Asian Calmination - Cambodia

Cambodia

I was excited to cross the border. Besides Hong Kong to Shenzhen, real land crossings have been missing from my life. The process didn't meet expectations though, with lots of waiting time in no man's land and no interesting bits, save the exchange of crisp US dollars. In Cambodia, the ride was very rural until suddenly crossing the Mekong River, urban Phnom Penh arose with little warning. My hostel, 19 Happy House Backpacker, was a couple blocks away from our dropoff point, at #59 Street 13. A wrong turn and a dozen blocks later, I was lost with the early afternoon sun really weighing down on me and my red backpack. When I finally reached the hostel, the staff could not find my booking. Minutes of awkward confusion later, I realized I was at Happy Backpacker, a separate establishment. I circled around even more confused, as Street 13 was somehow between Street 15 and Street 5. I came across #60 Street 13, which was some Malaysians' home. Malays speak English which is great, but they had never heard of Happy House Backpacker despite my protests that it must be next door. Some venting later, I kept walking down the street and finally saw the sign for 19 Happy House several blocks away. I learned the hard way that street numbers have absolutely no meaning in Cambodia.

Spark - eccentric establishment

My first night in Phnom Penh included pickup ultimate with the young athletic Swa players on a barebones mini turf pitch, followed by many beers at a concert hall/beer hall/replica Italian plaza/microbrewery/cafeteria called Spark (complete with sinks specifically designed for pukers in the bathroom) with Asian Ultimate legend Jared Cahners. I learned that the fellow Newton native has been living in and out of Asia since the 1990s, coming to Cambodia for his PhD but quitting shortly before we met, and had various histories of fluency in Mandarin, Vietnamese and Khmer. In between, I met a Japanese/Chinese/Thai Wellesley College graduate Clinton Global Health employee looking for someone to analyze malaria data, a Peace Corps volunteer and some of the pioneers in Cambodian ultimate. I always enjoy entering a new city and observing the makeup of the economy, and the makeup of the foreign population.  Throughout Asia, English teachers abound, but in Cambodia I met many aid workers/NGO veterans. This influx gives Phnom Penh a distinctly non-traditionally Asian feel. The downtown is awash in bars and pizza/Chinese food joints with stories traded in English and French.

I didn't have the best time in Cambodia. Everywhere I felt like locals were constantly trying to fleece the last buck out of me, and it really wore me down. Sure, this vibe was prevalent in all the former communist countries I visited (Vietnam and Laos) but most evident in Cambodia.  Ironically, while I attribute communism for the uninspiring aspects of Cambodia, a better understanding of the rise of communism is my best takeaway from the country. While Phnom Penh dates back to the 15th century, and was called the Pearl of Asia in the 1920s, it doesn't feel like an old city. The French and the Communists had left a grid of dusty and sweaty streets, old architecture too rundown to exude any colonial charm and a skyline dotted by a handful of uninspired modern high rises. There are some golden Wats scattered throughout the city and a major boulevard with a pretty monument in the center, but it struggles to compare to the temples of neighboring Thailand. And though I did not find Khmer cuisine bad per se, my palate was so well primed before and after in Vietnam and Thailand.

The ugly legacies of communist rule, and specifically the bloody genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, are thus still very tangible. The government was brutally anti-intellectual, killing most anyone with glasses, education or foreign language knowledge. The country's genocide caused the deaths of around a quarter of the population, an astounding culling of 8 million down to 6 million. When you lose an entire generation of cooks, architects, bureaucrats and writers, cultural devastation is inevitable.

I never really understood communism in history classes. We studied so much about its deleterious effects that it never made sense how such extreme practices took hold in the first place. I read Lenin in high school and Marx in college and still had no idea. But my second day in Phnom Penh involved visiting the Killing Fields outside the city, where hundreds of skulls are prominently shown, and the S21 school-turned-prison-turned-museum, which documents accounts of the atrocities that occurred there. Walking through history, I learned that Pol Pot as a frustrated failed man, who despite an education in France, rode a populist ideology that villainized the educated elite, foreign influences and minorities. The Khmer Rouge promoted rural ethnic Khmers as the backbone of Cambodian society, preaching self-reliant isolationism. If any of that sounds familiar and scary, reread what the regime did after they got into power and be even more scared.

I had planned to be in Cambodia for a brief two stops, before reaching Bangkok for an ultimate tournament. However I mistook the tournament to be a week earlier than it was, giving me another week to explore Cambodia. I'm not much of a beach person, but I figured a southeast Asian trip was incomplete without one, and so I ventured south to the resort town Sihanoukville. There awaited miles of pristine beach facing the Gulf of Thailand, and a bizarre mixture of expensive restaurants and hotels, dirt-cheap bungalows and hammocks, and a bunch of nothing in between.  Young Europeans who were lazing around the hostels for weeks on end seemed to outnumber any other demographic. They were apparently not my group, for in a backpacking rarity, I actively tried to  go out hard and have a good time and came out with no memorable stories whatsoever. Maybe it didn't help that I spent the day reading research papers in my air-conditioned bungalow and was looking for people with whom to discuss global income equality. Sorry I'm just not a beach person.

I quickly moved on to Kampot, a river town that was much more my kind of place. Just two hours away, the demographics could not be more different, with a local economy grounded on its famous pepper rather than tourism. The city's key attraction was an enormous durian sculpted into the middle of a major traffic circle. A conversation the previous day with friend John Johnson alerted me to an abandoned town between Kampot and Sihanoukville, but it was tough to verify on Google. Exploring a charming collection of expat-friendly riverside bars on the east side of the river, I found some seasoned expats engaged in academic research. I asked them about this abandoned town, and the expats enlightened me about Bokor Hill Station. One of them showed me the Google streetview, and pointed at himself standing next to a church. "I was there when the Google Earth guy was walking around with all the cameras!" I resolved to go the next day. 

Curious about the opposite riverbank, I explored a bridge closed to traffic and found a hole in the barrier, evidently used by pedestrians. I snuck over to the west side and found a decidedly more local scene. At an outdoor club blaring Khmer music, I ordered iced beer and cow entrails. On the way home, I passed by the durian, took one sniff of its imaginary scent, and threw up the entrails.

