Last weekend was the second annual V3 Digital Media Conference, an Asian American confab of everything blogging, social media, traditional media, YouTube, activism and pop culture. In other words, awesome. It’s like summer camp, family reunion, and tent revival all wrapped up in one. For the second year in a row, the event was led by Jocelyn “JozJozJoz” Wang of 8Asians and AAJA-LA. This year, I spoke on a panel about online safety for families, along with Eileen Chu of Cool Asian Kids, Thien-Kim Lam of I’m Not the Nanny and Jason Sperber of Daddy in a Strangeland, and moderated by Susan Hirasuna of Fox 11 News.

Like any blogging conference, it’s a chance to meet up in real life with fellow bloggers and writers. And a chance for online “friends” to become real friends. Above, Michelle Quiogue, Jason Sperber and Cynthia Liu of K-12 News Network.

This year, I was especially excited that BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page was able to join us. Elisa also spoke on a panel about finding success as a woman in technology. I was really pleased that the organizers are bringing in different aspects of the media world and hope this is the beginning of more collaboration between “mainstream media” and “new media” and also raising the profile of Asian Americans within the general blogosphere.

Of course, I didn’t get around to snapping pictures with everyone I should have, especially fellow Asian mom bloggers Marsha Takeda-Morrison and Julie Ju-Yeon Kang. Above, is Cynthia Brothers from 18 Million Rising.

One of the highlights of V3 2013 was hearing 97-year-old Grace Lee Boggs talk about her life’s work as a civil rights activist. That’s MSNBC anchor Richard Lui (fellow U.C. Berkeley Rhetoric department alum) interviewing her.

Like last year, the conference was held at the Japanese American National Museum. As a bonus, the museum is currently hosting an exhibit about Hapa Japanese, called Visible & Invisible, as well as a travelling exhibit, Portraiture Now, from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

And of course, no gathering of Asians is complete without food — and lots of it. One of the reasons I love V3 is it gives me an excuse to visit the many delicious independent restaurants in LA’s Little Tokyo, such as Suehiro Cafe (iced green tea and crab croquettes pictured above), and the famed Daikukuya Ramen (bottom left). And this year, the V3 opening reception at the Pacific Asia Museum even featured appetizers from Roy’s and Korean tacos from Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ — the food truck that started the whole craze (that’s Gil Asakawa enjoying them, bottom left).

Full hearts, full minds, full bellies.

Next year’s V3 conference is already scheduled for June 21, 2014. You can register now for the special early-bird rate of $25.

See you next year!

The post V3 2013: Friends Online and IRL appeared first on HapaMama.

Image Credit: Andrew Eick, Flickr

June is always a big month for milestones, and this year, it’s a big one. Besides the usual weddings and graduations, my birthday is also in June, and it just so happens that HapaMama was also started in June of 2008. The site launched around the same time Big Brother finished Kindergarten. That was also Little Brother’s first year in preschool. With several mornings a week all to myself, I finally had the time and clarity of mind to start writing some of my thoughts about raising a Hapa family.

At first the thoughts came tumbling onto the screen, such as my two-year-old wondering why his hair is brown or my efforts not to be a Tiger Mother (before Amy Chua even coined the phrase “Tiger Mother”). Then there were those periods when I went months without writing a thing, worried about what others would think and second-guessing whether anybody was even interested in reading about the particulars of a Taiwanese-English-Irish-American family.

Since then, I’ve met many wonderful people who share the same vision of raising culturally-aware and thoughtful kids. I appreciate each and every comment and the message I’ve received.  I’ve had the opportunity to write for bigger websites and to speak about mixed-race and multicultural issues. This June, the child who was in Kindergarten when I started this blog graduated from elementary school. Just like my kids, my blog has grown. As the subjects of those cute toddler stories now have opinions and identities of their own, I find myself being more judicious about the anecdotes I share. My goal in telling you the funny thing my kid did is not so much for a chuckle of a warm and fuzzy moment, but rather to start conversations about things that are going on in society today.

