Episode 016: A Day at the Mall

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Transcript

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COLD OPEN

CATHY VO: Back in the before-times... I would walk by this little bakery on my way to work.

CATHY VO: And nine times out of ten, I failed to convince myself to not go in, and ask the person behind the counter for the exact same thing: a plain croissant.

CATHY VO: I waited until I was inside my office to take that first bite, that crackles apart like a confetti of buttery shards on top of the paper bag, I would wet my finger and obsessively try to pick up each of those little golden flecks.

CATHY VO: Then I would say hi to my coworkers, and go to a meeting, and you know, start my day.

CATHY VO: This pandemic keeps reminding me just how much a communal space means to us. How going through these little rituals with other people feels like an anchor, whether you know them or not.

THEME MUSIC begins

CATHY VO: So today, I’m passing the mic to our friend and producer Erica Mu.

CATHY VO: Back in the summer of 2014, after moving back to the Southern California town she grew up in, Erica found herself wandering around San Gabriel Square.

CATHY VO: It’s a mall. A big, sprawling, landscape of mostly Chinese businesses in one of the most East Asian cities in America. But you know, still a mall. Where people meet up, have lunch, shop…

CATHY VO: But instead of shopping, she spent the day listening to the stories all around her — from dim sum diners, shop owners, security guards, kids, all-night partiers…

CATHY VO: And she’s sharing those stories because right now, they’ve taken on a new meaning.

THEME MUSIC ends

CATHY VO: Just so you know, there’s a tiny bit of swearing in this story. Here’s Erica.

SEGMENT 1: WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COMMERCE

SOUND: A loud, bustling banquet hall

ERICA VO: Ten a.m. at Five Star Seafood Restaurant is not for the weak or hungover. It’s bright, loud, and crowded.

ERICA VO: This morning, the Chang brothers, Steve and Yudor, are here for a family ritual: Saturday dim sum with a side of arguing. This morning’s argument is about Yudor’s broken garage door.

STEVE CHANG: How come you didn’t tell me?

YUDOR CHANG: I’m not gonna bother you for that.

STEVE CHANG: I coulda had my friend do it for like 200 bucks….

YUDOR CHANG: Are you kidding? The parts alone cost you like 3, 400 bucks.

ERICA VO: Steve wants to be helpful. But he also wants to be right.

STEVE CHANG: You can call me just to get information.

ERICA VO: ...Which annoys Yudor.

YUDOR CHANG: Well you’re busy, I don’t wanna bug you.

ERICA VO: It’s a whole dance the brothers have clearly done before.

YUDOR CHANG: See I hate bugging him, because every time I would call him, it would be, “What do you want this time?” So I avoid doing that kind of stuff.

STEVE CHANG: Every time you call me is when something goes wrong.

YUDOR CHANG: That’s right. See, that’s what I’m saying, I avoid doing that.

ERICA: As Yudor argues, his wife Pam walks around the restaurant, openly staring at the food on other tables. Eavesdropping on other people’s arguments. For Pam, dim sum is more than just food — it’s entertainment.

PAMELA CHANG: We fight! And argue! (laughs)

MUSIC begins

ERICA VO: I found myself at dim sum with Steve, Yudor, and Pam not long after I’d moved back to LA. 

ERICA VO: It was a time of big changes that I couldn’t undo. A job I once loved had become a job I could no longer stand. So I fled the scene. Fled right back into my parents’ house, 300 miles away. I started working in an after school program for cash. I volunteered entire days at the local aquarium. I ate a lot of burritos.

ERICA VO: And at the time, when I felt so lost… what I really wanted was to connect with something real and grounded. Feel sure of how it would all turn out.

ERICA VO: I found myself grabbing my tape recorder and driving to the most grounded place I could think of: The mall.

MUSIC ends

SOUND: Cars shift around the mall parking lot

ERICA VO: San Gabriel Square is extremely popular. There’s jewelry stores, department stores, herbal shops, travel agencies, nail salons, tons of restaurants. It’s busy. So people on Yelp have one glaring complaint: the parking.

MUSIC begins

YELP REVIEWER #1: I swear to god there hasn't been a single time I haven't wanted to get out of the car and fight a motherfucker.

YELP REVIEWER #2: I take 3 Xanaxes before attempting to enter this plaza.

YELP REVIEWER #3: The parking attendant today was very ruthless and heartless.

ERICA VO: That parking attendant is probably this guy, Humberto Chong.

