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That explains why 1 in 3 homes in the San Gabriel Valley (where new money mainland chinese are moving in droves) is bhought all cash. Also, a lot of the high end luxury condos in LA are being bhouhgt mostly by foreigners, with a good percentage of.them from Asia (Korea and China).
Well, LA's Koreatown is the biggest community outside of Asia, and is so large that you could basically live in a Korean expat bubble in which you seldom speak English, live in a neighborhood or building that's predominantly Korean, buy the exact same food products at any one of the many Korean supermarkets, keep up with the latest Korean fashions and goods at the local Korean malls, etc.
The same goes for the SGV, around Alhambra, El Monte, areas in the Bay Area, etc, where you have Chinese shopping centers and I can tell you with total honesty that the food is literally just as good as it is in any major Chinese city. Thanks to companies like Ranch 99 and similar supermarkets, and also smaller niche/regional mom & pops, you can get most of the same ingredients, products and brands that you'll find in China. Literally my first day here, I went to the bodega across the street and recognized most of the stuff on the shelves. I can thank my years in LA and SF for that.
For a poor or working-class immigrant, it can be tougher to get a leg up and buy that 3bd/2ba in Alhambra... Most Americans can't. But yes, for a wealthy Chinese or Korean, they can buy a house, buy out or invest in a business, park money here, get a visa, and now it costs you literally half as much to buy a BMW or Mercedes and other luxury goods. You can eat the same food as back home, generally live a good life in a beautiful area and collect your money and live life in a less-crowded, less-polluted place where your kids have better access to top schools. You have more access to American money and the status that comes with being a wealthy overseas Chinese or Korean, which is actually a really huge draw for many.
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Do i need to move to Asia to make money and afford the good life in LA? Lol
Well, it's not a bad idea, haha. I'm opening a restaurant here. Right now I do biweekly invitation-only dinners and each night I do it, I bring in what the average person in China makes in a month it's not a bad life if you can get over the crowdedness, pollution, language barrier, and the daily realities of living in a totally different culture to your own.
Here is an interesting article about opposition to the term "American" being used for Americans. It is a good illustration of how ridiculous it is that some insist that the imperialist Americans stole the name from unassuming Latin American countries. Or how silly it is when someone purposefully confuses the word "American" to mean everyone in the western hemisphere during a discussion that is clearly about the United States. Suddenly a noneventful conversation turns into a political stand against the name-stealing Yanquis. You've got to wonder where these people were before America became a superpower!
In a Washington, D.C., bar not long ago, I was ambushed by a very nice young woman drinking a Long Island. We were exchanging the standard get-to-know-you questions: What’s your name, where are you from, what are your thoughts on the weather. While politely parroting these questions back at my conversation partner, I walked into a well-planned sneak attack:
Me: Where are you from?
Her: I’m American.
Me: What state?
Her: Columbia.
Me: So, South Carolina?
Her: No. Colombia, South America.
My new Colombian friend scolded me for misinterpreting “American.” Didn’t I realize, she lectured, how unfair, imperialistic, and U.S.-centric it is for U.S. people to steal the terms “America” and “American” to refer specifically to their country and themselves? She was American, she asserted. I’m American too, apparently, but only to the extent that I live on this continent.
I thought little of it—people are entitled to their perplexing opinions—until a friend complained a few weeks ago that she had suffered similar admonishment from a Costa Rican during a cruise. I asked some Latino friends about it, and they all reported that they personally believe it’s inappropriate for Americans to call themselves “American,” or at least know other Latinos who think this way. Americans have been attacked on this front for decades. “As everyone knows, the right of Americans to be so called is frequently challenged, especially in Latin America,” American journalist H.L. Mencken wrote in 1947.* Today, the battle continues not just in bars but on the Internet. A Facebook group with 1,800 likes assures the Web that America is a continent, not a country. Wikipedia editors have squabbled over it. On urbandictionary.com, the top definition for “America” is: “A country that claims the name of an entire continent to itself alone for no compelling reason.”
So let me say on behalf of all Americans to anti-“Americans” everywhere: We’re not going to stop using “America.” We should not stop. Get over it.
It’s true that “America” is an imperfect word. Its overlapping and inconsistent connotations mean that it is, at worst, confusing in its ambiguity, and, at best, an annoying reminder of the incoherence of language. Usually context can tell you when a person is talking about the rest of the continent instead of the United States, but, admittedly, the fact that it can go either way seems somewhat inelegant. If I could go back in time, I would play a linguistic King Solomon and split the word in two, granting “Ameri” to the continent and “Ca” for the country. I can’t, though, and a mild irritation is not reason enough to build a time machine or kill a centuries-old tradition.
It’s not just linguistic inefficiency that earned me a lecture during trivia night at the bar, though. It’s something deeper. As my Colombian friend told me, Americans calling the U.S. “America” is jingoistic, even imperialist—as if the U.S. owns the whole continent.
