How to Speak Better and Get the Girl
March 28, 2011
My latest article on Amped Asia. You can see it on their site here. I reference some videos and have added a couple of the clips below for your convenience. If the words in the jpgs below are too small, you can right-click the image and enlarge it separately.
How to Improve Your Verbal Skills to Help Your Dating Life
Question from fan Brian: “How do you improve your verbal skills? Some people are just not as gifted with their words as others, especially for us Asian guys who grew up speaking an Asian language at home.”
[Edit: The youtube clip from Eyes Wide Shut just got blocked by Warner. Go figure. That clip was great as there was also some great alpha male body language and movement by Cruise (being more like his natural self) in the 3rd minute of this clip, which gradually disappears as the rest of the long movie progresses and Cruise's character loses self-confidence. Let me know if you find a new clip of the same part of the movie.]
So there you have it. Speak slower. Diversify your vocabulary. And free your mind to be in the moment without self-censoring.
As usual, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to write to me at: david “at” asianrake.com
Cheers,
David
How to Use Humour to Attract Women
March 7, 2011
This is my latest article on Amped Asia. You can check out my article on “How to Use Humor to Attract Women” here.
I’ve reproduced it below for your convenience. If the jpegs are too small, click on them, and that will enlarge them for you in a new browser.
As always, comments are welcome!
Question from Matthew: “Everyone knows that humor is a big attraction tool. How does someone who’s not very funny, or is perhaps soft-spoken, develop a good ability with humor?”
Hey Matthew,
You are totally correct that humor is a big attraction tool.
If you can’t even make a girl laugh, there’s very little chance you’ll be able to attract her. If you CAN make her laugh, you’ve got a good sign she’s at least comfortable with you and may accept your advances.
Lack of humor is a problem endemic to Confucianized cultures, including East Asian societies. We’re taught to think logically, to be conformists, and to be obedient to our parents and elders. Our Confucianized parents raised us to be good mathematicians, engineers, and classical pianists. We aren’t using to living in the mental world of the ridiculous or doing and saying outrageously bizarre things.
But just like any other skill, being comedic and conveying humor are things you can learn, practice, and master. I’ll give you three quick tips any Asian brothers or sisters can use to channel their inner Russell Peters.
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1. EXAGGERATE TO ABSURDITY
Dialogue 3
You (as a guy approaching the most hottest women in the bar or club): “Hey look, I know you guys are soo terribly unattractive that no guys would ever hit on you… So, I thought I’d do you a favor and make you look good… You guys are my good deed for the week (sly smile).”
Don’t do this on average-looking girls or on women lacking self-esteem. This is reserved for women who are beautiful and know they’re beautiful. They will get the joke 
Check out Russell Brand for exemplary cases of the “Exaggerate to Absurdity” strategy, especially his interview with Nerina Pallot. For the Russell Brand Nerina Pallot interview, click here.
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2. POSITIVE MISINTERPRETATION
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3. GET YOUR FRIENDS LAUGHING FIRST (AND GET READY TO LAUGH AT YOURSELF)
How to Practice Approaching Even in Close Knit Social Circles
December 11, 2010
Just published another Amped Asia article. Lance and his team are doing some valuable work over there for the cause of Asian minorities, especially Asian guys, so I’m more than happy to help out.
My latest article deals with what you can do to practice your skills in approaching and attracting women, even when you’re operating in tight-knit social circles where everybody seems to know everybody else… which is the case in Singapore.
I was shocked at how I’d meet new people a couple of years after I had moved here, and then I’d find out later that we already had 75 Facebook friends in common. You’d never find that level of inter-connectedness in North America. 20 mutual friends that you didn’t know about, yes. But 75? In one case, there was even a guy I had just met after 2 years living here with whom I already had 101 mutual friends.
So here are my 3 quick tips. Check them out here: How to Practice Approaching Even in Close Knit Social Circles.
Excellent Movies for Modeling
February 21, 2010
Interview with Amped Asia
August 5, 2009
Here’s the link to an interview I did a while back with Amped Asia, a prominent Asian-American pop culture website. Enjoy!
Empowering Asian Men, Part II
April 13, 2009
Rochelle graciously replied to my original article, which you can see on the post before this. You can find my reply to her reply here on Amped Asia. You can see her response to my original article here.
My Reply to Rochelle’s Reply to My Reply to Her Reply to that Guy Who Wrote That Letter About How Rochelle’s Racist
I love how this forum can facilitate reasoned discussion on this thorny topic.
First, the accolades. I am very grateful for Rochelle’s thoughts in these three articles. She is doing all Asian-American men a great service by listing what she perceives as weaknesses in Asian-American men. And she does this almost without any self-consciousness of how politically incorrect some of her claims are. For this, I applaud her. Too many people are afraid to speak their minds because of political correctness.