HUMBERTO CHONG: I no distinguish into good person or bad person.

ERICA VO: He takes his job super seriously. And when it comes to parking attendant rules of etiquette, that means: take no sides.

HUMBERTO CHONG: My job here in the plaza is not to argument with anybody. Only to observe and report. That’s my job.

ERICA VO: Humberto is actually the head security guard here — a nice guy trying to keep the peace across 12 acres of outdoor mall. Mostly, he rides around in a golf cart, chatting with the regulars and bringing donuts to the old ladies exercising in the parking lot. And, of course, he monitors the cars.

HUMBERTO CHONG: This is employee’s. Employee’s. Employee’s… Customer’s... Customer... This is customer’s, she living right here in the neighborhood.

MUSIC ends

ERICA VO: Today Humberto is reporting to John Wang, one of the two mall managers. John’s office is upstairs on the second floor, with a clear view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the parking lot.

JOHN WANG: Yeah, haha, sometimes people are trying looking for a parking spot, they fight each other (laughs)

ERICA VO: Most of John’s job is to make sure the mall is running: lights are humming, air conditioners are blowing, escalators are moving. Building management stuff. But then there’s the people management part.

ERICA VO: Like two days ago, the employees of the arts and crafts store on the first floor found a bunch of business cards on their counters — business cards from the jewelry store on the third floor. They thought it was a power move. So they called the jewelry store.

JOHN WANG: …”Hey, you send some people, send the business card here?” They say no no, we didn’t do anything!

JOHN WANG: That’s why then we found this guy.

ERICA VO: “This guy” had already struck last week in another business-card-related act of mischief. So John knew who the culprit was. But this time, John followed the guy, trailing him like a PI.

JOHN WANG: I followed him, and he walked into the dentist, he come out, I say, “What are you doing?” 

JOHN WANG: And from his jacket, he pulled out a bunch of business cards, put it on the bench. And I ask, “Where are you from?”

JOHN WANG: (pauses)

JOHN WANG: He say, “I’m from China!” hahaha (laughs)

MUSIC begins

ERICA VO: John tells me other stories about the characters who pass through the mall. Early in the morning, I meet one myself. He’s showing me the dinosaur bones he sells from his van.

KYLE HENRY: You can see it’s not bone anymore, it’s a stone. It’s like petrified wood. And that’s 20 million years old.

ERICA VO: The dinosaur guy is actually at the mall to stock up on tea. Which Travis Chen happens to be selling at a small stand nearby.

TRAVIS CHEN: Good for liver, good for stomach, lower high blood pressure.

ERICA VO: Today you get a free gift with purchase, Travis says. He’s also handing out free samples. It’s a lot of hard work.

TRAVIS CHEN: They don't trust me sometimes. (Laughs)

ERICA: Why not? 

TRAVIS CHEN: It’s a new product. It’s on sale in America for two years. Not too long.

ERICA: How many have you sold today?

TRAVIS CHEN: Uh... one tea bag. 

ERICA: One tea bag.

TRAVIS CHEN: Yeah.

SEGMENT 2: LOVE LOVES THE MALL

ERICA VO: It takes approximately zero minutes to figure out that love loves the mall, even in the early morning hours. Most stores are just opening when I run into Xiao Yuan and Shao Hua Lu, holding hands and giggling. They’re getting married next week.

ERICA: Do you have, like, uh, something to show for it? Do you have a ring?

XIAO YUAN: No no no…

SHAO HUA LU: Actually we plan to buy it today. (giggles)

ERICA VO: Jeremiah Krieger is also getting married next week. Breakfast at the mall is Phase One of his bachelor party.

CHARLES OTTOWAY: We’re not going to a strip club, that’s the official story. And um… yeahhhhhh.

ERICA VO: Kevin Mariano and Jason Cook are still riding the high of new love.

KEVIN MARIANO: We met at a club in West Hollywood. (laughs)

KEVIN MARIANO: Friday is Asian night. (laughs) So it’s called “Gameboy”!

KEVIN MARIANO: I was drunk! (chortles)

KEVIN MARIANO: So drunk. (chuckles)

JASON COOK: We were on the dance floor, and I saw him, and he waved at me. And we started dancing. (giggles)

ERICA VO: Shirley Wang and Sally Huang are still looking. They were actually here at the mall late last night for a pre-party snack. Now they’re back for breakfast and gossip.