The next morning I was back on a motorbike for the first time since my Sapa fall. From a purvey of Googlemaps, the trip seemed like a 40 minutes straightshot on one major road. However at the 40 minute mark I reached the ticketed entrance to the mountain road, and I realized that the Hill Station was of course, up on a hill, and that Google hadn't quite charted that winding Cambodian mountain road. I drove up into the unknown, made a sharp turn around a bend and nearly fell off my bike. The mountain sloped into the Gulf of Thailand to the south, and the ocean winds crashed down unimpeded. The winds affected me mostly on the hairpin turns, when I slowed down dramatically. More daring motorcyclists zoomed past me on those turns, but I wasn't shamed out of braking - my nerve had left with my palm skin in the mountain gravel of North Vietnam. Finally I reached the top of the mountain, past the construction of a monstrous modern casino, a budding tourism park, some sanitation pump stations. Hiking up a grassy clearing, I found a solitary stone church. A bench that could have been lifted right out of Paris sat undisturbed in front. The church's stonework was definitely weathered, but otherwise everything was in remarkably good shape.  The doorway arch was doorless and I walked into an eerie interior. The multi-scripted graffiti covering the walls and the flower pots in front of religious statues reflected a dichotomy between disdain and worship. A small Jesus on the crucifix still hung overlooking it all, silently witnessing decades of good deeds and sins.

There were no explanatory plaques, but the area had been settled by the French in the 1920s, providing a cool getaway from the stuffy Phnom Penh. It was abandoned by the French twice, ultimately to the Khmer Rouge, and was even used by their remaining forces after a Vietnamese invasion overthrew the regime into the 90's. Now Cambodia has been stable enough that the area is being developed, and the ghost town may itself ghost away. The lack of historical preservation is understandably not a focus (any cultural preservationist would be busy further north), but it still saddens me that so many stories there go untold. With no public information, I had very nearly missed this site.

I had already spent way longer on this hill escapade, and hurried back, driving past the large abandoned Bokor Palace Hotel that was apparently even cooler. The ride down the steep mountain slopes was interminable and I couldn't wait to never drive a motorcycle again. Returning to Kampot in the late afternoon, I was stunned to learn that there were no more bus options returning to Phnom Penh. Turns out the start of the Chinese New Year affects commerce in Cambodia as well, and buses simply stopped operating. The Super Bowl was the next day and definitely watchable in Phnom Penh. Wikitravel did list one alternate form of transportation - car pool. And so I found a bunch of drivers and agreed to pay $20 USD to join an unknown number of people for the 4 hour ride to the capital. I waited in the park for 2 hours, and finally there were 3 other Cambodians joining. The sedan driver and I made 5, and as we hit the main road, I thought to myself this wasn't so bad - Wikitravel had warned that these carpools often crammed 7 into the same car. As soon as I counted myself lucky, our car slowed down and I had to scoot in for another passenger. And then we stopped again, and two woman were sharing the shotgun seat. As the 7 of us drove down the road, imagine my surprise when we slowed again. I shuddered to think of 5 of us fitting in the back, but instead the driver got out and then essentially sat on the new passenger's left lap. And the 8 of us in this clown car of a sedan made our way up to Phnom Penh for the start of the year of the monkey.

Watching the Super Bowl in a Texas-themed bar in Phnom Penh was an experience, but the game sucked and I moved on to take a minibus to Siem Reap. Here again I was a victim of Cambodian capitalism. The minibus was run by a minor agency and not easy to find, and my desperation at potentially missing the ride was showing when I asked a tuktuk driver for help. He ended up taking me for a $1 ride, and literally drove around the block back to where we started and pointed out the agency. Upon landing in Siam Reap, I luckily had saved my hostel location on Googlemaps and realized it was a 3 block walk. I was harassed by tuktuk drivers anyway, and I gave one the address as a test. A $1 ride would have been generous, but this guy brazenly asked for $5. I was more than willing to contribute to the local economy, but such shameless disrespect honestly infuriated me. I told him to fuck off and walked.

No place on my path was as touristy as Siam Reap. In contrast to the well ordered geometry of the nearby ancient sites, the modern city felt like a disorganized cantina of businesses clumped every which way to mine that tourism gold. Hotels and restaurants catering to tourists of all types face each other with services advertised in English, French, German, Chinese and Korean.

Hostel owners advised me it was possible to rent a bicycle at 5am. Indeed it was, but I had to jump over the locked gate of the hostel first. Though I'm not much of a morning person, I biked the 8 miles out of town and reached Angkor Wat an hour before sunrise. The classic view of Angkor Wat at dawn is usually taken in front of a lake, but a tenth of humanity was camped out on that spot. I thought I could take an equally impressive shot from a different angle, and jostled with a separate large group of people for position. I failed to capture any decent photos from the front, except perhaps this one of the crowds. I raced through the temple and tried to process everything. The palace was immense yes, but each column was still intricately carved, the stonework carefully laid. Statues and murals were so commonplace that negative space was a rarity.

Angkor Wat from the back

Nowhere was I more negatively affected by hype than here. I had heard so much of these ruins and even the previous night, a hostel mate had talked about the spiritual experience of witnessing the sun rise in Angkor Wat. In front of the building, surrounded by thousands of people, I did enjoy the bright hues of the morning sun...but I was not spiritually moved. Perhaps my favorite part of the experience was reaching the back of the complex, the sky still in the later stages of dawn, and looking out into the relative peace of the jungle. Whether I like it or not, preconceptions heavily influence my enjoyment, and it is no surprise that some of my favorite experiences on this journey were ones that I had no expectations of at all.

The whole set of ancient temple complexes is often collectively referred to as Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat is only the biggest of the temples in the Angkor ruins (Angkor means capital city, Wat means temple). Angkor is undoubtedly the largest and most famous of the many temple ruins attractions in Southeast Asia (of which this trip included 2 others), all with a Buddhism-appropriating-Hinduism shared history. Dating primarily from the 12th century, the city is believed to have been the largest pre-industrial city in the world, spanning 390 square miles, before essentially being abandoned and lost to the jungle for centuries. Angkor Wat is so impressive, reaching the height of a 20 story building, and so revered, being the only building in the world to be featured on a national flag.

I biked over 40 miles that under that brutal Cambodian sun, stopping for coconut water whenever possible. I saw a temple in a marsh, a temple with a giant tree growing through it, and the temple that Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie had run through. By the early afternoon, I was unable to appreciate the ancient wonders around me - I had had my temple run.

There were plenty of temples I didn't get to on my one day of biking, but I didn't go back out the second day. Sure I felt bad, drinking beer in a cafe in the vicinity of some of the worlds' greatest treasures, but I was so tired it was a no-brainer of a decision. Even worse I was cognizant that my lack of appreciation of the temples was a product of my western education. I've learned enough about gothic arches and flying buttresses to admire European cathedrals, but I don't know the first thing to look at when staring at the Hindu/Buddhist temples. I don't know the difference between a temple dedicated to Vishnu or Rama, and the murals tell stories that make no sense to me. Clearly the course of action is to study this history, but I prefer to blast the parochial scope of my education. I explored the rest of Siem Reap that day, and was surprised to find a functioning town with some non-tourist economy, and a very touristy street creatively called Pub Street. Wandering through town, I got hassled nearly every block by a tuktuk driver offering to take me to the temples. Unable to find a respite, I walked straight to the bus station and bought a ticket to Bangkok the next day.

