travel

Thanksgiving in Italy: Experiences, Eats, and Everything Else

8:59 PM

One of my long-time dreams is to go on an extended urban backpacking vacation through Europe, as my dad once did when he was young and living the broke Ph.D. life in Paris. I told my boyfriend about this dream not long after we started dating, and he said, "let's do it."

Well, I paraphrased those words. It was a text message and I don't remember what exactly he wrote. But I remember feeling so overwhelmed and happy over the sentiment that I started crying.

I can be a very emotional person.

Due to work commitments, we were not able to do exactly what I dreamed of. Instead, we planned a week-long trip over Thanksgiving. We decided where we wanted to go. Flight and train tickets were bought. Hotels were covered by my excessive hoard of Star Alliance points. Itineraries were not really set, both of us preferring to be more spontaneous with our time. Recommendations were given to us by friends.

And...

body image

On Disordered Eating and Body Dysmorphia

8:45 PM



I dance with my classmates in ballet class, acutely aware of my largeness compared to their petite figures.

 I listen as my friend tells me her thighs are too big, and I silently wonder if mine are too big as well.

I ask to try on a dress, and the store owner dismissively tells me that they don't carry a size large enough for me.

I watch, mute, as my high school roommate prances around the room in her birthday suit, championing her own beauty and her muscles, criticizing the lack of mine.

I sneak oranges from the dining hall and skip dinner. 

I panic as my dress no longer fits. I binge until it holds itself up again. I starve until my tummy looks kind of flat again.

I look in the mirror and see someone sizes larger than me.

I forget to eat. 

I watch as the water runs down my body and my hair continues to fall out and swirls into the drain.

I fit into a pair of jeans that chafed my hips when I bought them years ago. This time, they are too loose.

I shake up meal supplement powder in a mason jar and force myself to put something in my body.

I wince as I chew and the sores inside my mouth hinder my progress. I make mashed food so I do not have to move my mouth when I eat.

I make and drink soup because it sneaks nutrition to my body with the least effort.

I nearly cry when my college roommate makes me food that reminds me of home, to try and make sure I don't starve.

boston

Rewriting Memories

11:08 PM

Boston Labor Day 2017

I don't see the Citgo sign as the bus drives into Boston because my attention is on the man sitting next to me.

The bus ride to Boston, once seeming days long, feels short this time. The last time I was in Boston was three months ago - waiting out the tail-end of a doomed relationship, wondering if I had wasted the past year of my life on a boy who never loved me back.

This time, I was with a man who has an uncanny ability to make my heart melt and make me cry of happiness.

Boston was once home. I felt like an imposter, every time I went back after I graduated, clinging onto a city that was not mine. This time, Boston wasn't home - just an old friend, with memories of joy and laughter and pain and sorrow.

This time, New York was home. Boston was just memories passed.

resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions: End of Summer Check-In

11:10 PM

I was never much of a believer in New Year’s Resolutions. They’re not common in my culture - in China, we traditionally get new clothes for the new year - so I didn’t learn about them until I moved back to the U.S. for high school. From there I watched my peers make them and fail at them, and I thought it was silly to have to wait until a new year to set new goals. Somewhere between then and now, my mentality changed.

There’s something clean and refreshing about the very man-made concept of a New Year. Especially now that I am no longer in school and my life no longer revolves around the September-to-June calendar, January 1st can hold a new type of significance for me, instead of the end of Christmas break.

While I still don’t subscribe to the behavior of waiting until a new year to set a goal, I have become a believer of new year’s resolutions. It took a few tries - I think I tried on and off for a few years but I didn’t properly record my first one until January 1, 2016.

happiness

On Prioritizing Myself and the Pursuit of Happiness

9:31 PM

Over the past few months I’ve slowly come to realize that I’ve never truly put myself as a priority. 


I grew up trying to prove my worth to my parents. I’m not quite sure why; my parents, despite their faults, have always been fairly supportive of me and given me the freedom to make my own choices. Perhaps their own individual excellences put pressure on me. They told me to always be better than them - be a better student, make better choices, achieve better outcomes. 

