Asian Americans

Aiming to increase their collective political clout and economic opportunities, Asian American business owners representing tens of thousands of mostly immigrant entrepreneurs in Southern California launched a collective chamber of commerce Tuesday. In a signing ceremony at a Koreatown hotel in Los Angeles, representatives from Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai chambers of commerce in Southern California established the Asian American Chamber Assn.

The success of some Asian American and Pacific Islander college students has given rise to a myth of the "model minority" that obscures important differences within a diverse population whose educational needs are often neglected, according to a report released Monday.

In China, competitive math teams are groomed and cosseted like college football squads. And in Vietnam, a television show called "Go to Olympia" tracks math contestants almost as if they were budding American Idols. So it came as little surprise that when Pasadena City College's math team won a national contest this year, six of the members were Chinese-born. The seventh arrived from Vietnam two years ago.

As Helen Jo worked her way to the front of the room to receive her new badge last week, a stream of colleagues, family and friends crowded and cheered around the freshly promoted deputy chief -- the first woman and the first Asian American to achieve such a rank in the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Jo, who assumed her new position in April, joined the Fire Department in 1998 as a budget officer and became chief of the financial management division in 2002.

Asian American churches are going through a "crisis of leadership" because seminaries are not preparing a new generation of pastors to work in multi-generational and multicultural settings, Asian American Christian leaders say. The problem, the leaders say, affects churches throughout the country but is particularly pronounced in California.

Perusing the Chinese leeks and bitter melons outside his neighborhood market, Dave Pon said he'd heard enough embarrassing talk of political scandal involving one of his own. He was proud when fellow Chinese American Ed Jew was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. But now he thinks Jew should step down -- even though, in a city where a third of residents are of Chinese descent, he is the board's only Asian American.

ACROSS from a row of car dealerships in the east San Gabriel Valley, the Dream dance club seems an unlikely node for a budding night life scene. Just before 11 on a Friday night, the Dream's parking lot is half-empty. Yet a few moments later, as if triggered by some hidden signal, baby Mercedeses and Lexuses, BMWs and tricked-out Hondas stream in, disgorging men with spiky hair and women in jeans, mid-calf boots and revealing tops. In a matter of 15 minutes, the lot is nearly full.

Frustrated by the assumption that all Asian American youths are well represented at UC schools, a coalition of Pacific Islander and Asian students at UCLA is pushing for the university to expand its demographic categories to highlight low numbers in some of those communities in hopes of boosting enrollment and outreach programs. Advocates are collecting signatures to petition legislators and the Board of Regents this fall to change how the university system collects admissions data.

Pastoring is a tough assignment by any measure, but for many English-speaking ministers in some of the nation's 7,000 Asian congregations, the work is made harder by cultural differences inside their own churches. Consider the situation of a second-generation Chinese or Korean American who works as an associate pastor for a largely immigrant congregation. Such a U.S.

When Douglas Lee started searching for a job as an English instructor in Chengdu, he seemed just like any other American to his potential employers. He was raised in Oklahoma, enjoyed listening to jazz and was a big fan of Woody Allen movies like "Crimes and Misdemeanors." But when he submitted a photo of himself, the 26-year-old graduate of San Diego State University discovered that he had one blemish on his application: He looked too Chinese.