SHIRLEY WANG: Actually we don’t sleep all night!

SHIRLEY WANG: We had a party last night, and stayed late, 4 —

ERICA: Did you guys meet any boys?

SALLY HUANG: Oooh, yeah, actually, we want —

SHIRLEY WANG: We want, but no cute boy, no cute guys —

SALLY HUANG: ...just we don’t have confidence, ask boy’s number! (laughs)

MUSIC fades out under Erica

ERICA VO: It's not just customers like Shirley and Sally who seem to live at the mall. Most of the mall's tenants are here almost every day.

ERICA VO: Like Daymond Luu, the owner of Sing Sing Jewelry, a jewelry counter in the main department store. Daymond’s parents opened Sing Sing when Daymond was a kid, so he kind of knows everybody on the jewelry floor. And there’s no one he knows better than Amy.

ERICA: So you guys have known each other for 12 years. 

DAYMOND LUU: Yes.

AMY TSAI: (laughs)

ERICA: You probably see each other more than your partners, your husbands, wives.

DAYMOND LUU: No!

AMY TSAI: No!

DAYMOND LUU: ...because when she worked here, she doesn’t really work, before.

AMY TSAI: Oh my God, what are you talking about. I’m always here. I’m always here. I’m always here.

ERICA VO: Amy works at the counter across from Daymond. They’re close — literally, their counters are, like, five feet apart.

ERICA VO: They’re the only young ones on a floor where all the other retailers appear to be in their 70s — which helps to explain how their relationship evolved from workplace colleagues to meddling besties.

ERICA VO: A few years ago, Amy was standing right here, complaining about being single. So Daymond stepped in.

DAYMOND LUU: I had —

AMY TSAI: He gave me two choices. 

DAYMOND LUU: — had two friends that were single. I just asked her, did she want a doctor or a restaurant owner?

AMY TSAI: And I only had three questions for him and that’s it. 

ERICA: What were the questions?

AMY TSAI: First question is…

DAYMOND LUU: “Who’s taller.”

AMY TSAI: No no no no. First question is, “Who’s older?”

DAYMOND LUU: Oh yeah.

AMY TSAI: Okay? And he said, “Okay, the restaurant guy is older.”

AMY TSAI: The second question is, “Who can speak Chinese?”

AMY TSAI: The third question is, “Who’s taller?”

AMY TSAI: “The restaurant guy.”

AMY TSAI: Okay, I say, “Okay, I’ll date the restaurant guy first.”

ERICA: You didn’t even see him? 

AMY TSAI: No.

MUSIC begins

ERICA VO: Daymond called the restaurant guy right away, and he came straight to the mall. 

AMY TSAI: ...That's it.

DAYMOND LUU: I didn’t know anything, and then after that, getting married. I was like whoa, okay! 

AMY TSAI: That’s two years later!

DAYMOND LUU: Yeah but still!

AMY TSAI: Then you know we started going out…

DAYMOND LUU: You started going out but I didn’t know it was like that serious…

AMY TSAI: Oh okay. It’s fate.

DAYMOND LUU: Huh? What you say that’s fake?

AMY TSAI: FATE.

MUSIC ends

SEGMENT 3: MALLRATS

SOUND: Daytime shoppers walk around the plaza

ERICA VO: It’s around 2:00 in the afternoon when I find a young man and woman sitting on a bench. But they don’t look that happy. Tiffany Wong and her cousin look bored out of their minds. They’re waiting for their moms, who are upstairs, still having dim sum.

TIFFANY WONG: This is my third day of dim sum, so I’m pretty tired of dim sum at this point.

ERICA: Why did you have three days of dim sum?

TIFFANY WONG: My mother. She goes, oh you’re going to chinatown anyways… so, enjoy dim sum! And I’m like, “Uhhhhhhhhh, again?”

TIFFANY WONG: And then today... I wake up at 8 o’clock. She goes “Oh, you’re up! We’re going now!” I’m like, “Where are we going?”

TIFFANY WONG: She goes, “You’ll see!” 

TIFFANY WONG: And she goes, “We’re going to the bank first.”

TIFFANY WONG: And then... she brought me to dim sum.

ERICA: You look so upset about that.

TIFFANY WONG: You can only have so much dim sum before you’re sick of it… before you’re sick of it, completely.

SOUND: An outdoor fountain runs in the background

ERICA VO: Over by the boba shop, I find another 20-something with a parent problem. Yun Peng Zhang sits with an enormous book open in front of him. He tells me he’s studying for the military. 

