GENE DEMBY, HOST:
Hey, y'all. This is Gene. And before we get into the episode this week, we wanted to stop for a second to talk about the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Tyre Nichols was 29. He was a skateboarder. He was a dad. And he worked the late shift at FedEx. And that's what he was doing on the evening of January 7, when five police officers from a specialized police unit in Memphis pulled him over during his lunch break for what they claimed was reckless driving. Within minutes, those officers were beating him. They were pepper-spraying him. And Tyre Nichols would die three days later in the hospital from the injuries he sustained in that attack.
We know what happened to Tyre because the city of Memphis released footage and audio from the body cameras that those officers were wearing, as well as some footage from some surveillance cameras on the street. Before that video came out, city officials warned people that what was in it was real bad. Like, the city's police chief, in the days leading up to the video's release, said that it was worse than the Rodney King beating. And they seemed to be trying to get people ready for how disturbing the footage was, but instead, it created a macabre anticipation for the tape, a kind of like collective countdown to its release, like a movie premiere or something.
And we've been covering stories like this on CODE SWITCH for a minute, like long enough to remember when body cameras were actually floated as a potential remedy for police violence. You know, like, maybe being recorded might keep some of the most violent impulses of the cops in check. Instead, in this case and so many others, they mainly provided us with the stuff for another viral video in this whole grim genre. Right? There was John Crawford in Ohio in 2014, Walter Scott in South Carolina in 2015, Philando Castile in a suburb of Saint Paul in 2016. Then there's Eric Garner in Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and, of course, George Floyd in Minneapolis.
And it should not be lost in all of this that the people we're talking about were killed by police who suspected them of moving violations or, at worst, misdemeanors. Like, it's important that we underline as much as possible that most of what the police do, day in and day out when they have contact with people, is not about crime. And the mere presence of the police, who are armed, who have wide discretion to use force if they say they feel fear or if they feel disrespected, puts all kinds of outcomes, including the fatal ones we're talking about, like in these videos, on the table.
So now it's like, what are we supposed to do with these videos, and what do these videos do to us? Like, at this point, how disturbing would a video need to be to finally persuade someone who is otherwise unconvinced about the serious problems in American policing? Like, what does trying to shock the conscience of some people cost us? And what does it cost the people whose final moments we see captured in these videos?
This is a conversation we had a few years ago, not long after George Floyd was killed. Jamil Smith, who was then writing for The New Republic, was thinking through a lot of these same big questions, and he came by CODE SWITCH to think through them with us. That episode was called A Decade of Watching Black People Die. We're going to reup that episode on our episode page, and we really hope you give that conversation a listen. All right. On to the show.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, HOST:
Hey, fam. You're listening to CODE SWITCH. I'm Karen Grigsby Bates.
JESS KUNG, BYLINE: And I'm Jess Kung. I'm a producer on the show.
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BATES: Jess is joining us today to talk about Lunar New Year, especially in light of the shootings that have happened here in California recently. So, Jess, welcome. And Happy New Year. Or is it?
J KUNG: I don't know. Personally, I keep starting the greeting and stopping. It's kind of hard to say, Happy New Year - (non-English language spoken). But it is still a new year. So I guess (non-English language spoken).
BATES: So have you done anything to celebrate the holiday?
J KUNG: Well, I'm home for the holiday for the first time in years, in the Bay Area, south of San Francisco, in an immigrant-filled suburb, not unlike Monterey Park. Our New Year's Eve celebration was small and quiet. You know, we had (non-English language spoken) for lunch and (non-English language spoken) for dinner. While I was half asleep, my parents slipped me a red envelope full of cash. Usually we would gamble, but we didn't even do that this year. But then, like so many people on New Year's Day, Sunday, January 22, I woke up to the news.
BATES: What we now know is 11 dead, nine injured at a dance studio in Monterey Park, Calif.
J KUNG: And that's a place I instinctively associate with Asian community, with a majority of Taiwanese and Chinese people, like my family. We know that the perpetrator was Chinese, too, and had at one point danced in the same places he attacked.
BATES: Later in the show, I'll talk to reporter Josie Huang from KPCC in Los Angeles about how the people of Monterey Park continue celebrating the new year. But for now, Jess is going to share some thoughts about Lunar New Year and why this one is so different for so many in the Asian community.
J KUNG: Yeah. I'd like to talk about why, from where I sit, this violence, on this holiday, in this country cuts so deep.
