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"California Dreaming" is one of the popular American songs of the 1960s. The term also indicates a state of mind of the special quality of life that is Californian – the carefree life style, the pleasant climate and scenery, the glamorous celebrity and movie stars, the entrepreneur spirits and their limitless possibilities, and all the good things in life. Many people in fact consider the state of California as a different country in the sense it is different from the rest of America. Here are some facts and personal observations
1. For Asian Americans, you know you are in a different and special region of the US the minute you step off your plane at SFO or LAX. There are so many Asian faces. The state has the largest concentration of Asian Americans
2. California has a casual dress code. The joke is that “formal dress” on an invitation means “please wear shoes”.
3. Super highways in California are called freeways in the sense there are no toll charges (except for large bridges)
4. Until the early 1990s, there are two competing technology region in the US – the Rt 128 area surrounding Boston and the Silicon Valley of the California Bay area . A book by Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 226 pp.) clearly records the history of this competition and reasons for which Silicon Valley won. Basically all the computer/IT companies of the Boston area were eventually absorbed or taken over by companies in the Bay area. Nothing illustrates this better than the two computer museums – one in Boston, the other in Palo Alto. The former actually was founded earlier. But the latter is much bigger and continues to expand while the Boston one is closed and had in fact transferred some of her collections to the Palo Alto one.
5. As a nation, California is the 8th largest economy in the world.
6. However, there is a dark side to the hedonistic culture. In recent years, the state seems to be in perpetual financial difficulties
7. May be this is special with me. Many times I arrive in California, say San Francisco, in the evening from a nonstop east coast flight; pick up a rental car and start to drive to my destination. I am alone in the car with my thoughts as I drive along the freeway. I see the beautiful distant city lights and bridge scenery rise to meet me. A very special feeling of total freedom and gratitude washes over me. I know I am free to drive anywhere on the freeway system. I can sing out loud. I have anticipation of tasks to be done, goals to achieve, and gratitude for the good things of life to come. This is a kind of happiness, satisfaction, and hopefulness that is difficult to describe and probably unique to California and to an immigrant.
8. In my opinion, San Francisco and Boston are the two most desirable urban areas in the US to live. Except for the threat of earthquake, San Francisco even has an edge over Boston. Years ago, the magazine New Yorker had a famous cover of an exaggerated and distorted map of the US. In this map the entire country consists of two large areas which are labeled Boston and San Francisco with MIT/Harvard and Stanford/Berkeley as prominent signposts occupying 90% of the map area. The rest of the country is squeezed into a sliver in the middle known as the “Midwest and the rest”.
9. From 1961 to date I have spent three summers in LA, two semesters in San Francisco, and countless visits to this state, north and south. My son and his family, and many of our life long friends live in the state. It is also 4+ hours (in flight time) closer to China than the East Coast. Every time we visit California, it is like homecoming.