And incidences like the recent brouhaha over the “controversial” Cheerios commercial featuring a mixed-race family are reminders that discussions about family and race are still relevant — perhaps more than ever.

So Happy 5th Blogiversary and thank you for helping to make HapaMama what it is today.

The post Happy 5th Blogiversary appeared first on HapaMama.

We’re kicking off our Summer Reading for 2013 with a picture book that’s perfect for Father’s Day. Oh, Oh, Baby Boy! is a picture book by Oakland artist and author Janine Macbeth, who is herself a Hapa of Asian American, African American, white and Native American heritage. The book doesn’t focus so much on ethnicity, but on the celebration of little boys — and their fathers. Like most picture books, there are only a few words on each page, beginning with a beautiful illustration of a newborn boy, and following him through childhood mischief until he becomes a father himself. The unique thing about this book is that the pictures depict a man doing many of the care-taking roles, such as holding an infant and cooking dinner. This is the kind of book you might like if you are trying to provide your kids with images that show dads in non-traditional roles.

Macbeth says Oh, Oh, Baby Boy! is based in her own experiences as a mother working full-time outside the home (her husband also works full-time at an office job):

People rarely talk about it, but motherhood has the very real potential to disenfranchise moms — socially, economically, and professionally. As a mom, I’m lucky to experience the power of a father’s genuine and loving involvement. It is because of him that I can be a working mom, pursue my dreams after hours, and be an engaged and loving mother to my boys.

Just one warning for those of you whose kids think babies come “from the stork”:  there’s one illustration that shows an abstract rendition of a baby being born. Don’t worry, it’s nothing graphic, but it might prompt some curiosity from your little ones.

I received a copy of Oh, Oh, Baby Boy! for review, but you can purchase a book for $15.95 through AK Press.

The post Oh, Oh, Baby Boy! appeared first on HapaMama.

Image Credit: Miamism.com via Flickr

School’s out for summer! But being kind of a reading geek, one of the things I look forward to most during vacation is curling up on a chaise lounge, beach towel or just a lawn chair, and getting lost in a good book. This year, instead of rolling out surprise reviews, I’m going to post a list of books I’m planning to write about this summer – a few are for kids, and most are for adults. Every Wednesday, I’ll post a review, and with a little advance notice, you can read along and join in the discussion, if you like! Most of these are new releases, but a few are not that recent, but titles I’ve been meaning to write about. I hope you’ll find them interesting, as well.

HapaMama Summer Reading List, 2013

June 12: Oh, Oh Baby Boy by Janine Macbeth

June 19: Dumpling Days by Grace Lin

June 26: Pastors’ Wives by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

July 3: House at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

July 10: When the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

July 17: The Third Son by Julie Wu

July 24: Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

If you’d like to read, you can order most of these books from Indie Bound through the links above. The books will be delivered to an independent bookseller near you, and a portion of the sale will benefit HapaMama!

The post Here’s My Summer Reading 2013 appeared first on HapaMama.

Don’t forget to scroll down and see what my blogging friends are making.

Most Gen X American kids were introduced to cooking through one of two toys: the Betty Crocker E-Z Bake Oven or the Snoopy Sno-Cone machine. Unfortunately, I had neither.

Fortunately for me, one summer, my grandparents brought with them from Taiwan a shaved ice maker. We froze water in the round plastic containers that came with it, creating a thick disk of ice that fit perfectly in the machine. Then we turned the handle, producing mounds of finely shredded fluffy white coolness. And for what it’s worth, my grandparent’s Taiwanese contraption worked much better than my friends’ Snoopy Sno-Cone makers, which often got jammed up, right as a mob of hot, hungry children were clamoring for their turn.

And unlike most Americans we didn’t top off our shaved ice with brightly colored sugar syrups. Instead, we got tropical fruits from jars — palm fruits, lychees and the like, sweetened condensed milk, and sometimes mung bean soup. While bean soup may sound un-enticing compared with bubble gum and blue raspberry syrups, it is actually a traditional Chinese way of cooling off during the summer.

