Mixed Asians Who Shaped the World

Bruce Lee

To kick off this series we have one of the most iconic and impactful mixed Asians in pop-culture, Bruce Lee! Firstly, yes, he’s mixed Asian which many don’t know, born in San Francisco in 1940. He’s a descendent of Sir Robert Hotung, famous Eurasian Hong Kong business tycoon. I think Lee’s impact on the world and how people view Asian men in general cannot be understated. In my view, his legacy is a double-edged sword, not to speak on the man himself, but the cultural shift his popularity left in Western society. Asian men now had an icon to idolize, but the stereotype of all Asians being masters of martial arts intensified dramatically. I could go on and on about his life and legacy, but in the end, he undeniably changed the world.

Charles J. Pedersen

Charles J. Pedersen, the pioneering and Nobel Prize winning organic chemist. If you know what a crown ether is (I did not and still can’t tell you after reading the Wikipedia article), then you should thank this man. Born in Busan, Korea, in 1904 to a Norwegian father and Japanese mother, he grew up largely in Japan before going to university in the United States, where he would study chemical engineering. His groundbreaking research in chemistry would earn him a Nobel Prize, one of the few to win it in any sciences category without a PhD. Now most of you probably haven’t heard of him, but that’s in part a big reason why I wanted to make this series of artwork to show how mixed Asians have shaped or impacted the world in ways many of you may not realize.

Nancy Kwan

Nancy Kwan, a Hong Kong Eurasian born in 1939. She was one of the first prominent Eurasians to act and star in Hollywood and other studios around the world, along with Yul Brynner. She stared in over 50 films in her lifetime, with the earlier ones at a time where it was more common to cast white actors to play Asian and Eurasian roles. Kwan was able to play both Asian and Eurasian characters as well as others throughout her career, probably due to not looking fully one way or the other.

Much like Bruce Lee’s legacy, that intensified the stereotypes of all Asians knowing martial arts, Kwan’s rise to fame and the roles she was cast intensified the perceptions of Asian women being hypersexual, becoming a cultural and sex icon in her own right in the early 1960s. In hindsight we can more clearly examine the good, bad and ugly of the types representation and lasting impacts they had, such as Kwan’s most famous film, Flower Drum Song in 1961 (first of only a few major Hollywood films with an all Asian cast), but undeniably, Nancy Kwan certainly helped shape the world.

Ana Gabriel

María Guadalupe Araujo Yong, or better known as Ana Gabriel, is a mixed Chinese/Mexican singer, songwriter — who over her long career has released dozens of studio, compilation and live albums, many of them achieving platinum status and winning lots and lots of awards. She is one of the most iconic singers for many traditional Mexican songs, but also excelled with more contemporary genres of music in Mexico. With her decades long career, and her music reaching wide across the entire Spanish speaking world beyond Mexico, Ana Gabriel may be arguably the most well known and influential mixed Asian musical star — though we’ll cover some more in the future that may take that particular prize.

José Rizal

José Rizal. A Filipino Mestizo (Tisoy) of mixed Tagalog, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish heritages. He is regarded today as one of the greatest national heroes of the Philippines. He was truly an amazing man, speaker of many languages, poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, ophthalmologist, sketcher, painter, sculptor, martial artist, pistol and fencing duelist etc. etc. etc. WHEW. And I didn’t even list it all!

But what’s most impactful from Rizal is how his many writings on the then colonial status the Philippines were credited in part for inspiring the Philippine Revolution, as well as it’s justification and support in the eyes of people around the world. His execution by the Spanish military for allegedly playing a part in inciting the revolt would only further fuel the Filipino struggle for independence. After the United States shortly thereafter conquered the Philippines, Rizal’s legacy continued to alter U.S. government policy on treating their new colonial citizens more fairly, and he would also later inspire other independence movements in Indonesia against the Netherlands, decades after his untimely death.

Few other mixed Asians had such a large geopolitical impact on the world as Rizal, except for... well, you’ll all find out in the next issue of MAM (or on my IG).