Author: Tin-Kay Goh
Date: 04-20-12 07:10
Many forumites at Asiawind would have known of Prof. Ming Long Pei, who was a pioneer Chinese in the academia in New York. He was in Connell, and despite the discrimination on Chinese in the US, he managed to become the head of two departments as Professor of Civil Engineering and Chief of Computation in 1963 in New York. He was also sent by the US Government in the early days of computer science to assist in China and some European countries.
Following his retirement as Emeritus Professor, Ming started the website China the Beautiful (CTB) at www.chinapage.com . Prof Siu Leung Lee was and is one of the advisers at CTB and because CTB was mainly on Chinese culture, Siu Leng started a section in his Asiawind website to cater for political and Hakka issues. Asiawind has now grown to a level that the World Forum site provides most of the important and controversial Chinese and World news.
Yoon Ngan is our anchor on Chinese poetry and songs, whilst we have excellent philosophy scholars in Paul Yih, lawyer economist in Hong Chuan, scientist in Martin Su and Charles Koon. I enjoy reading posts from Kobo, FM Liew, Hohoyan, Liang and Observer. Even the occasional irritating posts from Chow and Coyote expose an interesting imbalance in their Westernised views. My apology in missing out anyone.
I am now in New York and had a few occasions with Ming to discuss about all and any matters, particularly his love for China and the Chinese culture. We also had tete-a-tete over Chinese tea. Despite his age, he is still very much aware of developments in China. He even talked about the young up and coming basketballer, Jeremy Lin, and the Chinese and American economies, including the Chinese company, Baidu, which has overtaken Google. We also talked about Siu Leung and his calligraphy and his latest research on Zheng He. In fact we wonder how to buy Siu Leung's latest book, which is printed in China.
I was at Barnes and Nobles at Union Square, but they do not carry many Chinese books. It is a disappointment that the largest book store in New York has lost out to many bookshops in Singapore and China. New York has now so many Chinese, and a rough estimate on the streets in Mid Town would be one Asian in five to six people passing by. In neighboring New Jersey just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, one in two would be Hispanic. The US cannot be forever dominated by the Jews and Anglo-Saxons, though presently they control the economy and news media.
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