2025AAAinA-LC-reader-1 by Asia Art Archive

Led by Simon Wu Daniel Chew

The Vaguely Asian Reader

Asia Art Archive in America

Asia Art Archive in America (AAAinA), founded in 2009, is an independently established and operated U.S. 501(c)3, and the first overseas hub of Asia Art Archive (AAA) in Hong Kong. AAAinA’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make accessible information on contemporary art from and of Asia, in order to facilitate public understanding and specialized research to instigate dialogue and critical thinking, and to raise awareness of and support for the activities of AAA globally. To achieve this goal, AAAinA maintains a reading room in Brooklyn, New York which is open to the public free of charge, and comprises over 5,000 monographs, exhibition catalogs, reference books, periodicals, and audio-visual materials about contemporary art related to Asia. AAAinA also organizes a regular program of talks, screenings, workshops, participatory projects, exhibitions, residencies, and panels with artists, curators, critics, and scholars in the field.

Leadership Camp

Initiated in 2016, the annual Leadership Camp program brings together arts practitioners at varying stages of their careers to discuss through an “Asian” lens a wide range of topics impacting art, art practice and the arts profession. This Camper-led program encourages discussion, debate, and knowledge sharing and begins with an overarching theme, an initial set of “framing questions,” and a reading list. This combination of closed seminar-type discussions of selected texts with presentations by participants and guests culminates in a final project or program specific to each iteration. More information on previous Leadership Camp programming and upcoming open calls for participation can be found on the AAAinA website.

Installation view of “Refashioning,” Japan Society, 2022. Photo: Kirsten Kilponen

2024-25 Leadership Camp

Vaguely Asian

remote controls wrapped in cellophane the sound of taking slippers off in front of a door

Louis Vuitton bags (real and fake)

Paris Baguette

Danish butter cookie tins

loving deals

stuffed animals

pasta

In 2016, the art-fashion collective CFGNY (Concept Foreign Garment New York, or Cute Fucking Gay New York), coined the term “vaguely Asian” to describe a “feeling, or notion of Asianness, that isn’t really Asian, that connects us.” They used it to refer to a particular aesthetic in their work drawn from a “shifting set of symbols, experiences, and relationships shared by people with similar migration histories from Asia.” But being “ vague, ” it also conjures other associations – Rei Kawakubo’s bloopy dresses, cellophane wrapped around remote controls, gauzy plaids and, crucially, the ghostly presence of thousands of Asian workers who produce garments for the global fashion market. The term is meant to describe existing and yet to be formed potentials, inviting notions of expansiveness rather than foreclosure.

Historically, the “vaguely Asian” finds a cousin in the term “orientalism.” Originally coined by the Palestinian scholar Edward Said in 1978 to refer to distorted depictions of Middle Eastern subjects by French imperialists, orientalism was quickly adopted in the field of Asian American studies to describe processes of fetishization, caricature, and demonization that Asian workers as early as the mideighteenth century experienced when they arrived in North America. As we witness the latest episode of Americanfunded genocide in Gaza (which might also be known as “West Asia”) how can we assess solidarity differently through the “vaguely Asian”?

What might the “vaguely Asian” be? Who is it for? How does it try, or fail, to map what critical fashion scholar Thuy Linh Tu calls an “architecture of intimacy” across class and geography, stretching from the Asian diasporic elite to migrant laborers and crazy rich Asians? What possibilities does it open, and foreclose, compared to “Asian” or “Asian American” forms of racialized identity? Can the “vaguely Asian” model what the writer Viet Thanh Nguyen has called “an Asian American identity revived by an expansive solidarity”–an identity that allows us to ask questions and seek possibilities beyond those given to us within the confines of racism and colonization.

Photo: CFGNY

Leaders’ Bios

Simon Wu is a curator and writer involved in collaborative art production and research. He has organized exhibitions and programs at the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, MoMA, and David Zwirner, among other venues. In 2021 he was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant and was featured in Cultured magazine’s Young Curators series. He was a 2018 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and is currently in the PhD program in History of Art at Yale University. His first book, Dancing On My Own, is out with Harper in June 2024. He has two brothers, Nick and Duke, and loves the ocean.

Daniel Chew is a filmmaker and artist who is based in New York. He works collaboratively with Micaela Durand in film and with the collective CFGNY in art. Working in collaboration is very important to his practice and is an intentional political decision that models an alternate way of existing in a world that obsesses over the cult of the individual. He has shown work at International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Hammer Museum, Cooper Hewitt, MoMA PS1, MOCA LA, e-flux, Japan Society, Auto Italia London, and The Shed among many other venues. A trilogy of short films he co-directed with Micaela Durand is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. He has done residencies at Macdowell, Fogo Island Arts, BiljmAIR Amsterdam and has held fellowships with Jerome Foundation, Queer Art, and Asia Art Archive in America.

Leadership Camp Participants

Anna Ting Möller is an artist living and working in New York City and Stockholm. Möller received an MFA from Columbia University, New York and a BFA from Konstfack University, Stockholm, SE. Möller’s work has been exhibited at Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, SE; ArkDes, SE; Carl Eldh, SE; ICPNA La Molina, PE; Luan Gallery, CH; Jyväskylä Art Museum, FI; Titanik, FI, Supper Club Fair, Hongkong, HK; Gallery Tutu, US; Island Gallery, US; Murmurs, US; Urban Glass, US; Alexander Berggruen, US; Phillips New York, US and Ceysson & Bénétière, US. They participated in the 45th Tendencies Biennale in Norway and The Immigrant Artist Biennale in New York. Möller has received residencies and fellowships from EFA Robert Blackburn, US; Kronobergs Kulturpris, SE; The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program, US; Asia Art Archive in America, US; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), US; The Here and There Co (THAT Co), US;

Film Regionerna Sydost, SE; The Sweden-America Foundation, SE; Bengt Juhlin Foundation, SE. The artist’s work has been reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic and Brooklyn Rail. Konstenet, OmKonst, Paletten, DN Kultur, C-print, BON; amongst others.

Christina Yang is an independent curator, scholar, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn (NY) and Williamstown (MA). A global contemporary art, performance and archives specialist, her interdisciplinary work focuses on spectatorship, politics of the image and feminist care. She has filled curatorial roles at the Berkeley Art Museum + Pacific Film Archive, Williams College Museum of Art, The Kitchen, Guggenheim and Queens Museums. Her curatorial range includes new media, performance commissions, artist residencies, public engagement, and social practice. She contributes frequently to New Social Environment/The Brooklyn Rail and her essay Hung Liu: Seeing and Unknowing appeared in May 2024 (RYANLEE). She served as performance reviews editor at Women+Performance, a journal of feminist theory (2018-20) as well as on their editorial board (2015-20). In fall 2024, she is teaching in the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). She delights in being a mentor to an emerging generation of practitioners focusing on artists and curators of color. She holds an MA (Williams College) and BA (University of California, Berkeley) in art history. Her Ph.D. dissertation Performance and The Gaze: Spectatorship in The Kitchen Archive, 1974-84 is forthcoming from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (fall 2024).

