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[sounds of the city]
[cars beeping]
-Happy New Year. -[in Filipino] Thank you, son!
-I brought soy sauce chicken. -I brought the pancit.
-I brought tteokguk. -I brought the Peking duck.
Wow!
Lunar New Year is such an interesting celebration
because there are so many things I do now
that I remember doing as a kid when my grandparents were around.
What is your zodiac sign?
I'm Goat. I remember because I'm Capricorn.
Oh yeah!
I'm the Year of the Horse.
I like to run. Makes a lot of sense, right?
What generation are y'all?
Were you born here? Were your parents?
I'm a fourth generation Chinese-American.
My great-grandfather was the first in my family that came here
in the 40's or 50's.
-Wow! -Kim, how about you?
I'm like one and a half.
My mom was born here
and my dad came from Hong Kong when he was very, very young.
My grandpa's from Hong Kong. I've never been though.
I was planning on going before the pandemic.
-I'm going at the end of February. -I'm gonna come.
-[laughter] -Let's go. I'll see you there.
My sister said being there was something indescribable.
I used to go to Korea in the summers up until I was 12,
but I haven't been back since and I really want to go.
Ping, Ariel, where are y'all from?
I grew up in LA, where a lot of Asian kids grew up,
which I felt really lucky to be surrounded by,
not feeling like I was eating the weird lunch at school and stuff.
It's always great to be around people
who understand that this is your life and culture.
In the Philippines, we have this shrimp paste called bagoong,
but it has this interesting smell, so to bring it around people
who aren't used to that, I was shy about it.
-That internalized racism. -[laughter]
It's deep. Decades later, still undoing it.
When friends would come over and my grandma was making kimchi,
they'd say, "What's that smell?" and then I would be embarrassed
about something that's so integral to my culture.
I feel really proud of our food
and being able to have our identities in something so important.
I grew up so Americanized.
At the time I didn't realize
that I was trying to be more like the people I surrounded myself with
versus just taking the time to ask my parents more.
Now, I'm taking a lot of the time to do that.
What a reminder it's never too late to learn to love your cultural identity.
Not at all.
I'm biracial, so it's never being enough of one thing or the other.
Right.
Me being Filipino and getting made fun of,
going to my mom to ask her how do I deal with these things,
she didn't have the words or experience to help me process that.
Now I have the vocabulary to be able to process.
A memory that always comes back to me is in middle school,
not many Asian kids were playing basketball.
Me and one other friend, we were given nicknames.
My friend was Chin One and I was Chin Two.
-[sighs] -And then we just rolled with it.
Fast forward to now,
I interact with running, and maybe some of you similarly,
as a way to show that I can do this, I can do that as an Asian person.
I grew up around a lot of Asian kids,
but it wasn't all wonderful.
In fact, I was made fun of a lot for just having my name not be Western,
I'm Ping, and it was the Asian kids who were making fun of me
because they were all named Jessica or Thomas or whatever.
It was like you pick on others in order to not feel like you're next.
I hate that because names are so special, they're part of our heritage.
They're our identity,
we carry our lineage and our ancestors with us.
My middle name means 'one of great wisdom', it's Suji.
And when people found that out, they would say, "Sushi, sushi."
So I would westernize it and say my middle name is Suzie.
It wasn't until I got way older where I was like,
"Wait, this means 'one of great wisdom', own that."
Yeah!
OK, I have a fun question.
If you could have a running partner, dead or alive, who would it be?
-I instantly thought a cheetah. -[laughter]
My mom. Being at this age and appreciating that Filipino culture,
I would love to have conversations with her,
go on a long run, just ask questions and just be there with her now.
Chella, what about you? What's your relationship with running?
My dad would always go on runs,
and he would say "Come on, come on,"
so I went and it was just the best feeling.
Running has been the one constant thing in my entire life.
Eventually, Old Man Run Club, where we met…
That just became a group that I started running with
and I haven't stopped since because I found a community,
it felt like home from day one.
We'd been running for a few months and I just thought running wasn't for me,
I hated it,
but Chella and I hang out a lot and I would just always see him run.
One time we went on vacation
and I'm thinking, "vacation, relax,"
he's running in the morning,
and I thought, "if Chella can do it, maybe I can too."
I didn't run at all until 2017.
It was the only thing I felt comfortable doing and releasing anxiety.
So early on in the pandemic, I started running a lot,
but at the same time, Manhattan Chinatown,
my hometown neighborhood, was really suffering.
Businesses were closing and morale was extremely low,
so I started Run for Chinatown.
I got friends and family to donate a dollar for every mile that I covered,
and raised about $25,000.
[gasps]
-That's amazing. -That's so amazing.
Oh my god.
I'm trying to share that power
with as many people in the Asian community as I can.
Do you feel like you're not Asian enough?
-Yes. -[laughter]
Also being biracial,
I feel like I live on this continuum of many different identities
where I'm between a lot of different binaries,
race being one of them.
I really liked what you were saying
about growing up around predominantly white people,
being very Americanized.
I feel so grateful that my grandparents were in my life
because that was kind of the only window that I had.
Similar to disability, gender, race,
there are so many stereotypes about the way that you have to be,
so we just compare ourselves to what is projected onto us.
But when I sit with real people like you and you,
we define what being Asian means to us,
and that's the most real thing.
We are finally realizing that these things that we are trying to define
are actually just fine the way they are,
and it's who makes us who we are.
-It was nice to hang out with everyone. -Same.
-And tomorrow we run. -[laughter]
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