🐯 Welcome to the Jungle: The Official Den of Johnny (Tiger) Tai

One of my favorite jokes is that Chinese people are the only people Chinese people are racist against. And before anybody gets upset, relax. I’m Chinese,  I was born Chinese, I grew up Chinese, my parents are Chinese, my relatives are Chinese. I’ve spent over forty years dealing with Chinese people; I think I’ve earned the right to bitch :) The funny thing is that whenever I make this joke, every Chinese person within hearing distance immediately starts nodding and chuckling. Not cautiously, not politely—just full recognition, like I’ve just said something everybody already agreed on but nobody wanted to say out loud. Now I’m not saying Chinese people are uniquely terrible. Every culture has its own internal chaos. But there is something uniquely funny about how a Chinese person can walk into a room full of Chinese people and immediately find twenty-seven reasons to dislike the other Chinese people in that same room. In the video attached to this post, I go into the ...

Image:  A small art-gallery room with white walls, a light wood floor, and white track lighting on the ceiling. Framed artworks hang along the left wall in a row and also on the far wall; each frame appears to contain a brown-toned, textured image, with small white labels beside some pieces. Four adults are standing and talking. On the left, a man with light skin wearing a tan cap, glasses, a green sweater, and gray pants stands facing a woman with light skin and shoulder-length white hair wearing a light gray sweater and blue jeans; she has her arms crossed and a phone in one hand. On the right side of the room, two men are talking: one with light skin wearing a black puffy vest and dark pants stands with his back turned, facing another light-skinned man wearing a dark beanie, a light blue shirt, and dark pants. At the far right, a table covered with a black tablecloth holds a metal beverage urn and a few small items. A white door is on the far wall behind the group. [ ] There ar...

So here’s the piece: a curvy nude woman, balanced in a high kick, casually supporting a cat on her raised leg like it’s just another Tuesday. It looks intentional. It looks confident. It even looks a little… seductive. What it doesn’t look like is the truth behind it. Which is: this all started with me standing in my kitchen in my underwear… balancing my cat like an idiot. Yeah. That’s the origin story. Image:  Person kneels among stacked cardboard shipping boxes indoors. Two orange tabby cats cuddle close; one shows a white paw. Amazon logos visible. Cardboard scratcher nearby. Let’s rewind a little… A few years ago, I had dinner with one of my high school art teachers—about 10 or 15 years after I’d graduated. Halfway through the meal, she leans in and goes: “Okay, I have to ask you something. All of us teachers used to wonder this… but it never felt appropriate back then.” I already knew this was going somewhere dangerous. “How is it,” she ...