YUN PENG ZHANG: Air Force.

ERICA: The, like, American Air Force?

YUN PENG ZHANG: Yeah. It’s really hard.

YUN PENG ZHANG: If there is a question, like 10 words, 8 words that I have never seen it before. Yeah it’s crazy.

ERICA VO: Yun Peng says that he’s in the U.S. on what sounds like an EB-5 visa, which is a visa that, at the time we had this conversation, came with a five hundred thousand dollar investment in an American business

ERICA VO: So… it’s not really clear why…. he’s doing ….this.

ERICA: Why do you want to do that? Why do you want to be in the Air Force?

YUN PENG ZHANG: (Groans) I have no idea.

YUN PENG ZHANG: To be individual, to get the experience of my life. And… Get away from my parents.

ERICA VO: Yun Peng calculates that he just needs to learn 80 new words per day for the next 20 days to make it through the test. Just 1,600 words between him and adulthood. 

SOUND: A very wistful tune rings out on the harmonica

ERICA VO: Throughout the day, trucks pull into the back of the mall to make deliveries. One guy is running to his truck, but when he sees a microphone, he pauses and pulls out a harmonica.

ERICA VO: Over at one of the fountains, custodians Patrick and Danny foist a long pole into the turquoise water.

ERICA: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found in a fountain?

PATRICK: I have one time, they put a turtle.

DANNY: (Laughs in background)

PATRICK: Turtle.

ERICA: Was it alive?

PATRICK: No. This is chemical, no can live there.

ERICA VO: Plaza manager John’s running around the place, shooing some kids away from a broken electrical outlet.

JOHN WANG: Excuse me, hello, hello! Don’t move that. Gwan zai ma? Wo zao ta yi xia.

SOUND: The harmonica stops playing, replaced by the very slightly echo-ing sounds of a restaurant that’s barely filled

ERICA VO: Kids are everywhere at the mall. Parents bring them to shop. And they raise them here, too.

ERICA VO: Upstairs at Dong Ting Chun, a Hunan restaurant, Neil Zhao is helping his parents trim green beans while they watch TV. They’ve owned the restaurant for about 10 years. Right now, it’s mid-afternoon, the place is mostly empty. It has a kind of worn-in and worn-out feel.

NEIL ZHAO: So you can call us kind of like sophomore, juniorish, in the middle tier where we have like the Capital Seafood being the most senior one, like super seniors, if you say. 

ERICA: So you’re like, aw man, they’re like the cool kids.

NEIL ZHAO: Yeah. They are THE biggest restaurant, like we have customers sometimes coming in the door, and asking us: oh where’s Capital Seafood? And we’re like oh, well, down there, you know. This is not Capital Seafood.

ERICA: That kind of sucks. 

NEIL ZHAO: Eh like you see that every day. You get used to it.

SOUND: A man asks about making travel arrangements in Chinese

ERICA VO: A few doors down from Dong Ting Chun is a small, fluorescent-lit office. An 8-year-old kid looks at his Nintendo Switch while I ask him some questions.

ERICA: Where are we right now?

JERRY HWANG: Mmmm..

ERICA: You don’t know where we are?

JERRY HWANG: In a room?

ERICA: IN a room? Do you know what this place is called?

JERRY HWANG: Ben Travel I-N-C?

ERICA VO: That’s “Ben Travel Incorporated,” as in the kid’s dad, Ben Hwang. He specializes in trips from China to the U.S. and vice versa. When he gets off the phone, he introduces his kids.

BEN HWANG: Yeah they are Jerry, my second boy, yeah.

ERICA: Okay and your oldest son, where is he?

BEN HWANG: Tom.

ERICA: Did you just say “Tom and Jerry”? 

BEN HWANG: Yes.

ERICA: Like the cartoon? 

BEN HWANG: Yeah, heh, my wife like “Tom and Jerry,” so we pick the name Tom and Jerry. That’s their actual name.

ERICA VO: Ben’s family spends a lot of time together. Ben’s wife also works at the office, and the storefront kind of doubles as day care for their kids. The family spends even more time together when they travel, which happens about twice a year.

ERICA: Where do your kids want to go?

BEN HWANG: Uh ocean, beach… Like, Hawaii, Like Yellowstone. Yeah. And they don’t, they don’t like go back China.

ERICA: Is that a little bit sad for you?