I’m not one to trivialize the importance of words and how we use them. The way we use words influences the way we think, and the rise and fall of a word, like a racial or homophobic slur, both reflects and reinforces social change. Let’s face it: Some traditions do deserve to die. That’s why Slate recently changed its editorial policy regarding the local professional football team.
Unlike such slurs, though, Americans calling the U.S. “America” is not malicious. Certainly, the practice coincidentally reflects the U.S.’s world power. But John Adams used “America” to mean the “U.S.” in his first inaugural address, well before the nation emerged as a world power.
Anyway, if it’s anti-imperialist sentiment that drives Colombians to lecture me on this, it would be best if we all divorced “America” entirely. The word itself is an import of Europe, based on the Latin name of explorer Amerigo Vespucci. We might as well rename both the continent and the country using some ancient Aztec words.
The boring truth is that Americans using “America” is not imperialist and jingoistic. It’s just intuitive and convenient, and though it rankles some South Americans (and, most likely, some Canadians and Mexicans too), it harms no one. True, it demonstrates that Americans don’t often think of the entire American continent as a coherent geopolitical entity in the same way they think of Europe. That’s not because they dismiss Latin America, though. It’s because Chile has never invaded Greenland and Canada hasn’t bombed Argentina. The idea of “America” as a continent doesn’t have many practical applications beyond soccer tournaments and plate tectonics.
Yet somehow some Americans have been turned on this issue. “Why this term ‘America’ has become representative as the name of these United States at home and abroad is past recall,” Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote. He proposed Americans use “Usonia” and “Usonian” instead of “America” and “American.” (In Esperanto, the U.S. is called “Usono.”)
“Usonia” and others like it, such as “Columbian,” “Columbard,” “Fredonian,” “Frede,” and “Colonican,” never gained traction, and they never will. Nobody should ex*pect Americans to adopt a name that strays so far from the actual name of their country. Argentines might as well call their country “Argonia” because “Argentina” offends me. Maybe Americans can resolve to always use the full title. “United States of America” has a lot going for it. Its length and cadence imbue it with a certain gravity that you can feel if you remember belting out the pledge of allegiance in elementary school. It’s also a mouthful of a formality, and, unlike “America,” it doesn’t have the pithiness to appear in every piece of music, poetry, and rhetoric that Americans produce. Let’s re-imagine some song lyrics using it:
United States of America, the beautiful ...
United States of American woman, listen what I say ...
They’re coming to the United States of America … TODAY!
Meanwhile, the briefer “United States” or “U.S.” alone is just a spiritless, generic fabrication, useful for conciseness in news reports but otherwise meaningless. It reduces the country to its abstract political arrangement. It’s like a Brazilian saying, “Hello, I’m from the Federative Republic.” Of what? Where? The “America” grounds the “United States” to the specific, real-world example of these united states, here.
The more pressing question is this: If Americans are supposed to drop the “America” from the vernacular, what should Americans call themselves if not “Americans?” The solution that always seems to come up is “United Statesian.” Are you kidding me? “Statesian” sounds like parseltongue, raises haunting memories of my fourth-grade lisp, and transforms pointed film critiques on American culture into legislative dramas:
Statesian Graffiti
Statesian Psycho
Statesian History X
I’ll call myself “United Statesian” when my friend from the Republic of Colombia calls herself a “Republican,” to avoid confusion with Columbia, South Carolina. To all critics of “America” as the U.S.: I know the situation isn’t ideal. I know the Constitution should really read “United States of Some Parts of America Plus Hawaii,” but that’s not how it reads, and lecturing Americans about it on cruises isn’t just pointless but also unfair. Americans have been calling their country “America” for more than two centuries. They will and should continue. Deal with it.
Here's how I look at it; if they don't like calling citizens of the USA Americans in their language, then they are free to choose another word in their language to use. Look at Germany for example. It has a different name across many languages and in German is named after the language itself. Despite this, I'm not aware of Austrians or Swiss getting their panties in a bunch about Deutchland calling itself such even though there are two other countries where "Deutch" is spoken. What I find interesting is that the name Columbia (anglisized Colombia) was a choice for the USA as well long before Colombia became a country. next time tell her that we can just use that since we almost did anyway if she really doesn't like American for US citizens.
As far as I know the Western continent consists of North America, Central America, and South America. I don't believe the framers of the constitution, or the Native Americans that followed the track of the Bison across the Beringa Bridge to settle in Alaska, Canada and the Great Lakes ever heard the term "Latin American" much let alone STOLE it from someone living in poverty south of our border - that had not yet been established. . .
The Latin language of Europe died 2000 years ago. The only latin I hear today is in a Latin Mass in the Catholic Church, and it is rather rare find. Respect is a two-way street. If you want me to respect your view, then respect the fact I AM an American - whether you like or not. If you don't like Americans do not try to engage me in conversation; I am not interested in one more pretender. We have an ample supply.