Emma Ike is an arts administrator and educator passionate about community engagement and promoting access, equity, and cultural citizenship in museums. As Manager of Education at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, she embraces anti-bias values and diverse models of co-creation to collaboratively organize education and public programs serving access, adult, community, family, school, and teen audiences. Notable projects have focused on uplifting local Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander artists and communities, including commemorative Day of Remembrance programs and Community Days in connection to the Museum’s Open Call for Artist Banners.

Previously, Emma held education programming roles at the Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Hall, Children’s Museum of the Arts, Rubin Museum of Art, Studio Institute, and Venice Biennale. She earned a BS in Art History and Museum Professions with a minor in Asian Studies and an AS in Fine Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 2021, she was selected to participate in The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Museum Education Practicum and is currently in the New York Foundation for the Arts’ 2024 Emerging Leaders Program.

Eugenie Tsai is a curator and writer based in New York. From 2007 – 2023, she was the John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, at the Brooklyn Museum where she oversaw the Contemporary collection, and organized loan and collection exhibitions. Exhibitions she organized include “Oscar yi Hou: East of Sun, West of Moon” (2022-23), “Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven” (2022), “The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time” (2021-2022) and KAWS: WHAT PARTY” (2021). She also curated “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic” (2015), co-curated “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed Stuy and Beyond “ (2014), and La Toya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital” (2013). Prior to joining the Brooklyn Museum, she organized “Robert Smithson” (2004), which debuted at MOCA LA, before going on to the Dallas Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (the exhibition received the International Art Critics first place award for best monographic show of 2005), and “Robert Smithson Unearthed ” (1999) at the Wallach Art Center, Columbia University. Eugenie worked at MoMA/PS1 as Director of Curatorial Affairs (2006-2007), and at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1994-2000) in various curatorial positions.

Jayne Cole Southard is a contemporary art historian and curator. Her research focuses on contemporary Asian and Asian American art in New York City. Her work on these topics has been supported by organizations including the Henry Luce Foundation and the Association for the Historians of American Art. Her related writings have appeared in publications including Art Journal and Panorama: The Journal of the Association of American Art. Additionally, Cole Southard has a wide-range of curatorial, museum, and gallery experience. She held positions at the Shanghai Museum and the Walker Art Center, among other venues. She recently co-curated Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (19769- 2001) at NYU’s 80WSE. Cole Southard holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Oregon. She is currently a Lecturer in the Art Department at the City College of New York.

Hailing from the Bay Area, Jennifer Li (she/her) holds a Master of Architecture II (2023) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture (2019) from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She serves as critic at Cal Poly, Boston Architectural College, NYIT, and Parsons New School when requested; Design Associate at Alloy Development, a development firm run by architects who build only in Brooklyn under the pillars of beauty, sustainability, and equity; and writes occasionally. With contributing works featured in Pairs GSD (2023) and e-Flux journal (2024), Li is also one of sixteen Emerging Leaders at the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (2024). Her studies accumulate on the basis of collaboration and inquisition, where she has had the great liberty of creating and moderating panels, internationally televised forums, and coordinating exhibition work; inviting a number of architects, artists, activists, and theorists in discussion and exhibition as Chair for a number of organizations: Womxn in Design, National Organization of Minority

Architects, and APIA at Harvard GSD. Jen is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, where she has an issue with (or a gift of) safekeeping paper memorabilia, and is on the hunt (ongoing) for the best Taiwanese flies’ head in town.

Johann Yamin (he/they) is an artist, art worker, and educator. His current research and writing focus on digital cultures from the contexts of Singapore and its broader region of Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on the materiality of communication infrastructures and their entanglements with colonial histories. Responding to the technopolitics of virtual worlds, his practice has taken shape through text-based videogames, moving image installations, curatorial work, and varied forms of support. He was a 2020 Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow at Eyebeam, New York for co-organising the online project Pulau Something, and a Curatorial & Research Resident at the Singapore Art Museum in 2021. He was awarded a Rhizome Microgrant in 2023. He is currently a PhD student at NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communication program.

Julie Chen is from San Jose, CA. She earned an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College in 2024, and was a Fulbright Fellow researching Chinese fast fashion workers in Prato, Italy, from 2019-20. She works as a fundraiser for CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities. She also makes music as Slime Queen.

Lucia (Lulu) Yao Gioiello (b.New York City) is a creative director and founder of the cross-cultural book series and platform FAR–NEAR, aimed at broadening perspectives of Asia through image, person, idea and history to unlearn the inherent dominative mode. She lives and works in New York City. Working through the cross-cultural effects of imperialism and migration, her annual printed book series FAR–NEAR aims to blur the boundaries in which Asia is positioned and viewed on a global scale. She has developed an on- and offline space for the international Asian creative community to express and share cultural commentary freely. Her work has influenced curators and artists such as Kikuji Kawada and Xiaochan Hua of Hua International to curate further exhibitions on the topic. Her work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library Special Collections, The Franklin Furnace/MoMA Artists’ Books Collection, the SVA Library and ICP library. Her books are sold in various art bookstores and galleries across Asia, the Americas, Europe and the UAE such as the Walker Art Center, Tsutaya Ginza, 0fr Paris, Artbook at MoCA and more. In addition to FAR–NEAR, she writes and directs stories for various publications, galleries and art collectives such as Document Journal, Circa.art, Beyond Noise and WHAAM Gallery.

Philip Poon is an architect, artist, and writer whose work engages the complex dynamics of a changing Manhattan Chinatown and the relationship of Asian-American identity within it. Informed by his background as a Chinese-American from New York City, his work as a registered architect, and his engagement with art and activist movements in Chinatown, his projects materialize issues at the intersection of space, race, and class. He had a solo exhibition at the Pearl River Mart Gallery and has exhibited at La MaMa Galleria, WSA, Citygroup, and On Canal. His critical writing has been published in Other Almanac, Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts, and Untapped, and his work has appeared in Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, Chicago Review of Books, The Architect’s Newspaper, South China Morning Post, Sing Tao Daily, World Journal, Deem, and more.

