Brittany Tom

A shopper at an Adidas outlet in Beijing prepares to buy a souvenir Jeremy Lin T-shirt.

BEIJING – Asian-Americans continue to be the fastest growing ethnic population in the U.S., according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics released on Wednesday.

The data, which come weeks ahead of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month in May, also demonstrates how integral a part of the American fabric Asians have been. As many as 1.5 million businesses in the U.S. are owned by Asians. More than a quarter million have served in the U.S. military. And nearly half of the Asian-American electorate voted in the 2008 presidential election.

And yet while generations of Asians have integrated into American society, a small but growing number of the 3.8 million Asian-Americans of Chinese descent are finding themselves in mainland China to study or to work.

Especially since the 2008 global economic crisis, many ethnic Chinese are seeking economic opportunities in China as emigrants. Almost all are also motivated by cultural heritage interests.

At the same time, Jeremy Lin's popularity has reignited discussions about identity among Chinese-Americans that are unlikely to wane as quickly as Linsanity.

One writer for the sports website Grantland hit on the issue during the height of Lin hype last month: "These have been a revealing two weeks, not only for the Asian-American community or the Ivy League basketball community or the talent evaluator committee, but also for the watchdogs, handwringers, and pulpit-thumpers. Not since Barack Obama's presidential campaign has there been so much national discussion about the appropriateness of discussing race."

And in China, where many American-born Chinese have gravitated over the past few years, race and nationality intersect in interesting, sometimes confusing, ways.

Brittney Wong feels "even less Chinese" in China than she expected.

"I realized how American I am," said the 23-year old Seattle native, who recently arrived in Beijing for a year-long intensive Chinese language course. "Which is strange, because I just assumed I would just blend in perfectly here."

Cultural disconnect
But in trying to befriend local Chinese, Wong came to see that "learning about their experiences in high school and their lives, how they lived so far, [are] so different from my experiences. Even their personalities."

The cultural disconnect is compelling enough to have provided some inspiration for a new feature-length film.

Daniel Hsia is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who has just wrapped up production for "Shanghai Calling," a movie about American expats in Shanghai. "The world is turning on its head. Expectations are being reversed all the time," said Hsia.

In the movie, the main protagonist is a Chinese-American executive whose employer sends him to Shanghai. "I thought it would be more interesting to have the character [be] of Chinese descent but completely ignorant of Chinese culture. It just creates more conflict. It's more interesting to watch a character who looks like he fits in but doesn't."

Sometimes the cross-culture experience makes people feel even more American.

"In many ways, being in China has caused me to have a strong appreciation for just how American I am," said Jason Chu, a 25-year old Delaware native. "It has helped me come to terms or embrace the positive aspects of being distinctly Asian-American."

Chu is wrapping up two years in Beijing, where he has been dividing his time between serving as a pastor and writing music. The child of ethnic Chinese parents from Malaysia and Thailand, he grew up speaking English and began learning Chinese in college in the U.S. 

Speaking fluent Chinese, Chu has found, is perhaps the most critical determinant of authenticity. "There is this sort of disappointment that many Chinese-Americans are familiar with, where if you look Chinese or people know you're Chinese and your Chinese language isn't good, you're less of a person," he said.

Writer Gish Jen, on a recent trip to Beijing, recalled similar reactions when she first visited the mainland in the 1980s.

"In the early days, I used to feel they were quite critical," said Jen, one of a handful of hyphenated American novelists who led the multicultural wave of fiction in the U.S. in the early 1990s. "They saw me as a sort of fallen Chinese… You don't even speak Chinese, what's the matter with you."

Asian body with a Western mind
Although Jen believes mainstream Chinese attitudes toward overseas Chinese such as herself have improved, she thinks many still fail to understand what it means to be American.

"I don't think they understand what it means to be in between [China and the U.S.]," she explained.

The Chinese "don't distinguish between nationality and ethnicity," said Chu. "They don't understand that it's possible to have an Asian body but a Western mind."

That seemed to be the case when U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke arrived on the mainland last year. Some Chinese media commentators and bloggers voiced expectations that Locke, an ethnic Chinese born in the U.S., would be more sympathetic to Beijing's point of view. When it became clear that he was here to represent America, some of those same voices accused him of betrayal. One critic called him a "fake foreign devil who cannot even speak Chinese."

