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Pan Asian art shows suggest culture crosses all borders
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NICHKHUN Horvejkul, 25, is a cultural phenomenon. Born and raised in Southern California, his high school friends told him that with his looks and winning smile, he should be a Korean pop star, never mind that his parents are immigrants from Thailand, and that he didnÕt speak a word of Korean.
But off he went and signed a contract in Seoul. He had to undergo intense Korean and Mandarin language immersion for two years, along with taking singing and dancing lessons.
Now Nichkhun is a bona fide Korean pop star, a member of the popular boys band called 2 PM. But heÕs so much more: Since he speaks Thai and Chinese and English and Korean, he has so far starred in a Chinese and Thai movies, made commercials in Thai and Korean, released several singles in Thai, English and Korean, and is set to star in a Japanese film, an adaptation of the immensely popular manga-anime “Ouran High School Host Club.”
In other words, Nichkhun is a Pan Asian star, a citizen of an increasingly borderless cultural sphere with Seoul more or less at its center.
“Today,” noted Christina Klein, writing for Yale Global a few years ago, “the notion of a distinctly American or Chinese or Indian cinema is breaking down, as film industries around the world become increasingly integrated in ways that make them simultaneously more global and more local.”
“Memoirs of a Geisha,” for example, is an American production with an all-Asian cast.
But in the Pan-Asian world, the major collaboration remains between China and South Korea. The combination of Korean and Chinese box office markets are worth almost US$4 billion annually, according to Screen Daily, but that number is only going to rise. Pan Asian films and Pan Asian stars, after all, can guarantee international box office and can, therefore, draw in big international investors.
Nearly two decades ago, Singaporean pop star Dick Lee prophesied the new phenomenon of Pan-Asianism in his song: “Our separate lands are one from now on/We are Asians/We sing in one voice, and we sing in one song.”
In the new Pan-Asia the song may have to be revised a bit: “We are Asians. We sing in many voices. And we sing in many songs.”
Wang Leehom followed that message with “I used to dream that I could soar beyond the clouds/Just close my eyes and fly away/Blue skies inspire us to be free as a bird/And that dream connects us every day.” from his single “One World One Dream,” a song that he sang in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
And it makes sense now in the 21st century, where there are few borders that couldn’t be crossed, that it would take a transplanted Asian American to imagine the dissimilar spheres as one.
Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of three books, “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora,” “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres,” and his latest, “Birds of Paradise Lost,” a collection of short stories about Vietnamese refugees struggling to rebuild their lives in the Bay Area.
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