It's Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and NBC4 is celebrating the culture, food and changemakers that make our community unique.
News4's Eun Yang and Aimee Cho hosted a half-hour-long special that celebrates AANHPI resilience and achievement in the D.C. area.
Those changemakers include people like Edwaard Liang, who was named director of the Washington Ballet last fall. Born in Taiwan, he moved to the U.S. when he was just five years old. Now, he is the first Asian American to lead a major ballet company anywhere in the U.S.
"It is kind of a continuous pinch-yourself moment," Liang told News4. "I'm just taking this all in, because this has been such a dream company."
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And that culture includes the dances, music and language preserved in places like the Cambodian Buddhist Society, which is the first Cambodian Buddhist temple established in the United States.
The temple in Montgomery County, Maryland comes alive every Sunday, and honors the resilience of the Cambodian people by letting its members stay connected to the lives they had to leave behind when they arrived in the 1970s and 80s.
From youth activities that connect grandchildren to their grandparents, to the women in science who built a respected name for themselves within the U.S.'s health research community, AANHPI Heritage Month comes with plenty to celebrate.
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Watch the AANHPI Month Special in the video player above, Roku Live TV, Samsung TV Plus, Xumo Play, Peacock and more (here’s how).