For Chinese-Americans like Chu, being in China means more about being American and behaving more overtly like an American. "I dress more differently [than the Chinese here]," he said. "I over-emphasize my foreignness."

Sense of apartness
Similarly, Toronto native Lili Gao thinks living in China has brought out a sense of apartness that she said she never experienced growing up in Canada.

"I never had any cultural identity issues in Canada. I speak Chinese, but I'm Canadian," said Gao, who was born in Shanxi before moving to Canada when she was 6 years old. "But then, coming back here, I realized I really was not Chinese. That was an interesting experience to have a clearer idea of identity."

As with many other Westernized Chinese, Gao found the issue of identity to be rooted in communication.  Although she speaks fluent Mandarin, the young marketing executive said that social culture was a large hurdle. 

"I couldn't possibly get used to it…the way people interact [here,]" she said. "The Chinese have a different way of communicating" that is not simply about language.

Now, having lived in Beijing for five years and working at Chinese companies, Gao finds herself "over-interpreting all the time, even when I'm communicating with foreigners!"

For someone like Jonny Chin, an 18-year-old senior at an international school in Beijing, it's simply that his American identity is much stronger. Even though he was only 6 years old when his parents, originally from Hong Kong, moved the family to China from San Francisco – meaning he has spent two-thirds of his life in Beijing.

"I still refer to America as home," he said. "Like when I say I'm 'going home' for Christmas. And when people ask, 'Where are you from?' I say I'm from the U.S."

With additional research from Brittany Tom and Isabella Zhong 

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A pedestrian passes a branch of Chinese sportswear shop Qiaodan Sports in Shanghai on Thursday. Retired NBA superstar Michael Jordan announced that he has filed a lawsuit in China against Qiaodan Sports Company Limited over unauthorized use of his name.

BEIJING – Between Linsanity and Apple’s iPad trademark case, it seems like the only things on people’s minds in China right now are basketball and trademarks.

Leave it to “His Airness” to elevate that talk to another level.

Earlier today, NBA legend Michael Jordan issued a statement announcing that he has filed a lawsuit in Chinese court against Qiaodan Sports Company Ltd., charging the company with using his name and playing number without permission.

“A Chinese sports company has chosen to build a Chinese business off my Chinese name without my permission,” said Jordan in a video statement posted on a special website announcing the suit. "It pains me to see someone misrepresent my identity.”

“Qiaodan” is a transliteration of the name Jordan has gone by in China since he and the NBA took China by storm in the ‘80s and ‘90s, transforming the mainland into a nation of basketball diehards.

“It is deeply disappointing to see a company build a business off my Chinese name without my permission, use the number 23 and even attempt to use the names of my children,” Jordan said, referring to Qiaodan’s recent bid to trademark the name of his children in China. He continued by saying, “I am taking this action to preserve ownership of my name and my brand.”

Jordan’s announcement is a blow to Qiaodan, a Chinese sportswear and footwear manufacturer that has its roots in the 1980s but found tremendous financial success when it changed its name to Jordan’s Chinese moniker in 2000.

Company: Lots of people named 'Jordan'
Since that time, Qiaodan has borrowed heavily from the Jordan mystique to drive sales in China. His iconic number 23 is on much of their sportswear and advertisements and equipment often sport a logo which greatly resembles Nike’s iconic “Jumpman” logo, which accompanies virtually all of Jordan’s branded gear.

Still, the company denies any connection to the NBA legend and argues any resemblance is coincidental.

Speaking to Chinese media today, a spokesman for the company brazenly claimed, “There is no connection, 23 is just a number like $23 or $230 dollars… I don’t think there is a problem at all here.”

He continued by saying Qiaodan goes to great lengths to advertise that the company was a “China national brand” and that there was no need to tell every customer that they are not associated with Jordan since their brand is already unique to the mainland.

Bob Leverone / AP

Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan smiles as he announces a cash donation to the Second Harvest Food Bank on Feb. 20 in Charlotte, N.C.