I truly enjoy how Rochelle lets loose, even though her arguments are in places heavily tainted by Eurocentric and especially American-centric assumptions and viewpoints.
She and I agree on most points regarding the current flaws in Asian-American men.
I’ve been telling Asian men for years informally, and over a year formally on my site, that they need to be more dominant, aggressive, adventurous, confident to the point of being almost cocky, and to stand tall and buff up.
Advice on what guys need to change about themselves is so much more powerful when it comes from an attractive girl. I have no idea how hot Rochelle is, but I’m imagining a hot girl, lol. I will point to Rochelle’s assessments as data and evidence for my claims and admonitions regarding the above points.
As for the disagreements: Clearly, Rochelle and I don’t have access to the facts that would settle our core disagreement here, which comes down to the physical features of the Asian race versus non-Asian races.
I admitted as much in my original article. And then I said that since all Rochelle offered were specific cases, I too would offer isolated cases, which is what I did systematically.
I’m not going to reiterate my cases and evidence, which you can find in my original article.
In her rejoinder, Rochelle seems to retract her original statement about “Asian men” since she doesn’t want to make claims about Asian men everywhere in Asia or the world, and rightly so.
Also, she neglects to address the personal examples I cited about Chinese men in China and about Asians from the northern steppes, including Mongolians.
More tellingly, she did not speak to one of my main points, which is that for Asian-American men to get in touch with their Asian roots and discover the alphaness in their Asian heritage, they really need to spend an extended period living in Asia and hanging out with real Asian alpha males.
The solution is not as easy as saying to Asian-American men, “Hey, be like those white guys and black guys over there who are taking all your Asian women.”
For an Asian-American to go that route is already emasculating. The Asian-American male would have to admit that yes, my genes and heritage have let me down, white men are socially superior, and I aspire only to become like those white alpha males physically and socially. This is self-defeating, not to mention utterly demoralizing.
Rather, one of the secrets to turning the tide of Asian-American masculinity is a re-connection with the local or native Asian alpha male. At present, they are rarely found outside of Asia. After all, there is no good reason for the top dogs in their own country to immigrate to a completely foreign field. By the way, this applies to the most beautiful Asian women, as well. See my post on “Is It Easier or Tougher for Foreign Guys in Asia?”
The purpose is to see firsthand what a natural Asian alpha male is like and how different they can be from non-Asian alpha males. Admittedly, these native Asian alphas can be hard for the average foreigner to find.
But the example they set is empowering.
You don’t have to be like the alpha white guys. Don’t take Rochelle’s point as “Be more like those alpha white guys.” Even if that was her intention, I’d like to think she had something nobler in mind.
Be the Asian alpha male. There are particular Asian ways of being alpha. One of the best ways to do this is to learn from native Asian alphas.
Make your genetics, your race, and your cultural heritage work FOR you.
Asian-American brothers, stand up for yourselves! Don’t make me be your Tyler Durden. Be your own Tyler Durden!
Okay, that sounds pretty funny, lol. But I’m trying to be serious, here.
Now to the rest of Rochelle’s rejoinder.
In most of these disagreements over the empirical evidence, we are talking past each other.
Part of the problem was that I may not have been clear enough in my earlier article, and for that, I accept all the blame. I will try to be clearer here.
With half the world’s population, Asia still couldn’t produce more than a handful of guys who could compete at the highest level of a sport that requires the traits that I’m talking about (strength, height, stature, etc).
I guess she’s referring to basketball. Yes, I readily acknowledge America’s domination and promotion of this sport and of how few Asians are competing at the top levels. There are, however, plenty of sociological, economic, historical, and even political reasons for this. This has hardly anything to do with whether there are enough tall Asians, LOL.
Even worse is American Football where there are barely any Asian players at all, much less a superstar.
Yes, America dominates American football, LOL. I don’t think any Asian country even cares about whether they field an American football team.
I personally love American football. But let’s face it. American football is not even an international sport. It wouldn’t matter if I were 6’5”, 230 lbs., and could run 40 yards in 5 seconds. I still wouldn’t have a clue where to get the equipment, find the right field, or even locate other players to play American football in, say, Beijing or Singapore.
Okay, so basketball and American football… Hmm… Can we say, “Team USA!”
Even in a sport like tennis where pure athleticism wins over strength and stature, there are very few Asian players that can compete with the Russians, Americans, and Europeans.
Tennis? Why tennis? Why not martial arts, like Tae Kwon-do or Judo? Or even boxing, in which China did win a gold medal at the recent Olympics.