But how could I be better than them as a small child, struggling to grasp concepts in classes, afraid of being scolded for not understanding a “simple” math concept or for wanting to read stories that helped me escape reality? 

How could I be better than them when I grew up in a place of economic privilege and they grew up, starving, in Mao-Communist China?

It should never have been a comparison. 

I fell back to their advice, time and time again, up until very recently. Put your studies before everything else; take more AP classes than your peers in high school; don’t go to art school, you’ll starve; go to a STEM school because it’ll help you get a job anywhere. My mother once told me that I should drop one of my best friends because she was too mediocre. It might be one of the only pieces of advice I never took. 

In my head, they were always right and I was always wrong. They knew better because they were older and they were wiser and they had lived through more.

I put their wants ahead of my own without even realizing it.


Like most of the students I knew at MIT, I always put my work before myself. It was fine for a while; I was tired a lot, but I got my work done, ate proper amounts of food, still slept somewhat, and didn’t participate in many extracurricular things. I managed. I bargained with myself - I could read a book if I finished this thing, or I could have a snack if I finished this other thing. I worked multiple part-time jobs just for the feeling of having my own money, for the near future when I was no longer allowed to rely on my parents. 

The first year and a half of MIT is a blur in my memories. I was so busy spreading myself too thin that I don’t really have many good memories from that period.

Junior year of college, I took it to the extreme. My work for architecture studio became such a priority for me that I stopped eating or sleeping. I was so constantly anxious about everything and I was incapable of being a good or even decent friend because I was so wrapped up with trying to make my psychologically abusive studio professor happy. I was lethargic. My hair started falling out. I had to take breakfast supplements because I couldn’t muster the energy to eat real food. 

One of my best friends, Caitlin, started making me food to make sure I wouldn’t starve, and then told repeatedly me to go to MIT Mental Health until I finally went. My other best friend, Julie, checked in on me weekly and had me over at her dorm, and I would watch TV with her boyfriend Stephen - also one of my best friends - for a few hours before the anxiety of not doing work and “slacking off” caught up to me.

Somewhere in the middle I joined a dance group and it became an escape. I gave up working so many part-time jobs and opted for relearning to dance and memorizing choreography. Despite a few scrapes and bruises, dancing made me feel good. It was a place where everyone was constantly trying to improve themselves, but doing it together, without the ruthless competition that had been ingrained in me as a child.

Being part of ADT was one of the most significant parts of my college experience, and it was one of the few times in college where I allowed myself to put myself first.


Ask me what I want to do with my life, and I would tell you that I want to help make people happy. I think that’s what I would find the most meaningful: making the world a happier place.

That’s kind of what I do in my job, actually. For all the gripes I have with what I do, and my dissatisfaction with feeling like my work isn’t particularly meaningful, I do think that some of my work helps make other people a little bit happier. Maybe that’s enough.

Watching people smile is one of the most beautiful things I can think of. Watching people smile because I helped make them smile is even better. And because I was gifted with a decent amount of hand-eye coordination, I am capable of making things that puts smiles on the faces of people in my immediate circle.

This also means that when gift-giving season comes around, I fall into a whirlwind of gift-making and gift-giving anxiety. I forget about the joy I get from creating things with yarn and paint and fabric and paper and instead turn into a ball of anxiety attempting to finish a growing number of presents and worrying that my friends might not like the things I make.

I discovered that the secret for finishing a growing number of gifts is to just make them year-round. There’s a reason Caitlin calls me her Christmas elf.

I prioritize the smiles on my friends’ faces over my own sanity sometimes. I don’t think I ever stopped to think that they might worry when I fall into cycles of anxiety over their gifts and their smiles.



Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been tracking my daily average mood - rating it from 1-10 - just to see how my mood fluctuates over time and its dependency on the events going on in my life. 

It’s pretty drastic. 

Before my past relationship ended, my only extremely happy days almost always ended up on days when I was seeing my ex. I didn’t realize how dangerous that emotional dependency was until I was no longer part of that relationship.

I also didn’t realize how unhappy he could make me until we left each other. My worst days were days when his carelessness cut me the most, when I could not brush it off as successfully as usual. 

