Cultural Diversity in L.A

There is a joke that goes like this- three Asians wanted to migrate to the U.S. But for them to be acceptable at Immigration, they had to change their names. They wanted to have American sounding names. The first, Chang, changed his name to Chuck. He got accepted. The second, Bang, changed his name to Buck. His application got approved. The third, Fang,  was sent home. L.A. has got to be the most culturally diverse city west of the Mississippi. There is a Koreatown, a historic Filipino town, a Little Armenia, there’s Fairfax (also known as Jewtown), there’s South Central, and of course, there’s Chinatown. When I was teaching in a high school with a significant Asian population, I learned that Chinese kids spoke mostly Mandarin to each other. Vietnamese spoke to each other in Vietnamese. But when Vietnamese spoke to the Chinese, they spoke Cantonese! And they understood each other well. And that was probably due to the frequent border crossing of Viets and Chinese at their common boundary that they learned to communicate in a common language different from their own mother tongue. Amusing and amazing.

Then while we are having snacks at a round table at the cafeteria, 4 out of the 6 people would surely come from one country or another. There was  an instance when there were four of us from four different continents sharing a common European language – English. One would be from Congo. Another from Palestine. And another from Argentina. And one would be Filipino. And we would always talk about our different cultures, our interesting languages, our common love for food, all in sunny camaraderie. Then a small group of Mexican faculty who would converse with a Persian in French. Such interesting encounters. Then there was this Iranian who could speak 6 languages – Farsi, French, Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian! Then an Armenian co-teacher would quietly sit down to listen to the conversations. Then another one whom you would perceive as an African-American was actually a pure African – a Nigerian.

Then I would hear of mixed marriages. A Mexican co-faculty was married to a French lady. So during summer vacation, he would fly to Paris to be with his family. I have a student whose father was a Filipino with a Chinese sounding last name and a mother who was Hispanic. The Math coach had a German father who wife was Nicaraguan. Another Caucasian co-teacher was married to a Filipina. 

An interesting cacophony of tongues and characters descending in the City of Angels.

Fang must be missing a lot of these here in LA.