Asian Calmination - Vietnam

The giant red backpack is completely deflated. At its peak it bundled 30 odd pounds and imprinted its shoulderstraps onto my body.  Long hauls in bus hulls and nights on dirty hostel floors has bruised the polyester casing. Somehow it held up and protected my laptop, my clothes and my sanity over the many miles.

The longest trip I've ever taken feels very epic to me and my little world. By plane, train, boat, bus, motorbike or carpool, I made my way through the unfamiliar. I had my resolve tested deep in the jungle, survived hairy motorbike experiences, crossed five land borders, crashed an aviation annual gala, squished into a clown car, bathed an elephant, soared over the rainforest, drunkenly floated down a river, climbed a waterfall, prayed in an abandoned church and refreshed my trove of good stories. I ran into a college teammate in Bangkok, explored the best coffee shops in Luang Prabang and was offered jobs in Phnom Penh and Chiang Mai. I ate street food everywhere but miraculously never got food poisoning, or even had a calamitous toilet encounter.

I had been thinking about a trip like this for a while. I'd enjoyed traveling before I moved to Hong Kong, but 4 years in a great jumping off point fed a growing travel appetite. The more of the world I saw, the more of the world I realized remained to be seen.  Many cities were accessible by short flights, but plenty of fantastic less urbanized areas were beyond the reach of the weekend warrior. If I were to leave Asia, I had always planned on allowing for a lengthier trip to visit some off-the-path areas. And at the beginning of 2016, I made the decision to leave my job and make this trip happen. I targeted places I hadn't yet been able to visit, mainly Vietnam, but I didn't set a real itinerary. I had some vague routes that made geographic sense, but honestly had no end date set. Along the way I hoped to see cool sights, get off the b have fun, learn more about the world and global income inequality, visit friends, and also take "travel breaks" to learn the professional skills to transition to becoming a data scientist. I hadn't intended on this being a soul searching odyssey, but that happened regardless.

The trip weaved in and out of different phases. I departed Hong Kong for Hanoi on January 15, a week after my last day at work. I backpacked through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, while I was more of a digital nomad in Bangkok, Malaysia and Singapore. The portion in Xinjiang felt like a separate trip altogether, after which I embarked upon familiar lands for a friends seeing tour. I returned to Hong Kong on March 28 but continued living out of my luggage for another two weeks there before arriving in Boston (via San Francisco) April 12, making for 35 stops in 96 days. These three months were some of the best days of my life and I tried to never forget how lucky I was to have this whole opportunity.

I get some flabbergasted responses when I recount the whole expedition, as if the whole idea was nuts. I get some nonchalant nods as well - while this may have been my most epic trip, there are plenty of ultramarathon voyagers who sneer upon my measly wanderings.  Some of these expert travelers were great sources of knowledge and inspiration to me. These include Tim O'Rourke, long time Hong Kong expat who tried to bike from Darjeeling to Ireland through Pakistan and Iran in the early 90s, Dave Learn, the long time Shenzhen expat who traveled around the world for over two years, John Johnson, whose Instagram photos have a cult following, and Sam Axelrod, who needs no descriptive appositive.

Vietnam

The instant I landed in Vietnam, I became a millionaire, with more Dong than I knew what to do. I immediately caught an overnight train north to Sapa, a mountain village I had only heard about a few weeks before.  I was in a nervous daze the entire ride, arriving in the chilly darkness into a remote train station an hour away from the town. It wasn't until a local bus took me a main-squarish place that the discomfort eased off and discovery took over.

And I discovered that I'd picked a hell of a start. A simple walk out of town led into gorgeous green valleys with rice terraces carving up steep slopes. The clear weather provided an incredible backdrop to what was probably the most beautiful place on my entire itinerary.  I took a chill hike down the valley to neighboring villages, and on the way back up to the town, I stopped by a cliffside coffeeshop / bar. Sipping egg coffee and beers, I watched as the fog rolled in and out of the valley outside my window, evolving from one sensational view to another. It was as pleasant a beginning as I could ask for.

Sapa was part of a rural mountainous area settled by at least 6 distinct ethnic groups. While it was difficult for foreigners to reach during a long weekend, Sapa was well frequented by backpackers. I quickly began to learn the demographics that made up the southeast Asia, or Banana Pancake Trail, backpacking crowd. There were few professionals based in Asia like me, and far more students in a gap year or about to start work, mostly from Western Europe and Australia. Likely due to greater student loans and a less prevalent traveling culture, Americans were few and far between.

On my second day, I summoned the nerve to rent my first ever motorbike to visit some waterfalls an hour outside town. I immediately braked too hard and fell. I came out of that fall alright and quickly got a grip, and was soon exuberantly cruising along mountain roads. Then the road turned to gravel and I came to a patch mysteriously being hosed by a man. I braked before reaching the puddle and suddenly found my bike skidding and my hands hitting the gravel hard. Emergency thoughts rushed through my head. "Is this how it happens? Is this how people die in accidents?" Half a minute elapsed before I could feel sure that nothing was broken. The man with the hose helped me up and an old man raced down from the hill. He led me to his hut and placed my skinned palms into a bowl of water and watch the gravel sift out. My palms, the right one especially, had little remaining skin. I was wearing long pants, but they had torn apart and left my left knee pretty scraped. I had to get my bloody palms back on the handlebars and finish my ride to a waterfalls. Luckily when I returned to my guesthouse to patch up my wounds, a German couple there revealed themselves as nurses and helped dress my wounds. The damage on my right palm, while superficial,  hindered my ability to carry bags for another month.  The good start to my trip had turned bad quickly.

On my bus from Sapa to Hanoi, I had the luxury of choosing assistance from the Dutch nurse or the Australian medical student to redress my wounds. Hanoi was a hectic city, with its unordered motorcycle madness crazy even when compared to Chinese cities. In terms of crossing the street difficulty, Hanoi is to Beijing as Beijing is to New York City as New York city is to Random Little Town. Within that chaos however, I was able to find lots of chill time within the city's many interesting cafes. The coffee was so good, oh so good, and the food maybe even better.

I stayed in the city's Old Quarter, not far from the west lake with its giant tortoise. Unbeknownst to me, this tortoise died while I was in Hanoi, leaving only three of its species left (am I such bad luck?). The area breathed of the narrow alleyways and makeshift market places, organically winding streets free of the bird's-eye decrees of urban planners. There was plenty of griminess - Hanoi is still in a developing country, but it's a capital with an illustrious history. The Hoa Lo Prison, or the Hanoi Hilton, was despite its dark nature probably the most interesting place I visited in the city. Though the war is long over, the prison/museum is full of propaganda trying to convince viewers that the American prisoners loved it there. I had known enough about John McCain's imprisonment there during the Vietnam War to question these accounts. Though the museum walls now seemed harmless, they were just eerie enough for me to imagine the horrors of McCain's experience being dragged down the same corridors. It was more fun to imagine how Donald Trump might have fared had he not dodged the draft. 

