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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

As a (south) Asian immigrant I found this article trite. To answer the title—what happens after the test taking ends? Asians end up as the highest income demographic in the country. Thank you, tiger mom.

I also don’t appreciate the angsty ranting about Asian immigrant culture. Work hard, keep your head down, raise kids, provide for your family, respect your parents, etc. Those are great values and are as much traditional American values as Asian immigrant ones. It’s the American baby boomers and millennials with their fixation on self-gratification that are the outliers.

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I agree with you. There's a tendency of exaggerating the downsides of Asian culture. Some people can't accept uncomfortable truths. I lived in Japan for one year. I felt like a medieval peasant stepping into a time machine. Everything was clean, safe and fully operational. Rome looks like a ghetto compared to Tokyo. Not one graffiti in sight – a byproduct of respect for public spaces. Critics always bring up their work culture, as if that invalidates the whole picture.

> Work hard, keep your head down, raise kids, provide for your family, respect your parents, etc.

Have you noticed how American media is always set on undermining those qualities?

In case you haven't heard, there's "Paris syndrome" for Japanese, which is:

"a condition exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris, as a result of extreme shock at discovering that Paris is different from their expectations."

per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

Basically, Paris is so dirty that it is a shock to many Japanese. And it's not surprising that's the case, given how clean and tidy Japanese cities are.

Expectations about Paris are created by fantasy driven marketing about foreign places by the tourism industry as well as local representatives of said countries. Note that mass media is also guilty in Japan for propagating the illusion of a perfect Paris.

Not only Japanese. I had a rude awakening as a younger backpacker walking through one of those underground sidewalks in Paris. The strongest and foulest smell of urine imaginable.

The joke is that you are not in a true Parisian coffee if the waiter is not rude.

With that said there are a lot of nice and clean places in Paris. But the tourists area are mostly in the worst neighborhoods. To compare with American cities Moulin Rouge would be a strip club in Skid Row. It’s madness sending tourists in the north/ north center of Paris, travel agencies don’t do their jobs.

Counter point - I walked past an artist putting up a new mural today because I live in a place with a lot of graffiti and people generally tolerate the bad stuff and enjoy the good stuff. A lot of the art bring in middle age tourists that pay young broke college students to talk to them about the different styles.

Japan has its own share of problems that you just don't see because you are not part of their culture, which is one of the most insular in the world (for better and worse). People in Japan are often no happier than anywhere else they just find their unhappiness in different ways. They have a lot of elderly dying alone in 70s era decrepit apartment blocks, and a lot of young people who have chronic agoraphobia (hikkomori). These are generally not Western/US problems.

What? Americans dump their parents in retirement homes and loads of aging Americans live in dumpy apartments and trailer parks as well. And not a day goes by without articles about the rise of social anxiety/NEETs/“incels” withdrawing from the world.

They’re not unique problems. Countries just frame other countries as having foreign problems by using different words for the same stuff.

people dying alone is nothing specific to Japan. This is the standard of most of the developed world. 引きこもり is also not something you face in Japan unless you look for it. You could say there is also a lot of mental health problems in other countries and this is just a different manifestation of it.

As i am getting older, i started to understand joint family structures from asian countries like India, China or even Italy. When we're young, we are full of ourselves. Everyone wants to freedom and nuclear family. But when your joints stop working with nothing left except loneliness, then the importance of family become clear. Sadly in states too much importance is given to individualism while asian countries are dropping traditions without understanding reasons behind them.

> Not one graffiti in sight – a byproduct of respect for public spaces.

I, for one, enjoy the occasional graffiti. Especially if it's poetic or clever. I enjoy the rebelliousness.

Japan has lots of artistic expression that doesn't degrade someone else's property. They have a strong tradition of craftsmanship, and there are handmade things all over that are just oozing with skill. Their manhole covers are even artistic.

I suppose that if you really wanted a rebellious display in public then the Japanese culture isn't for you. But if you want poetic and clever art then you just need to look.

Would you like your home to be ravaged by the random graffiti that you did not ask for?

It had been once. I laughed. But I can agree that it’s less enjoyable on residential property.

Depends

If it is a monocolored tag made by random kid? I wouldn't.

If it was something that took skill to do, even a tag? why not, if i found that person i would pay them to make something awesome on my wall.

