's, yeah, so I'm glad you asked that question, yeah. It is definitely a macro trend that people, I don't understand, but I was gonna say that a lot of these Chinese peoples, it's a way of coming home too, this imagine of homeland because to be honest, all these Chinese people around the world, the global diaspora. So if we're saying 60 to 70% of the earth is Asian, let's say 20, almost 23% of the earth is Chinese, right? So almost one in four people or at least 20%. When you eat Chinese food, you can eat an imagined homeland, right? So there's like some energy level of taste that you can, you know your grandmother ate those Armenian items and then she loved it and then your father ate it. So you feel this like connection. And I think that, yes, I definitely agree. It's like some sort of macro spreading, but with kind of a homeland feel, yes. This is, again, in the ability of the person that not only yet goes and has the moment of wanting to provide what their culture can bring to the area that they move to, but also the person that comes from that local area to experience that culture and their food, you made this clear at the very beginning too, is that you learn a bit of the language, learn a bit of the food, ask good questions. Don't just come to this restaurant without inquiry into the deeper levels of the roots of the people and the culture and wanting to learn, because it's a missed opportunity to learn. And if we can instill that curiosity in children to want to learn even at the level of just a restaurant when they go and they learn about the food and they learn about the culture, et cetera, it'll make it so that the world becomes more of that one community. That, yeah. I also want to ask you this question, because given the amount of, I don't know if there's been study into this, given the amount that small, medium-sized businesses around the world are, yes, some are coming up, but most of them are going away due to the increased amount of massive corporations taking stock in their ability to deliver groceries, deliver restaurant food. Soon it's already being tested to be done by autonomous cars and robots and drones and all different types of delivery mechanisms like that. Given that, do you foresee something also occurring or has there been any study with that number of 50,000 restaurants potentially, and that's just in the US, but around the world slowly potentially declining and needing to find other work and all this other kind of stuff. I would say absolutely not for Chinese food. Number one, Chinese food, the price point, you can't reproduce it for that price point with a machine, right? The how Chinese restaurants work is a lot of unpaid labor, right? And a lot of, and it's down the line, how they get their items and it's all. How do they, if there's unpaid labor, how do those people live if they're unpaid? Well, like family? Yeah, their family, like I wasn't paid. But only family because then the father, although you're unpaid, pays for the rent. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that kind of stuff. So I don't see a machine, because if you actually really paid people what they work, right? The prices for a Chinese restaurant, those items like even orange chicken would be triple the price, right? Even in reproducing it in a form that is mass produced will never be the same, I don't wanna say quality, but that, I don't wanna say authenticity, but that traditional recipe cannot be reproduced, right? What you had in Beijing cannot be reproduced in a mass swanson, right, or something, you know? And I just don't see it happening because particularly I think just Chinese people are very hardworking, as all people are, but they're very, they will go, they will, I don't see it. I think that no machine can reproduce a traditional, there's like over 12 food cultures in China. They cannot, I don't see it, yeah. And for that- I do, which is interesting. Really interesting, okay. I see nothing, I see nothing. The area of what human expertise has advantage over AI and automation, robotics, that area is very rapidly decreasing. And I do foresee some people being able to like, you know, grapple on for like the last couple of like these decades that it's coming, but even then, like it's pretty clear to me that within 100 years, the definition of like work is gonna be so much different. There's gonna be a lot more one could say like art or play or that kind of, and this isn't the most brightest possible future. There's lots of other futures where there's, you know, bifurcation based on socioeconomic status of people, the ones that own the AI and the automation and the ones that don't. And so there's gotta be a heart-centric consciousness evolution that we focus on where we uplift all of us and we distribute the fruits of the emerging technologies. So that way everyone has their ability to bring unique gifts forth, live a prosperous, peaceful, dignity-oriented, and driven life, and hopefully have AI, robotics, automation just augment for now until we then decide what is the next evolutionary step after that, which in many ways could be what humanity is, a biological bootloader for that next step of a digital-style superintelligence. I hope you're right in that we're all uplifted. That's the cool part. Everyone gets the fruits of AI, yeah. Yes, yes, this is paramount, yeah. This is paramount, yes. I do agree on that, I love it, I do agree on that. I wanna ask you this too, Jenny. So you have a passion for helping first generation college students with their barriers to college success, specifically Southeast Asian American. And you were teaching me about this, this is really, really important, given so much of people moving, like diaspora, moving across the planet, and then trying to seek being able to actually bring their unique gifts forth. There are barriers, there are challenges that obstacles to overcome. How have you seen that process and been able to catalyze assistance with that and help? As I mentioned, I was a Chinese little eight-year-old cultural broker, like you, and so one could argue a professor is a cultural broker. And so one of the things I've realized being Asian-American, a type of tribe, or I don't know, because I guess I could be part of the human tribe, whereas 70% of the humans are Asian, or all humans, 100%, but Asian-Americans in particular, I don't know the Canadian situation, but Asian-Americans in America are called the motto minority. And they're called the motto minority because on aggregate, they have the highest graduation rate in college, over 55%, right, so 55% of all Asian-Americans have a college degree, and within that, you have like South Indians and Taiwanese-Americans that have an 80% graduation rate with additional graduate degrees like PhDs, doctors, lawyers, et cetera. And also as aggregates, Asian-Americans have the highest income in terms of