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J KUNG: New Year's feels both hard and not hard to explain. I mean, we all know New Year's. Lots of cultures use non-Gregorian calendars. Lunar New Year is the imperfect name we have for the traditions and calendars approximately aligned across Asia. China and places with historical Chinese influence or immigration or imperialism - Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and more.
I grew up with some Chinese and Taiwanese traditions, but our celebrations were usually just for a day or a weekend, or sometimes my parents would give a presentation at our school. Sometimes we'd go to bigger festivities, like the San Francisco New Year's Parade. But most of us in the States will never feel the fullness of the holiday. In China, in years without pandemic travel restrictions, almost every industry grinds to a complete halt for at least a week, including farms, factories, markets. Everyone, like, stocks up on food ahead of time. Almost everything stops except the trains and planes moving hundreds of millions of people home. Like other cultures' New Year's, it's time to reset and attract good fortune with a wide range of traditions and superstitions to set the stage for a prosperous year.
SOO YOUNG CHRISFIELD: One of the most important things that we do as Korean Americans is (non-English language spoken). (Non-English language spoken) is when we wish our elders Happy New Year by performing a big, big, big bow. It's not the kind of bow that you bend at the waist, but it's the kind of bow where you're - where you slowly come down on your knees and put your face to the ground. And our elders are really at the center of these traditions.
J KUNG: That's listener Soo Young Chrisfield (ph) from Maryland, who shared her experience with us. She didn't say this directly, but we know that the victims in Monterey Park were elders, or at least aunties. Transparently, I had to bug my parents for reminders of what our traditions are, and then I checked them against Chinese cultural education available on the English-language internet. But, you know, it's like, ahead of the holiday, clean the house, but once it's New Year's Day, don't sweep or take the trash out. Don't wash your hair or clothes on New Year's Day; it rinses the luck away. If you're feeling weird about hygiene, by the way, that's just for the one day. But there are superstitions across the two-plus weeks of holiday to prevent bad fortune. Don't get into arguments. Don't go to the doctor. Don't incur new debts. Don't use scissors or knives or needles. Negative words are bad luck - words like poor, sick, death, ghost. Don't say them out loud and invite them in. Don't cry. Don't kill.
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J KUNG: My parents made sure we grew up hearing some of the myths behind our traditions. And there is one story I can't stop thinking about. It's a monster story.
HELEN KUNG: Everybody is scared of a monster called Nian. Nian means year. And this monster comes once a year, on New Year's Eve. So everybody is frightened. Everyone is hiding.
J KUNG: You're hearing my mom, Helen, telling a version of this story. I mean, it's one of those ancient, fuzzy oral traditions that has a billion variations. In this one, an old woman who lives alone is anticipating Nian's destructive arrival, and she's afraid.
H KUNG: She might be the one that is eaten by Nian. But a stranger came to town seeking help. So the old lady says, well, I don't have much, but come on in. Overnight, she's, like, really scared 'cause the monster's coming. And this guy, old dude, says, don't worry about it. Let's gather some of your old bamboo ware and other things, and we'll set a fire and warm ourselves up. So some of her old, like bamboo stuff, like broomsticks and other things, when they put it in a fire, they start popping. And then he told her also to, like, put up whatever is in the color red around her house, by her window, on her doorframe. And that frightened the Nian monster outside of her door.
J KUNG: In some tellings, the mysterious old man is probably an immortal sharing knowledge. In others, villagers figure it out for themselves. But we get to the same place. Fire, noise and the color red keep Nian away. That's supposed to be why we wear red and celebrate with firecrackers and lanterns - to scare away the monster and keep the community safe.
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H KUNG: Firecracker must not have been an easy tradition to keep because so much of Asia has experienced so much trauma of war, trauma of murder and mass death.
J KUNG: I mean, that's part of why we have so many immigrant communities in the U.S. Right? I've been processing a lot of this with my mom, not just because she's my mom, not just because she taught me about how to be a person, but because for her whole life, she's been translating between languages and cultures. She grew up bouncing between the U.S. and Asia and, after settling in the Bay, really got involved with ESL and citizenship classes for older Chinese people through her church. She became a pastor, a bit of a community leader. She organized social events and phone trees and acted as an emergency contact to translate for interactions with lawyers or doctors or cops.