Words can hurt. Lack of words, sometimes, can hurt even more. Usually it was a mixture of both.

Because I knew the relationship was ending, I spent a lot of time before preparing for its inevitability. I ended up planning event after event after event in June, trying to give myself things to look forward to and things to be happy about - and it worked. 

My amazing friends gave me a birthday that made me feel so incredibly loved - more loved than I had ever felt while I was in my past relationship. I planned dance classes with my friend Alyssa. I planned a whirlwind weekend for when my dad visited me, and then again when my friend Rosa visited me. I bought tickets to see a musical and ate tasty food. I painted pictures of sunsets with new paints inside a new sketchbook. I bit the bullet and bought tickets to see Julie and Stephen in San Francisco. 

I prioritized the things I had wanted to do for a while - seeing things in the city that I hadn’t been able to because I had spent so much time traveling back to Boston for so many months - and in doing so, prioritized myself.

I think being prepared for the hurt and knowing about our incompatibilities for months beforehand helped me deal with and get over the breakup so much faster.

I was so stupid happy throughout June and July that it was actually rather astounding to see the contrast in my mood tracking.

When I was sure I was capable of making myself happy on my own, I thought I might maybe try dating again. I had heard so many horror stories from my friends about dating in New York City that I wasn’t sure, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt.

The worst that could happen is that everyone is creepy, I give up, and I go back to planning fun things with friends and exploring the city that I was finally, slowly, starting to fall in love with. For worst case scenarios, it wasn’t that daunting.

I got lucky. I met a guy who seems to be just the right amount of weird and the right amount of dorky and the right amount of caring. I don’t know where it’ll go, but the addition of him in my life currently gives me immense happiness.

And because I am continuing to rate my average mood every day, I can say for sure that so far my happiness isn’t dependent of whether or not I see him that day. I’ll try my damnedest to make sure it stays that way.

I still prioritize my friends’ smiles now, but I’m also trying to make sure I smile every day too. 


Turns out, it’s not that hard.

memories

Snippets From My 21st Year

10:20 PM

June

Goodbye, MIT.
My friends take me out for my 21st birthday, and it is unexpectedly fun. I realize I can enjoy drinking when I’m around friends that I love and trust. I reinforce my taste for drinks where I can’t taste the alcohol. I learn that kahlua and I are not friends.

I graduate. My dad is surprised that I do not cry. He helps me move to a sublet in New York the same day.

I start my first real job. It is challenging but not at the same time.

I pass out from dehydration on the subway platform in Union Square. My head hits the floor and then suddenly a hand is there to steady it. A stranger helps me get on my train and made sure I would be able to get home okay. I learn that despite reputation, New Yorkers are helpful and kind when they see someone in need.


July
Making new friends. My cutie roomie is the second from the left; I'm the third from the left.
I meet my roommate-to-be through a friend I consider a sister. She eventually, quickly, becomes one of my best friends. We discover that are similar in many ways. She becomes a person I trust immensely and am happy to see when I go home every day.

The sadness about graduating finally hits as I watch a tv show that I always used to watch with friends now living across the country. I text them as I cry and they laugh, because they’re jerks. I love them.

I move in with my roommate. We call each other cutie roomies.

August
Being tourists in New York includes lots of city skyline photos.
A friend from school visits. He has never been to New York before, so I take him to do all the touristy things - the Empire State Building, the High Line, DUMBO, the Statue of Liberty. We walk a lot and he complains that his feet hurt.

The friend across the country visits Boston, so I go to Boston to see her. I miss her.

I realize that I like the friend that visited me in New York very much.

September
The quietness of Boston is always a welcome refuge for me when I get sick of busy New York City life, and having someone to visit just gives me excuses to get away.
We talk and start dating. We don’t really tell anyone, but some people figure it out and some people get told. One friend gets told many months later and she is not pleased.

I start visiting Boston regularly and get really good at sitting on buses for long periods of time. Over the course of the relationship I become more aware of some deeply hidden insecurities I have around my attractiveness and around love. I slowly learn to balance them to keep myself sane.

