David Chiu

H sent me a link today about this film - The Grace Lee Project. It opens in LA today and I’m going to make an effort to go see it. What immediately caught my attention is how similar the themes are of this film with my life. The filmmaker Grace Lee grew up in Missouri and was the only Grace Lee she knew. Then she left the midwest an discovered that there were many other Grace Lees out there. So she created a film to explore the stereotypes surrounding her identity. I grew up between Delaware and Pennsylvania and I was the only David Chiu that I knew of. Heck, other than my family and one of my parents friends, we were the only Asian people I knew of. Growing up I was unique. I was different. I was Asian. And I set out to change the way people perceived me and my asian-ness. Well, actually I just tried to shrug of my asian-ness and assimilate both the white and black culture. Well, more of the white culture but with a strong affinity to r&b/new jack swing music and style. Eventually I grew up and moved to LA to become an actor and immediately had culture shock. I never knew so many asians lived in one place (other than in Asia). What was even more shocking was my first audition walking into a room with a bunch of guys who walked, talked and looked very similar to me. I was no longer all that unique. A few more years pass and I receive another shock when I type in MY Name into Google and find out that MY Name had been moonlighting as the Mayor of San Marcos, a well-known poker player, an executive, a couple grad students, and several others. My name lives on around the world. It was like looking at parallel universes and possibilities of who I could be if I made different choices in life. It was wierd. But then I realized that the website belonging to me appeared at the top of the list - and everything seemed ok again.
I’m glad I found out about The Grace Lee Project. It was good inspiration to get my creative thinking going again.

After writing this I decided to make a self correction. Actually, there were other Asians other than me. There were a few Asian kids at my school (5 including my brother that I can remember). And there was that short stint at “Chinese school” that my dad tried to force upon us one summer. I guess by saying that I was alone in my asian-ness was actually a mirror into my insecurities as a kid growing up and always feeling a little different and inferior…