Maureen Catbagan is a Pilipinx-American, multi-media artist based in New York whose work engages social collectivity and explores the intersections of immigration, labor, and visibility. They have collaborated with Flux Factory, Yams Collective, Abang-guard with artist Jevijoe Vitug, and have co-written articles with Dr. Amber Jamilla Musser. Recent exhibitions include “Perfect Imperfect ” at Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY (2024); “in pieces…” at PS122 Gallery, New York, NY (2023); and “Lights, Tunnels, Passages, & Shadows” solo exhibition at The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY (2021). Their individual and collaborative works have been exhibited, screened, and/or performed in the CICA Museum (Gyeonggi-do, Korea), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Abrons Art Center, Socrates Park, and Whitney Museum of American Art (all in NYC), Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and The Contemporary Museum (Honolulu, Hawaii).

Catbagan has been awarded residencies with Abangguard at Residency Unlimited (Brooklyn, NY), and The SixFoot Platform at DUMBO Art (Brooklyn, NY), and with Flux Factory at Governors Island (NYC), ARoS Museum Public Atelier (Aarhus, Denmark), and Art Quarter Budapest (Hungary). Fellowships and grants include 2024-25 Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, 2021 NYFA-City Artists Corps Grant, and 2020 Critical Minded for Cultural Critics Grant.

Sixing Xu (b. 1996, Beijing) is an artist, writer, and translator based in Brooklyn. Informed by a crisscrossing movement between linguistic borders, she makes sculpture–text installations that mine other(ed) meanings and storylines out of the insignificant, the accidental, and the peripheral. Xu has exhibited works at 601Artspace, New York; NARS Foundation, Brooklyn; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Current Plans, Hong Kong; Shanghai Himalayas Museum; Chengdu Times Art Museum; gallery no one, Chicago, among others. Xu’s writings and projects have appeared in print and on the digital platforms of Spike Art Magazine, Sine Theta Magazine, Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, and Macalline Art Center. She was a participant in Triple Canopy’s 2024 Publication Intensive and the co-founder of Pararailing, an artist-run nomadic space and organization. Xu holds a BA in Media Studies from Vassar College.

Rujuta Rao was born in Goa, India, and is based in Jersey City, NJ. Rao’s multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, book and sound art, alongside conceptual and functional garments. Her practice is research-led and intensely personal, investigating the fragility and limitations of materials relating to place, family history, and hospitality. Rao received her MFA in interdisciplinary art from Parsons School of Design and BFA in sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Artist residencies and fellowships include CCA Islands Travel Fellowship, Japan; ISSP Riga Residency, Latvia; Civita Institute Fellowship, Italy; and The Rejoinders Residency, UK. Rao is a 2024 Workspace Artist in Residence at the Center for Book Arts in New York, where she is developing wearable publications.

Xinyi Li is an educator and designer trespassing and dwelling on multiple thresholds. Her practice includes pedagogical expression, diagrammatic media, and visual opacity. Her recent work addresses diasporic experiences and food practice, digital resistance and creative subversions, and language and pedagogy in transnational and transcultural contexts. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Undergraduate Communications Design Department at Pratt Institute. With the group post-radical pedagogy, she questions the values and legacies that shape design pedagogical practice. Previously, she collaborated on Digital Humanities projects and engaged with design research for healthcare experience.

Xyza Cruz Bacani (b. 1987, the Philippines) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her experience as a second-generation domestic worker in Hong Kong informs her practice and engagement in less visible, erased, and underreported world events. Her works explore migration, transnational identity, climate change, and labor. Bacani received her M.A. in Arts Politics at New York University in 2022. She has been recognized as one of Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young Leaders, Artpil’s 30 Under 30 Women Photographers, Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Asia, and BBC’s 100 Women of the World. Her artistic accomplishments are documented by the Philippines House of Representatives under ‘House Resolution No. 1969’. She received multiple grants from the WMA Commission, the Open Society Moving Walls Foundation, and the Pulitzer Center, and was one of the Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellows. She is also the author of We Are Like Air. Bacani’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, KADIST Collection, Foreign Correspondents Club Hong Kong, New York University Special Collections, and numerous private collections worldwide.

The Gallery Mall in downtown Philadelphia announces its presence in oldschool marquee lightbulbs, all the letters hunched together like a family standing against the wind. Within its maroontiled halls one could find a food court, a train station, and a mixture of budget department stores like Old Navy, TJ Maxx, and JCPenney, the last of which routinely sent coupons to my family with the irresistible provocation to take $15 off your purchase of $25 or more. Like many born in the ’90s, I divined my earliest ideas of design and style, of gender and conviviality, from the mall. All of my life has been lived inside of capitalism, even all those places where I read about how to escape it, and so it was at JCPenney that I was weaned on my earliest lessons of the deal. We never bought things at full price because what you paid for in full price was time— the ability to wear a garment that was of a moment. It was a tax we didn’t care to pay. And focusing on getting things cheap, we believed, literally made us more stylish by imposing an arbitrary set of limitations. At JCPenney I hid in the canopies of dresses when I was still small enough to do so, imagining them to be soft cathedral architectures, and my mom would pull me to get my opinion on a blouse or a top. I lingered by the underwear models, pulled in now obvious, clichéd ways to their sex. There were kind cashiers who smudged the rule that we could only use one coupon, asking us with a wink to do a quick lap and come back as “Jack” or “Paul” instead. I liked pretending to be brandnew. The glamour of the deal produced its own style and lifestyle. The lore of a purchase imbued our garments with a lucky pallor, a charm derived from the adrenaline of couponaided theft. The clothes we bought at JCPenney were “outside” clothes. They were clothing my parents bought for my brothers and me to wear to school and school assemblies— stiff polos, khakis, Levi’s

VAGUELY ASIAN

Storefront of the East Broadway Mall at 75 East Broadway in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Taken November 3, 2023, by the author.

When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums. Andy Warhol

Hitcha gaw gaw, breeza subuwah Imma kwee kwah abah weena hah kah Robyn, “Bonichita Kitcha” (the Simlish version of her 2007 single “Konichiwa Bitches” recorded for The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff )

A mannequin made of tape, cardboard, and papiermâché reclines on the floor, propped up on one elbow, looking down at a paper iPhone. Garments hang sparely on bamboo poles around the perimeter. “This is cute,” I say, picking up a cropped vest made of smiling cartoon bear plushies. “It’s reversible,” I add as I turn the garment inside out, revealing a shimmery inner surface. Julie nods. I pick up the label, printed on stiff paper, and peek at the price— $250. I show it to her and we raise our eyebrows together. “I think my mom got an entire sack of pajamas with patterns like that for twentyfive dollars,” I say. She thumbs quickly though the other garments. There are puffy, stiff jackets made of packing blankets; shimmery suits in flowery patterns; latticelike tops to be draped over plaid dress shirts. “This reminds me of the pajamas I used to wear when I was growing up,” I say, measuring the cropped jacket against my chest.