October
My cutie roomie and the present I handmade for her.
My cutie roomie turns a year older and I race to finish her birthday present. I manage just in time. I think she likes it.

November
Best friends and dogs are always a good combination.
I tell him I love him. He would never say it back.

I visit my friends in California! I love them and I miss them. I eat lots of food because it is Thanksgiving and that is what one does during Thanksgiving. I end up flying back to New York on a red-eye flight and the next day at work is a struggle.

December 
The shenanigans I deal with when I go home. I love it.
Christmas time is always my favorite time of the year. I love making people presents and Christmas is just a good excuse to spoil everyone.

My dad takes me to Spain, a place I’ve wanted to visit ever since I was tiny. We had authentic paella. I learn why paella does not traditionally have pork in it. I see some of the world’s most incredible architecture. I am over the moon.

We ring in the new year in Barcelona.

January
Spending the first day of January in Park Güell, Barcelona.
I set a few goals for myself for the year, including attempting to lower my meat consumption by going vegetarian for a week every month. My roommate decides to do it with me. It turns out that it’s not that hard.

My most favorite human in the whole world turns 8. I am a bit sad that she is growing older. I want her to stay tiny forever.

February 
I am just like my country, young scrappy hungry.
My friends in California visit me and we go see Hamilton because we got tickets to see it the year before. It was a long wait and completely worth it - both waiting to see my friends again and waiting to see the show. I cannot wait to see them again. My friends, I mean. I miss them all the time.

March
Fancy drawings of some fancy food.
My dad visits me and we go eat some of the most expensive food I will probably ever eat, because he wanted to try a Michelin star restaurant. It was really good, but I realize I would appreciate a good bowl of ramen just as much. What can I say, I'm a simple girl with simple needs.

April 
This little girl is the best thing in my life.
My mom and my sister visit me and I extort an excessive amount of hugs from my sister. Baby hugs are the best kind of hug.

I start tutoring adults in high school math to help them attempt to achieve high school equivalency. I forgot how much I loved tutoring and I enjoy being able to help people one-on-one. Their thankfulness for my help is incredibly rewarding and it helps with my mental health.

May
At least I got a bloody painting concept out of it?
I see it coming but my heart still gets broken. I go to work the next day and it ends up being a 13.5 hour work day. Despite my best efforts, I cannot stop crying the entire day. My workplace either does not notice or is kind enough to not say anything.



Dog flowers.
I turned 22 on the first day of this month. My sister and my mom sends me flowers arranged to look like a dog to my workplace and I am embarrassed but also very happy. My work gives me tiny cupcakes and a funny card. My friends take me out to eat Korean fried chicken and spoil me rotten with presents that they did not have to buy. They help me end a really difficult week with joy and happiness and I feel more loved than I have in a really long time.

My friend is so talented. Also this made me bawl so much.
The next day I receive mail from my friend in California and I find a card with a beautiful drawing of the two of us, and I cry all over again.

So while my 21st year ended on an incredibly low note, my 22nd year starts with me feeling incredibly joyous and incredibly loved. I have the best friends in the world and I am incredibly blessed to have them.

I have the best friends in the whole world. They squish me with their love. It's the best kind of squished to be.
From top to bottom: Julie as a rock, Rosa, Michelle, Caitlin, Alyssa, Lydia, and myself.
Here’s to another year of hopefully consistent blog posts, memories, and friends! I hope it’s a good one.

reflection

On Words People Have Said and Responses Never Voiced

7:22 PM

I think we all have moments when people say things and we don't know how to respond, but their words are remembered and we can almost taste our responses on our lips but they get caught in our throats. Here is a small collection of mine. 

“Why can’t you just get it?” 
My dad, trying to teach me math concepts often times before they were covered in school so that I could get ahead. Whenever I got stuck, he would explain the concept to me, but he would get impatient by the third time - and then I would cry, and he would yell, and I would cry more until I understood. I got it, in the end. I don’t think you needed to yell.

“Do you understand?” 
Teacher Chen, the art teacher that I visited every Friday since I was 7 years old, tirelessly explaining the differences between shadows and highlights and how to depict them accurately to a child who could not yet understand the language he spoke. You changed my life. You showed me what a difference a wonderful educator could make in a child’s life. I could never be grateful enough.