Dictionary.com defines Latin America "Those areas of America whose official languages are Spanish and Portuguese. It should make the Brazilians very happy to know they are Latin Americans and no longer citizens of South America. What a crock!
I was born inside the continent of North America in the United State of America. I am a natural born American, and when I die I will die a natural born American. Nothing in history will change that the fact that the citizens of the Unites States of America are called Americans. It is not going to change the fact citizens of Canada are Canadian, or the citizens of Mexico are Mexican.
It is time to stop calling these people Latino. They are not Latin speaking, and there is no country recognized Latin America. They are Hispanic except for Portuguese - a very old language spoken in 8 countries: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It may have roots in Latin but it also has roots in the Germanic languages. Few speakers of pure Spanish can understand or speak the Portuguese language, any better than Spanish speaking Mexicans.
OP, from my point of view I would not engage in conversations with hostile rabid people as nothing good comes of it. I will leave them to their own unhappiness while I either find like minded others or find a good book or two. And I would be greatly annoyed by some dumbaxx chiding me about my place of brith. Columbia is one of the prime suppliers of illegal street drugs in America. It is not a friend to America or Americans. .
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this is one of my responses when they play that America is a continent crap. I tell them that they cannot be Latino as they do not speak Latin because it died out.
It's all just silly...nothing to get in an argument about with anyone.
I was talking to my cousin recently...she is from Mexico and was studying in Taiwan for a year, where she befriended many Latin Americans. She said that when she met an American (from the USA), she would instinctively just call them 'americano.' At which point her other Latin American friends (particularly the South Americans/Suramericanos) would scold her and remind her that 'we are all Americans, and what she meant to say is 'estadounidense'.
Truth be told, in Mexico they don't care...as everyone there assumes that when you say American or Americano, it refers to anything or anyone from up North, de los gringos. It is really more of a South American issue, and I wager that is due to their history going back to figures like Simon Bolivar that talked about one free, liberated and united 'america' (of course, referring to South America'.
“The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” - Simon Bolivar
So, South America has always had their own continental idea of what 'America' is. While in the north, our identities and cultures have always been different enough (British Empire Canada, Imperialistic America, Mestizo Mexico), and not until recently have we started to develop a continental identity, like the Europeans or South Americans, as North Americans. Nonetheless, that affiliation is rather weak and you will hardly ever hear anyone from the U.S., Canada or Mexico describe themselves as a North American, like South Americans easily identify as 'americanos.'
Good points. I have heard my Mexican friends argue with Colombians etc. that an American is from the USA. Mexicans do seem to understand this but South Americans are lost when it comes to this.
For whatever reason, people abroad have positive associations with California (Google, Apple, Beaches and Hollywood/celebrities are probably why), not so much with the United States (war, violence and bad healthcare come to mind). heh. Works to my advantage, as a 'Californian' I've had only warm, friendly receptions
You're not the first person I've known to do this with similar reactions
I figured that the main US place I'd hear or get asked about in Asia was NYC, but LA is definitely #1. People seem to think of LA as a combination of LA, SD, and OC overall. SF is widely known and loved because of its historic and current Asian influence, and Silicon Valley is well known enough that I've had people tell me in Chinese that they want to move there, that it's "so cool." I've even heard people mention San Jose, Mountain View, and Cupertino... Surprised the hell out of me.
I think part of the allure of CA is that it, or at least the perceptions of it, are actually fairly exotic by Asian standards. NYC is regularly compared to Shanghai, HK, and Tokyo, and so people tend to think of it as just that: Shanghai, HK, or Tokyo, just in the US. CA is much more interesting to most people here. Add to that the fact that everyone here has heard that there are tons of Asians and separate ethnic enclaves in CA and yup... There you have it.
The idea that Californians are naive and airheaded is lost here, the attitude is more one that people are cool, unique, clever, and live a good life.
Well I've never been to Asia, but in Europe and Brazil everyones eyes lit up when I said I was from CA. Especially Brazil, they are fascinated with Californian culture.
Netherlandians sounds a little ridiculous as well, so those people call themselves Dutch, like the language. United Statians can be creative too, because claiming to be american is so vague that it's meaningless. It's like claiming to be English, and expecting that one should associate a country with that language. I suppose the British have dibs on being English, but it's similarly vague.
Netherlandians sounds a little ridiculous as well, so those people call themselves Dutch, like the language. United Statians can be creative too, because claiming to be american is so vague that it's meaningless.
Meaningless? really? I wouldn't take it that far. When someone from the United States travels to a different country and they are asked "Where are they from?" and the tourist from the US answers "I'm American", do you really think people in those foreign countries won't know that they are talking about the United States?
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It's like claiming to be English, and expecting that one should associate a country with that language. I suppose the British have dibs on being English, but it's similarly vague.
Don't Arabs do that though?
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it's not a bad life if you can get over the crowdedness, pollution, language barrier, and the daily realities of living in a totally different culture to your own.