“Asia,” she says, definitively, before she is interrupted by the wonder of a dress with a stuffed animal in its lining. “ Kawaii .” We are standing in Cover Street Market , an installation by the artfashion collective CFGNY. It has been made to resemble the highfashion boutique it borrowed its name from, Dover Street Market, but with more humble materials— plastic, cardboard, tape. Their name stands for Concept Foreign Garments New York, or Cute Fucking Gay New York, but also sometimes Crime Fracture Gross Nasty Yummy, or Cutting Fried Garlic Near You, or whatever other acronyms they can think of; CFGNY has multiple names to reflect the shifting nature of their collective. Julie points to the floor. A small display of stuffed animals,

blue jeans, Van Heusen shirts. But at home we wore “home” clothes. These were more comfortable, but they were also more Asian, because they were usually made from fabrics from China, by way of Burma. Soft flannels with small, dancing animals impossibly anthropomorphized; loosefitting, bouncy, plaid shorts; the occasionally longyi. I never wore “home” clothes outside because they were pajamas but also because they seemed too delicate to survive the world. I got used to shedding my “outside” clothes once I passed the threshold of home, like an actor coming offstage with a relieved sigh. My mom keeps suitcases full of fabrics that feel like neither “home” nor “outside” clothes— celadoncolored satins and shimmery plaids from Burma that she had saved to make clothing for special occasions. That stuff never really interested me as a kid. I wanted a skater hoodie to match my sideswept bangs. Or a shirt from Old Navy that looked like it was from Abercrombie. But sometimes I’d ask her to pull the suitcase out just to look at the fabrics. They smelled of mothballs, a smell that I like now, which added to the feeling that they were relics of styles and homes past. They rested in wait for a time when their use might present themselves again. Julie and I are shopping. She had just started a job as a paralegal and I had started a fellowship at the Brooklyn Museum after my Whitney internship. Disaffected, both of us, at the pinnacle of our youth, by jobs that required long hours in front of a computer, we Facebook-Messengered each other about Jia Tolentino articles, weird Issey Miyake bags on SSENSE, and bizarre posters for raves happening on the weekends (“????”). A friend told us about this store that was also apparently an artwork, and we decide to go.

to ascend into an arty creative class, that I thought had no place in my new, adult, queer life. On my Notes app, I start a running list of “vaguely Asian” things:

Paris Baguette remote controls wrapped in cellophane the sound of taking slippers off in front of a door

Louis Vuitton bags (real and fake)

Danish butter cookie tins loving deals stuffed animals pasta

Earlier in the summer, Julie and I had gone to our first SoulCycle class together, somewhat ironically. We walked out of it, flushed, a little disoriented, and, despite ourselves, kind of liking it. Pretty earnestly. At SoulCycle, I felt that I was staring into the most perfect performanceart installation to encapsulate our current moment: a machine that wanted me to become a machine, to create a more aerodynamic version of myself through EDM, sweat, and vaguely Eastern spirituality. Intellectually: indefensible. In practice: really fun. We explored this dichotomy in notes that we collected in a shared Google folder we called “capitalism is fun and convenient.” When I look in it now, it has a picture of Amazon dash buttons (where you instantly order an item when you press a button), a New York Times article called “Why Are Young People

DANCING ON MY OWN

55 PlayStation controllers, and woven sheets of leather parody a shop display, but with a stuffed bunny splayed out on the floor like a tired shopper.

CFGNY coined the term “vaguely Asian” in 2016 to describe this aesthetic. 19 It’s a term they prefer to keep intentionally ambiguous. But they generally use it to refer to a shifting set of symbols, experiences, and relationships shared by people with similar migration histories from Asia. In a 2021 interview, they describe it more simply as “Getting things cheap and loving deals,” and a “feeling, or notion of Asianness, that isn’t really Asian, that connects us.”

20 In CFGNY’s first collection, Subtitled , which hung on wooden rods in the perimeter of the installation that Julie and I were standing inside, the “vaguely Asian” manifested in a mixture of nostalgic references and a patchwork aesthetic. There were simple buttondown shirts that seemed to be “infected” with strips of plaid; minimalist jackets revealing cute animal cartoon prints; sheer panels and strategic cutouts that hide and reveal the wearer. Other materials pointed directly to Vietnam, where the clothes were made in collaboration with local tailors: leather from a motorbike seat factory on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, trousers made from recycled woven plastics used to create plant canopies. In later collections, they would incorporate more idiosyncratic references, like Rei Kawakubo’s lumpy dresses, the industrial grunge of Bushwick’s queer scene, and the oversized suits and jelly slippers of elderly residents in New York’s Chinatown. We didn’t end up buying anything that day. But I was struck by how the clothing made me feel. CFGNY had brought together “home” and “outside” clothes in a way that scrambled what either of those might mean. These were aesthetics that I had forgotten about since moving to New York. That I had willfully left behind

It is so close to the original, yet in its asymptotic difference, it is a world away. “Very vaguely Asian,” I say, and Julie nods. Later that night, CFGNY throws a party. The installation’s lights are dimmed to purple. Tin Nguyen and Daniel Chew, CFGNY’s original members, are in attendance. They first met in 2013: Daniel worked for the artist Kerstin Brätsch, and Tin was studio mates with the artist Debo Eilers, who collaborates with Brätsch in a collective called KAYA. I met Daniel and Tin for the first time that night. In my mind’s eye, Daniel remains the way I met him then, kind and smiley. I was happy to meet another Burmese Chinese person. He wore a pair of dark blue pants whose legs flared out in a way that felt, at the time, inaccessibly stylish to me; something I didn’t even have the proper context or set of eyes to appreciate. Tin had a more severe look, wearing a pair of plaid shorts and a sweater vest baring his arms. In the small kitchen in the back, a few open bottles of wine were laid out with plastic cups. There was a DJ, an Instagram star, and his boyfriend. Julie and I observed the sharp litheness of their modellike proportions from afar. Tin and Daniel both moved to New York in 2006—Tin to study art, and Daniel to study film at NYU. At first, they noticed each other because they were both gay and Asian in a predominantly white scene, and felt that they might have to be competitive. “I think that one thing that you internalize, or at least I did, is that you get competitive with this other person, because you’re used to being special,” Daniel said. “But that special is conditional.” “Because you’re also tokenized within the wider circle,” Tin added. Instead, they made the deliberate decision to be friends. Their

Pretending to Love Work?,” and a note from Julie that reads: That one time this dude on Tinder asked me if I had a linkedin, said I had a “linkedin vibe?”