“Ching Chow Ling Long.”
My high school ex-roommate, every weekend, whenever I spoke to my parents on Skype. I had just moved from China to the US. While I had lived on this side of the world before, I had been a child young enough to be shielded from racism. Her words made me uncomfortable but I always tried to laugh it off because I did not yet know how to advocate for myself and call her out. You are the most distasteful person I have ever had to spend an extended amount of time with.

“Did you know, they talk about your boobs in Clement House?”
The same high school ex-roommate, telling me this as if I wanted to know. No, I did not know that. Thanks a lot - and I mean not at all - for letting me know the peers I looked at and spoke to every day were objectifying my 13 year old body. 

“You just need to loosen up!”
J.P. Jacquet, my high school art teacher, telling me to step outside of my box during my AP art class before promptly putting my drawing under a water faucet. I hated you a little bit when you did that. I was - still am - careful, measured, disciplined, detail-oriented. You showed me how to have fun on a canvas. You are one of my all-time favorite teachers. My body is inked with a tribute to the impact you had on me.

“You’re good at math because you’re Asian.”
No, I worked hard at math and did problems every day for years of my life. Funnily enough, I’m not even that good at math, although high school math is still immensely fun.

“You helped me get my first B in English!” 
An underclassman I tutored in high school at the Writing Center, surprising me with a joyful smile and a hug in the dining hall. I had worked with him to organize his ideas and formulate his sentences. You showed me how rewarding tutoring could be, and I hope you’ll go far.

“Thank you for being her friend.”
When my friend came out as lesbian to the school and her parents, who taught there, felt compelled to thank me for sticking by her. Her sexual orientation did not and should not change how I feel about her. There was no need to thank me. 

“She didn’t deserve you.”
My high school best friend, Lydia, told me this after a friend graduated, left me behind, and never responded to my texts. Thinking about it now, it was like a bad breakup, except we were never romantically involved. Thank you for helping hold my heart together and sticking by me even when I failed at being a good friend to you later on. 

“You should exercise more.”
My mother, telling me after I had mentioned that I felt fat. It was not the beginning of the spiral I sunk into around my self-image and my eating issues, but it certainly did not help. For future reference, mom, I do not think that was the appropriate response to your daughter telling you she has body image issues.

“You’ve gotten skinnier - you’re pretty now!”
One of the few times I’ve ever seen my dad yell at my uncle. I was visiting my extended family over a school break and it was the first thing he said to me after he sat down at the dinner table. If only you did not hold so much value in appearance and actually tried to make something of yourself, perhaps you would be a better person. Unfortunately, here we are.

“Now that Jiang Jie is married, it’s your turn!” 
The same uncle, telling me that I was next in line to get hitched, even though there is another cousin between the one who got married and myself. When I pointed that out, he responded that “Tao is a boy, so it does not matter as much.” I had more words to say but I did not know how to argue about sexism in Chinese. Plenty of people find partners later in life, and if it is children that you are concerned about, my eggs will not expire as quickly as you seem to think so.

“You’re going to sleep, the night before your final review?”
Yes. Yes I am. This is why I pulled the all-nighter last night, so I could sleep this night. It’s called planning. Also, I am useless at speaking if I have not slept, and that’s no good if I have to explain my thought process to a panel of reviewers.

“This is how it’s been for centuries.”
At a panel of architects and architecture alumni, a well-known architect responding to a query by a student about how we could prioritize mental health in studio instead of pressuring students to work themselves to the bone night after night for a grade. This is not how you improve society. Forever enforcing old pressures on young people only creates a vicious cycle of bad experiences. I’m sure anyone who’s ever facilitated progress has never thought that way.

“Oh, you got into MIT because you have good genes.”
At lunch with my mom and one of her clients, he said this after telling us in extensive detail about his Harvard-attending son who surpassed his devastating health issues - cancer, I think - to get to where he is now. It is only time I remember ever hearing my mother advocate for me. She told him I had worked hard to get to MIT and it had nothing to do with the genes she gave me. I was tempted to say that his son must have only gotten into Harvard because of his genes, but I am not cruel.