I suppose now we’re going to go through the sports one by one and argue over whether Asians have the potential to compete at the highest level. But this would be futile.
My original point was that there is nothing inherent or genetic in the physical build or stature of Asian men that prevents them from getting to the highest levels in any major sport.
There are plenty of sociological, economic, political, and historical reasons why certain countries have dominated other countries in certain sports.
There is no human race that has any significant advantage genetically over any other human race in any international sport.
I am quite frankly shocked that I would even have to make this statement explicitly. Perhaps I’ve been too long in the ivory tower…
Of course China is going to train great gymnasts and ping pong players, but just because they have some great athletes in those sports doesn’t mean the whole race is athletic.
Wow. I must be misreading here. Ignoring the American-centric bias towards certain sports here, I still can’t be interpreting this rightly.
Rochelle can’t possibly be claiming that the WHOLE RACE of ASIANS is inherently physically inferior.
She must mean, instead, that historically, non-Asian countries have been dominant in more international sports than Asian countries have.
I am happy to agree with that empirical claim, even if it is historically contingent.
Let’s conclude with a convergence.
If you notice I wrote about “Where in Asia can you find the charismatic and dominant equivalent of Brad Pitt in Fight Club” I didn’t say “Where in Asia can you find people who have a body like Brad Pitt.” The keyword here is the charismatic and dominant portrayal of Tyler Durden that Brad Pitt displayed that is really key… The issue I wanted to address with the Brad Pitt example was that Asian men are simply not as dominant with their words or their actions as they could and should be.
This part I really like. I misunderstood her original point, thinking that she meant Brad Pitt’s physical appearance. What she really meant was that more Asian-American men should be like Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden.
Thank you, Rochelle, for saying this. I totally agree with you that Asian-American men in particular need to stand up for themselves and be more like the Tyler Durden character in Fight Club. In fact, that is a running theme in the PUA (pickup artist) movement.
I am Asian and I love my Asian heritage, but sometimes I’m just fed up with Asian guys that simply need to “man up” and ask me out on a date or I’m mad that some Asian guys don’t care enough about their body… Instead of having Asian men whining that white guys are stealing their girls, why not go out and steal some white girls?
Here, here.
Dudes, quit your whining. Stand up straight. Keep your chin up. Speak loudly. Learn to be dominant. Step out from under your dad’s shadow, and stop being a momma’s boy. Be your own man.
For more on the basics, get my Dating 101 audio course, and check out the Best of the Blog articles on my site: www.asianrake.com I’m going to be churning out more material for you, so stay tuned.
Thanks, Rochelle, for the great discussion.
Play on, The Asian Rake.
Empowering Asian Men
April 13, 2009
This is an article that appeared on Amped Asia here. My aim is to contribute to a broader movement aimed at improving the self-image of Asian men and shaping general perceptions of Asian men as being sexy and sex-worthy. I believe this is as worthwhile as any academic project out there, especially in Asian studies.
On the Physical Appearance and Dominance of Asian Guys
This article was originally inspired by fellow columnist Rochelle Nguyen’s article, which was in response to a letter written in reaction to her original article entitled, “Five Reasons Asian Girls Like White Guys.” It’s also taken me about a month to write because I wanted to ensure that I wrote dispassionately with a cool-head and because business got really busy recently.
I agree almost entirely with her original piece. Her main point was that Asian men lacked certain personality traits that kept them from being as dominant in social interactions as white men. I actually concur with her on this and am actively working to help empower Asian men in this respect. And I agree with almost everything she wrote in her follow-up article. Everything, that is, except the following.
This is from the respondent’s letter. No doubt, a non-native English speaker wrote this, as it’s ungrammatical in places with spelling errors.
“Yes you have at some some clue in this, it is true you are brainwashed by white beauty standards, a social illness that has hurt so many women. And of course there are plenty of asian men are also big, muscle, tall, athletic PLENTY! you have been deprived.”
This is Rochelle’s response to the paragraph.
“Oh please, this one is a no brainer. Even the leading men in Asian cinema can’t compare to the leading men of Hollywood. Where in an Asian film can you find the charismatic and dominant equivalent of Brad Pitt in Fight Club? Can Jackie Chan or Jet Li compare? Or better yet, those ladyboys that have feminized themselves that seem to plague Korean media? I do agree that there are Asian men who are big, muscular, tall, athletic, etc, but it’s easy to say that there’s more white guys who have those attributes. White culture is totally obsessed with being alpha men. Football players, wrestling, bodybuilding, etc. Do you really want to argue that there are more Asian men than white men that possess those characteristics? And you say I’ve been deprived?”