“Not everyone will think this is misleading,” said the spokesman. “There are so many Jordans besides the basketball player – there are many other celebrities both in the U.S. and worldwide called Jordan.”

A bold claim by Qiaodan, but one that is seemingly refuted by a 2009 survey conducted by a Shanghai marketing company. They found that 90 percent of 400 young people polled in China’s small cities believed Qiaodan Sports was Michael Jordan’s own brand.

“We live in a competitive marketplace, and Chinese consumers, like anyone else, have a huge amount of choice when it comes to buying clothing, shoes and other merchandise,” said Jordan, “I think they deserve to know what they are buying.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Nike, who markets the “Jordan” brand in China under its English name, which the Oregon-based company registered in China in 1993. It failed, though, to register the Chinese name, allowing Qiaodan to take it in 1998. Attempts by Nike to legally halt Qiaodan from selling under that name were blocked by the Chinese government’s state trademark office 

Subsequently, one can walk into a sports store here in China and often find Nike’s official Jordan line of sportswear on sale just a few racks down from Qiaodan’s brand.

Why now?
In lieu of Nike’s previous experience in attempting to protect its trademark and the fact that Jordan himself has waited 11 years to make his first high profile attempt to stop Qiaodan, the question is: “Why now?”

The answer to that may be found in two recent legal decisions involving two other NBA players.

Stan Abrams of the invaluable China legal and business blog, China Hearsay, wrote about two cases involving Chinese basketball stars – Yi Jianlian and Yao Ming – and the parallels between their two trademark cases and the suit Jordan is bringing against Qiaodan.

In the Yi Jianlian case, a company unaffiliated with the player registered for the trademark of his name in 2005. Yi filed a complaint with the Chinese Trademark Review and Adjudication Board and won in 2009; he also won a subsequent appeal in 2010.

Yao Ming faced a similar issue when he filed suit and won against another Chinese sporting goods company, Wuhan Yunhe, which had attempted to trademark a name associated with the former NBA superstar.

In both cases, lawyers for the players cited Article 31 of Chinese Trademark Law which states: "An application for the registration of a trademark shall not create any prejudice to the prior right of another person, nor unfair means be used to pre-emptively register the trademark of some reputation another person has used.”

Perhaps seeing the trademark law now being more stringently enforced in cases closely paralleling his own, and already knowing the terrific economic potential for himself and his brand in China, Jordan must have seen this as the time to make a definitive move against Qiaodan.

Considering Nike’s failed injunction and the fact that Qiaodan is a purely homegrown Chinese company – a fact that should not be underestimated - Qiaodan must have appeared frustratingly untouchable to Jordan, who touched on fairness in his statement.

“When I was a former player, I played within the rules, I played off of honesty,” said Jordan. “Today, even in business, honesty is something that I truly, truly hold as a high value, and I stay within the guidelines.”

While the lawsuit is primarily for control of his Chinese name in China, Jordan has pledged that any money earned in the lawsuit will be “invested in growing the sport in China.”

“No one should lose control of their own name; China recognizes that for everyone. It’s not about the money; it’s about principle—protecting my identity and my name.”  

One person who should take heed of Jordan’s words? Current NBA phenom, Jeremy Lin, whose Chinese name was registered by a Chinese company back in 2010.

Watch Jordan's video statement

Chris Trotman / Getty Images

Fans cheer on Jeremy Lin against the Sacramento Kings at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.

BEIJING — He means something to many people: Asian Americans, underdogs, geeks, Ivy Leaguers, sports fans, Christians, anyone who loves a great story.

But Jeremy Lin — the Harvard graduate of Chinese descent born in Palo Alto, California, to Taiwan parents — is not the same thing to all Chinese.

If ever there were one event that has the potential to show how fractured Chinese communities can be, "Linsanity" — or linfengkuang in Chinese — might be it.

For days now, we in Beijing have been fielding emails from our U.S. colleagues: “Hey, we hear Lin’s big in China now?  He’s on the cover of the New York Post!”  “The NY Knicks player is having a Cinderella week… he’s being noticed/watched in China….”

For the record, yes, he’s big in mainland China. 

It’s been widely reported that his Sina Weibo account (a popular Chinese version of Twitter) clocked more than a million followers as he led the Knicks to victory over the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday — more than doubling the number he had the night he faced off with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers last Friday.

