Dancer. Standup Comedian. Realistic dreamer.
Made in China, but not your tiger mom’s daughter. Lover of Argentine tango, aka dancing backwards in high heels, aka practicing the impossible art of being female. Despite her sunny, sweet disposition, this one knows how to bite.
Those are the three most random words to appear together in a subject line. But somehow, growing up in China in the 1980s, they describe the beginning, middle and end of my puberty. Bear with me... My parents are in an arranged marriage and they don’t like each other at all. They were always arguing, yelling and throwing vegetables at each other. To this date, I never understood how I came to this world. But I have one very fond
I didn’t come to the US until I was 21. The concept of prom just blew my mind. What?!? Schools and teachers will organize huge parties and obligate teenagers to go on DATES? Parents will pay for all the fancy dresses, hairdos and suits so their children can lose their virginity at the end of the night? That is the exact opposite of my teenage days. Our school wanted us to be as ugly as we could be, so we
This is typical when I, a first-generation immigrant of Chinese descent, meet someone new. “Where are you from?” “Seattle.” “No no no, where are you REALLY from?” (Rolling my eyes, I know where this is going) “China." “NOOOOO.... you look way more Korean to me. I always know the difference!” Oh, do you? Even I cannot tell the differences between Korean and Chinese women anymore. They all look exactly the same to me, someone who was born and raised in China.
I’m 100% made in China. And like everything else made in China, I’m a little… defective. You see, I don’t know how to hold my chopsticks properly. In fact, it’s not just me, but my entire generation - all of us born in China in the 80s. I can always tell which Chinese person at Din Tai Fung grew up in China versus those raised in America by how they hold their chopsticks. Don’t believe me? Listen, chopstick wrappers in