The storied Halong Bay was next. I visited in January, way out of season, and the bright green water and clear blue skies that so many photos had hyped up were nowhere to be found. Both sky and water were generic shades of grey. I joined a two day one night cruise with an interesting cast of characters. People often ask me, "who is the craziest person you met on your trip?" I think it's difficult to uncover the depths of another's depravity until you really get to know them, which doesn't happen too much while backpacking. However on that cruise, there was an old white haired, white bearded American who probably last shaved during the Reagan administration. Upon boarding, he immediately inquired about weed, which endeared him to the younger backpackers. He soon got weird. He was in his 60's and had not been in the US in over 30 years because it was too sinful. He was a Bible Literalist, believing every single word to be divinely inspired, and actually withstood scrutiny of hypocrisy. Another American girl Brook talked about her last name Long and how cool it was that Long means Dragon in Vietnam, and that Halong itself means Descending Dragon. Bible Beard then spoke about how dragons were the flesh incarnate of the devil and how terrible it was for the Vietnamese to worship them. Talk about buzz kill. Luckily the tranquil seas and green islands of Halong Bay were fun enough overall to drown out Buzzkill Bible Beard and the grey skies.

Next up was Da Nang and Hue, and the memorable bus trip and aviation party which I've documented already. Hue was cool and palatial (Hue Forbidden City) and I could have spent more time there exploring, but instead I chose to escape the rain and drink. Da Nang might seem like a boring modern city, but I enjoyed the chance to see a functioning industrious side of Vietnam. From Da Nang it was a short ride to Hoi An, a charming old port city which had eschewed the modern commercial duties to Da Nang and emerged instead as a touristy lantern-lit ode to a historical era. I loved Hoi An and how the tight Chinese-Japanese-Vietnamese urban architecture intermeshed with the gorgeous river scene. Though the town was small, I could have wandered around those pedestrian alleyways all day. The trip was greatly supplemented by a long bike ride to the beach with a French girl I had just asked to take my picture, and another ride out from town to the Terracotta Park, a random museum with clay models of world wonders, which I had learned from Mya at the aviation party. The liberated joys of backpacking - meeting fellow travelers and finding hidden gems - reached new highs in Hoi An. 

This high was soon to crash down. Sometime on my next voyage, a 16 hour bus ride to the mountain coffee town Buon Ma Thuot, I lost my phone. I spent about 24 hours mostly feeling sad, but I fit in 5 delicious cups of coffee, observant walks through a tourist-free city economy, and a great goat meat dinner with a retired Canadian couple.

Skipping the resort city Dalat, I headed straight to Ho Chi Minh City to a new phone. I was lucky to be offered housing from Sam & Quentin Axelrod, though they were both out of town. Their US consular housing provided a pitstop of luxury, with AC, TV, gym, wifi and an immense jewelled tiger (that Sam loves and Quentin hates). I also was able to connect with some ultimate friends and a Georgetown classmate who based his startup there. I learned that Saigon, or HCMC, is a surprisingly great city for startups. For a city of its level of development and quality of life, the cost of living is bizarrely low (sidenote: its abundance of skybars are also an urban outlier). A steady local graduate corps of programmers are readily and affordably available, and several co-working spaces have sprung up to make HCMC a go-to spot for location independent workers.

I planned my days to involve at least 2 coffee outings, interspersed amongst tourist site visits. My 5 days in HCMC were chill, with sobering trips to the Cu Chi Tunnels, the War Museum, and Saigon's Chinatown. I went into the tunnels confused about how a rag tag underground (literally) bunch could beat the US army machine, but left with an idea of the terror any American soldier must have felt entering those narrow dark trap-filled death corridors. I went into the war museum prepared to deflect the Vietnamese propaganda, but left aghast and abashed. Even if the Agent Orange exhibit inside was incredibly exaggerated, the US atrocities during the war were unfathomable. I felt deep shame for my country and my ignorance of this event. The Chinatown experience was less sobering, but still war-related. I walked around District 5 and found my way into a housing estate where I heard Cantonese. In the courtyard, a pair of adjacent stalls sold dumplings and tea respectively. I sat down and awkwardly started a conversation with a 50 year old enjoying his lunch. His vernacular was odd, with an unfamiliar word to be found in every sentence. He used a formal term for a soldier's march in lieu of the verb for walking. He went on to describe how the whole area used to be in Chinese, and how 4 in 5 residents left during or after the war. I asked him why he stayed, and his calm demeanor belied the sadness of his answer. "Most of them died leaving. The Chinese people have forgotten us. Few Hong Kongers like you want to visit us. But it's ok, life is pretty good here."

The rest of my Saigon experience consisted of expensive drinks at skybars, to the extent where I nicknamed the city Skygon. My first country and main impetus for the trip surpassed my expectations. The pho, banh mi and coffee defied the laws of economics in their quality and price. The foods that hadn't been popularized worldwide, My Quang and Bun Bo Hue and Banh Xeo, rocked my world. I had tasted enough of the food and learned enough of the language that when I entered a Vietnamese restaurant in Bangkok weeks later, I felt surprisingly at home. There was never a dull moment outside either. Cars didn't own the roads and pedestrians didn't own the sidewalks. Everywhere the motorbike was king. The system seemed to be in a state of dynamic flux, never at any equilibrium but somehow never breaking down.

These Golden State Warriors

I don't write much about sports anymore, mostly cause I don't really have an interesting perspective to contribute. But I want to write about these 2015-2016 Golden State Warriors just because I want to. Many words have been written about this historic 73 win team who sadly will not be remembered as the best team ever because of their Finals loss. Despite that failure, what I find fascinating is how unique and well put together this team is, with so many players playing interesting roles. Before the championship disappointment, sportswriters were trying to rank this team among all timers. Unlike the showtime Lakers and the '86 Celtics, the Warriors are not stacked with all timers at every position. The Warriors are more flawed, with a real vulnerability in rebounding, than those teams and the Jordan Bulls, but more than make up with their incredible shooting prowess. This imbalance enhances the team's likability - they're less like the big playground bully and more like a kid that somehow always wins at rocks-paper-scissors.

