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| COVER STORY |
| Chinafornia |
| In myriad ways, California is moving West
to East.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY REAGAN
LOUIE
TEXT BY MICHAEL ZIELENZIGER |
COMPETITION, COOPERATION, AND ASSIMILATION—these
characterize California's ever-closer connections to Greater China.
For as the world grows smaller and China's presence looms ever larger,
no place feels this global convergence more than California, where
more than 10 percent of the population is Asian; where half of all
citizens of China who travel visit here, where California businesses
send billion in goods to China each year; and the central focus of
California's cultural interchange, foreign investment, trade, and
technology transfer is now squarely focused on the Pacific Rim.
| China
is now one of California's biggest markets, even while it emerges
as one of California's largest commercial
competitors. |
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"China is so much a part of the way people live
their lives here today," says Emily Sano, director of San Francisco's
Asian Art Museum, who reached this conclusion only after exploring
the connections between China and California as the museum prepared
to sponsor an exhibit on Taoism in 2001. "Whether it's martial arts,
herbal medicine, or meditation, these are elements of Chinese culture
we feel and see all around us." Or as Amy Klatzkin, one of an estimated
5,000 Bay Area mothers who has adopted a Chinese baby girl in the
past decade, puts it, "It's almost impossible to have your child be
the only Asian kid in class."
Today, about one-third of San Franciscans are of
Asian heritage, as are 20 percent of Bay Area residents and 11 percent
of all Californians, according to the Chinese American Voters Education
Project. So are nearly one-third of all entering students at Berkeley.
"It's a comfortable place for an Asian student," says Elaine Huang,
a junior studying economics and Chinese language, and, with parents
who were born in Southern China, seems to keep a foot on each continent.
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