Julie has always had a shrewder outlook on cultural politics. Too often I was dazzled by exercise classes and fashion runways, the shiny baubles of capitalism. I romanticized the radical claims of contemporary art. Part of this was from being at the Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP), which was its own inter section of art and capitalism. Founded in 1968 as the first education department of the Whitney by a man named Ron Clark, it soon moved to a separate building so that its participants could more freely reflect on their relationship to institutions. It had produced generations of socially engaged artists who critiqued the museum and larger institutions everywhere; the artist and critic Hannah Black, who penned the letter of protest against Dana Schutz, was a graduate of the program. Yet it was not without its own contradictions, its own tendencies to get wrapped up in too much critical theory. Out of the seminar room, Julie would always steer me, gently, back toward more material questions: What is this cultural thing claiming to do? Who is it actually for, and what is it doing for them?

After SoulCycle, we go to a Froyo place downtown and reflect on the class. Did you cry? I cried. We sit underneath a wall of fake vines. Pink fluorescent lights cast a glow on our faces. The only other person at the counter, wearing a black cap, presumably also Asian, watches videos at full volume on their iPhone. A neon sign on the wall misinterprets the 2010s ism “It’s Lit,” saying instead: “It Lit.”

SIMON WU probably even on the lower end for that. But it was more than I had ever spent on an article of clothing. This price tag was as alien to me as the prospect of owning it was seductive. I reasoned that I was investing in an artwork made by friends, and this made it easier to shortcircuit the dealbusting mindset I had grown up with. “Well, how do you like to dress?” Daniel asks, seeing me pull the vest close to myself. “You could wear the vest with a shirt if you want businesscasualanime. Or wear it without if you want to look slutty.” He laughed. “I think you can go anywhere you want in the kawaiislutty spectrum,” Julie encourages. I buy the vest. Later, when I wear it, it feels like I have dredged up some substance within my identity and externalized it into something that others could see, all by paying money to someone else. Capitalism is fun and convenient. I liked how the vest was both cute and unnerving in its multiplicity, that there was something transgressive to the sexual pallor it was casting on pajamas that reminded me so strongly of home. Tin and Daniel see fashion as a vessel, and an excuse, to bring people together and talk. Specifically, they hope to explore common Asian American experiences: reinforced racial and sexual stereotypes of gay Asian men on Grindr, the intraracial competition stoked by tokenism, and a more existential sense of alienation. “We all feel that alienation and we understand each other in a very specific way,” Tin says. “That’s a very big common bond, the alienation that we feel.” 23 I appreciated CFGNY because they were critical, and sympathetic to the idea of “belonging” in Asian American culture. “Belonging” seemed trite and overdone, and it pushed for an idea of America, and American citizenship, that I wasn’t sure I wanted to

ON MY OWN 59 friendship was cemented as fashion friendships so often are in New York: waiting for embarrassingly long amounts of time together outside sample sales. It was in one of these lines that they got the idea to start CFGNY. “So basically we were at the sample sale, talking about being cheap,” elaborates Daniel, “and then Tin was like, I wanna spend more time in Vietnam because I’ve only been there once or twice. My mom goes there to make clothes. We should just start making clothes. We could do it more like an art project. It wouldn’t need to be a production line.”

21 Neither Tin nor Daniel is formally trained in sewing, so they decided to collaborate closely with local tailors in Vietnam, often deferring to the tailors’ interpretation of their instructions. Sometimes, this meant that zippers end up in different places, materials are swapped, or garments are given a different fit. Soon this collaboration became an integral way that CFGNY would operate. “A lot of times they’ll just kind of make decisions,” says Tin, laughing. “Because they worked with us so many times, they feel like they understand our sensibilities,” says Daniel. “So if they can’t contact us and it’s at the tailor, there’s this sort of chain of sequence that goes down, and then decisions are made, not by us, and I feel like they know our aesthetic.”

22 (In 2019, the artists Kirsten Kilponen and Ten Izu would join the collective, and introduce even more collaboration.) Lingering at the perimeter of the party, I take a closer look at a patchwork shirt. I notice an oddly placed button. A collar that is slightly larger than normal. I try to discern if this is Daniel and Tin’s taste or the tailor’s call. I can’t tell. Maybe that is part of the point. I think about buying something. A vest made of teddy bear stamps. At prices ranging from $100 to $500, CFGNY’s garments are comfortably within the range of other designer clothing,

Bottega Veneta cassette handbag, a fabric tote with green fringe. I stop in front of one particular accessory— a pair of black briefs studded with rhinestones with callvim kernel on the waistband. I pick them up, feeling the cardboard bend a little underneath my fingers. I notice the synthetic tautness over the brief’s crotch. I notice a tag. “Slightly Worn by Franky,” it reads in shiny silver letters. Who is Franky? Is he hot? I look up Franky on Instagram, and I can’t find him, but I am an experienced gay socialmedia sleuth, so I search through CFGNY’s followers to look for him. I see that he walked for CFGNY’s last show. He is indeed hot. His pictures reference Asian culture but nothing too specific— Pokémon? Hello Kitty? Abs. Mostly abs. But also old Celine and Dries van Noten. Always selfies. Orange cowboy selfie. Round circle tattoo selfie. L.A. tattoo selfie. I imagine buying the callvim kernel briefs to enjoy the uncanny, erotic intimacy with this Instagram star they might afford; I imagine their musk and their residue, the sweat the elastic might have captured. The inner label of the briefs, meanwhile, says “Made in Vietnam.” Even if Franky put them through the wash, might residue have been left by the seamstress who sewed them, or by the machine she used? Who else do these briefs put us in contact with? Who else was at this dimly lit party, hiding in the seams of our garments? In 2019, Tin and Daniel flew to Vietnam to go shopping. In the District 1 area of Ho Chi Minh City, known for its many tailoring shops, they ran their hands along reams of fabrics. On the veranda, a child thumbed an iPad in the shade, and garments hung on mannequins sticky from the humidity. Tin and Daniel were there with a proposal, an experiment for a new collection they were developing called Synthetic Blend V.

aspire to. In coming up with the term “vaguely Asian,” CFGNY suggests that there are other, more ambivalent emotions to being Asian. Identity is constructed from an outside; it is something that is done to a subject. One result, they posit, of having to reconcile (or being unable to reconcile) the images you make of yourself and those that others make of you is a pervasive sense of alienation. A feeling that you don’t belong where you should belong. CFGNY proposes this alienation as an integral aspect of identity formation. “What does ‘being Asian’ even mean?” Daniel asked in a 2019 article. “We can’t possibly define that. What we can define is the experience of being viewed as one huge group. The alienation that is a consequence of being judged for something you aren’t, and what brings us together is understanding that relationship between ourselves and our identity. It’s not about being Asian, it’s about trying to expand what being Asian means.” 24 They have not yet given up on the idea of community, or Asian America, even if they are critical of both. Their work across fashion, art, performance, and writing seeks to use that alienation as the basis for a community.