I realize it may be unfair to use Rochelle’s writing here as fodder and stalking horse for my own points. This paragraph seems more like an exception to the rest of her piece. In any case, I’m using it as an example of a typical perspective on the physical appearance of Asian men.
I don’t normally like to wade into such minefields as racial prejudices. On such topics, reasoned argumentation often gives way to emotional appeal.
However, given that the readership of the Amped Asia site includes many Asian-American men, I wish in this article to help disabuse Asian men of self-limiting negative stereotypes and misconceptions regarding their Asian masculinity and heritage. This is to begin in some small way to cut off the limiting beliefs that American and other Western societies impose on Asian-American men.
A Message to our Asian-American Sisters
First, allow me to go on a preliminary tangent and speak to our Asian-American sisters to explain why their Asian-American brothers are so caught up in this topic.
It’s much easier to accept criticism about something you have the power to change. Critiques of your social skills or your fashion sense are relatively easy to swallow.
However, when someone says something like “White men are bigger, taller, more muscular, and more athletic than Asian men,” this strikes at the root of Asian men’s identities. Yes, with work, an Asian man can and should become more muscular or athletic.
But without radical surgery, an adult male usually cannot change his height or shoe size. Such categorical assertions will and should, if we want masculine Asian guys, generate a outrage from Asian men.
As Asian-American men, moreover, we will feel a sense of betrayal when our Asian-American sisters fail to understand us or support us. We grew up alongside our Asian sisters, were raised by Asian mothers and aunties, and share a common Asian heritage with our Asian female counterparts. We view them as part of our “in-group.” So when they perpetuate stereotypes and misconceptions about us, we feel a sense of betrayal.
Perhaps this is misplaced. After all, they are just echoing what the media and other sources of social influence have fed to them.
There are even some Asian-American brothers (some of whom run some Asian-American websites trying to make Asian-American guys into better Asian men) who also perpetuate the view that Asian men in Asia are effeminate and weak, that Asian-American men should in some sense repudiate their Asian heritage, and that American culture is more masculine and produces men superior to what traditional Asian culture produces.
So we can’t put all the blame on our Asian-American sisters. Sometimes, too, we as the sons of Asian immigrants, engage in self-perpetuating stereotyping practices. We, too, self-Orientalize. We ought to acknowledge our own complicity in the current, sorry state of affairs. But it sure would help if our Asian-American sisters would understand.
Just The Facts, Ma’am
Second, let’s take a look at the factual claims made here.
The central claim is that “more white men are tall, big, muscular, and athletic than Asian men.” Furthermore, Rochelle asserts that “it is easy to say” this.
I wonder where the evidence is for such sweeping claims. Asia includes China, North Korea, India, and a total population of over four billion people, making up roughly two-thirds of the world’s population.
Who among us has reliable records of the current height, weight, and body fat to muscle ratio of the population of North Korea, The People’s Republic of China, or even India? Maybe the CIA.
How, then, can we make accurate factual claims about the total number of tall, muscular, and athletic Asian men in the world? This is not even mentioning how vague these terms are in the first place, a point I shall come to later (how muscular is “muscular”?).
In absence of any hard data, let us indulge, as Rochelle does, in anecdotal evidence and at least give some specific examples.
While my examples are drawn mainly from China, as my Ph.D. research focused on this area, and I am of Chinese descent, I’m certain that a little more research would likely turn up comparable data for Japan (sumo wrestlers and samurai come to mind), Vietnam, the Philippines, and especially Korea.
Part of the misconceptions prevalent among Asian-Americans about Asian culture stem from the extremely small sample size upon which they often draw. This applies to just about everything in Asian culture.
I think it completely laughable that Asian-Americans think they are experts about Asia because they drink bubble tea (or boba) every day, munch on California rolls, and shop in the grocery store in Koreatown, or because they spend the occasional summer with their relatives in Asia. I remember the days in Toronto when people wouldn’t believe me that Mandarin Chinese is spoken by the majority of Chinese in China. They were convinced that Cantonese was the main dialect because that’s all they heard in the Chinatowns!
Asia is a complicated place. To someone who has devoted almost a decade to the academic study of Asia, this is the mother of all understatements.
Take just China for example. Most immigrants to North America, until very recently, came from southern China, mainly Hong Kong and Taiwan. Southern Chinese tend to be come from leaner, ectomorphic stock. Through most of Chinese history, dating back at least a millennium and a half, southern Chinese were considered the scholars and artists while the northern Chinese composed most of the martial class.
The people of the northern steppes were some of the greatest warriors in the history of the world. By the thirteenth century, the Mongols had swept from the Sea of Japan to the Holy Roman Empire, conquering and ruling over 20% of the world’s total land area.
Northern Asians, who share in the ancestries of northern Chinese and Koreans, have included some of the tallest, most muscular, and most athletic men in the history of the world.