Here's a breakdown of the players on the first non-Boston team I've ever cared about, and an ode to why their greatness should not be diminished:

Stephen Curry
When I fantasize about being a superstar basketballer, while being short, I basically imagine being Steph Curry. He has maximized the scoring potential of a 6'3" shooting guard, raising our peak expectations of the position from a Steve Nash or Allen Iverson. Not only is he the best shooter of all time, but he's so much better than the second best, shattering 3 point records in a ruthlessly Ruthian manner. But it's his amazing handle, the way he can get one step away from his defender who knows not to let him shoot, the way he drives to the hoop and makes difficult layups and floaters look automatic, and the flashy passes he delivers when teams overload on him and forget he's a true point guard. He's not perfect - Curry is sloppy, turning it over more than he should, and with his slight build he occasionally gets exposed on defense.  But with the way he was overlooked coming out of high school (3 star recruit!), going to the small conference Davidson, and even after scoring all those buckets in college (including 30 to knock out Georgetown) being drafted behind 4 guards, and spraining his ankle 5 times, Stephen Curry has overcome so much. Pablo Torre's article on how all his ankle rehab work has made him better post-injury made me realize just how hard Curry has worked. He is this incredible culmination of a phenomenally coordinated athlete with a naturally great shot and an insane work ethic. Through it all, he's managed a very likable mix of self-confidence and humbleness en route to winning 2 MVPs and becoming everyone's favorite player.

Klay Thompson
If Curry is an otherworldly shooter, Thompson is simply a best-of-this-world shooter. At 6'8", his highlight reel includes some blocks and dunks in addition to all those 3's. To have both these incredible shooters on the same team at the same time defies probability and implies that they've pushed each other to shoot better. They're both also sons of former NBA players and relatively unheralded coming out of high school. Klay was the 11th pick in the 2011 draft. Unlike Curry, who was famous as a freshman, I hadn't heard of Klay until the Warriors were starting to get good. When Klay gets hot, he gets really hot, with an insane record-breaking 37 point 3rd quarter this past year. He probably couldn't lead a team consistently like Curry does, but goodness is he deadly on this team.

Draymond Green
Listed at 6'7", Green somehow spends most of his time playing either the 4 or the 5, and among the Warriors starters, is the only good defender. He's the biggest mouth, the most boisterous, and the one with the biggest chip on his shoulder after getting drafted 35th coming out of Michigan State. He does so many incredible tasks on the court, from quarterbacking the defense to rebounding to incredible passing to making hustle players to draining 3 pointers. He was 2nd in the league with 13 triple doubles in the regular season. While his offensive efficiency is low for this team, Green is such a great glue guy that the Warriors really can't win without him. In some ways he's as unique a player as Curry and as important to the team, even getting 2 second place MVP votes this year.

Andrew Bogut
Do people remember that Andrew Bogut was a #1 overall pick? The Australian who played college ball in Utah was sorely missed in the last 2 Warriors losses. He never really fulfilled #1 pick expectations, but he didn't fail either, peaking at 15.9 points/game and 10.2 rebounds/game and 2.5 blocks/game in 2009-10. His stats look low this year as Bogut doesn't feature much in the Warriors' offense and isn't part of their lineup of death, but he does start for a reason. When Green plays on the wing, Bogut is their only real rebounder. His passing, picks and veteran savvy are very noticeable, and on the other side of the ball, Bogut is a main reason this team of shooters is well above average defensively.

Harrison Barnes
Barnes was the guy most valued coming out of high school, winning the Morgan Wootten award (top high school senior) and named a pre-season All-American at UNC before he even played a game. Two solid but not amazing college years had him drafted 7th onto this Warriors' team, where he's never been the major offensive threat. Barnes is the prototypical athletic slashing swingman, the kind of player who led most teams in scoring in the 2000's. He has updated his game for the era, transforming into a 39% three point shooter. So often he's the guy who gets buckets when the Splash Brothers' shots aren't falling. However Barnes played badly at the end of this finals, and he's probably the most expendable starting player of this team.

Andre Iguodala
I find Iguodala's story so compelling. Here's a great athlete who'd competed in the dunk contest, a no. 9 overall pick from Arizona who was once the star player with the Philadelphia 76ers. Touted as the AI to replace AI, Iguodala averaged 19.9 points for a mediocre team in 2007-08. Commentators noted though that if Iguodala was your best player, your team could never contend. Amazingly Iguodala may have listened, transforming his game from a volume shooter to an all-around player and defensive stalwart. The Warriors' fortunes really rose when coach Steve Kerr switched Iguodala with Barnes and let him come off the bench. He anchors their reserves, outclassing opposing bench players and his one-on-one defense frustrates great players, from Russell Westbrook to Kevin Durant to LeBron James. Furthermore, I have been so impressed by his incredible passes. A mediocre team has Iguodala as their best player, but a transcendent team has him as a 6th man. When Iguodala replaces Bogut in the lineup, he completes the Death Lineup, the small terrifying group who can all shoot 3's, making them immune to double teams. Iguodala has been so important to this team, and it's been amazing seeing him change from a ball hogging shoot-first guy into the consummate professional.

Shaun Livingston
Livingston's story is a bit like Iguodala's, a once highly-touted star athlete who has found himself as a valuable chess piece on this Warrior's bench. Livingston was the 4th pick of the 2004 draft coming out of high school. I remember the comparisons to Magic Johnson for this 6'7" guy who played point guard with rare court vision. However his story is unique due to his comeback from a gruesome injury. The disastrous landing that took out every joint and ligament in his knee is one of those graphic injuries that requires a viewer discretion warning. He basically missed the next 3 seasons and bounced around the league after that. His place on the Warriors' the last two years as Steph Curry's backup could not be more redeeming. He's had two injury-free seasons making great passes and occasionally stellar plays, participating for the first time in games that matter. When he shines, he looks like a 30 year old athlete who somehow has 12 years of NBA experience, and you forget all about his injury. Who knows if he really could have played like Magic without that injury - he's never even scored more than 25 points in a game - but the way he's overcome setbacks and contribute to this great team is inspiring.

Steve Kerr and Luke Walton
There are other bench players worth mentioning, like Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli, but I'm going to skip right to the coaches. It's no coincidence that the greatest 3 point shooting team of all time is coached by two fantastic 3 point shooters. What they've done with this team has affected the whole NBA, with old school philosophies tossed aside in favor of 3 pointers and "stretch fives", centers who can also shoot. The creative play calls that Kerr employs to get Curry open and open up backdoor cuts when defenders overplay the perimeter has been amazing to watch. Above all, I'm impressed with his willingness to stick with the 3, which has always been thought of as a live and die gamble. The 2002-03 Boston Celtics under Jim O'Brien were the first team I ever watched, and they set 3 point records at the time, firing off almost 24 a game. Rodney Rogers and Walter McCarty were early stretch fives. When they were on they could beat great teams, but they only made 36% of their 3's overall and often got blown out when their shots didn't fall. This Warriors team shoots almost 32 3's a game and makes 41.6% of them. Sometimes they are cold and fall way behind in games, but Kerr continues to trust in the game plan. In Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Blazers, Steph Curry was 0 for 9 from 3 coming back from injury. I couldn't believe he was still shooting after clearly not having it, but he kept going and caught fire with 4 minutes left in the game. He then scored an astounding 17 points in overtime and the Warriors won.