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J KUNG: One of the concepts that stuck with me longest working on this show is racial melancholia. It was coined by David Eng and Shinhee Han, who wrote the book "Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On The Social And Psychic Lives Of Asian Americans." Melancholia describes mourning that never ends. Here's David Eng in our 2019 episode.
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DAVID ENG: Processes like immigration and assimilation - which are never complete - they put immigrants and Asian Americans along a continuum where they can never quite mourn or get over the losses of homeland, of language, of culture.
J KUNG: One of the harder things for me to understand, being U.S. born, is what it means to be part of a collectivist culture. But my mom's got practice explaining that difference. She has a go-to example. It's about her friend Lucy. Lucy Ai (ph) was born 13 days before my mom. But my mom counts her age like an American.
H KUNG: My friend Lucy always, always says that she is two years older than me because we're in our mother's womb for 10 months, and by the time you're born, you're 1 year old. And then as soon as the new year comes, you turn a year older alongside all of your peers. When we say another year, everybody's a year older, we mean it collectively. That means we identify as part of the entire community. We seek to be that whole. We seek to make that part harmonize, make the whole community sort of hum together as part of our cultural identity. So being violent in New Year's time is breaking that trust.
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J KUNG: My understanding is that grief will always be part of living - from dancers trying to celebrate together, to farmworkers trying to provide for their families, to so many more. It feels impossible to digest. But we have a lot to grieve together.
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BATES: Coming up, how residents of Monterey Park, Calif., and the broader San Gabriel Valley are responding to what's happened. Stay with us.
Karen. Just Karen. CODE SWITCH. We've been talking about the significance of Lunar New Year, the traditions and the meaning behind them in the wake of the tragic shooting in Monterey Park, Calif. For a lot of Asian Americans in the United States, the holiday is usually celebrated relatively quietly, at home with family and friends. But for people who live in a community with a large Asian population, the whole community comes out. After the attack, Monterey Park canceled its second day of Lunar New Year festivities. Instead of celebrations, the community has spent the holiday pulling together vigils.
Monterey Park is one node in what our next guest calls a rich constellation of communities with Asian and Asian American majorities throughout the San Gabriel Valley, and some of the communities are still celebrating - in public. Josie Huang is a reporter for NPR member station KPCC. She covers Asian American communities in Southern California. Hi, Josie. Welcome.
JOSIE HUANG, BYLINE: Hi, Karen.
BATES: Josie, tell us about Lunar New Year festivities this weekend. How did that go?
HUANG: Yeah. So Lunar New Year goes on for a couple of weeks. And this was the second weekend of festivals. And nothing was canceled. This is despite what happened in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay - or maybe it is because of what happened. You know, these festivals this past weekend were a chance for people to salvage some of that hope, some of that sense of renewal that Lunar New Year's all about. So over in LA, Chinatown leaders, they went ahead with their Golden Dragon Parade. And in Orange County, there was the Tet Festival, which went on for three days.
And then there was also this festival in the city of Alhambra that I went to. Alhambra is an LA suburb right next door to Monterey Park. It's also where the shooter tried attacking a second ballroom dance studio but was thwarted by someone who works there, this 26-year-old person named Brandon Tsay. The Alhambra Festival organizers had a special ceremony honoring Tsay for his heroism, and that was a really big draw to the festival for folks. Even though it was cloudy and drizzly at times, I'd say overall, the mood there was upbeat. You know, part of the main street was shut down so they could make room for booths, you know, dozens of them where you could buy novelty hats, roasted chestnuts, Korean barbecue. And there was a main stage where you could watch comics and traditional dancers.
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BATES: Were these celebrations this year different from past years?
HUANG: Well, during the pandemic, Lunar New Year celebrations were canceled or scaled back. So there was a lot of excitement going into this year's events. At the Alhambra Festival, I met Mike Chung (ph). He's a high school history teacher in LA public schools. And he'd come to see Brandon Tsay being honored. And he told me, despite the recent mass shootings, he knew he really wanted to be there.
MIKE CHUNG: Since pandemic, we haven't had a Lunar New Year festival for years. So I think this is a very special occasion. And for the community, it's more important that we focus on the positive and look forward to the future.
(CROSSTALK)
BATES: Josie, you spent last week in Monterey Park covering the tragedy, going to several vigils. What were people telling you?