The party starts to crowd. Angela Dimayuga, the chef of a popular downtown restaurant, comes in with aluminum trays of food covered in Saran Wrap. Riffing on the idea of “cute,” she had made pandas and little bears out of rice and Spam and other food that she had grown up eating as Filipino American. She had gone into her mom’s recipes, pulled out “home” aesthetics, and was letting them oxidize in the New York air. I take a walk to the other end of the gallery. The music dims; no one is here, they’re all by the food. A long table displays DIY versions of highfashion accessories: designer briefs stretched over rectangles of shipping material, a cardboard remake of the popular

ON MY OWN 63

Those impulses are present. But the reality that they recount seems to be more complicated. Custom tailors in Vietnam are not the same as the factories at the fringes of the city where most fast fashion is produced. CFGNY does not posit that they work in a fastfashion economy; rather they work more in the language of luxury fashion, even if they try to reject that language as well. (CFGNY does not participate in fashion week shows or sell to retailers, and they produce each of their garments via preorder. At least for now.)

Also, who is to say that the tailors they work with were all that alienated from their work to begin with? Or that they need them to become less alienated? Although CFGNY would like to count many of these tailors as collaborators, not all the tailors were necessarily receptive— or cared much, for that matter.

“Some tailors were like, ‘we just cut and sew, you direct us, we don’t provide creative services,’ ” Tin says. “They were unwilling to do it.”

27 A shop run by Anh Quanh and Chi Loi refused the invitation, explaining that they are set up to take measurements and fill orders, and that to come up with ideas for garments would be too distant from their business approach and too disruptive to their daily work. And although Tin and Daniel often defer to the tailors’ suggestions and translations, they still curate which of these garments make it into their collections: “Sometimes, we’d get it back and be like, ugh this is so ugly, the fold is wrong, etc.,” said Daniel. “And then sometimes we’d get things back where we hadn’t asked for a certain thing, but they’d just done it.” Another time, they asked their moms to produce a version of a diasporic garment, but they found the results so offputting that they didn’t want to display them. Mistranslation is a key part of their process, but it is ultimately mediated through Tin and Daniel’s particular sensibilities. Synthetic Blend V is, however, exceptional partly because they

Although they had been working together with various tailors— Nguyê t Huê ´ Nguyê t, Bùi Thi My˜ Linh, Bùi Thi Lan Anh, Da Trâ ` n Va˘n Tân, and Namsilk Tailor— since 2016, this time they had a new proposal for the tailors: to create an outfit based on their interpretation of what a CFGNY garment might look like. But first, Tin and Daniel had to explain the concept of a diasporic identity, or even an “Asian American” identity, to the Vietnamese tailors. “One way we put it simply was like, he’s Chinese, I’m Vietnamese, and we hang out,” Tin recounts, trying to explain the idea of Asian American community to the tailors. “So emphasizing this idea that there’s overlap (and camaraderie?) in the ways in which we, as Asian diaspora, identify. They were often surprised by that, that a Chinese and Vietnamese might identify with one another in America.” 25

Working on this collection, Tin and Daniel became much more aware of the cultural, even U.S.specificity of an “Asian American” or an “Asian diasporic” identity. They had taken this to be common knowledge, but of course, one only becomes Asian outside of Asia. The process of explaining this to the tailors asked them to articulate how living in the diaspora feels and looks like in blunt and unforgiving language, run through the blender of Tin’s elementary Vietnamese. “Community. Ummm. Friends. Ummm. Together. Asia.” I was excited by the idea that these exchanges might be a way of bridging transnational rifts in Asian experience. Or that they might be a model to alleviate the alienation that otherwise embeds itself in the economic exchanges of fashion production— designers in America making long calls to Asian factories. Tin has mentioned how the tailors treat him like family, and he calls them “aunties” and “uncles,” what the cultural theorist Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu in her 2017 cultural history of Asian American designers, The Beautiful Generation , describes as an “architecture of intimacy.” 26

worked with tailors who were enthusiastic to collaborate. Two sisters, Chi Lan (Bùi Thi Lan Anh) and Em Linh (Bùi Thi My˜ Linh) are credited. In grade school, Lan dreamed of studying fashion, but ultimately pursued a career in economics until she left to open her shop. Lan was excited for the opportunity to exercise her creativity through her craft with CFGNY. 28 In one of the outfits that CFGNY produced in collaboration with Lan, a model wears a wool skirt in which strips of leather had been woven into a checkerboard pattern. On top, she wears a mesh cardigan that sits like a transparent overlay. To me, the garment is a little confused. It sits between “HiI’mabrownleaf” and “HiI’macraftydemurelady.” The garment is the product of progressive cultural politics— collaborating with a farflung tailor, scrambling designers and producers— but I find it, despite myself, kind of ugly. And that is perhaps part of the point. It’s not for me, or for my taste; it’s for Lan.

I used to take a bus from the Whitney ISP offices in Chinatown to Ramapo College in New Jersey once a week to help my mom at the sushi counter she ran in the cafeteria. In the 1980s everyone wanted sushi, but the Japanese didn’t all want to make sushi, so the Burmese immigrants stepped in. They were Asian enough, and no one could really tell the difference. My mom had worked in sushi since I was a child, operating different counters at local supermarkets like Giant and Acme. Ironically, she doesn’t even like sushi; when she brings back leftovers she microwaves the raw fish and recooks it in stews to eat with rice. The counter at Ramapo College had just started selling sushi, the ones that everyone knew— California Rolls, Salmon Avocado, Spicy Tuna, etc.— before expanding to be an allpurpose panAsian food counter, with teriyaki chicken, popcorn shrimp, and lo mein.

Photo: Mary Kang

Vaguely Asian

Readings

Lowe, Lisa. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1, no. 1 (1991): 24–44.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “Palestine Is in Asia: An Asian American Argument for Solidarity.” The Nation, January 29, 2024.

Chang, Eileen. “Love.” Chinese Reading Practice, June 12, 2020. https://chinesereadingpractice.com/2020/06/12/essay-love-by-zhangailing-eileen-chang/.