And then some random person spray-paints that wall...

HN is funny. There is always a response to questions posed in this manner explaining why some extraordinary circumstance is true rather than just agreeing with the premise raised by your question.

There was a question posed the other day "What car could you possibly be driving that would mean 10% of your driving tickets is a number greater than 1?" Instead of saying the figure may have been an exaggeration the answer was basically, "I drive a racecar."

While I can appreciate more confrontational art it should be noted that they are signs of a profoundly sick society

Disagree, even Ancient Rome had graffiti. As did caves. Are you trying to say that humans in caves had “profoundly sick societies?”

Graffiti is a natural instinct. REPRESSING that instinct signals a sick society.

I don't believe Rome is a great example of a healthy society, and the presence of some graffiti isn't the same as it being widespread. Caves are an entirely different context entirely, I wouldn't consider all wall art to be graffiti. All good societies repress certain inclinations because they understand they cause harm to others. A sick society inclines people towards damaging the structures built around them because they see those structures as symbolising their own oppression in some capacity.

>Caves are an entirely different context

Respectfully disagree.

>A sick society inclines people towards damaging the structures built around them because they see those structures as symbolising their own oppression in some capacity.

If you don’t think oppression exists, and that it can be symbolized by structures, I don’t know what to tell you. Are you against the toppling of sculptures of Saddam Hussein?

What do you think of advertising? Do you not consider billboards “damaging to structures”? How do you think advertising differs from graffiti and do you really find advertising non-oppressive? No ad agencies ask my permission to assault my visual field with a billboard, and neither do graffiti artists. All’s fair in art and war.

>If you don’t think oppression exists, and that it can be symbolized by structures, I don’t know what to tell you.

I said the exact opposite. The advertising industry shouldn't exist and neither should statues of anyone let alone tyrants like Saddam.

You don’t think statues of anyone should exist? What about Michelangelo’s David?

It shouldn't exist and if displayed on public property should be torn down, albeit this is an unrelated issue to that of rebellious art.

Why do you think Michelangelo’s David shouldn’t exist? That is one of the oddest opinions I’ve ever encountered in my life.

As time progresses statues have a nasty tendancy to become objects of worship as their original stories are lost and replaced with new ones or greatly exaggerated. Once something is raised to the point of worship people will begin doing what they think the idol wants and as a theocrat this is concerning, as it splinters and corrupts society's morals.

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to Hacker News. We've had to ask you this before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't see how this is flamebait.

> A sick society inclines people towards damaging the structures built around them because they see those structures as symbolising their own oppression in some capacity.

Or simply the force of youthful rebellion that seeks to always create something new as a reaction against the old.

'Youthful rebellion' needn't always exist. I reject the notion that young people rebel because they are young rather than because they live in a society that has not raised and supported people correctly.

>Youthful rebellion needn’t always exist.

Respectfully disagree. Youthful rebellion appears to be driven by hormone-related factors (elevated risk tolerance) rather than being driven by reactions to anything in particular about a society.

Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17135

Disagree, such studies are extremely western oriented, cross cultural studies indicate otherwise https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-t...

That study talks about teen brains. I’m talking about teen hormones. And that study fails to account for the facts that:

Mao’s rise was driven by youthful rebellion in China

Many Islamic suicide bombers are teenagers

The Amish have rumspringa

And yes some western teens are graffiti artists.

Teen rebellion cuts across cultures, that study just doesn’t show it because it is solely attempting to refute the univariate “brain” factor. I’m not talking about brains. I’m talking about hormones and risk tolerance. Teen rebellion cuts across cultures. And no single-variable “cross cultural study” can prove otherwise

I'd advise reading the article prior to responding.

I did

Japan is fantastic, but I think there are some absurdly rigid social standards that would keep me from spending long periods of time there. I think it's easy to downplay these standards if you're someone who is generally "average," but the socially conservative attitudes are somewhat offputting to a westerner like me. The attitudes towards things like LGBTQ rights and tattoos are a good example.

Collectivism can produce incredible things, but a dose of individualism wouldn't hurt either.

I'm pretty sure that there's a strong correlation with Japan's attitude and Japan being a fantastic place.

>Japan being a fantastic place for a certain type of person

There's a heavy implicit qualifier on that, which is what your parent commenter is trying to get across.