“I’m not racist, but I would never date an Asian man. I’m just not attracted to them.”
One of my roommates, after being surprised at how attractive her friend’s Vietnamese boyfriend was. Yes, you are being racist when you write off all Asian men as unattractive to you. They come in all shapes and sizes and appearances, since, you know, they make up approximately a fifth of the world’s population. 

“You should smile more.”
The uncomfortable moment when words I had heard yelled at me on the street was spoken to me at work, by a man I like and respect. I went silent in disbelief. I wanted to ask him if he said that to the male employees, but the awkward power dynamics stopped me. If my resting face makes you unhappy, that’s your problem, Also, never say that to a woman.

“Are the bathroom signs sexist, since the woman has a skirt?” “Yes. Someone should design new ones.”
Said by a client and my boss, when we walked by the bathrooms while we were working on a project in their office. The signs are sexist because you perceive the icon of the person wearing a skirt as a woman. New icons do exist - for example, the triangles - but that does not get to the root of the problem: that people fall into multiple gender identities and the perceived gender binary is ridiculous and antiquated. I propose, after some thoughts with my friend Caitlin, that we instead label bathrooms by functionality, like we do with every other space. Use a toilet icon. If you must have two bathrooms, use a toilet and a urinal icon. Simple, to the point.

“You’re not Chinese.”
My mother and her most recent offense, after asking me where else I would live other than the US and Canada if I were to move. After I said I would not want to live in China - I’m far too outspoken and have too many opinions about politics - she responded with those words. I lived in China for a quarter of my life and I have family - regardless of how much I like or dislike them - in China. I am consistently perceived as Chinese in the States, and I identify ethnically as Chinese. Besides, mom, you’re moving to D.C., and you sure as hell aren’t American.

“His jaw dropped. I’m having a proud boyfriend moment.”
You make me smile like an idiot.

"You're perfect. I'm here for you."
Words that Caitlin has said to me time and time again. Even though I always write it off and say that I'm not, every time you say them I feel a little better about myself. I must be doing okay if even just one person thinks that about me. I tear up every time those words show up in our conversations. I love you so much - and you are perfect too.


reading

Reading and Empathy

8:27 PM

I learned a few months ago that Hera, my eight year old little sister, is no longer allowed to read at home by mandate of my mother. As a voracious reader, this horrifies me.

I don’t know if my mother ever held reading in high regard. I think she’s met many bookworms in her life that she did not respect or did not like, and it may have turned her off of reading for life.

For example, my aunt has a huge problem with reading in inappropriate places - when I was little, she walked up the dark, narrow stairwell of her apartment building with her nose in a book while babysitting me and her daughter. I remember asking her about whether or not it was a good example for my little cousin and she waved my question away, too engrossed in the pages between her hands to consider my query.

Needless to say, my mother and my aunt have a strained, albeit civil, relationship.

I admit I also had issues with self-control and reading when I was little. I used to hide books under my bed - and later, in the nook within my headboard, when I found it - and would read in the dark with a little flashlight after my bedtime. When my mom found out, she locked all of my books in a suitcase until my dad took pity and unlocked the suitcase for me a week later.

Afterwards, I still read into the night sometimes. I just got more careful about hiding it from my parents, although I think my dad still knew.

Likely because of this, my mom demonized reading and books. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her read a book for her own enjoyment. And despite having switched careers and become an educator, she does not seem to value reading as must as the rest of the world does.

Reading is important.

Not a single education researcher will tell you differently. 

Reading is important because it expands your vocabulary. It demonstrates different grammar structures and, in a way, helps teach you to write. Reading is important because literacy is crucial for survival in today’s world.

Reading enhances your ability to think bigger and to be more creative. You follow protagonists and learn how they solve their problems, and because authors generally try to avoid tired tropes, solutions continue to become more extravagant, more creative, more interesting. You learn how people solve their problems. Sometimes, a lot of the times, they solve their problems in a way that is different from your own. 