making over 60,000, 70,000 a year, which is quite a lot in comparison to average-American, right? So if you look at that number, you think, oh, Asian-Americans, they're the motto minority. They're doing wonderful, doing great, right? But when you just aggregate the numbers, you actually see that it's actually not correct, not true at all, because number one, Asian-Americans, a lot of them don't speak English, and they don't fill out these census forms. Asian-Americans live in multi-family households, so if 17 people are making 2000 a year, that's still gonna show up more than one person with a nuclear family, right? And of course, a lot of those people will not even report their income, right? And so the numbers are incorrect, but in particular, if you look at Southeast Asians, the Hmong, the Mian, the Camu, Cambodians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and also low-income Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese people, Americans, they actually are in high poverty rates, where 70% of them report having a traumatic food or poverty-ridden situation, where they cannot help themselves if they had a big issue, right? And so particularly for Southeast Asians, they have one of the lowest graduation rate, around 11 to 14, which is much lower than the American national average. Yeah, this is an important breakdown. It takes something that's viewed as a, like you said, a model minority group, and it breaks it down, and there are some incredible practices that happen, people coming over with motivation and determination and perseverance and grit to get, to actualize those gifts and want to, so there's some great things there. But when you do open that up, double-click in, and look at the breakdowns, there's some serious issues that have happened with specific people as a diaspora coming to other parts of the world, where there is many of the time diaspora comes from some sort of a violence or a war, or, you know, these, yeah. Yes, genocides. Genocides, and then trauma is there, from family lineages, and then we're carrying that trauma with us that needs to be healed, and we need to evolve and grow through that and heal it, and otherwise we have a feeling that comes when we encounter humans where there's just something that is, it's not whole, it's not full-hearted. There's still something there, but then there's all this closed-offness with the process of trying to heal it. It's gotta be the right person at the right time, with the right circumstances, all this type of stuff. So how do we catalyze environments? As frequently as we see Chinese restaurants, why don't we have holistic healing centers? That would be great, I would love that. That's the social fabric I wanna build, you know? That's what we wanna envision. That would be wonderful for you to build that. Why is, we will do it, because why is it that on the streets there are so many options for food, but so little places for our emotions? It's a disaster that that's like that. Our emotions have taken the most absolute backseat place in the economic machinery. Now instead of being able to talk with someone about the true most visceral feelings at my deep depths of my psyche, now I like, you know, and this is a trusted person, now I'm concerned, but when I pay a therapist to try and make sure that they're not self-dealing when they also wanna prescribe me a pharmaceutical, and there's all this type of, you know, indigenous people are trying to wake up, wake up, heal, heal. There are processes of healing that we've been doing for millions of years, and that can be leveraged for making it so that these breakdowns of minority groups that you're talking about that aren't as this, don't have $60,000 plus a year of salaries, that they themselves can actually heal and then can achieve their unique gifts that they can bring to the world. I'm really happy that you bring that up as well. That's a really interesting point. So American Chinese restaurants, society, culture, and consumption is out. Yes. It's available, the link's in the bio below. It's on Amazon, Walmart, but Amazon is probably the easiest place to get it. Link in the bio below. Jenny, I wanna ask you another question, one more. Okay. What do you think is most beautiful? What a lovely last question. You've been asking a lot of these, what is the most? So what, what is the most beautiful? There's so many things that are beautiful. Well, I think that things in nature are very beautiful. I don't know about the most again, like what is the most, right? I think nature is very beautiful. Being nature things that all around me in a forest, those are truly beautiful places like Yosemite, where I lived very close to, are very beautiful. So those are beautiful things, and you feel like the forest can heal you. It's been there for thousands of years, and I think those are very beautiful. And then if you're with your family in the forest, then you're also gonna feel even more beautiful. So I really like nature, and those, I think that area, nature with your family, I think those are beautiful moments, yeah. We highly recommend people to visit Vancouver as well. British Columbia, I mean, like looking across towards North Vancouver here. It's beautiful. The mountains and the ocean and the trees, it all speaks, it all speaks and communicates. The energy. The energy, yeah. It's good energy. It tells you that you're not alone, that you're actually part of thousands of years and your problem might be big to you now, but I'm a tree and I'm hundreds of years old. I'm thousands of years old. Yeah, so. Yeah, and it's all so deeply interconnected and just to remember to embody that interconnection and unconditional love, deep presence. Yeah, so this has been such a great interview. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming to the program. Thanks for asking me. You're super welcome. Thanks for all your great work. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on that episode. Let us know what you're thinking. On all of the cool things that Jenny was teaching us last time about your thoughts, check out the links in the bio below to Jenny's work. Also check out the links in the bio below to American Chinese restaurants. You can use the code as well in the bio below. Check that out. And also check out the links in the bio below to the American Anthropological Association and support them, support their incredible annual meeting and support simulations. We continue doing cool things like coming on site to great places like AAA's annual meeting and conducting these epic partnership interviews. You can find us on PayPal, Patreon, Cryptocurrency, all those links are in the bio below. And go and build the future everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon. Peace. That's a wrap. Oh, okay. Good job. Thank you so much. Good job, good job, good job. Good job. Good job.