Remember the concept of yin and yang? According to the principles of traditional Eastern medicine, “hot” and “cold” are not just functions of temperature, but qualities of the body and of certain foods. Mung beans are considered a “yin”, or cooling, food, and are believed to help the body get rid of heat and toxins. Some even say eating mung beans can help clear up acne. But don’t think that you can substitute the more popular red beans (or azuki beans) for this purpose. Red beans are a “yang” food and traditionally eaten during the winter. And there you have the extent of my expertise in traditional Chinese medicine. Please don’t ask for other medical advice. I charge extra for that.

My grandparents’ shaved ice maker is long gone, but recently I found a Jelly Belly brand machine that looks very similar and has the same crank mechanism. Plus, it was on clearance at Target for just $5 at the end of last summer. A quick check of Amazon shows many other snow cone machines for sale — plus a modern version of the 1970s Snoopy Sno-Cone machine. Maybe I can finally convince my kids of the deliciousness of Asian bean desserts…

So give my recipe for mung bean shaved ice a try and let me know if it helps cool you off!

Mung Bean Shaved Ice

Yes, I know the theme is “Too Hot to Cook”, and that I was the one who came up with the idea of no-cook recipes. However, you can make the soup during a cool morning or the night before and store it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to serve.

Ingredients:

1/2 c. Chinese mung beans

4 c. cold water

1 chunk rock sugar, or 2 Tbsp. white sugar

2 Tbsp. small tapioca pearls

condensed milk, to taste

shaved ice

Directions:

1. Soak mung beans in a medium saucepan for a few hours or up to overnight
2. Drain beans and add 4 c. fresh water and rock sugar or white sugar
3. Bring beans to a boil and reduce to medium heat. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes or until the beans are soft. Be careful not to boil at too high a temperature or the beans will fall apart quickly and turn into an unappealing olive drab mush.
4. Add the tapioca and continue to simmer about 15 minutes or until the pearls are soft and turn clear.
5. Cool the mixture and refrigerate until ready to serve over shaved ice and drizzle with condensed milk. Feel yourself getting cooler already!

Speaking of condensed milk – who can finish an entire can of Eagle in one sitting? And how do you store a half-used container of stickiness without inviting disaster? have you seen this condensed milk in a squeeze jar from Trader Joe’s? It’s genius!

For more Let’s Lunch “Too Hot to Cook” posts, follow #LetsLunch on Twitter or visit my fellow bloggers below:

Lucy’s “The Girl in a Hat Goes on a Picnic” at A Cook and Her Books.

Monica’s Peanut Salad at A Life of Spice

Lisa’s Aperol Spritz Granita at Monday Morning Cooking Club

Cheryl’s Mango-Key Lime Pie at A Tiger in the Kitchen

Linda’s Escape from San Francisco Picnic at Spicebox Travels

Pat’s Almost No-Cook Rice at The Asian Grandmother’s Cookbook

Linda’s Coconut Creamsicle Sodas at Free Range Cookies

Emma’s Cheese Plate at Dreaming of Pots and Pans

Anne Marie’s Lettuce Sandwiches at Sandwich Surprise

Check back… as I’ll be updating with more links and recipes from the Let’s Lunch bunch!

The post Cool Off With Mung Bean Shaved Ice appeared first on HapaMama.

Today, we’re wrapping up our Taiwan Tuesday series. I’ll still post about Taiwan occasionally — and if you have any questions about traveling to Ilha Formosa with your family or suggestions for posts you’d like to read, please feel free to send me an email. With the end of the school year upon us, I’ll be introducing the HapaMama Summer Reading List for 2013 next week, so check back soon for updates!

Until then, check out my list of 7 Parenting Mistakes I Made While On Vacation, over at Mom.me, and find out why my kids are now scared to go to bed without brushing their teeth.

What happens in Taiwan, stays in Taiwan… until it becomes part of a blog post!

The post What Happens in Taiwan… appeared first on HapaMama.

