East Pacific is Asia-in-America

West of the Rockies past the Great Plains to the Sierra Nevada is open country for the ruggedly solitary individual, or those out to establish a New Canaan like the followers of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.  The Pacific West defaulted on the New England homogeneity, in my estimation.  I call the coast, Asia-in-America.

I live in the northeast of China where the old Kogoryo west of the Yalu River is Korea-in-China, Yanbian Autonomous Region, where the signage system in the city of Yangi is maddeningly Hanggul (Korean) and Zhongwen (Chinese) only in my last visit.  Traditionally connected to North Korea, it eschews English all together!  Not even Russian and Mongolian make the grade as they do in Harbin, Heilongjiang and Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia.

 The Pacific West coast of the United States is Asian, thus, the  Pacific East designation.  To be sure, the Mexican influence is considerable but the native Americans from the Aleuts to the Mayas and all the native Americans in between are definitely Asian.  They crossed over through the Bering Straits long time ago, and have shared their DNA even traceable among the Incas of Peru.

The Sinophobia of America that resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 did not deter the Sino presence in the Pacific coast.  From Vancouver to Acapulco, there is no shortage of the dimsum appeal and there is an extensive network of tongs and clans that make the Shanghai eggroll, the ubiquitous chow mein and the popular dumpling a common fare in the prolific Sino dining tables.

Daly City just northwest of the SFO airport is Asian to the core.  Folks of Indian descent drive cabs, those who migrated from Fiji and Malaysia, not to mention the various Philippine dialects spoken in the area, dive fro crabs; the Zhonghua of the Hakka that is between Fukien (Fujian) and Cantonese (Guangdong) underneath the common putunghua (common language) predominates in the city.  SF in all its glory is a metro Asia.

A word about Asia.  The etymology of the term derives from the Assyrian word for anything east of Europe (Greece and Rome), so it is a negative definition.  To have Asia as a contiguous continent would include Europe, save it now refers to the geography east of the Urals down to the Bosporus, so Turkey straddles Europe and Asia.  The Middle East properly belongs with the Arabic nations of North Africa, but we refer to it as Southwest Asia, as the rest of the continent comprises South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Far East Asia, and China since Marco Polo.

Asia is thus a creation of the classical European mind more than a helpful category in geography.  The seamless continent, in fact, is Afro-Euro-Asia.  The Asia portion holds 60 percent of the planet’s population, bounded by the Urals, the Caucasus, the Suez, the Indian, Arctic and Pacific oceans.  Africa, Europe, and Asia were Europe’s mental division of three cultural continents until the Americas were discovered and Oceania got created.

 The etymology of Asia and Europe might have been determined by their location relative to the sun viewed from Akkadia (present day Turkey).  The Akkadian word asu and Persian word asa referred to the east where the sun rises while the Akkadian erebu is where the sun sets in the west.

It does not matter.  Asia is now a definition in progress.  In the famous Asiatiska folk, Nordisk familjebok, (2nd printing 1904), there were 36 ethnic images.  But not only is Asia a cultural-geographical definition still in progress, one’s social grid of the planet itself can no longer be contained just by the five categories of Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

For the cartographers and social scientists among our readers, I offer the social grid of three hemispheres (West, East, and South) at three continents each.  For the West, I have North America, Europe, and Russia; for the East, Sub-Asia, SinoAsia, and SEAPacifica (Southeast Asia and the Pacific); and for the South, NAME (North Africa and the Middle East), South Africa and South America. 

Chicago’s Ecumenical Institute in the 60s and its secular arm, the Institute of Cultural Affairs in the 70s, suggested a version of this social grid, three spheres and nine continents, and though boundaries and names might need calibrating, the general divisions still hold in my cognitive overview of planetary geography. 

Meanwhile, though the European categories are still universally used, and Asia more perceived for its location relative to Europe rather than the integrity of its landmass, diversity of its ethnics and demographics, we promote the non-European definition of the East Pacific of America’s west coast as Asia-in-America.

The Sino-Indo-Malay-Turkic main ethnic groups comprise contemporary Asia.   The west coast of North America is predominantly of this constituency, and its culture is a few miles removed from that of New England.  So, from San Diego to the traffic lanes of L. A. and the tunnels in the Bay Area to the bikes of Portland, the varied ITs of Seattle, and the Hakkas of Vancouver, I am very much at home.  Time to name the reality the way it is.