Asian Refugee Actresses
Wash Up on California Beaches

Another wave of Asian Refugee Actresses (ARAs) washed up on area beaches. The confused young women say they paid top dollar to be smuggled illegally from "actor training camps" in the jungles of Southeast Asia onto Long Beach-bound freighters.

by George Wolfe

MANHATTAN BEACH, Ca. — In what is turning out to be a strange summer phenomenon, dozens of Asian women are being plucked out of the ocean by Coast Guard and Lifeguard vessels after the women apparently jumped ship and swam for the beaches — toward careers in Hollywood.

"It's totally crazy," said Redondo Beach lifeguard, Sven Wörmslüme. "We're reeling these gals in like holy mackerel on Easter Sunday!

"We're reeling these gals in like holy mackerel on Easter Sunday!"

— Sven Wörmslüme, lifeguard

The Coast Guard estimates that over 500 Asian women have been hauled in over the past two months. The women are typically stowed below deck on U.S.-bound freighters, but when they see land they've been overwhelming their human smuggler captors with martial arts maneuvers they learned at their actor training camps. Then they jump ship with makeshift flotation devices or swim as fast as possible.

Many of the women show evidence of plastic surgery that has them resembling celebrity actresses such as Lucy Liu (Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Zhang Ziyi (Hero), Angelica Lee (The Eye), Li Gong (Farewell My Concubine), Christina Chang (The West Wing, L.A. Dragnet) and Go So-Young (Comrade).

The women, many speaking in broken English cliches from famous action films, acknowledged that they each scraped together hefty sums of money to attend actor training programs in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and that the fee included passage to America where they could presumably break into Hollywood.

While some of the young women eluded authorities, slipped away and have landed representation fresh off the boat, many other women have had their careers delayed as they wait in detention centers. At one facility, however, a group of these women revolted, beat up a staff of twenty heavily armed guards, and escaped onto the streets of Hollywood.

"They just went berserk on us!" said one beaten-up guard who requested anonymity, "It's like, on the boat, they'd all gotten in sync with their periods or something. They're kick-ass women for sure… and awfully pretty, but what they did to us — it wasn't a pretty sight. What am I going to tell my children?"