Reading helps you believe in a better future. There is a reason why the Happily Ever After trope continues to exist - when we feel sad, or pessimistic about the current state of the world, books are there for us. After all, if so many heroes can save their dystopian worlds, who’s to say we can’t get through the day?

Reading is a safe haven and a community, perhaps especially so with my generation. We have communities of fans for all sorts of different stories, and while there might be dispute within and between communities, people are accepted. We learn to debate and argue respectfully through discussions of characters and their choices. We learn how to hold conversations about topics we’re passionate about. We learn to accept other people’s ideas and incorporate them with our own. We manipulate the worlds that were already built and make them more colorful so we can see ourselves within them.

Be a rebel. Read a book. A section of a public art piece seen at the Brooklyn Public Library.
But most importantly, reading is one of the easiest ways for a person to learn about and gain different perspectives.

 I am an ethnically Chinese, Canadian-born, middle-class, cis-gendered woman. I will only ever have my own stories and my own experiences. I will never truly know what it’s like to be transgendered, or biracial, or black, or Hispanic, or male, or white, or anything else, because I cannot swap bodies with other people. 

 But when I read stories written by black men, I begin to understand what their lives and their experiences are like. When I read stories written by African-born women, I begin to look into their worlds. When I read stories written by straight cis white men, I understand what their privilege looks like and how it differs from mine.

 And this is true regardless of the genres of the books I’m reading. Fiction is just as true at describing experiences as nonfiction is. Authors write so that every word and paragraph and sentence ooze their own life experiences, no matter how fantastical.

 Just think - Jo Rowling wrote her most famous works while she was a depressed single mother living on welfare. And what topics continue to appear in Harry Potter? Depression. PTSD. Overwhelm. Poverty. Friendship. Kindness. Forgiveness. 

 Funnily enough, it just so happens that the Harry Potter generation has been credited with being more moral and charitable than many before us. Harry Potter taught us about love and forgiveness and sacrifice and the little bits of heroism within each and every one of us. 

 Harry Potter taught us about the pitfalls of xenophobia and hatred and profiling and bullying and prejudice, and we are all better for it.

 I truly believe that reading is a crucial part of learning empathy, and empathy is what makes people kinder. Empathy makes people better. If everyone had a little bit more empathy, I have no doubt the world would be a better place.

 It seems fitting that the people I can think of off the top of my head who seem to lack empathy are also people who do not read.

 Books are for savoring and appreciating and considering. It’s one of the world’s simplest and most accessible joys. 

 It breaks my heart that Hera isn’t allowed to read freely outside of school anymore. She is possibly as voracious of a reader as I am. Her curiosities are just as insatiable as mine, and I believe she has the foundation for the kindnesses and empathies that I wish I could achieve. 

 If she’s anything like me, she’ll figure out a way to get around my mom’s rules and continue to read in secret. 

representation

Look Around, Look Around: Representation Matters

9:56 AM

I actually got really lucky in this aspect. For most of what I remember of my lifetime, I’ve always gotten to see people like myself on the screen.

When I was really little, I had Mulan, a badass Chinese woman depicted in classic Disney animation and voiced by two badass Asian actresses, Ming-Na Wen and Lea Salonga. By the time Mulan wasn’t enough to satisfy my media consumption curiosities, I had moved to China and was surrounded by people that looked like me. Chinese television and movies are, unsurprisingly, filled with Chinese actors and actresses. 

Not that I consumed much television or movies. My dad preferred me reading books, but sometimes I got to watch TV with him. Most of the television he watched was about the war efforts in China during WWII or had some aspect of kung fu in it. Subsequently, my two favorite TV shows that I remember are The Return of the Condor Heroes [神雕侠侣], a show about martial artists engaged in a forbidden romance, and Number Five Secret Service [五号特工组], a show about a five-person Chinese spy group that takes down their Japanese counterpart.

