A blue suit, a record collection, a well-worn Chinese/English dictionary, and something less tangible but just as precious — one’s name.
Poet Shin Yu Pai is the host and creator of “Ten Thousand Things,” a National Public Radio podcast that examines everyday things that touch people’s lives and “the uncommon people that transforms them into something remarkable.”
“We consider our emotional kinship with everyday objects to reflect together on what we own, what we inherit and what we cherish,” she said. “From everyday objects owned by Asian Americans, we can learn personal and cultural values and tell stories that are deeply humanizing. We’re connected.”
Pai (her full name is pronounced Shin Yee Pie) first titled the podcast “The Blue Suit,” a nod to the suit worn by Congressman Andy Kim on Jan. 6, when he was photographed collecting trash following the United States Capitol insurrection. The suit has since become part of the Smithsonian’s collection, a found object to add to Asian American history.
Renamed for this new season, “Ten Thousand Things” debuted on May 1. New episodes release weekly on Mondays on NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms.
The new name refers to many Chinese sayings, where “ten thousand” is used in a poetic sense to convey something infinite, vast and unfathomable. For Pai, the story of Asians in America is just that.
From a search to replace “PooPoo,” a beloved childhood stuffed toy, to the dictionary an ancestor used to acclimate to a new country, the podcast celebrates and highlights Asian American stories and challenges listeners to re-imagine attitudes about their own experiences.
This season’s first episode featured transgender and non-binary poet and educator Ebo Barton, talking about the power names. Other guests this season include Alice Wong, host of the “Disability Visibility Project” podcast; and Eason Yang, founder of Not Entirely Dead, which helps young cancer survivors find work.
Pai was born in Decatur, Ill. in the 1970s, but her Taiwanese parents moved the family first to Los Angeles, then to Riverside County.
“I grew up in Highgrove, an unincorporated town between Riverside and San Bernardino counties with zero Asians,” she said. “However, my parents were somewhat intentional about staying connected to the Taiwanese American community in the greater L.A. area and Rosemead. So one of my very first freelance writing gigs in the late 1990s was for a Taiwanese-American newspaper out of Rosemead.”
Pai went East for college, earning her bachelor’s degree in English from Boston University, before attending the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Colorado. Pai later received a master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a master’s in museology from the University of Washington, where she specialized in oral history.
She has written 11 books and is the Civic Poet of Seattle for 2023-2024. She’s written for Atlas Obscura and the New York Times, and her visual work has been exhibited at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, the Paterson Museum, the American Jazz Museum, among other institutions.
Pai has also created video poems and taught creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas, Southern Methodist University and Dalla Museum of Art.
The pandemic prompted her to ask what people cherish and what they leave behind. One of her own cherished items is a white silk scarf she keeps in a Buddhist shrine at home. It was given to her by her teacher, a Buddhist priest, on the day she took her vows of refuge.
“It’s a concrete object commemorating making the choice to choose this spiritual path full of wakeful possibilities,” Pai said.
Other episodes will focus on new objects but also more intangible concepts.
“This series is about experiences of diasporic Asians and how they continue to carry their values themselves,” Pai said.
Anissa V. Rivera, columnist, “Mom’s the Word,” Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News, Azusa Herald, Glendora Press and West Covina Highlander, San Dimas/La Verne Highlander. Southern California News Group, 181 W. Huntington Drive, Suite 209 Monrovia, CA 91016. 626-497-4869.