Well, sure. You can't please everyone. Just move to a country that is better suited for you, then.

That's just Japan. In South Korea and China things look vastly different. Trash bags on streets, very few cans, some litter.

Though still no graffiti.

Whenever I've been to places that are perfectly clean with no graffiti they just feel sterile. It might not be for everyone but I prefer places that are somewhat grungy, they also tend to be the places were good music and art flourish.

I don't think being good bureaucrats is what any intelligent, hardworking people should aim towards. I think asian culture has some great tenets, hard work being the one i like the most. People should take the best things out of the different cultures. Too much deference to authority is not a good thing (in my opinion the weakest part of asian culture).

Not enough deference to authority leads to a lot of unnecessary conflict. (especially with police) I've seen so many stories where even if the police arguable cross the line, events usually start with the civilian with an attitude.

I am all for civil disobedience, but it has to be done properly.

Lastly, where did you pull out bureaucrat from the previous comment? Non sequitur.

> I am all for civil disobedience, but it has to be done properly.

I suspect the definition of properly looks very different when you're a victim, perpetrator, or a (privileged) bystander.

Let's march politely down the street with the rest of my college educated peers doesn't exist for everyone unfortunately.

You say it's caused by inappropriate lack of deference to police. I say it's caused by an inappropriate expectation of deference by police. Their motto is "protect and serve", not "rule with an iron fist".

Police need to maintain discipline and composure regardless of the attitude from people that they are interacting with or they are not worthy of the power that they have been entrusted with.

> Too much deference to authority is not a good thing (in my opinion the weakest part of asian culture).

Yes, the homogeneous entity of Asia and its culture.

How do you even have a productive conversation about this topic when people are this ham fisted and uninformed?

Have you actually been to Asia? Try traveling there and see if you still think there's "too much deference to authority". If anything the opposite is closer to being true, this stereotype is a western cliche.

And yes, I'm Asian and grew up in "Asia".

There are strong Confucian cultures in Korea, Japan, and to a lesser extent (ironically enough) China. In those countries, you can really feel the authority deference. Samsung especially has trouble with this when opening branch R&D offices in the USA.

You really have to work in these countries to feel it though, just visiting isn’t good enough. When I was working tech in China, expats had lots of war stories about working in japan or Korea, which sounded a lot less appealing than working in China (though working for an American company, the culture was necessarily mixed). I’m sure SE Asia and South Asia/India would be fairly different in many respects.

>to a lesser extent (ironically enough) China

i heard people attribute that to Mao who explicitly encouraged the younger generation to challenge established authority (which was a way to turn and use them against the rest of the state and the Party power who became critical of Mao blaming him for the failures and disasters of the Great Leap Forward) as part of the Cultural Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Red_Guards...

"At the Red Guard rallies, Lin Biao also called for the destruction of the "Four Olds"; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas.".

The Cultural Revolution was highly anti intellectual. Academics and artists were imprisoned, or even killed. In 1956 Mao did start the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which encouraged criticizing the government. But that was followed in 1957 by a campaign targeting people who had the wrong opinions.

I get what you mean but i think there's different types of authority. Your boss, your parents, your elders, the government. They all get treated very differently. So deference to authority isn't quite specific enough to be applicable imo.

I disagree. I’m a westerner but I have lived in South East Asia (Indonesia and Thailand), and my wife is Thai, I regularly visit her parents and relatives and we are pretty close to her family.

Obviously every individual is different and I can think of people I met there that don’t conform to that stereotype, but in general, yes I think that on average South East Asians have a tendency to avoid criticising anyone in a position of authority, or at least they do that less often than westerners. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but it’s definitely there. When I speak of westerners I should point out that I was born in Italy and I now live in Australia and these two countries, rather than the USA, make up much of my idea of “western” (even though Australia is geographically located in the Asia-Pacific region!).

Have you considered that Thai are unlikely to criticise authority because criticising the government can fall under lese majeste and result in severe prosecution?

I don't think that's the case because:

1. I was talking about authority in general, you are not accused of lese majeste for criticising your teacher or your parents.

2. The other country that I mentioned (Indonesia) is a republic.

I think some Asian countries have this a lot more than others; Japan and Korea probably among the most. One example that springs to mind is that Korean Air had a major problem with plane crashes until nearly 20 years ago. A crucial exacerbating factor was the culture of deference from the flight attendants to the pilot:

https://thediplomat.com/2013/07/asiana-airlines-crash-a-cock...