BEN HWANG: Mm… A little. Yeah. Because they are Chinese (laughs) Are you Chinese?

ERICA: I am, I am. I was born here as well. I’ve never been to China, not because I don’t want to, but because… I don’t know, my parents just never... asked! I don’t know why.

BEN HWANG: Yeah. You can go by yourself.

ERICA: I can go by myself. This job doesn’t pay very well… (laughs)

ERICA VO: I’m caught off guard when Ben turns the questions on myself. In an instant, I’m a child again, stumbling over answers about who I am and how I fit in, even here at the mall. Especially here at the mall.

MUSIC begins

ERICA VO: When I was a kid, Five Star Seafood was called Capital Seafood, and San Gabriel Square was called Focus Plaza. On the rare night out, my tired parents would take my brother and me to Sam Woo Barbecue on the first floor. I’d stare at the roast ducks hanging in the window with equal parts hunger and horror until our number was called.

ERICA VO: My brother would then taunt me with chopsticks, or the desiccated head of the roast duck. And I would space out, the sound of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese floating around me, each distinct but all inaccessible.

ERICA VO: As I got older, going to Hollywood with friends seemed more appealing than going to Sam Woo with family. When it was time for college, I moved away. The mall faded from my memory.

ERICA VO: I never expected to come back home. But my feelings about what I wanted in life were changing. And it occurs to me that I’m trying to figure out what others are doing here at the mall because I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.

ERICA VO: Maybe if someone else lets me in, even for a brief moment, I’ll be pulled out of my own directionless storyline.

ERICA VO: But soon, it’s clear: I’m not the only one who’s struggling to make sense of this moment, and get to the next one.

MUSIC ends

SEGMENT 4: THE MIDDLE OF THE STORY

SOUND: A very lively backdrop of people chatting and walking around the mall

ERICA VO: As evening falls, I head to a newer mall across town, Atlantic Times Square. And I find Steven, sitting by himself on a bench, staring into the absurdly bright lights of Daiso, the Japanese dollar store. He just got a call from his ex-girlfriend, totally out of the blue.

STEVEN: Oh gosh, this is kind of embarrassing. Alright.

STEVEN: My heart did kind of drop. I mean, it’s not the kind of phone call you expect.

ERICA: Was there like texting involved?

STEVEN: No, just (heh) just a phone call, and the other person saying, “Guess who?” Heh.

STEVEN: Um, and of course it kinda brings up everything that’s… that you’ve ever kinda like tried to move past. It kinda just bubbles up to the surface, you know.

STEVEN: You’re kind of wondering in the back of your mind, “Why is she calling? What’s going to happen from here? What should I say?”

STEVEN: Like, can they feel how shaky your voice is right now? Can they sense, like, what you're feeling? Is it awkward? Should it be awkward?

STEVEN: And all of this kind of, like, goes through your head in like a split second, you know when this person, as soon as this person says, “Guess who?” 

STEVEN: So it’s just… ughhh... yeah.

ERICA: ...Did you save her number?

STEVEN: (Sighs)

STEVEN: I… If I see her number again, I’m going to recognize it for, like, another, like, two or three weeks or so, until, like, the number kinda fades from my memory again.

STEVEN: But no, I didn’t actually save her number.

SOUND: People and cars mill softly around the parking lot, later at night

ERICA VO: Around 10pm, Paul Chan and Winnie Lui are sitting outside the mall’s movie theater, eating sticky rice with mango. Paul and Winnie didn’t plan on having a kid. Especially not two of them. Sometimes he gets frustrated.

PAUL CHAN: Like I’ll tell you one of the things we tell our kids, we threaten them, I was like, “If you don’t behave, we’re going to get on a plane and go to China, we’re going to get off the plane, and I’m going to hit you, I’m going to beat the crap out of you and nobody’s going to help you. Everyone’s going to look at you and be like yeah that kid deserves it.”

PAUL CHAN: You know, because you can’t do that in America. We start raising our voice in South Pasadena and we got parents dialing 911 ready to hit “send.”

(Paul’s voice ducks under Erica’s narration)

ERICA VO: Paul knows how this sounds. But he jokes about keeping his kids in line because growing up, he did a lot of drugs, barely got his GED. His parents weren’t on board and let him know it.

ERICA VO: So as a newish dad, he’s trying something different.