HUANG: Well, it's been a real roller coaster for folks. So the shooting happened late on a Saturday, and many people didn't know about it until they woke up the next day. I was in Monterey Park that morning, and at that time, the shooter was still at large. And that's about when I ran into this woman on the street who had gone downtown to do some grocery shopping. Hong Leu (ph) is her name. And she and I were talking about the manhunt, and I saw her look nervously up at the TV helicopters circling above us, and then in front of us were police barricades and this crush of TV news vehicles.
HONG LEU: (Non-English language spoken).
HUANG: She told me she had not realized how serious the situation was, and now that she knew the suspect was still on the loose, she was scared and she wanted to go home right away.
BATES: And at this point, police hadn't released any information about the shooter, so nobody knew who this guy was or what their motivation was.
HUANG: Totally. You're totally right. And you had public officials wondering aloud whether the shooting had been motivated by race. And it wasn't until later that day we found out that the shooter was, himself, Asian. You know, it was a lot to take in, the shooting where an Asian shooter was targeting other Asians. And this was on top of the anti-Asian attacks during COVID. And this has put a lot of people on alert. I talked through this a little with a woman I met at a vigil last week. Her name's Tammy Cho, and she runs this nonprofit called Hate is a Virus, which is a group she co-founded in 2020 to address the surge in anti-Asian attacks. And she got emotional. She teared up, you know, trying to talk about how she was feeling at the moment.
TAMMY CHO: I think I'm still in the process of processing everything that has happened. But I think what I've come to realize that as much as I am fearful of everything that's happening - (crying). Sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. I think it's like moments like these, the opportunity to gather with our community, our friends, our loved ones, strangers that are also affected to share this space and just be able to grieve with each other has been really, really special.
BATES: That sounds like it's been really tough on Tammy. I'm sure it's been tough on a bunch of other people as well.
HUANG: It really was. But Tammy said being able to grieve with other Asian Americans at the vigil, be they her friends or strangers, was really healing. Now, I should mention that Tammy doesn't actually live in Monterey Park. She lives in South LA with her husband. And she met up with friends at the Monterey Park vigil. None of those friends live in Monterey Park either, but they all feel very connected to the area.
BATES: Why? What's the connection here?
HUANG: Well, they described it as a place where they feel like they really belong. I talked to Steven Lim, who listeners may recognize as a well-known YouTube personality. He's Chinese American and from Cincinnati, and now he lives in South LA with his wife, Tammy, who you just heard from.
STEVEN LIM: There's only a few places on Earth that feel like home to me, where I can go around and look around and see that there are people like me, who look like me, who have that same cultural upbringing. And Monterey Park and the SGV area is one of them, where the food is familiar, the language is familiar and the people are familiar.
HUANG: Steven said when he first moved to LA, he lived in Koreatown, but he'd drive to Monterey Park every week for groceries and boba, which would take him about 20, 30 minutes to get there.
BATES: And it's - that's something that's always been on my bucket list. And real talk - complete transparency - I have never been to Monterey Park to eat. I've been there to do stories. I've been to visit a couple of people. But we actually haven't had a meal there. So, you know, in LA, it's one of those things where you go lots of times to what's closest because it's easiest. But it sounds, Josie, like meals in Monterey Park seem totally worth the travel time, which for me would be about an hour.
HUANG: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's long. But I feel like that's worth the trek because the restaurants are what Monterey Park is the most famous for. And it's something that the residents are really proud of. I talked to May Paolim, who lives there, and she was able to rattle off some of the different regional cuisines that you can sample there.
MAY PAOLIM: So there's all the different styles, like Shanghainese and Hong Kong cafes and Sichuan. And so if you want dim sum or if you want, you know, dumplings or noodles or coffee shops, teas, boba - I mean, it's just - you could try a new restaurant, I think, every week for years (laughter).
HUANG: Because so many people do come to Monterey Park for these restaurants and also to do their shopping, it actually feels bigger than its population of - what? - 60,000 people.
BATES: So there's a reason why there are so many Asian restaurants in Monterey Park, right?
HUANG: Yes. The population is two-thirds Asian, and many of those folks are immigrants. Monterey Park is the first U.S. city to have an Asian majority. And after it became Asian majority, so did a bunch of other nearby cities in this part of LA County that we call the San Gabriel Valley or what folks here just shorten to SGV. Today, there are, by my count, 10 Asian-majority cities in the SGV, and they're really fluid with each other. Like, people who live in, say, Arcadia or Diamond Bar, they might do their shopping or get their hair done a few towns over in Monterey Park or San Gabriel or Temple City.