Deference is often baked into Asian language - using different heirarchical expressions for someone based on their age, status and so on. We used to do something similar in Western countries but its nowhere near as marked.

Perhaps religious role models like Jesus Christ and the Buddha play a subliminal factor in disobedience, risk taking, etc

Right hong kong and Taiwan and the Indian independence movement suffer(ed) from too much deference to authority

I'm South Asian as well and I find your attitude a little arrogant. As pointed out in the book "The other one percent" (Sanjoy Chakravorty) Indian immigrants of my generation have benefited from a couple of events we didn't have to fight hard for, namely the end of colonialism in South Asia and the civil rights wins in USA, as well as a stable and privileged background that many Indians lack access to. To varying extents the same is true for other Asian immigrants as well. Many non-Asian people "work hard" and take care of family, we are not unique in these respects and these self-aggrandizing stories are not the complete explanation for our demographic's income or our model minority myth.

Take the best and brightest in a country of a billion, move them to another country. Wonder at why they are still doing pretty well compared to the local population which is average. Also wonder why their children are doing well despite the fact that they inherited their parents DNA. True their home countries local population might not equal their adopted country's local population in their aptitude. Immigrants make the adopted upper classes even richer, obviously they get a small piece of that. Their children inherit their genes, and they get the benefit of being born to relatively well to do parents. Obviously they often do well as well, if their parents don't burn them out.

You want Asian CEOs, then Asian investors should invest in American companies and make Asians CEOs of those companies. Its that simple. At the end the corporate structure is defined by investor money. That money belongs to people of certain races who trust their race to run their company... and if not their race then white people -- and this goes for Arabs and Asians. The rather have their companies run by whites (which often includes the other whites that must not be named) that know other whites that can make things happen.

The Asian values of "respect your parents" and "children have a duty to parents" impedes the ability of abused children to realize that something is wrong.

Parents, by making an explicit choice to have kids, are bound to the obligation to not harm or mistreat them. However children never chose to be born, and do not have an obligation to accept responsibilities given by parents, or respect their parents' right to mistreat them.

When children complain that the parents are hurting them, parents can avoid responsibility for their abuse by arguing that their children "do not respect them". When children do not go along with their parents' values and orders, parents can easily use "disrespect" as a reason to punish the children. I have Asian parents who physically and mentally abused me, though I'm not sure if they specifically invoked "respect" as justification.

The interesting question is how those values are to be regained after the Boomers. Perhaps the half-century of the self has broken the chain for passing these values through to future generations cast adrift in a sea of self-obsessed narcissism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

> highest income demographic

Yes, concentrated in a narrow band around upper middle class professional jobs. The point of the article is that some people want more than that, and can't figure out why they aren't getting it. Well, you don't get above average outcomes without taking some risk, and it's no surprise that the most risk-averse culture is going to be under-represented at the top, while still doing well in the median outcome.

> The point of the article is that some people want more than that, and can't figure out why they aren't getting it.

Actually, the article found out pretty well why they aren't getting it: "And yet while only 15 percent of the male population is at least six feet tall, 58 percent of all corporate CEOs are."

Asians are not as tall as other ethnic groups, so are naturally at a disadvantage here. Only 3% of CEOs are 5'7" or less, which is the median height of an Asian-American male. 95th percentile height of Asian-Americans is 5'11.4" or thereabouts (source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03_039.pdf ).

Height? Are you sure that if you control for height you can explain away the entire effect? I think there might be a little more to it than that.

> The point of the article is that some people want more than that, and can't figure out why they aren't getting it.

Well as an Asian I’d say these delusions of grandeur are part of the problem.

Delusions of grandeur? If you work your whole life doing all the things people tell you to, and do them well, and you expect some reward beyond a pat on the back, is this a delusion or a reasonable expectation? The one that wants to be a leader, but never will, because leadership character traits were conditioned out of him (or her) by a long process of socialization towards following and away from questioning, disobedience, independent observation and inquiry, in short all the attributes of leadership ... this one suffers from a delusion? Perhaps, but then can we blame him if every person in authority in his life has always told him he is doing everything well? How can this delusion be dissolved if the entire cultural heritage in which he is shaped encourages following rules as a chief virtue?