Kerr and Walton might not have helped Curry become a better shooter - he was always in a league of his own. But behind the scenes they must have done well with players like Barnes, Green, Iguodala, Barbosa and Speights, who almost surely wouldn't be as deadly from long range on other teams. They've shown that optimizing this fundamental skill wins championships. Alas it wasn't enough this year.

Wringing Whitewashing Out to Dry

"Whitewashing" has been the term put to the casting of white actors/actresses into non-white roles. It has picked up steam as a mainstream issue, with Asian-American actors speaking up and Last Week Tonight doing a great hilarious piece covering the prevalence of this phenomenon. While I have no experience in the film industry, I have lots of experience as an Asian-American, and my journey co-opting my identity has been influenced by Asian-American representation in TV and film, and have thus observed this practice keenly.

Empress Dowager Cixi and advisor

In the pre-Civil Rights movement days, Hollywood whitewashing was flagrant, with blackface and yellowface deemed socially acceptable. The WTF-inducing examples are plentiful, from Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface and an ensemble of white people in 55 Days at Peking playing Chinese imperial figures.

Someone you know saw this in 1965

While plenty of articles grant this issue facetime and recount historical context, I haven't seen a fleshed out and nuanced understanding of 1) why is whitewashing an issue? and 2) when is something whitewashing? In creating this list, I found so many confounding grey areas. What is the right move here? What does the slippery slope take us to? This discussion deserves more back-and-forth than it gets.

Let's start with the easier question. Why is whitewashing bad? And why does it happen? In a movie like 55 Days at Peking, the whitewashing is dripped in colonialism. You can almost see the thought bubbles, "We need a Shakespearean-trained dramatist to portray Empress Dowager Cixi, not one of these Chinese actresses without theatrical class." We've certainly come a long way, but even if filmmakers nowadays do not harbor these same sentiments, they still need to be wary of belittling the abilities of minority thespians. However, the biggest complaints raised now is less the overt racism, but rather the institutionalized practice of reducing opportunities for non-white actors.  Filmmakers counter that they need bankable stars, so many of whom happen to be white. Minority actors rightfully respond that to become bankable stars, you have to get cast in the first place! Missing out on roles early on means missing out on exposure means missing out on more roles later on - producing a very white snowball effect. The mentality of sticking to "known quantities" reflects a lack of imagination, a peculiar quality for the film industry. The downstream consequences of this practice include an all white set of Oscar's Best Actor/Best Actress nominees #oscarssowhite.

The connections-heavy world of Hollywood, where many stars are themselves children of stars, poses a difficult barrier of entry. But less industry-specific causes exist too, such as self-segregation which pervades throughout society. I am sure there are many white producers, writers and directors who have primarily white friends - many who don't normally hang out in minority-filled crowds. The reverse is far less true, because minorities in this country by definition find themselves outnumbered by white people all the time. This bleeds into show business. So often you can just tell watching a show that their screenwriters are all white. Consider Friends, the successful decade-long show starring 6 white people, produced by another 10 white people. However this show was considered super mainstream. Lots of minorities watched it, and we didn't find that weird at all.  Sure the show only contained white experiences, but we're used to seeing that. Consider Tyler Perry's House of Payne, a successful show lasting 8 seasons, starring and produced, and watched nearly exclusively by black people. This whiteness-as-a-default is an entrenched characteristic of our society, (which is why fantasy characters or race-blind roles still so often end up played by white actors), and if you don't hang out with minorities, you only know the default.  Our society is moving towards Aziz Ansari's Master of None, which just as obviously appears written by a diverse staff who find it normal to discuss race.

In addition to depriving actors of color, when films addressing historical or cultural topics are whitewashed, the film itself can suffer. History and culture are passed down among sub-groups and latched onto one's core essence. It's very awkward then to see dances, rituals or poetry performed by people to whom they have not been passed down to. Not saying it can't be done with class, but I shiver hearing a white person recite translated Confucius. There is just this knee jerk reaction of "oh no you don't go there."

Where we draw the line is quite challenging though. Everyone gets offended differently and you can't please everyone, especially in this age. Zoe Saldana was criticized as being not black enough to play Nina Simone, and there was even furor at Irishman Pierce Brosnan playing Englishman James Bond.  As a stutterer, I would have preferred an actor with a real speech impediment play the main role in The King's Speech, though Colin Firth's performance won me over. Personally, when examining a casting or adaptation decision, my first barometer is the simple visual test: "does this person look the part?" Secondly, I believe strongly that power dynamics must be contextualized. Because French people do not face discrimination in America, we examine the Hollywood adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo differently than an adaptation of the West African story of Anansi.  Thirdly, "cultural distance" too factors in casting. Certainly there are differences between Latin American countries, but a sense of cultural proximity might allow Puerto Rican Benicio del Toro to portray the Argentine Che Guevara. What determines whether cultural distance is too great though has no one answer.

When Natalie Wood plays Maria in West Side Story, she doesn't completely fail the visual test, but her casting is still squeamish because of the uneven power dynamic between white Americans and Puerto Rican Americans. When Gary Oldman puts on an accent as the Russian villain Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One,  it's just a good performance in an action movie. Despite the Cold War history, present day dynamics between Russians and Brits or Americans are not particularly sensitive. And in the Russian-German-Kazakh co-production of Mongol, the majority of the cast is Mongolian, but main characters Genghis Khan and his rival Jamukha are played by Japanese and Chinese actors respectively, who learned Mongolian for their lines.  They look the part though and the movie flows without a hitch (at least to the non-Mongolian speaker). When Korean-Americans Randall Park and Ken Jeong play Chinese-American characters, they basically pass the visual test and aren't stealing jobs from Chinese-Americans - in our current setting, they are all in the same boat (or fresh off it), struggling for limited roles.

I need to add that I am holding Hollywood to a very high standard. Film studios all around the world, whether it's India, China or Nigeria, practice their own local ethnic washing methods. When those studios become as rich as Hollywood and those countries become as diverse as 2016 America, we can judge them to the same standard. And I know that Hollywood studios face intense financial pressure, and that a huge chunk of Americans do not share my sensitivities, or even actively oppose them as too "politically correct." But we should challenge nonetheless, for not only does Hollywood exhibit a microcosm of American ethnic issues, but it also commands the rare podium to affect it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it is getting way better. We have Anthony Mackie playing a rewritten Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Irfan Khan in Jurassic Park, John Bodega in Star Wars etc. We have hit shows like Empire, Fresh off the Boat, the Mindy Project and Jane the Virgin.  And then there's Hamilton. The progress has been real. But now, let's explore how much further we have to go.

