About Asia, Still

Hi! My name is Shaun Patterson

This site grows out of a long habit of reading, travel, and close observation. I write essays on Asia that move between history, culture, and everyday life, with an interest in what is often flattened or overlooked by Western perspectives.

Rather than treating Asia as a single story, I focus on specificity, contradiction, and lived experience, whether that means examining Japan’s postwar position in the region, the social meaning of hawker centres, tattoo culture in Thailand, or the internal diversity of Vietnam’s fifty-four ethnic groups. I hope this sparks your curiosity and invites you to see Asia through a more nuanced lens.

My mixed background in fine art, business, and law, combined with my teaching career, informs my cultural observations. This helps me question stereotypes while decrypting societal issues, encouraging readers to move away from viewing Asia through a very generalized lens.

Alongside academic training, I am an artist and a lifelong non-fiction reader with a deep interest in material culture and geopolitics. Travel has given that reading lived experience, but the goal is not travel writing.

These essays are not definitive statements. They are attempts to draw attention, to get folks to slow down and look closely.