Given that the tallest and biggest Asians have historically originated from northern Asia and that most of America’s Asian immigrant population is from points farther south, it makes sense that Americans would form the misconception that Asians are homogenously short and skinny.
According to the latest report (2008) from the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, as an official U.S. Census Information Center, Asians comprise 14.9 million American residents or about 5% of the total population. The largest sub-group is of Chinese descent, numbering 3.6 million. Most of these originate from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and southern China. Recently, there has been a marked upsurge in mainland Chinese immigrants.
The second, third, and fourth largest groups are neither Korean nor Japanese, which may come as a shock to those living near sourthern California’s Koreatowns and Little Tokyo. Korean residents in America number 1.5 million and Japanese residents total 1.2 million. Indians comprise the third largest group at 2.7 million. The second and fourth largest groups are actually Filipinos at 2.9 million and Vietnamese at 1.6 million. Notice that Filipinos and Vietnamese are from southeast Asia. So there are relatively few northern Asian immigrants in America, though that situation is now starting to change.
So the small sample of Asia that you get in America is misrepresentative of Asia as a whole. Asia is big. There are all kinds of Asians, including groups that are generally tall and big.
Height
Where in the world is the world’s tallest man? That’s right. China. Inner Mongolia, to be exact. His name is Bao Xishun, and he stands at 7’9” (2.36m) and is a relatively healthy 60 years old. Incidentally, the world’s tallest woman ever on record was also Chinese. Who is the tallest player in the NBA? That’s right. Yao Ming. A Chinese guy. His hometown is Shanghai, though he most likely has Northern Chinese ancestry.
Muscular
In the most recent Olympic games (Beijing 2008), which team dominated the gold medal standings overall? Yes, the home team: China. 51 gold medals compared to 36 by the US and 23 by Russia.
Take gymnastics, for instance. Certainly, gymnastics is one of the top sports requiring a great combination of strength and agility. Have you seen those Olympians on the rings? Their armpit muscles are bigger than most girls’ biceps, lol. Which team totally trounced the competition? Yes, right again. China. China took home gold medals in the Men’s Individual All-Around, Men’s Floor Exercise, Men’s Pommel Horse, Men’s Rings, Men’s Parallel Bars, Men’s Horizontal Bar, and the Men’s Team competition. Talk about domination.
You want pure, brute strength? How about weightlifting? Yes, China again. The Chinese team took home gold medals in the Men’s 56kg, 62kg, and 69kg categories. And have you seen the Chinese men’s water polo team? I’m not saying this to be gay or anything; it’s just that a friend of mine happened to be at one of their Olympic matches, and she snapped some pics of these gigantor dudes in their tiny speedos.
Any cursory perusal of the photos of Asian Olympians should disabuse you of the idea that there are any genetic or biological reasons behind the stereotypes about men in Asia. There is nothing inherent or genetic in Asian men making them less muscular. If anything, as we’ve seen, they have the potential and capacity to be even stronger and more muscular than their non-Asian counterparts.
So much for the claim that Asian men aren’t as “tall, big, muscular, or athletic” as non-Asian men.
Go to Asia
One of the most important sources of the problem is that Asian-Americans are getting an inaccurate and incomplete cross-section of Asian cultures. There is a lot more diversity in Asia than what you can see represented in America.
This largely explains why Asian-American men have witnessed so few Asian alpha males.
Where are all the Asian alpha males?
Honestly, growing up in Canada and America, I really didn’t see many. I saw plenty of Asians who excelled in academics, athletics, the arts, and public service. Friends and family went to such storied institutions as Penn, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Oxford, and then went on to very successful careers in respected professions like medicine, law, pure research, and various branches of business. This is why they call us the “model minority.”
But where were the Asian male sex symbols?
Not in America or Canada, I tell you. Not even in Hollywood movies. Nowadays, you find newer stars who are more representative of the scene in Asia, guys like Takeshi Kaneshiro (can’t believe how the Amped Asia crew missed him and many of the top male stars in Asia), but they certainly haven’t entered mainstream American consciousness yet.
Certainly, asexual martial artists like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, or Bruce Lee would not count as sex symbols. I strongly agree with Rochelle’s opinion of the sex appeal of these otherwise excellent role models. I like Jet Li a lot, particularly after he started spear heading his inspirational One Foundation charity and especially since he’s not a rabidly horny dog like Jackie Chan and Jackie’s son (reports of their philandering ways in KTVs are legion). I guess being raised in a Buddhist monastery can do a boy good, lol. But Jackie and Jet? Sexy they were not.
Only in my second straight year of living in China did I come into contact with true Chinese alpha males. After that, though, I began to see them all over the place.