From least to most egregious:

#13 - Dr. Strange (2016) - Tilda Swanton as the Ancient One

There's a fair amount of uproar about this role of a Tibetan spiritual guru being rewritten as a "Celtic mystic." I actually have less problems with this than you might think. I'm not a reader of the comics, but given that this character was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko to be a wise male sorcerer capable of astral projection, I read this character as an exoticization of Tibetan culture and all things "Far East" by western society? Since the Himalayas have historically been so remote and inaccessible to foreigners, myths like Shangri-La have long fascinated western culture. This character is more a manifestation of these myths (and maybe reverence for the Dalai Lama) then a proper imagining of a superhero Tibetan. 

Furthermore this character comes with political baggage. First, there are 8 million Tibetans in the world but only around 9,000 Tibetans in America. It's fair to say that it is logistically challenging to find a qualified actor of Tibetan ancestry to play this major role. Second, Marvel wants that China audience and Tibet is a very sensitive issue to China. The PRC Ministry of Culture probably would have blocked the movie had it cast a Tibetan actor or acknowledging the character's origin as Tibetan. That doesn't mean Marvel must bow to this political pressure, but they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Furthermore, let's say a Chinese actor looked and fit the part. That would have been even worse (power dynamic)! That sort of casting would have further marginalized Tibetan people. Giving it to a Korean or Japanese or Indian actor doesn't feel right either.

All in all, reimagining the character as a female Celtic mystic and getting away from those issues and letting Tilda Swinton do her thing isn't too terrible to me. The worst sin is the studio's admitted effects of trying to make Tilda Swinton look more Asian - they should go all the way and make her look super Irish or Scottish instead. Since the movie isn't released yet, we can wait and see how awkwardly they appropriate Tibetan customs, but until now this more or less gets a pass.

#12 - A Mighty Heart (2007) - Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl

I never knew even after watching the trailer for this film that the wife of beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl was of part Afro-Cuban descent (and part European and part Chinese). With tanning sessions, Jolie actually arguably passes the visual test, though she does need to wear a wig, which crosses into the ickiness of hairstyle appropriation. The real life Mariane Pearl actually stated she was elated to have Angelina Jolie portray her. Hard to blame her, it doesn't get more flattering than that. You could talk me into compromising my ethnic heritage if Brad Pitt wanted to play me in my life movie. Pearl's opinion matters a lot here, especially her own racial self-identity, and since she's also part-white, it's not the greatest sin to have a more white actress portray her.

#11 - The Social Network (2010) - Max Minghella as Divya Narendra

Initially, this one also didn't strike me as too offensive. Minghella's father is Italian and his mother from Hong Kong, of mixed Chinese, white and Indian Parsi extraction, just like my family. His appearance could kinda pass for Indian. But it really irked Aziz Ansari, as he expressed in Master of None ("We're all 1/16 something. I'm probably 1/16 black. Do you think they're going to let me play Blade!?"). And so I thought about this from his perspective more, and I realized here you have this historical Indian-American person and over 3 million Indian-Americans. I think you can do a little better than someone who "could kinda pass for Indian." We also seem to have one level of credulity for an Indian actor trying to pass as white, but another level for a white actor trying to pass as Indian.  Chalk this up as passing the visual test with a C-, but denying opportunities and insulting a real life figure.

#10 - The Martian - Chiwetel Ejiofor as Vincent Kapoor, Mackenzie Davis as Mindy Park

Even without reading the book, during the movie I could tell from the names that the casting seemed suspicious. While the author was not explicit, Vincent Kapoor was envisioned as Indian and Mindy Park as Korean. In the movie, they are Black and White respectively. Fictional whitewashing isn't egregious, especially when the race of the characters are irrelevant to the storyline. But on the other hand, this still diminishes the types of roles available to Indian and Korean actors respectively, which is the whole reason we're having this discussion. In a case like this, I believe the minor role, in this case Mindy Park, is more aggrieved, because of course you can find an Asian actress to produce a quality 2 minutes of screentime. Vincent Kapoor is a major character, and if you think Chiwetel Ejiofor is the person able to bring the most out of that character, I'll at least entertain your argument. I'll make the argument that you could have cast an Indian actor and the film would have done just as well artistically and commercially.

#9 - Aloha (2015) - Emma Stone as Allison Ng

This one caused an uproar when it happened. Emma Stone's character was inexplicably identified as half white, quarter Chinese, quarter Hawaiian, and based on a real person director Cameron Crowe met. When I first heard about this, I actually got excited! I assumed that Emma Stone must have been part Asian and I just hadn't known, like Keanu Reeves. When I discovered she wasn't, I assumed Cameron Crowe must have been part Asian. How could a white guy just cast a white girl to play a character like this in 2015? It made no sense. I haven't seen the movie, but I read that Allison Ng's ethnicity is largely superfluous to the plot. It establishes her connection to the island's heritage, but can easily be written out. So why leave it in at all?

Crowe says the character was inspired by a real person of that ethnic background and super proud of it, who really did appear white. If Crowe really thought this Asian heritage was important to the story, he should have cast a mixed Asian actress like Olivia Munn or Chloe Bennet. If he was committed to Emma Stone, he should've left out that part. But the current status treats mixed heritage as a prop, something you can simply put on as opposed to something that defines who you are. It does no justice to the nuances of growing up as a mixed person, especially in a diverse place steeped in colonial history like Hawaii.

#8 - Prince of Persia (2010) - Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia

So Persians are Caucasian, and Jake Gyllenhaal, a descendant of Swedish immigrants to America, is also Caucasian. Still I don't think I need to explain how culturally distant Sweden and Iran are, and this film gives zero fucks about that. This movie is the classic case of big budget Hollywood, casting a good looking, poorly acclaimed star and culturally appropriating non-Western concepts for a Western audience. The entire main cast is in fact white American or English actors, getting as diverse as Ben Kingsley, whose father was of Indian descent. If this movie were to be remade, it should probably occur in a fictional fantasy land without any obvious takes from real places.

#7 - Cloud Atlas (2012) - Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo Im

If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, this entry may elicit a WTF reaction. But there are legitimate artistic considerations here. The plot occurs several time periods, with the same actors and actresses reprising multiple roles over the periods. This includes a futuristic Seoul where several non-Asian actors, notably Jim Sturgess but also Hugo Weaving, James D'arcy and David Keith, portray Korean characters. To make their facial features appear more Asian, CGI is used essentially to create epicanthal folds. The net effect looks completely terrible. Such obvious high tech yellowface is somehow not considered socially taboo, as opposed to blackface, which is avoided in the movie.

It's fascinating to me how blackface seems to be the only clearcut ban in the Hollywood whitewashing game. Its slavery-days origins means that using blackface is either explicitly racist or ignorantly insensitive. Using makeup to appear Hispanic, East Asian or South Asian does not have the same historical baggage - but it still looks ugly. When a member of a privileged class makes such effort to look like a less privileged class, the simple visual strikes a queasy feeling that strips away human dignity.