It's hard to take issue with people wanting to set up their kids for success by prioritizing academics.

Not really hard to take issue with once you see how it's done, no.

In principle, there's nothing wrong with prioritizing academics. That statement doesn't imply going to extreme lengths.

In principle, non scholae sed vitae discimus. Prioritizing anything becomes pathological when we lose sight of the benefit for which it is worthy of prioritization. In practice, non vitae sed scholae discimus, because we make degrees, credentials, and zero-sum competitions a goal and forget the true goal, which is a life well lived, for everyone, not just the top N% of the class.

There is a tired, beaten-up trope that we need to be “saved” from our culture, and that only Westerners can understand us, from the outside, and heal us. And we even need Westerners to understand our own cultures.

Would it be less grating if it came from a place of honest intentions, if that’s even possible? Among other things, this is how I also understand why rural Americans find “liberals” to be stuck up and condescending. It’s weird having empathy for a demographic that’s dissimilar to you, and by all appearances and experience dislikes you, but the dumpster fire of misunderstanding runs pretty deep. It’s hard to take a stand against the politics of the day when everything you hear, from both sides of the aisle, makes you want to watch the world burn.

You know, if you had substituted "Coastal Elites" for "Westerners" in the first paragraph, then I would have sworn you were writing from the perspective of a person from Appalachia or the South. So safe to say, that sentiment you feel really is shared in some way by many rural Americans, and hopefully, some empathy might even go both ways in many cases.

You are hitting into a salient point I think though. What point do these tropes actually serve? Make people from other cultures conform out of shame? Or is it purely to make the people perpetuating these standards to feel superior?

This. I think I'm better off today having raised by tiger parents than not. I remember the days when I feared coming home for canings if I had "median" high school scores. It wasn't fun. In hindsight, this weird combination of fear and desperation to achieve excellence I still carry on till this day. The only difference now is me competing against yesterday's self, and this has helped me significantly in my career.

I think the key focus should be “immigrant” culture.

If you’re in Asia, (which is like saying Africa or Europe), and as long as you don’t stay in the expat bubble, you will meet so many different types of people.

However, one thing to note is how assertive Asians are treated in the workplace,

> East Asians who don't conform to racial stereotypes are less likely to be popular in the workplace. "In general, people don't want dominant co-workers," says Berdahl, "but they really don't want to work with a dominant East-Asian co-worker."

theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/05/study-of-the-day-theres-a-bamboo-ceiling-for-would-be-asian-leaders/257135/

Ingroup biases (race, class, religion) don't really become a factor until the outgroup is assertive. I saw this firsthand as a foreigner in Korea. The first few years I kept my head down and was treated well. "He's just like a Korean." As I became more confident at work, my coworkers started playing politics to hold me back. (One of them used race explicitly to form a coalition.) Nowdays I don't play politics, and my performance is good, but I still get a lot of comments about my "attitude" from my boss. Nevermind that people I don't report to directly love working with me.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be Asia. As a white dude working in Australia I found myself on the wrong side of arguments and perceptions cuz I had a different accent.

Most of those values you've mentioned equate to 'Don't try and change the status quo'. It should be obvious for a lot of people that when the status quo doesn't benefit them, they don't find value in what you've listed.

Especially this notion of 'working hard' which is almost purely a corporatist-favoring attitude nowadays. Work harder for no reward, and keep your head down because trying to earn more means you're a selfish millennial. What happened to the value of 'work smarter, not harder'?

Although non-Asian I was coming in to say pretty much the same thing, what happens to them after the test taking ends - in most cases I would assume a high paying job.

To add on, did anyone else find it strange that the demographics of the interviewees counters the main point of the entire article? Most of them are alumni of elite universities; shouldn’t we be introduced to those who rebelled against the Asian narrative?

I’m not sure if this is just standard of Asian American coverage. See this article from the NYTimes recently on affirmative action: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/magazine/affirmative-acti.... Most of the interviewees again went to elite universities, even though affirmative action affects more than just elite privates.

No, the point of the article is that the ones who succeed within the Asian narrative don't end up getting everything they want or expected.

They also lie about women's test scores to keep them out of Universities. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/world/asia/japan-medical-...

Their nuclear reactors blow up.

They still hunt whales and dolphins.

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