Simply spending a summer in Asia won’t cut it, although it’s a good start. Unless the average Asian-American has a guide who is really well connected in the local area, it will take him some time to find the local Asian alpha males. They’re like rulers of an underground society, ensconced deeply in their territory.
But once you find one and spend some time with him, you’ll start to spot them more frequently. After all, China is a country of 1.3 billion people. That’s over four times the population of the US. India is nearing 1.2 billion. At least 3-5% of those men in China and India are pulling as much high-quality tail as any man in the West. That’s a lot of guys.
My first extended encounter with a local Chinese alpha male was in the person of the ex-boyfriend of one of my girls in Beijing. The guy lived in a far suburb of Beijing. He had 3-4 toughs along whenever I saw him. He was muscular, tattooed, had a shaved head, wore lots of jade jewelry and liked black clothes, and had an addiction to chewing on toothpicks. He rarely smiled. Whenever he spoke, it seemed like he wasn’t moving his lips. Yet the effect was striking.
To his many girls, he was the sweetest little boy and the perfect gentleman. The contrast was dramatic, enchanting, and sexy. And the girls, when I asked them why they like him so much, said that they appreciated how he was tough with all the guys and the outsiders, but super sweet to them. At last, my first Chinese alpha male. It only took me a year and a half floating aimlessly in China and twenty-nine years of my life to find one.
After that, though, I started to spot them all over China. And I’m not just talking about gangsters. There was a whole range of alpha dudes.
In the Beijing bar district known as Sanlitun, I once saw six or seven extremely tall, young Chinese males surround a taxi in which sat the Chinese cabbie, a white girl, and three white dudes. There were two guys in the group who were at least 6’7”. One of them was maybe even taller. They looked like a college basketball team. One of the dudes was standing at the front of the taxi with one foot on the bumper and grill, preventing the driver from driving out of the small alley. A couple of the other dudes were reaching through the window and grabbing the white guys with one hand while pounding their faces with the other. The white girl was screaming hysterically. There were plenty of white expat chumps just staring at what was going down. The tall Chinese guys finally let the taxi go. By this time, there was a huge crowd on both sides of the street watching. It turns out one of the white dudes had insulted one of the Chinese guys, and things just escalated. Typical. Bar fights aren’t all that uncommon in Beijing. One night at 5AM, I was at a club chatting up a cutie when one of my wings came back holding a paper towel over his bleeding forearm. He just started talking to me as if nothing had happened. Apparently, he had gotten into a fight downstairs and didn’t see that one of the guys was wielding a broken beer bottle. Hilarious. This sort of thing happens all the time in Sanlitun. That’s one of its charms.
What I want you to notice is that there were six dudes easily over six feet tall who were standing up for their pride on a bar street full of white expats. These Chinese guys weren’t Olympians or state sponsored athletes, as far as I could tell, as state athletes have strict curfews and very monitored lives. These dudes were just regular guys, but they were tall. In the US, I often feel short because I’m shorter than average. In southern Asia, I fit in better. But in northern China, I feel just as short as I do in the US. Who says that there aren’t tall, athletic Chinese dudes? Who says that Asian guys don’t have balls?
My first two long-term girlfriends in Beijing both hailed from the north. One was originally from the northwest in Inner Mongolia and the other was originally from the northeast in Jilin. The first was 5’8” (1.73m) and the second was 5’9” (1.75m). They had even taller cousins. They used to tease me about my height (5’7”/1.70m) because all the males in their family were taller, and I was the shortest guy they had ever dated.
A little known fact in the modeling world in China is that there are plenty of Chinese male models over 6’ (1.83m) and female models over 5’10” (1.77m) walking those runways in Beijing. We’re trying to bring some of these runway models down to Singapore
So, yes, there are a lot of tall people in China. And yes, there are a lot of muscular people in China. In fact, not just in China, but in all of Asia!
But you don’t even have to be all that tall or muscular to turn girls’ heads.
Rochelle held up Brad Pitt as a standard. Let’s look at Brad Pitt for a minute. He’s just barely tall enough to be a male runway model, squeaking in at 5’10” (1.8m). Many of my Chinese guy friends were this height or taller, and many of my girlfriends’ guy friends were taller than this.
He’s muscular, but nowhere near what he would have to be to compete in any bodybuilding competitions. What makes him stand out is his low body fat percentage. That famous look he had in Fight Club wasn’t all that muscular; he was lean, really lean. He bulked up for Troy, but not that much more; he was still lean.
What is universally attractive to women is a low body fat percentage. That’s easier to achieve for ectomorphs like Pitt. The good news for Asians is that genetically, we are predominantly ectomorphs, too.