If you’ve followed my stories from Taiwan, you’ve probably already figured out that food — especially from street vendors — is a big deal in Taiwan. But it’s not just at the night markets. Cheap, fresh eats start at the crack of dawn, with small shops that specialize in fresh soy milk, shao bing and you tiao. One of the things I really love about food in Taiwan is that most stands or restaurants specialize in one type of food, and they make everything from scratch and they do it really well.

Although the hotel where we stayed served a serviceable morning meal (rice porridge and various toppings, white toast, and an assortment of ho-hum stir-fries), just down the street was a hole-in-the-wall shop dishing up hot soy milk.

People dressed in business clothes queued up outside on their way to work, as you or I might stop by Starbucks to pick up a latte before heading to the office. On an outside counter, the grandma of this family-run business rolled out strips of fresh wheat dough and deep fried them until they puffed up into the glorious crullers called you tiao (which in Mandarin literally means “oil sticks”).

These type of shops often sell other bread products, such as tsung you bing, shao bing, and steamed meat and vegetable bao.

But the most comforting of the comfort foods is a hot you tiao dipped into a bowl of  hot dou jiang (soy milk). Just like you might start your day off with coffee and a cruller in America — if this were the 1970s and you were a sitcom cop. Besides being warm, the milk is liberally sweetened with sugar. I cringed as I watched a vendor dump a heaping soup spoonful of white crystals into my soy milk. No one was complaining, though, as the sweet steam wafted off the bowls.

There were times when my boys balked at the choice of foods in Taiwan. But as long as (soy) milk and (Chinese) doughnuts were available, I didn’t need to worry about people cleaning their plates.

The post (Soy) Milk and (Chinese) Doughnuts appeared first on HapaMama.

Wing Luke Museum

By Joe Mabel (Photo by Joe Mabel) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Wing Luke Museum  in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District is the nation’s only museum dedicated to a pan-Asian American experience and is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. Besides including the hotel where many newcomers to the country first stayed, Wing Luke also has a hands-on KidPLACE.

Japanese American National Museum

Japanese American National Museum  in Los Angeles has preserved some of the barracks used at the Heart Mountain internment camp during World War II, plus many rotating art and history exhibitions. And of particular interest to Hapa families, through August 25, 2013, JANM is hosting the Visible & Invisible exhibit, focusing on the Japanese mixed-race experience.

Angel Island

Image Credit: Mark.Hogan via Flickr

Manzanar

Cemetery shrine, Manzanar Japanese internment camp, Image Credit: Daniel Mayer  GNU FDL

Manzanar National Historic Site on Highway 395 in the Eastern Sierras is home to an interpretive center commemorating the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated there during World War II. When I used to frequently drive this stretch during the mid-1990s, the site was practically barren. But thanks to the work of the Manzanar Committee volunteers, in 2004 the old Manzanar High School auditorium was re-opened as an interpretive center. Tina at 8Asians has a great write-up of her visit to Manzanar.

Locke Chinatown

Locke Chinatown, located near Sacramento is the last standing rural Chinese settlement. There are no guided tours, but there are several historic buildings, including a one-room schoolhouse and the Dai Loy Gambling Museum are often open for visitors.

Smithsonian Institution

Image Credit: Nick Peretti via Flickr

Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. also sometimes has rotating exhibits at its various museums, featuring aspects of Asian American heritage, such as the history of Chinese American food and Asian American portraiture. Visit the Smithsonian APA website for current exhibitions.

Also check my list of recommended children’s books about the Asian American experience.

Do you have any other suggestions for landmarks or musuems for families to learn about Asian American history?

Let me know your ideas and keep checking back, as I’ll be adding to this list!

The post Asian American Landmarks and Museums to Visit With Your Family appeared first on HapaMama.

I took over 1000 photos while travelling in Taiwan, and today I’d like to share with you some tips on how to control your camera’s shutter to really capture the look of speed.

