a) Proximity to good East and South Asian food, well-funded libraries, and an overwhelming selection of summer camps for children.
b) Because my family of 6 subscribes to Ray Pahl's household work strategy whereby a collective decision was made to invest in the household member with the greatest earning potential, the benefit of migrating northward towards higher income outweighed the costs. The opportunity cost of not moving would effectively hamper any monetary or non-monetary benefits of staying.
c) Here is arguably the heart of Chindia valley, and even though walking into a large tech firm anywhere in the Bay Area will showcase a global and diverse workforce, the City of Cupertino is 63% Asian and an elementary school here will have as high as 94% Asian representation.
d) I'm a 1.5 generation East Asian immigrant and was always a minority growing up (as in one of 2 non-white kids in school) and definitely a minority in undergraduate school. Being in the majority is still fascinating to me.
West Los Angeles vs. Chindia Valley
- Everyone’s working on a screenplay vs. everyone’s got a website under development
- Food trucks for lunch vs. bento boxes for lunch
- Spanish vs. Hindi/Chinese
- Doll-sized portions vs. Biking to work
- Dress well to impress vs. Dress well and lose credibility
- If you’re even semi-professional, you will inevitably be screened for a game show vs. once you reach semi-professional status you will find yourself too expensive for companies and out of a job
- Strangers are friendly to you because you could be an agent or producer vs. Strangers are friendly to you because you could be an angel investor
- Carmageddon vs. Karmageddon (no more flowers in the hair)
- Carmageddon vs. Karmageddon (no more flowers in the hair)
- Waiter/actor vs. Engineer/app developer
- Parents with one room in home dedicated to training future stars for video and print auditions vs. Parents with one room in home dedicated to all homework all the time
Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
ReplyDeleteMy folks moved us down here to Cupertino from Crescent City back in 1963 when I was 7. It was definitely not as multi-cultural as it is now, and it’s been interesting to watch the changes as time goes by. My parents’ reason for moving here (at least this is what my father told me) was that he was worried that because there weren’t any colleges nearby at the time in Crescent City, he was afraid we (his kids) would all move away when we got older. But I see it as a great blessing that he did so, despite his struggle to make ends meet as a teacher. A software engineer myself, what better place to grow up but right here smack in the middle of it all? In my church as a teenager, there were a number of young Caucasian couples and families that moved into the area, engineers recruited to work at Hewlett Packard, some just out of BYU. A number of these guys mentored me, showing me and giving me cool stuff like some of the early LEDs, adding fuel to my already burning desire to be an engineer.
Over the years, I saw the nearby orchards give way to new buildings housing technical companies, but didn’t really give it much thought. In my high school, Monta Vista, I only remember there being a handful of Asians and Indians. I worked my way through college, first going to De Anza and then transferring to San Jose State, got married and had 5 kids in the process, graduated, got divorced, and it was only later that I noticed how in a blink of an eye, it seemed, that there seemed to be more Asians at my old High School and Cupertino, for that matter, than Caucasians. I later remarried, to a Chinese woman from Taiwan no less, a software engineer herself, and now live in Santa Clara, bordering Cupertino, in a newly developed area where it seems that Indians are now the majority.
I don’t really have much to say about what this means, because this is just my normal life, save that perhaps the academic performance of the local kids is higher than average, which I would attribute to the focus on and value placed on education by the Indian and Chinese families that moved here. I only really notice it when I leave the area, such as when I flew to Salt Lake City a while ago, and was surprised by what seemed to be a sea of blond heads in the crowded airport. Despite the underlying cultural differences that there must be, and the different accents and outward appearance, it seems we nonetheless all have the same kinds of hopes and dreams, which makes it perfectly natural to smile when I see my neighbors out playing with their kids.
-John
Great comments, John.
ReplyDeleteJohn: Fascinating details of your experiences here! I appreciate your comments as a way to help guide the direction of this blog. It's not necessarily meant to be provocative, but it certainly is here to help us all reflect on the rapid changes (blink of an eye) that have taken place in our community.
ReplyDeleteI should explain that I was born in Taiwan and lived much of my life in heterogeneous rural Utah and the Latino ethnoburb of Riverside, CA. When I was sworn in as a U.S. Citizen at the age of 18, the thousands around me in the L.A. Convention Center were a diverse group. It was fascinating to me to see this diversity having never experienced it in any one place I lived in.
In talking to former Cupertino residents who graduated from Cupertino high schools in the 70's and late 90's, it seems the high caliber of education existed before and during the influx of East Asians. So besides a "good" school district, proximity to tech company employers, and neighbors who speak the same language and have the same culture/values what else contributed to Cupertino's dramatic shifting demographics in less than two decades?
Jenn, sorry, I only just noticed your comment (curious that blogspot doesn't send email notifications). I can't think of many reasons beyond the tech companies attracting world-wide talent.
DeleteDid it become easier to emmigrate? I would guess it became harder, at least in recent years, but maybe in the transition years it was still easy enough.
Did other countries start having more graduates in tech fields? I don't know.
My son struggled for a year and a half to find a job (unskilled) in Salt Lake, but gave up and came back and found a job in less than a month. So it seems it's also easier to find lower-end jobs here too. But this might be counter-balanced by the higher cost of housing here.
Did other aspects of the "California Lifestyle" (whatever that is) attract people? I don't know.
One of my other personal draws here is that the weather is certainly good here. But did anyone know or care, at least until after they got here and found out? Probably not.
As a lay person, I'm afraid that's about all I can come up with. Thanks again.
-John