“Ectomorphs have a light build with small joints and lean muscle. Usually ectomorphs have long thin limbs with stringy muscles. Shoulders tend to be thin with little width. Ectomorphs find it very hard to gain weight. They have a fast metabolism, which burns up calories very quickly. Ectomorphs need a huge amount of calories in order to gain weight.”
The general consensus in online bodybuilding forums is that Pitt is an ectomorph, which makes getting the lean, cut look in Fight Club that much easier. (I am somewhat of a mesomorph myself, which has its advantages, but makes getting the Brad Pitt Fight Club look harder to attain.)
The amount of muscle Brad Pitt had in Fight Club isn’t hard to get. The average, adult skinny Asian guy could get there in a few months of really rigorous training and the right high-protein diet. The hard part is cutting away and keeping off all the fat to get and maintain the lean look. Most of this is accomplished through the right diet. For a very low body fat percentage, you are looking at a very strict diet, not so much in the amount you eat, but in the kind of food and drink you consume.
All of this is achievable for the average Asian man. In fact, ectomorphs have a distinct advantage in getting the cut, lean look. And if it’s true that Asian males tend to be ectomorphs, then all the better for Asian guys!
So, are Asian men just as tall, muscular, and athletic as non-Asian men? Hell, yeah. And I’d argue that they are even more so!
How much does this matter in attracting women? It certainly helps. But if you’ve got the right body language and tonality, that matters much more. Verbal technique can also make a difference. Looks are just one factor.
However, my main reason for writing this is to help Asian-American men fix the way they think of and see themselves. I am here to help you realize your own potential as an Asian man and to see that there are rich resources for you in Asia to build up your “inner game”—the strong, confident attitudes and mindsets that define a man who naturally attracts women. Stand up for yourselves, and take pride in your Asian genes and heritage!
[Addendum: A few of my statements about Asian-American men may seem too strong, but that's not my intention. For example, I wrote, "Where are the Asian male sex symbols? Not in America or Canada." The context of that statement should make it clear what I mean by "sex symbol." I did not mean by this that no Asian males in America or Canada are sexy. Far from it. That's one of my main points: There are plenty of Asian males all over the world who are representing the race well, and there are even more who have the potential to do so. But because of various sociological, economic, cultural, and even political reasons, they are not seen as "sex symbols" in Western societies. I surely hope that I have not discouraged those Asian-American males who are doing well with women; I am personal friends with quite a number of them. What concerns me here is the perception of Asian men by some parts of Western societies and some Asian-American women and how this can affect the self-image of Asian men anywhere. A "thank you" to blog reader, Ed, for pointing this out.]
Emotional Contagion: How You Make Her Feel the Way YOU Feel
December 15, 2008
This is my latest article for Amped Asia. I’m a little apprehensive that it will go over the heads of general readers. But I really do think it introduces a groundbreaking concept for the social arts community.
Emotional Contagion and How to Harness It
As usual, if you haven’t got the fundamentals down yet, then take care of those first–body language and positioning, eye contact, vocal tonality, and most importantly, your mindset. Or just take my course specifically designed to teach just this–Essentials of Dating.
In the last article, I talked about the importance of having fun and how to start having fun no matter where you are.
While knowing what to do is helpful, it’s even better to understand WHY something works. That way, you can adapt it to different contexts, internalize it, and make it your own.
In a very interesting book called Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, author of the bestselling Emotional Intelligence, draws attention to some highly illuminating research in psychology and neuroscience that helps to explain exactly why one’s “state” and “having fun” are necessary and so effective in attracting women.
(Incidentally, for those who have read my blog article on “How to Project a Sexual Vibe,” this also provides a scientific explanation for why sexual state transference works so well. If you haven’t read it, go to my website and click on Best of the Blog.)
When I first started coaching, I wondered why even though I could give some random guy the exact same words I say to women, he could sometimes still bomb miserably.
Even when he modeled my body language and vocal tonality, although the response was somewhat better, there was still something wrong.
He would still come across as too contrived, too fake, too insincere. His sub-communications betrayed him.
I came to realize that actually underlying all of the words, body language, and tonality was the bedrock foundation: Mental and Emotional State.
Whatever you are feeling at the time, she will eventually start to feel. If she does not like the feelings you are transferring to her, she will respond almost immediately by cringing and pushing away.
This explains why I have seen naturals with lazy body language, sloppy tonality, and the most offensive words still manage to attract multiple women in mere minutes. It was because of the principle of Emotional Contagion.
If a man is not feeling confident or comfortable or content, then he will very likely turn off whatever girl he is talking to regardless of his words, body language, or tonality.