Remember this image? It’s one of my favorite photos from our visit to Hualien. Everything about it — the old building, the moped, the lady riding side-saddle — reveals a little something about the culture. I use a Canon 7D, and I shoot mainly in manual mode, so I can maximum control over the exposure and depth of field.

See how the whole photo is crisp and both the people and the background are in focus? I took this photo out of the window of a taxi when both the motorcycle and the car were coasting to a stop. It was an overcast day, my settings were ISO 800, f 3.5, 1/250. Usually I wouldn’t expect the background to be so in focus at a fairly wide aperture, but I think it helped that my lens was zoomed almost all the way out at 26mm.

Here’s another shot, taken with ISO 800, f 3.5, 1/500. The cab and the motorcycle were traveling at highway speeds, but both the motorcycle and the background are sharp. Sometimes, as with the picture of the couple riding the moped in front of an interesting old building, you want to see the background clearly. Other times, as with the guy riding next to an empty field, the background doesn’t add much. Frankly, it’s kind of boring.

So the next day I had a little more fun. We had a long cab ride from Hualien to Taroko Gorge, and the taxi driver was doing what felt like 60 mph. I already knew what a motorcycle looked like when photographed at a fast shutter speed, so this time I experimented with setting the shutter as slow as reasonable for a hand-held shot. ISO 250, 30mm, f13, 1/50. The cab was driving at the same speed as a the moped, so the riders are in focus, but now you can feel the wind whipping through your hair as the fields and trees fly by. MUCH more interesting.

Since I liked the way the last shot turned out,  I decided to push it a little further dropping the shutter speed down to 1/40 and whooo wee! Hold on to your helmets!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson in controlling your camera’s shutter speed. If you own a dSLR, do you like to experiment with your shutter speed (or do you stay in one of the automatic modes)? You can tell me, I won’t judge.

The post Photography: A Lesson in Shutter Speed appeared first on HapaMama.

Back when I was a kid, the Taiwanese community would gather once a year in a church parking lot or a community center for it’s annual bazaar. There were booths selling street food, such as bah-tzang, bah-wan, and noodle soups. But for us kids, it was all about the game booths. Not because they were so wonderful, but because they weren’t. They were the most homemade, simple activities, such as throwing balls into a make-shift hoop or trying to catch a goldfish with a net that was basically a paper towel glued on a bent wire. Later as a teenager, it would be my turn to help run the booths with the Taiwanese youth group.

Only when I visited Taiwan at age 30, did I realize that those do-it-yourself carnival games weren’t just the inventions of our immigrant parents. Those feats of skill were their attempt to recreate the experience of playing games at a night market back in the homeland. During my last visit to Taiwan, we rode the MRT to the city of Tamsui, about 45 minutes north of Taipei. It’s a riverfront port town, sort of the equivalent to the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk or Fisherman’s Wharf. Back in 2001, the entire waterfront was under construction for a massive renovation project. But wandering through the streets, I spied some of those booths with the familiar goldfish-catching games, and I filed it away in my mind as something I definitely wanted to do with my own kids someday.

Fast forward to 2013. During our recent family trip to Taiwan, my cousin suggested that we spend a day along the waterfront in Tamsui. Well, twist my arm!

Once there, the games and the food stalls were just a few hundred feet away from the subway station. And what did we find? Not only a goldfish game, but one where you could try catching tiny turtles! My children got to experience the excitement of chasing critters around with the flimsy net, and then the heartbreak of watching the paper dissolve and the last turtle swim away.

Of course, there were more standard carnival games, as well, such as this one, in which you try your luck at tossing ping pong balls into glasses.

And ones where you try to throw wooden hoops around little figurines.

 One nice twist on the carnival game at this booth — if you succeed in ringing a Pikachu or lucky cat statuette, you could choose it as a prize.

Or you can win tickets to redeem for little plastic toys that seem extra special because you had to work so hard to earn them.

Have you ever played carnival games at a Taiwanese marketplace? What are your favorites?

The post Taiwanese Carnival Games appeared first on HapaMama.