Perfect storm continues for Jeremy Lin

On Taobao, China’s leading e-commerce site, shoppers can buy copies of Lin’s Knicks jersey and t-shirts and sweatshirts bearing his number “17.”  A quick look suggests the merchandise isn’t moving as briskly as Weibo messages about the athlete, but it’s an impressive range of goods nonetheless.  In the brick and mortar world, however, his jersey — even counterfeit versions — is said to be selling out.

But mainland China is also very big.

Let’s go back to Weibo.  Lin’s following, large as it sounds, is still just a fraction of some high-profile mainland Chinese.  Pan Shiyi — a Beijing-based property mogul some people liken to Donald Trump — has 8.6 million followers.  Hong Huang — a publisher and commentator who is often described as the "Oprah of China" — has four million.  Lee Kai-fu, the former head of Google China, has 11 million.

The comparisons may be unfair since none of these Chinese are athletes and all have had profiles on Weibo for longer.  But high-profile mainland athletes like Yao Ming, Guo Jingjing (the glamorous Olympic gold-medallist female diver), Liu Xiang (the Olympic gold-medallist hurdler) don’t have a presence on Weibo.  Only Yi Jianlian has a profile; the mainland Chinese NBA athlete who plays for the Dallas Mavericks has 6.5 million followers.

In the offline world, Lin’s name is not on everyone’s lips the way it seems in the U.S.  It’s not perfect evidence, but a random sampling of Beijing taxi drivers, normally glued to radio news, this morning came up blank.  “We only know Yao Ming,” said one cabbie.

PhotoBlog: Lin leads Knicks to 7th win in a row

There’s been steady speculation about why China’s state-run media has been muted with its reporting on the Lin phenomenon and why CCTV — normally awash with NBA coverage — has not been broadcasting his games.  (New York City Time Warner subscribers, we share your pain.)

 “Mr Lin is a trickier fit for Beijing’s propagandists,” one Western report noted.  “His Christianity is perhaps more awkward for China’s atheist Communist rulers. While Beijing officially sanctions some churches, it frowns on the spontaneous professions of love for God that pepper Mr Lin’s postgame comments.”

Lin’s success has also raised the inevitable and perhaps unwelcome question (at least in the mainland) “Could China, an Olympic powerhouse and homeland of Yao Ming, produce such a gifted, confident point guard?”  As the journalist pointed out, not for now.  Not given the state-run sports industry or its rigid approach to training and talent-spotting. 

China's president-in-waiting returns to Iowa

Then, of course, there’s the fact Lin’s parents come from Taiwan, which has engaged in a fractious rivalry with mainland China for nearly 70 years.  Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province while the latter regards itself an independent nation.

Tug o’ war over the favorite son
Over the weekend, folks in China’s Zhejiang Province, the ancestral home of the athlete’s maternal grandmother, laid claim to him.   And today, a local newspaper re-posted photos from Lin’s visit to his mother’s hometown last May. 

The accompanying article opens with the following lines: “Lin Shuhao became famous overnight.  But what we here are more proud of is his roots here in Pinghu.”  It concludes with a quote from Lin’s mother saying the family might return to Pinghu again this summer.

The media in Taiwan — which has hailed Lin as one of their own — have taken notice.  Local newspapers on the island today went on a blitzkrieg to assert Lin’s Taiwan identity, quoting family relatives, and also claimed Lin might visit the island this summer.  The coverage followed a report in the New York Times, which quoted Lin’s uncle in Taiwan as saying about the Knicks player and his parents, “For sure, they are Taiwanese.”

Sam Yeh / AFP - Getty Images

Jeremy Lin featured on the front page of many newspapers in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sunday.

Since Lin’s debut for the Knicks on February 4^th, Taiwan’s local media have given the overnight sensation blanket coverage, and there has been no problem catching any of his games live on television.  “They’re broadcast live in the morning,” one of my uncles who has spent the past month in Taipei told me.  “And then they’re shown twice again later in the day.  And every newscast has packaged highlights of every game.”