These three texts come from distinct periods—1944, 1991, and 2024— and unintentionally mark different epochs of Asian life from varied perspectives. What differences do they highlight? What similarities do they share? When we discuss the “vaguely Asian,” we’re engaging primarily with a form of cultural politics. We believe it is unproductive for either direct action or art to overshadow the other, but we also recognize our discussion is not exclusively about art.

Lisa Lowe, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Edward Said are all literary critics whose works encourage us to approach these issues with healthy skepticism. By learning from each other, we can better understand and calibrate what we refer to as “cultural politics.”

Our intention is not to confine the concept of the “vaguely Asian,” but rather to open it up for exploration. What binds us together? What drives us apart? How does art reveal these conditions, and where do we locate beauty within them?

Photo: CFGNY

Lowe, Lisa. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1, no. 1 (1991): 24–44.

Background: Lisa Lowe is the Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University. Initially trained as a scholar in French and comparative literature, her research now centers on the cultural politics of colonialism, immigration, and globalization. She is particularly recognized for her scholarship on French, British, and U.S. colonialism, Asian migration, Asian American studies, race and liberalism, and comparative empires.

When Lisa Lowe uses terms such as dominant and minority cultures, she’s drawing on her background in Cultural Studies, an intellectual tradition shaped in postwar Britain by thinkers like Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and notably Stuart Hall, whose influential work extended into the 1980s and 1990s. Cultural Studies emerged as a Marxist-influenced approach to culture, critiquing and complicating classical Marxist notions of base and superstructure, and introducing concepts such as Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony, as well as categories like dominant and emergent cultures. Lowe employs these frameworks to illustrate how particular cultural elements gain dominance by becoming accepted as “ common sense, ” emphasizing that hegemony is not simply imposed from above but operates at every societal level, always encountering forms of resistance. Through her analyses of novels and poetry, Lowe argues against the notion that Asian American culture and knowledge are transmitted exclusively from one generation to another (vertically); rather, she suggests that they are also dynamically constructed within generations (horizontally). Lowe continually moves between the desire to articulate a coherent ethnic identity and an active interrogation of any fixed, static notions of ethnicity itself.

Photo: CFGNY

In what way is the Vaguely Asian about a kind of generational rebellion, loss, or transmission?

What is the relationship between authenticity and the vaguely Asian? As Lowe describes through the short story, what place does the idea of being “authentically Chinese” or “authentically American” play in our idea of it?

In what ways does Lowe believe “heterogeneity, multiplicity, and hybridity” will foster a more fruitful solidarity for Asian Americans than an ethnonationalist one?

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “Palestine Is in Asia: An Asian American Argument for Solidarity.” The Nation, January 29, 2024.

Background: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.

Nguyen excavates the history of the term “Oriental ” back to Edward Said, and the way the “Oriental ” had to be killed for the “Asian American” to be born. He suggests that all minority groups need self-defense, inclusion, and solidarity and that finding a way to expand those categories across needs might be a way to rethink this history.

Lowe vs. Nguyen? 30 years later?

What is the role of the short story in Nguyen’s text? What does his solidarity look like in life? In art? In politics?

I was really struck by his question about if and when Asian American literature becomes imperialist. How does that question – of power –come into the dynamics you work through in your work?

Chang, Eileen. “Love.” Chinese Reading Practice, June 12, 2020. https://chinesereadingpractice. com/2020/06/12/essay-love-by-zhang-ailing-eileenchang/.

Background: Eileen Chang, also known as Chang Ai-ling or Zhang Ailing, or by her pen name Liang Jing, was a Chineseborn American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. Chang was born to an aristocratic lineage and educated bilingually in Shanghai. She gained literary prominence in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1943 and 1945.

Essay: Ailing

By Kendra

One intriguing biographical detail is that Chang’s best friend from college, Fatima Mohideen, was the sole witness at her first wedding. Mohideen was herself of mixed heritage—half Ceylonese and half Chinese—a fact that brings to mind Nguyen’s short story, “Chinese in Haifa,” which similarly explores complex intersections of identity, migration, and intimacy across cultural divides.

the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and is still one of China’s most famous female authors.

A tragic, dreamlike little essay from writer Zhang Ailing (张爱

Essay:《爱》Love by Zhang Ailing Eileen Chang)

Some language stuff

玲, English name Eileen Chang) about love and destiny. This is one of her more well-known works of micro-prose, written in 1944. HSK 5-6.

As with much of Zhang’s writing, a couple sentences are deep but a little vague, it’s left up to you to read into them. The last paragraph of this work are along those lines.

By Kendra June 12, 2020 8 Comments

Love by Zhang Eileen Chang)

⼩康之家⼩康之家 xiǎo kāng zhī jiā – A middle-class household, or a family that has enough money to cover the necessities but isn’t wealthy.

A tragic, dreamlike little essay from writer Zhang Ailing (张爱

This is the second thing I put up from Zhang this week. The first piece was filed under “advanced” (though I think HSK 6 readers could probably tackle it), but this one is definitely a little easier. I introduced Zhang in that post, so head over and read her bio if you’d like, but the short version is that she was a literary diva whose work garnered a cult following in China in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and is still one of China’s most famous female authors.

玲, English name Eileen Chang) about love and destiny. This is one of her more well-known works of micro-prose, written in 1944. HSK 5-6.

做媒做媒 zuò méi – Play matchmaker, act as a middleman / negotiator to ﬁnd a suitable spouse for someone.

作妾作妾作妾 zuò qiè – Be a concubine.

A tragic, dreamlike little essay from writer Zhang Ailing (张爱玲, English name Eileen Chang) about love and destiny. This is one of her more well-known works of micro-prose, written in 1944. HSK 5-6.

Some language stuff

This is the second thing I put up from Zhang this week.

The first piece was filed under “advanced” (though I think HSK 6 readers could probably tackle it), but this one is definitely a little easier. I introduced Zhang in that post, so head over and read her bio if you’d like, but the short version is that she was a literary diva whose work garnered a cult following in China in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and is still one of China’s most famous female authors.

转卖转卖转卖 zhuǎn mài – To buy and re-sell something, or in this case, someone.

As with much of Zhang’s writing, a couple sentences are deep but a little vague, it’s left up to you to read into them. The last paragraph of this work are along those lines.

⼩康之家

Want something easier?

Some language stuff

Pinyin

⼩康之家 xiǎo kāng zhī jiā – A middle-class household, or a family that has enough money to cover the necessities but isn’t wealthy.