BATES: After Monterey Park went Asian-majority, there was a chain reaction effect in the region. Tell me how that started.
HUANG: Well, as with most everything, there was this confluence of events. So it used to be really hard for people from Asia as well as Africa and other non-European countries to come to the U.S. There was this quota system that really restricted how many people could come every year. But in 1965, federal leaders, you know, influenced by the civil rights movement going on at the time, they eased those restrictions. They got rid of those quotas.
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LYNDON B JOHNSON: From this day forth, those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationships to those already here.
HUANG: So you had this liberalization of immigration laws, and this was happening at the same time as tensions with China were ramping up and driving many Taiwanese people and Hong Kongers to look for an escape hatch. And for many, that was California. So you can add to that mix some businesspeople who were really savvy about marketing the SGV.
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FRED HSIEH: There is just, you know, no decent living accommodation whatsoever.
HUANG: One person in particular stands out, this developer, Fred Hsieh, who, during the '80s, marketed Monterey Park abroad and in the U.S. in the Chinese-language dailies that circulated here. So even I heard about Monterey Park as a little kid growing up on the East Coast because my parents read those papers. And if you've heard of Monterey Park being called the Chinese Beverly Hills, you can thank Fred Hsieh, who'd been credited with coining that phrase. Monterey Park has also been nicknamed Little Taipei and America's first suburban Chinatown. And by 1990, it was more than half Asian, mostly Chinese and Taiwanese and Hong Kongers, but also Cambodians, Vietnamese, Thai. So to this day, Monterey Park remains this landing spot for a lot of new immigrants who are just getting their feet wet in the U.S.
BATES: So Monterey Park was incorporated in 1916, before these big waves of immigrants came. How did the existing population feel about all these new arrivals?
HUANG: Right. Well, I should also mention Monterey Park already had a sizable Asian American population with all the Japanese Americans who were living there. But there were definite growing pains. Like, in the 1980s, there were these campaigns to ban Chinese-language business signs and to make English the official language of Monterey Park. I mean, these failed, obviously, as you can tell from driving around Monterey Park today. And it's common to see storefronts with both English and Chinese on them.
BATES: Yeah, and not just little storefronts. I mean, I live in LA, and when I drive through the SGV, it's not just local businesses that have signs in Chinese. Like, there's big shops, like Citibank.
HUANG: Yeah, that's right. You don't even notice it anymore. People are so used to it. But some of the longtime residents back then were up in arms about this change that was happening that they felt was too rapid. And you saw, you know, the Asian American residents there trying to fight this xenophobia and nativism and becoming more involved in politics. And if you look at the city council today, 4 out of 5 of the members are Asian American. Monterey Park actually became a real springboard for Chinese American politicians in particular. There were vanguards like Lily Lee Chen, who, in 1983, became the first Chinese American woman to be elected mayor of any city in the U.S.
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LILY LEE CHEN: The local newspaper named me as an atypical Asian woman. You see, whatever you want to do, you want to accomplish, you have to have your footprint. You have to take the necessary steps. I never dreamed about being the greatest, but I always wanted to try my hardest.
HUANG: Decades later, in 2009, Judy Chu, who was also a former mayor of the city, she became the first Chinese American woman to be elected to Congress.
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JUDY CHU: Hello. I'm Congressmember Judy Chu, and I represent this district, the 28th Congressional District.
BATES: And in the last week or so, we saw a lot of Judy Chu back in Monterey Park, speaking at all the vigils that were held for the victims.
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CHU: My thoughts and condolences go to the victims of this horrific crime. I can only imagine the terror, pain and anxiety that they feel and how devastated the families of those who were killed must feel right now.
HUANG: Yeah. There she was back at Monterey City Hall trying to reassure people about their safety because, you know, before the shootings, safety just wasn't something people there really worried about, you know? Generally, it's a relatively quiet, family-friendly bedroom community and, you know, kind of boring if you're a younger person itching to get out of the 'burbs. And, you know, lots of people have left. But I've also been meeting people who've come back, second-generation kids who are now in their 20s and their 30s, like these two brothers, Wilson and Wylie Kyi. They came back to the SGV after living elsewhere.
WILSON KYI: I worked in New York and in San Francisco and West Boston for a little bit. I was in China and in Mexico.
WYLIE KYI: I've lived in the Bay Area. I've lived in Phoenix, Ariz. I've lived in Taiwan.
