EPISODE 2: African Guangzhou and Coronavoting in Korea

Hello!

Time to Say Goodbye is a podcast—with your hosts, Jay Caspian Kang, Tammy Kim, and Andy Liu. We launched this thing because, like you, we’ve been sheltering in place and wanted an outlet for our thoughts on the coronavirus, Asia, geopolitics, and Asian Americans.

A short introduction to your hosts:

Jay Caspian Kang is a writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine and the author of the upcoming book The Loneliest Americans.

E. Tammy Kim is a magazine reporter, a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, and a retired lawyer. She co-edited the book Punk Ethnography.

Andrew Liu is a historian of modern China. He wrote a book called Tea War, about the history of capitalism in Asia. He remains a huge Supersonics fan. 

Today’s show is about markets and mandates.

The large African immigrant community in Guangzhou, in southern China, has faced persecution on Covid-19 grounds. We discuss this in the context of China-Africa relations and global racism. Soapboxing about: trade routes, multiculturalism, and ancient explanatory power.

We return, regrettably, to the topic of Asian American discrimination, America-first navel-gazing, and what it means to declare: “Chinatown is not in China.”

Then we welcome our first guest, Victoria Kim, Seoul correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Victoria tells us about last week’s midterm parliamentary elections in South Korea, the first national vote of the pandemic era. What can we learn from Korea’s election protocols? Why did voters turn out in such large numbers? How has Korea’s successful response to the virus affected its reputation abroad? And how might the ruling liberal Democrats parlay their landslide victory? 

Show notes:

3:05 – Why are Chinese people lashing out against Guangzhou’s African immigrant community? What are the international implications and, without resorting to pop anthropology, can we draw parallels to the xenophobia in the U.S.? The latest, plus background here and here.

26:30 – Does a second-generation Chinese American doctor deserve to get “hate-crimed” less than a new immigrant laborer from Hong Kong? Discrimination takes from an Asian American éminence grise and a Joy Luck Club alumna.

40:01 – The brilliant Victoria Kim of the Los Angeles Times, on electoral politics and life in a functioning democracy. Sigh. Her coverage of record turnout, the woolly future of human contact, and all things South Korea.

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