And, yet, something still seems to ring hollow about the mainland's or Taiwan's scramble to call Lin one of their own.  One of the mainland Chinese readers who responded to the local Zhejiang newspaper report put it succinctly: "He's American.  You should be ashamed of yourself trying to dig up his maternal ancestral grave."  In fact, many Chinese--in dismissing comparisons between Lin and Yao Ming--have argued that Lin is distinctly American, has nothing to do with China, and didn't experience the cultural and language adjustment that Yao underwent when he moved to the U.S. to play in the NBA.

But then there are the American-born Chinese (ABCs).

'A watershed moment'
Judging by the flood of columns by Chinese-American commentators, Lin’s success means more to this cohort than any other community:

Eric Liu: “[The Knicks fans’] embrace of Lin has made millions of Asian Americans feel vicariously, thrillingly embraced. Not invisible. Not presumed foreign. Just part of the team, belonging in the game. It’s felt like a breakout moment: for Lin, for Asian America and, thus, for America.”

Jeff Yang: “It’s hard not to feel like this isn’t a watershed moment. Hard not to feel like this is historic. Hard not to think that we’re at the cusp of an actual tectonic shift in the culture, when an Asian American “kid” could be the unquestioned king of one of the most storied franchises in sports, the guy that every guy in the room wishes he could meet and every kid in the room wants to group up to be.”

Ling Woo Liu: “For those who've been following the campaign ad controversies as well as the [Harry] Lew and [Danny] Chen cases, Lin's meteoric rise has been a much-needed sign of hope.

Bryan Chu: “Some might say, why didn’t Yao Ming evoke this type of emotion in you?  The difference is that Jeremy is one of us. He was born in the U.S. He was that kid who got straight A’s in school. He was the one that worked at his high school student newspaper. He has a bit of an Americanized accent when he speaks Mandarin. He had a pipe dream of making it to the NBA. He’s humble and sometimes misperceived as a shy, Asian kid who shows flashes of brilliance and then finally explodes on the scene when he’s given a chance. He’s the guy friend who, if he needs a place to crash, will be thankful for a couch.”

With additional reporting by Bo Gu.

BEIJING—It was a good and a bad weekend for Chinese in America. 

And one that so far seems to have gone pretty much unnoticed amongst Chinese in China.

On Saturday night, the New York Knicks’ third-string point guard, Jeremy Lin, dribbled and soared into the hearts of hometown fans.  He led the shambolic team to a tight victory over the New Jersey Nets, scoring 25 points and seven assists in 36 minutes.

The New York Times said Lin’s performance “ignited an instant love affair with New York.” 

The New York Daily News ran a headline online, “It’s Lin-sanity!”

Lin, a California native whose parents are from Taiwan, was perhaps better known previously as being an Ivy League graduate--one of only 40 such players in the N.B.A.  He’s a member of Harvard University’s Class of 2010.

But for many of his fans, it’s been more notable that he’s the first Chinese-American to play in the N.B.A.

A great moment for Asian-Americans until the Superbowl, when a controversial campaign ad by U.S. Senate Republican candidate Pete Hoekstra ran against his opponent, Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow.

The ad features a young Asian woman riding on a bicycle against a rice paddy.  She stops to speak to the camera in broken English, “Debbie spend so much American money, you borrow more and more for us.  Your economy get very weak, ours get very good.  You get our jobs.”

Just in case it wasn’t clear, the website, debbiespenditnow.com, features the China flag and what one Twitter user called “chop suey” font.  The message being that U.S. government officials like Stabenow are spending so much money that it benefits China, which is why America is in this economic mess now.

Criticism came swiftly on Twitter from American expatriates living in China, many of whom called the commercial "racist."

But so far there’s been virtually no reaction on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, to either phenomenon.

As my Chinese colleague, Bo Gu, noted, Hoekstra’s ad didn’t make any sense to her.  “It was just like that time with the Spanish basketball team.”

She was referring to a 2008 photo advertisement for which the Spanish national basketball team posed, each player pulling their eyes to make them look slanted.  The ad -- which emerged just before the Beijing Olympics -- provoked an uproar in the U.S. among Asian-American groups, but it was shrugged off by Chinese in China.  Most didn't understand the gesture; those who did found it amusing or flattering.