During my junior year of high school, my friend Kimberly and I stood at a Walmart deciding whether or not we wanted to buy potato wedges from the deli and the ladies behind the cash register called us over. They asked us what ethnicity we were. “I’m Chinese and she’s Vietnamese,” I replied and they looked surprised.

As part of the Asian American Pacific Heritage Month, Pacific Ties is looking at different AAPI student leaders on campus. In this edition, we interviewed Trent Kajikawa, the recently elected Academic Affairs Commissioner and current Academic Affairs Commission Chief-of-Staff.

On May 9, the Association of Chinese Americans (ACA) hosted its 26th annual Chinese American Culture Night called A Skill Called Chance, which took place at Royce Hall. Each year, an issue experienced by the Chinese American community is addressed through the form of a theatrical performance by UCLA students.

The lines can be long at certain hours of the day, but it’s definitely worth the wait. Plus, they give out free samples while you wait in line. Inside, they have a T.V. slideshow displaying Instagram photos of people tagged with Tpumps drinks.

My uncle still calls me Mulan as a joke because I loved that movie so much. In retrospect, Mulan had a huge impact on my life because this warrior princess was the first character who looked like me on screen. So to say that I was just “excited” about a live-action Mulan is a bit of a understatement.

With the passing of the 23rd anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots on April 29, it is important to recall that these protests are not isolated instances, but rather examples of how race relations, socioeconomic conditions, and systematic oppression intersect in a way that allows urban communities to become the breeding ground for repeated protests against police brutality since the 1960s.