Du Chinese has a big catalog of easy HSK 1 and HSK 2 texts for ultra-beginners. There are quite a few free practice lessons, but CRP readers get 10% oﬀ on paid accounts using the discount code CRP10

做媒做媒做媒 zuò méi – Play matchmaker, act as a middleman / negotiator to ﬁnd a suitable spouse for someone.

Be a concubine.

CHECK IT OUT

As with much of Zhang’s writing, a couple sentences are deep but a little vague, it’s left up to you to read into them. The last paragraph of this work are along those lines.

转卖转卖转卖 zhuǎn mài – To buy and re-sell something, or in this case, someone.

⼩康之家⼩康之家⼩康之家 xiǎo kāng zhī jiā – A middle-class household, or a family that has enough money to cover the necessities but isn’t wealthy.

As with much of Zhang’s writing, a couple sentences are deep but a little vague, it’s left up to you to read into them. The last paragraph of this work are along those lines.

这是真的。

Want something easier?

做媒做媒做媒 zuò méi – Play matchmaker, act as a middleman / negotiator to ﬁnd a suitable spouse for someone.

⼩康之家⼩康之家⼩康之家 xiǎo kāng zhī jiā – A middle-class household, or a family that has enough money to cover the necessities but isn’t wealthy.

作妾作妾作妾 zuò qiè – Be a concubine.

有个村庄的⼩康之家的⼥孩⼦，⽣得美，有许多⼈

转卖转卖转卖 zhuǎn mài – To buy and re-sell something, or in this case, someone.

CHECK IT OUT

做媒做媒做媒 zuò méi – Play matchmaker, act as a middleman / negotiator to ﬁnd a suitable spouse for someone.

来做媒，但都没有说成。那年她不过⼗五六岁吧，

是春天的晚上，她⽴在后⻔⼝，⼿扶着桃树。她记得

她穿的是件⽉⽩的衫⼦。对⻔住的年轻⼈同她⻅

Want something easier?

作妾作妾作妾 zuò qiè – Be a concubine.

过⾯，可是从来没有打过招呼的，他⾛了过来，离得

不远，站定了，轻轻的说了⼀声：“ 噢，你也在这⾥

转卖转卖转卖 zhuǎn mài – To buy and re-sell something, or in this case, someone.

吗？” 她没有说什么，他也没有再说什么，站了⼀会

，各⾃⾛开了。

就这样就完了。

Want something easier?

Show Pinyin

CHECK IT OUT

后来这⼥⼦被亲眷拐⼦卖到他乡外县去作妾，⼜

⼏次三番地被转卖，经过⽆数的惊险的⻛波，⽼了的

时候她还记得从前那⼀回事，常常说起，在那春天的

晚上，在后⻔⼝的桃树下，那年轻⼈。

CHECK IT OUT

Hide English »

This is true.

There was a village girl from a middle-class family, she was born a beauty, many people came to play matchmaker, but none [of the negotiations] succeeded. That year she wasn’t more than about 15 or 16 years old, and one spring evening, she stood at the back door, with her hand on the peach tree. She remembers she was wearing a moon-white shirt. [She had seen] the young man across the way but they had never greeted each other, but had never greeted each other, he walked over, no great distance, stood still, and in a soft voice said: “Oh, you’re here too?” She didn’t say anything, and he said nothing else, just stood there a moment, and then each went on their way.

It was over just like that.

Hide English »

This is true.

Later, this girl was abducted by her relatives and sold as a concubine [to a man] in another county. She was resold again and again. After passing through countless dangers and storms, when she had grown old, she still remembered that one thing, and she often mentioned that spring night, under the peach tree at the back door, and the young man there.

Popup Chinese dictionary and Pinyin script created by Alex at Mandarinspot.com Thank you Alex!

⼈ Hide English » This is true.

There was a village girl from a middle-class family, she was born a beauty, many people came to play matchmaker, but none [of the negotiations] succeeded. That year she wasn’t more than about 15 or 16 years old, and one spring evening, she stood at the back door, with her hand on the peach She remembers she was wearing a moon-white shirt. [She had seen] the young man across the way but they had never greeted each other, but had never greeted each other, he walked over, no great distance, stood still, and in a soft said: “Oh, you’re here too?” She didn’t say anything, and said nothing else, just stood there a moment, and then went on their way.

Among all the thousands of people you meet, in all the thousands of years, in the boundless wilderness of time, there is no ‘behind’, and no ‘ahead’, there is only coincidental catching up, [and in such moments] there are no other words to say, only a gentle question: “Oh, you’re here too?”

There was a village girl from a middle-class family, she was born a beauty, many people came to play matchmaker, but none [of the negotiations] succeeded. That year she wasn’t

It was over just like that.

Later, this girl was abducted by her relatives and sold as concubine [to a man] in another county. She was resold again and again. After passing through countless dangers and storms, when she had grown old, she still remembered that one thing, and she often mentioned that spring night,

Hide English » This is true.

What space does friendship hold in this expansive solidarity?

How flimsy of a word — love — in the face of such atrocity as war?

How is translation related to the Vaguely Asian?

“Diane in Refashioning: Look 34”

Photo: David Brandon Geeting

Typeface

Authentic Sans by Christina Janus, Desmond Wong

Authentic Sans explores the semiotic and aesthetic idiosyncrasies of the anonymous Latin glyphs included with CJK system fonts; the typeface aims to subvert the Eurocentric standards of typographic quality and refinement. Distributed freely under the WTFPL, AUTHENTIC Sans is a reflection of the studio praxis: expanding and redefining the visual and cultural boundaries of default systems.

!Týpa! by Hólmfríður Benediktsdóttir

Inspired by the fluidity, large accents and porportions in the typeface IBM Selectric Light Italic (found reading through anarcho feminist magazines at CIRA). With the added angle it brings a more mechanical feeling hoping to mix attributes of angularity and fluidity together.

Photo: CFGNY

COLOPHON

Session Leaders

Simon Wu

Daniel Chew

Design

Xinyi Li

Lulu Yao Gioiello

Paper

Hammermill Fore 20lb

Typeface

Authentic Sans

!Týpa!

Printing

Reprographics Lab, School of Design, Pratt Institute

2025AAAinA-LC-reader-1

The Vaguely Asian Reader

Asia Art Archive in America

Leadership Camp

2024-25 Leadership Camp

Vaguely Asian

Leaders’ Bios

Leadership Camp Participants

VAGUELY ASIAN

Vaguely Asian

Readings

Essay: Ailing

Essay:《爱》Love by Zhang Ailing Eileen Chang)

Some language stuff

Love by Zhang Eileen Chang)

Some language stuff

Some language stuff

Some language stuff

Typeface

COLOPHON

Further Reading