PAUL CHAN: ...one thing that we do with our kids, is like… We tell them that we love them a lot. Like, “I love you Wesley, goodnight Wesley. I love you Parker, goodnight Parker.” You know, like...

PAUL CHAN: Like, I don’t mean to be a bummer, but like, um, my cousin, one of my cousins had passed away about, I don’t know, 10 years ago or something.

PAUL CHAN: I just remember at his funeral, my uncle, his dad, said something like, “Yeah in Chinese tradition, we’re kind of taught to be, like, really emotionally reserved all the time.”

PAUL CHAN: And basically my uncle was saying that he regretted that he never told his son that he loved him.

PAUL CHAN: (Choked up) ...Choked me up. I was like, “UGH! I never want that... (cough) to happen to me..

PAUL CHAN: (Voice wavers) It’s cool... It’s cool…

WINNIE LUI: It’s okay…

PAUL CHAN: Naw it’s... (coughs)

PAUL CHAN: ...It’s cool, It’s just uh… (sniffles) ...yeah, I tell ’em every day.

SOUND: Parts of a metal workout apparatus clank in the distance

ERICA VO: Another guy at the mall, Patrick Lei, is also doing things differently. A few years ago, he found himself at a turning point.

PATRICK LEI: I went to the hospital. (laughs)

PATRICK LEI: Basically I was addicted to soda. I was like 19 or 20, it was stupid. And dumb.

ERICA VO: Patrick’s blood sugar levels landed him in the hospital. And then, his grandfather landed there too, and passed away.

ERICA VO: Now Patrick’s a gym rat, working out on weekend nights at the 24 Hour Fitness.

SOUND: Ambience shifts to another part of the mall, where people are gathering

ERICA VO: And then there are other folks who aren’t here to work out, or to work things out. For John Chen and Mark Huang, the night still has potential.

ERICA: What are you guys doing tonight?

JOHN CHEN: Tonight? Party. 

ERICA: Where.

MARK HUANG: It’s secret.

JOHN CHEN: Karaoke…

JOHN CHEN: Karaoke. Like the KTV.

ERICA: Karaoke?

ERICA: So are there going to be like girls there tonight?

JOHN CHEN: Yes! Some girls. 

ERICA: Like girls you’re, like, interested in? 

JOHN CHEN: Yeah! A lot of girls we are interested!

MUSIC begins

ERICA: So it could be an amazing night.

JOHN CHEN: It WILL be.

ERICA VO: I think back to the party girls from the morning who hadn’t slept, and hope that they’ll meet up with John and Mark. That some cosmic thread might pull together the loose ends of our time at the mall.

ERICA VO: But as I replay these moments, I know there is no tidy ending. That the mall is for being in the moment, in the middle of the story. And that’s okay. When we’re all in the middle, it means none of us are really alone.

ERICA VO: Sometime early in the pandemic, I went back to San Gabriel Square. It was mid-afternoon. The parking lot was quiet. A security guard rode around in a golf cart. I couldn’t tell if it was Humberto — the guard was wearing a mask. And I didn’t get out of the car.

ERICA VO: For a brief, blissful moment, I imagined the familiar, the ordinary. And here it was. Changed, but still standing.

ERICA VO: And so am I.

MUSIC swells and then ducks under Cathy

CREDITS

CATHY VO: This episode was produced and written by Erica Mu, with help from Rebecca Kanthor and Paulina Hartono.

ERICA VO: Leslie Chang and Alyssa Kapnik Samuel helped me out with recordings at the mall. The story was edited by Liz Mak, and George Lavender gave me some really valuable feedback along the way.

CATHY VO: Final edits were made by James Boo and Julia Shu. Sound mix by Timothy Lou Ly.

ERICA VO: Music by Podington Bear.

CATHY VO: And our theme music is by Dorian Love.

ERICA VO: This story was made with support from the California Council for the Humanities, the Third Coast International Audio Festival and Radio Residency, mentorship from Martina Castro at the Association of Independents in Radio, and fiscal sponsorship from Visual Communications — developing and supporting the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists.

CATHY VO: Self Evident is a Studiotobe Production, made with support from our listeners.

CATHY VO: If you want to support our mission and make our work more sustainable, please become an official member at patreon dot com slash self evident show. I’ve really enjoyed meeting members on our monthly video chats, so hopefully I’ll see you there, too.

CATHY VO: I’m Cathy Erway. Let’s talk soon. Until then, keep on sharing Asian America’s stories.

MUSIC ends