I think it is a wonderful way to live that I can get 250 different kinds of tacos on one neighborhood, and they are all different. That all of South Korea’s latest and greatest food trends are here in the same city, along with Taiwan’s. It’s pretty nice to have local and regional Chinese food across the entire Chinese diaspora at all price points in SGV. I think it also reflects many different lives and many different ways to live.

Sometimes people from my tiny country bemoan how ‘messy’ this place is. It is, but it’s also messy because I think there is no one, right way to live here. You could live here forever and never speak a word of English and you can still have a life. At least, it’s that way in big cities. I like that, actually. Integration and assimilation aren’t always positives. I like having 250 types of tacos. (And I dislike nationalist projects that impose erasure on immigrant groups as a cost of entry)