The decision to reuse actors to portray the reincarnation themes of the book can be judged solely on its artistic merits. The cast displays impressive range and the makeup artists deserve great props. The yellowface does not further this artistic vision. Though its a strategy more common for the theater than for the cinematic screen, I think keeping the actors' appearances minimally altered and letting the audience use their imagination would have been best.

Most stunning may be how little controversy this yellowfacing generated. Researching this, I unfortunately came upon a PopSugar piece praising all the transformations, and gushes over the Brit heartthrob like this: "I have just three words for you: Asian Jim Sturgess." Jim Sturgess' own deleted tweet from the controversy showed his own enlightened understanding of the issue. "Yellowface? Blackface? Pinkface? Pinkberry? Blueberry? Strawberry? Bananas? Frozen Yogurt? All the toppings?  ... Lovely!" What the actual fuck?

#6 - 21 (2008) - Jim Sturgess as Jeffrey Ma

We got a pair of Jim Sturgesses! I'm not great at Blackjack, but I think when you're dealt a pair of Jim Sturgesses, you never split.  In this version, Sturgess doesn't go yellowface - he just replaces the ethnicity of a real person, the Chinese-American MIT graduate blackjack-winning. Ma downplayed his whitewashing and said, "I would have been a lot more insulted if they had chosen someone who was Japanese or Korean, just to have an Asian playing me." Despite my Brad Pitt joke earlier, I totally disagree with Ma here. Maybe fame or financial gain were more important to him that historical accuracy, and the film was also a dramatized adaptation of a book that itself significantly dramatized the real events, and Ma was not very involved in the whole process. Instead of criticizing him, it is much easier to criticize the filmmakers who "would have loved to cast Asians in the lead roles" but such Asians were unavailable. I doubt the white filmmakers ever thought what it would be like for a non-white actor to portray them in a movie inspired by their lives. 

#5 - Elizabeth, Michael and Marion (2016) - Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson

I think this yet-to-be-released movie is one of the most interesting cases on here.  Unlike Mariane Pearl, Michael Jackson explicitly stated that he did not want to be played by a white person and was proud to be a black American. Of course, Jackson was a weird, weird man with the palest skin and facial features that didn't look like anyone. Most black actors would not look anything like him. It remains to be seen how good this movie's makeup team is, but Joseph Fiennes doesn't look anything like Jackson either. Maybe studio execs thought, "If we can make his brother look like Voldemort, we can make him look like MJ." I think the appropriate course of action is to search for a light skin black actor, maybe a Wentworth Miller or Jesse Williams. No you're not going to get a perfect casting here, but you can at least try to not insult the American audience. For his part, Fiennes is pretty incredulous: "I'm a white, middle-class guy from London. I'm as shocked as you might be." 

#4 - The Last Airbender (2010) - Everything About the Movie

We had such high hope M. Night Shyamalan. Normal hope, not the kind that culminates in winning the Razzie for Worst Picture. The movie is based on a Nickeldeon TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender that is not actually a Japanese anime as I had thought, but an American creation by two white guys, heavily inspired by Japanese anime. The Avatar universe is full of architecture, themes and people  heavily inspired by East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Inuit and New World cultures. Though voiced mostly by white people, the characters are depicted in the anime as variously Asian. We can have a separate conversation about whitewashing in voice casting (it's not as bad), but let's see how the producers and Shyamalan handled this film. On one hand, the cast is very diverse with many parts for young actors and actresses of color. On the other hand, the main protagonists are all white (and not well-known stars), and the antagonists South Asian or Middle Eastern. All of these characters in the TV show appear East Asian or Inuit. Now, you can do something creative in this fictional world and put characters of an ethnicity into clothing, cultures, and even names atypical of that race to stretch our assumptions. But when one ethnicity represents the good guys, minority ethnicities represent the bad guys, and none of them are true to the show, then people will start judging the cultural appropriation, criticizing the acting and eventually put your film on this list.

#3 - The Lone Ranger (2013) - Johnny Depp as Tonto

I'm sure this movie wouldn't have been made without a big name playing Tonto of the Comanche tribe, and none of the big name stars in Hollywood are significantly Native American. Way back in the 1950s, Canadian Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels played the same role. I'm not sure whether this indicates that Hollywood has regressed in 60 years, or whether Canada has just always been more progressive. Depp claims to be part Cherokee, or maybe part Cree, and it's all pretty dubious. If you want to talk about uneven power dynamics, no example is more skewed than Native Americans and white Americans. The producers touted the presence of a Comanche advisor on set and they had dialogue in the dying Comanche language. Whatever. The film is a stupid remake of a stupid radio show of a stupid racist genre and it deserved to lose all these producers millions of dollars.

#2 - Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) - Christian Bale as Moses + Everything Else

This is basically the same concept as in Prince of Persia and Gods of Egypt (2016) with casting decisions that piss off modern Egyptians and don't give minority actors a chance.  Except the production team of Gods of Egypt actually recognized their mistakes, with director Alex Proyas and Lionsgate issuing apologies for not considering diversity. Director Ridley Scott of Exodus went the other way, dropping this memorable quote, "I can't mount a film of this budget...and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such...I'm just not going to get financed." This is not without truth, but it belies the fact that Scott didn't even try to fight this trend and simply doesn't care to understand why people like me are so bothered by whitewashing.

#1 - Dragonball Evolution (2009) - The Movie

The reason why I rank this movie with a $30 million budget worse than those larger films is because this one's personal. If you want to understand the backlash against whitewashing, you have to understand it on an emotional level, and no example causes more of an emotional response in me than this one.

I freaking loved the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z as a kid. In elementary school and middle school, I made sure I was home at 5:30 on weekdays to watch Goku kick butt. I didn't think too much about the cultural setting of the show, or even that the main human characters are all supposed to look Japanese. I had no idea that Goku was inspired by Sun Wukong, 孫悟空, the Monkey King from the Chinese folktale Journey to the West. None of that was important, the show was just awesome.

When I heard about this movie, it'd been many years since I cared about Goku, but I still got excited. Then one look into the trailer I physically shuddered. It was bad enough adapting the Dragon Ball Z epic into an American high school coming-of-age story. It was criminal to put a white guy into the main role. It was worse to keep most of the supporting cast Asian. I felt like it was a direct referendum: Asians are not cool enough to be the hero. They can play the supporting role, the wise kung fu trainer, but white people will never accept you as a leader or star. Having a no name white actor (who the fuck is Justin Chatwin) playing Goku, name unchanged and all, and Emmy Rossum (Shyamalan-esque career post-Mystic River) playing Bulma, is so mind-bogglingly jarring I still cannot bring myself to see this movie. You can make all the intellectual arguments against whitewashing, but sometimes the best argument is a visceral one. Fittingly, this movie was universally panned.