Looking For Asian America: An Ethnocentric Tour
(2001 – 2002)

From the one of the United States' most diverse areas (Hilo, Hawaii) to its least (Slope, North Dakota), Wing, a Minnesota native whose family is from China, spent nine months traveling through 39 states on an "ethnocentric" tour of his homeland. Some of the sights include a Vietnamese Elvis, a Hmong enclave in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in front of the Washington Monument, a bubble tea valley girl, ABCs (American-born Chinese), FOAs (fresh-off-the-airplane), and a self-described red-neck Chinese restaurant owner near the Okefenokee Swamp. The result is an idiosyncratic and personal odyssey through an America where Asians, particularly Chinese, happen to be in the majority.

Young Chinese woman walking on a sidewalk in Chinatown, wearing a tiara and a sash that says "Miss Congeniality." San Francisco.
Founder of the Asian World-Wide Elvis Fan Club. Vietnamese man in a room filled with Elvis memorabilia, singing into a microphone. Houston Texas.
Man standing next to the gravestones of Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee, in Seattle Washington.
Asian woman standing next to a wax figure of Whoopi Goldberg at a museum in Las Vegas.
Grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter, at a kitchen ware store they own in Vancouver, British Columbia, called Ming Wo Cookware.
Michael Jordan on television, next to a Buddhist altar, in a bar in Chinatown, San Francisco.
A young Asian couple photographing themselves at Diamond Head Crater, Waikiki, Hawaii.
A young child sitting in a Barbie chair, getting her hair combed, in Richmond, British Columbia.
Four people in front of a World War II memorial celebrating soldiers of Chinese ancestry in Seattle, Washington.
A stature wearing a robe inside a glass memorial at a cemetery in Kauai, Hawaii.
A buddha statue in a store front window display of a beauty shop in Wenatchee Washington.
Cheerleaders on the sidewalk in Seattle, Washington.
Previous

Lake Street USA
Next

University Avenue Project