Lunar New Year in LA [#111]
The heart of Chinese and Taiwanese American diaspora in California is now associated with a massacre.
Our hearts are heavy. Lunar New Year is like Christmas and Thanksgiving all rolled into one. It’s the time of year when you go home to family, wherever they are, pay respects to elders and ancestors, eat endless amounts of traditional foods — dumplings representing money, fish for abundance, noodles for long life — and in places firecrackers aren’t banned, set off firecrackers to chase away the evil spirits from the year before. Red envelopes, lion dances and the zodiac animals are all involved.
Monterey Park, California, USA, is the heart of the Chinese/Taiwanese diaspora in Southern California. I know it because my parents know it. Because they have friends there, or friends of friends there, because so many first generation immigrants either settled or found community there. As the Washington Post put it:
“Here between the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains and downtown Los Angeles is a place that decades ago made history, becoming the nation’s first Asian-majority city after years of determined emigration from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.
Now its history includes a grimmer development, one it shares with an increasing collection of American cities and suburbs.”
On Sunday we were planning to go there. My younger daughters were performing as part of day two of the biggest Lunar New Year festival in the area. It was the first time Monterey Park held the festival in three years, given all the locked down or contained COVID years since 2020.
That “Monterey Park” and “massacre” are now in the same sentence, and that 20 people were shot at a ballroom dance studio where boomers were enjoying movement and community on Lunar New Year’s Eve is absolutely gutting. It was the 33rd mass shooting in America in 2023. A 34th happened today — up north in California’s Half Moon Bay.
My youngest daughter, the five-year-old Luna, was the most sanguine about the festival’s cancelation, reminding the rest of us, “Don’t worry, there are LOTS of Lunar New Year performances, we’ll perform again!”
Reading
The everything guide to George Santos lies. That actor we all love should play George Santos in the TV special. This summary of Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, covered the important bits so I could be conversant on it, not that it has come up in any of my party conversations. I didn’t even know there was a Mindy Kaling backlash.
Werk and Musings
The LA Times covered how we talked to our kids about it and snatched a little meaning and togetherness in a time of sorrow. I appeared on a panel for MSNBC about what happened, with a gun control activist mom who discussed what to do now. Later this week, longtime friend and former NPR colleague David Greene and I will process the week on KCRW’s Left Right and Center. And finally, a book note: subscribe to the book-specific newsletter if you want to keep up-to-date on events and other behind-the-scenes developments, and reserve your copy if you haven’t yet!
Watching and Listening
You’re Wrong About’s series on Jessica Simpson, from 2020. It’s a multi-parter and it is so damn compelling. I just got through the episode where she was counseled by Willie Nelson before deciding to leave her marriage, Her juicy early aughts dramas were treated with such compassion and humanity, I loved every minute.
Aftersun. I can’t stop thinking about this quiet poem of a film.
Decision to Leave. I am not even sure I understand the specific plot points of Park Chan Wook’s latest, but it doesn’t matter because it was the most sensual, thrilling film I’ve seen in a long time.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Director Rian Johnson and stars Janelle Monae and Kate Hudson are working the awards campaigning circuit so I went to a screening where they appeared to talk about the hijinks and the process of making it. So much fun, but my daughters were jealous they didn’t get to meet Janelle Monae! I know Rian through a good friend of mine, Alec, so it was good to see him and take a selfie. He directed perhaps the greatest Breaking Bad episode of all — Ozymandias (the one where Hank dies).
I am wishing you peace as we head into the new Year of the Rabbit.
Wishing for ease and healing,
Elise