HUANG: Last voice you heard was Wylie, who was born in Monterey Park, went to Monterey Park schools when he was little, and now he's living right over the line in neighboring Rosemead, another Asian-majority city. And Wylie told me he grew up wanting to be like a prototypical American kid, the kind that Madison Avenue comes up with. Like, for lunch, he wanted to eat Lunchables, even though he lived in the Chinese food Mecca of the U.S.
WYLIE KYI: We know what our parents wanted us to get was dumplings, which is fine - right? - when we eat at home. But at one point, you feel like you want - you also want to belong.
BATES: Advertising is powerful. Peer pressure is powerful. So I get why Wylie would find Lunchables and other kinds of American basically junk food alluring. But I'm guessing that his tastes have matured, Josie, as he grew older.
HUANG: Well, he says he still loves his tacos and burgers, but he also really appreciates Asian cuisine now, especially all the different fresh takes on Asian food that a younger generation is reinterpreting and remixing. You know, take dan dan mian. It's a noodle dish that comes with minced pork. It's from the Szechuan region. Well, at this place, Yang's Kitchen in Alhambra, the young Chinese American chef - who grew up in the SGV, by the way - he makes the dish vegan now. And instead of the typical thin noodles, he uses campanelle, which is that pasta that looks like a bell-shaped flower.
BATES: Yeah. That sounds really interesting. And it sounds like the SGV kids, especially these two kids, are realizing that you can come home again and make it your own, with a twist.
HUANG: Yeah. I talked to another resident, May Paolim. She's the one we heard speaking earlier very proudly about how there are so many restaurants in Monterey Park that you could eat at a new place every week. Well, when she was younger, she could not wait to get out. But then she really missed her family and the unpretentiousness of the residents.
PAOLIM: It's just a place that's an anchor. And I don't know. It's just - I never thought I would be back, but I'm back (laughter).
HUANG: Not only is May back in her hometown; she's back with her entire family.
BATES: So who's in this family? And do they all live together?
HUANG: Well, May has been raising her 18-year-old son on her own, and he's still living with her as he starts community college in East LA. And apparently, he's in no rush to leave.
BATES: (Laughter).
HUANG: A more recent development is that May now lives with her two sisters and their mom, which is not an uncommon setup. A lot of Asian Americans live with older relatives. You know, research shows about a quarter of Asian households are multigenerational.
PAOLIM: Yeah, we all moved in together when the pandemic started. And so we've just stayed living together because - for my mom's sake, to take care of her and keep an eye on her. My mom is 91. And then just as a family, it's easier, you know, to prepare meals, to cover, like if I can't pick up my son and my sisters are available. So it's nicer just to have a group that you can count on.
HUANG: That's so blessed. And also, now I know why your son doesn't want to go anywhere.
PAOLIM: No. He's very well taken care of (laughter). He's extremely well taken care of.
BATES: Extremely well taken care of. Lucky him.
HUANG: Totally. Family is part of the appeal of Monterey Park, and it's something that May really want us to know about, that there's so much more to love about Monterey Park, to recognize for beyond the shooting. There's the food. There's the community. There's lots of love here.
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BATES: And we know a little bit more about Monterey Park 'cause you've brought it to us. Thank you, Josie, so much for talking to us about this.
HUANG: Thanks for having me, Karen.
BATES: Josie Huang is a reporter for NPR member station KPCC, where she covers Asian American communities in Southern California.
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BATES: And that's our show, y'all. You can follow us on IG at @nprcodeswitch. Or if email's more your thing, ours is codeswitch@npr.org. And subscribe to the podcast on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just wanted to give a quick shoutout to our CODE SWITCH + listeners. We appreciate you and thank you for being the subscriber. Subscribing to CODE SWITCH + means getting to listen to all of our episodes without any sponsor breaks, and it also helps to support our show. So if you love our work, please consider signing up at plus.npr.org/codeswitch.
This episode was produced by Christina Cala and Jess Kung, with help from Diba Mohtasham and Olivia Chilkoti. It was edited by Dalia Mortada. And a big shoutout to the rest of the CODE SWITCH team - Kumari Devarajan, James Sneed, Veralyn Williams, Courtney Stein, Gene Demby, B.A. Parker, Lori Lizarraga, LA Johnson and Steve Drummond. Our intern is Olivia Chilkoti. And special thanks to Josie Huang from member station KPCC. Take good care. I'm Karen Grigsby Bates. See you.
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