What’s going on here? Now it’s time for a little lesson in neuroscience. By the way, all of this is common knowledge in the field.
The amygdala is a key part of the human brain and acts as the brain’s system for emotional contagion. Among its many functions, it extracts emotional meaning from nonverbal images, such as a frown, a sudden change of posture, or a jump in a tone of voice. This happens in a split second, even before the rest of the brain can process what we are looking at.
What’s also interesting is that the amygdala has no access to the brain’s centers of speech. It is, literally, speechless. When we register a feeling, signals from our brain’s wiring, instead of alerting the verbal areas, which express what we know using words, mimic the emotion in our own bodies.
The amygdala registers the emotional aspects of whatever we perceive—nervous mannerisms and twitches, the resigned slouch of defeat, the sensuality of a sexy smile—and then processes that data subliminally, below the level of conscious awareness. This reflexive, unconscious process then carries that emotion into us by priming the reciprocal feeling (which may sometimes be different, such as feeling fear on seeing anger). This is the mechanism for “catching” a feeling from someone else.
Quoting Goleman:
“The fact that we can trigger any emotion at all in someone else—or they in us—testifies to the powerful mechanism by which one person’s feelings spread to another. Such contagions are the central transaction in the emotional economy, the give-and-take of feeling that accompanies every human encounter we have, no matter what the ostensible business at hand may be.”
Because all this emotional processing and transference happens faster than the conscious, verbal parts of our brains can take in, we are often at a loss as to why we feel or reacted the way we did. This is what drives people to backward rationalize.
Borrowing a phrase from David DeAngelo, “Attraction is not a choice.”
Attraction is not even conscious.
Clearly then, what is sabotaging the poor random guy mimicking my words is that he is feeling and thus transferring the wrong emotions.
How then do you generate and transfer the right emotions?
Having the right words, body language, and tonality help because if you adopt the right outward, physical stance, vocal sounds, and words, it will help to generate within you the corresponding appropriate feelings.
If you stand confidently, you will then tend to feel confident. If you speak with a strong tone of voice, you will then tend to feel strong. In this regard, words are not as powerful in affecting one’s state as body language and tonality are.
If you know some hypnosis or neuro-linguistic programming, then you should avail yourself of those helpful tools for altering your state, as well.
But even the average Joe can start to do this. Re-read the previous article in which I talk about outcome independence and how to have fun.
This is really about controlling your own sub-communications. Maybe if you are a really good actor, you might have developed some degree of control over these. But for most people, it is far more efficient and effective to monitor your emotional state and coax it in the right direction.
Your emotional state in many ways dictates your sub-communications, which trigger the process of state transference in the people around you.
Learn to have fun and to be happy and positive about yourself and life. Be passionate about your passions! If you don’t have any passions yet, well, that’s probably a major reason you are not yet having remarkable success with women. Explore your interests. Develop passions in life.
Feel intensely. A common characteristic of charismatic individuals is that they feel emotions strongly. Encourage and develop those tendencies within yourself. Be passionate. You will draw others to you in an almost effortless way because you will be transferring your good feelings to them.
As New Age-y or Buddhist as this probably sounds, if you learn to identify the emotions you feel, you will start to be able to control your own emotional states.
For example, learn that even in stressful situations, there are many effective ways of inducing calm and relaxation in yourself. Learn the many different ways of generating in yourself the feelings of gratitude, happiness, or excitement.
If you want your partner to feel sexually aroused, you can cause yourself to feel turned on while looking deeply into your partner’s eyes. This is so powerful that I caution novices from using this until you’ve gained more experience inducing less intense emotions.
Next time you talk to people, pay attention to your emotional state. Induce in yourself the feelings you want the other person to have, and then see the magic work.
Not only will you be more attractive, you will also be a more empowered and happy person.
Happy playin’, Dr. Asian Rake.
Having Fun equals Effective Socializing
November 16, 2008
I’ve been holding off on the Amped Asia articles until we unhinged powerofbeingasian.com from asianrake.com. The more focused, Americanized audience of Amped Asia just didn’t match the socially conservative mainstream audience of The New Paper.
Here’s the new Amped Asia article.
Faithful blog readers will notice it’s a revised version of the Outcome Independence post.
I’m really busy for the next few weeks, but once that’s over, I’ll be churning out more products and articles. Can’t wait!
Peace and love, Dr. Asian Rake.
Back off on Kino with Asian Girls
October 22, 2008
My latest article for Amped Asia: Check it out here.
In case the link doesn’t work, use this: http://www.ampedasia.com/article/Asian-Men-Physical-Flirting-with-Asian-Women/
I really did put quite a lot of thought into this one and tried to keep it as succinct as possible.
Peace and love, Dr. Asian Rake.
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