Top Left: Jianping Ouyang [欧阳剑平], from Number Five Secret Service - she was the head of the spy group and she was always able to take down the bad guys while looking fabulous in a qipao.
Bottom Left: Han Gao [高寒], from Number Five Secret Service - she was the "little sister" of the group but never let any of the boys give her any shit. She was awesome. They were all scared of her.
Right: Xiaolongnü [小龙女], from The Return of The Condor Heroes - she was the best martial artist around and she was empathetic and beautiful and my tv first crush ever. I also wanted to be her. I still kind of want to be her.
Because of this, I got to grow up with three-dimensional, awesome Chinese women as characters to look up to in my television shows. While the movies I tended to watch were made in Hollywood, the lack of representation in the movies I watched was offset by what I saw in my television shows.

When I moved back to the US, I didn’t immediately notice that all the people that looked like me had disappeared from media I consumed. I didn’t watch much television at first, being more preoccupied with the magic of Youtube, and more worried about classes and living up to the expectations of my family and my peers that required me to excel. 

My family wanted me to succeed because I am their daughter. My peers expected me to succeed because I am ethnically Chinese.

I started watching a lot more television when I was at MIT. It was a byproduct of being cooped up in studio all the time - building models can get quite mindless, sometimes, and watching television helped keep me awake during long nights. Television also helped give me an escape when my school-related anxieties became too overwhelming. 

It took a while before I started noticing how little representation there was in my media. I started out by watching a lot of the classic nerdy shows - Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Supernatural, three shows filled with an overwhelming number of white people, white men, where women were diminished and one-dimensional and used to further the mens’ stories instead of having their own, especially in the latter two shows. 

And then I branched out and watched other shows, shows that were supposedly similar but better. There was Sleepy Hollow, a show about a multiracial duo that depicted strong companionship and friendship between opposite genders, but then Abbie Mills was killed off to further Seneca Crane’s story even though she was, by all accounts, the more compelling and exciting and relatable character. 

There was Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where a Chinese-American woman plays a central part of the team and is all-around the most badass character on the show. She’s great and I love Ming-Na Wen but she never got enough scenes and the storytelling kept getting worse, and I never really forgave the writers for killing off the one black character just to replace him with another black character (Sorry, Mack, you’ll never replaced Trip in my heart), because as long as there’s one they can be heralded as a diverse show, right?

Then there was all of my DC television that I had somehow gotten into. Arrow was mostly boring. Flash had a typical nerdy white boy who became a superhero, but was worth watching because Iris West, beautiful Iris West, was black and intelligent and a journalist and incredible. Supergirl was a woman protagonist and had a plethora of powerful and vulnerable and awesome three-dimensional women other than the superhero, albeit most of them white.

The other day I got excited because I saw an Asian extra on Supergirl. He played a police officer. I can’t remember if he had any lines.

That’s how thirsty for representation I am. There are literally so few Asian characters in mainstream media that I get excited about a nameless, speechless Asian extra character that ends up needing to be saved by the (white) superheroes. 

How bullshit is that?

And don’t even get me started on movies. Just look at The Great Wall - a movie I really tried to get myself to go watch, because I like the director, but couldn’t because three out of five of the people on the poster are not Chinese. But at least Matt Damon’s character is supposed to be white. Then there’s Ghost in the Shell. 

It’s nauseating to me that yellow face is somehow still almost acceptable in 2017.

Sometimes though, sometimes America does okay. Sometimes America gives people of color a place to tell their story. That continues to be incredibly exciting to me. 

In January, I went to go see Hidden Figures with my roommate. For those of you living under a rock, Hidden Figures is a cinematic depiction of three black women that worked at NASA and were the reason America won the Space Race. Without these women, America would not have succeeded in inventing and calculating the necessary formulas to send men into space.

I watched the movie in Brooklyn’s Borough Hall movie theater. The majority of the moviegoers were black - bringing their children to see the inspiring achievements of other people of color that have stayed hidden for so long. It was an incredible experience. Everyone was excited over every little win the characters fought for, clapping and cheering when Katherine Johnson (played by the incredible Taraji P. Henson) called out her white male coworkers for their outright racism towards her.

I think everyone cried when her (white, male) boss struck down the sign for the Colored Women’s restroom. I thought it was a statement about how important being an ally is. I was heartbroken when I learned that detail had been fictional.

And in February, just a few weeks ago, I went to see Hamilton. 

It was incredible.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for musical theater. The magical thing about musicals is that to me, it has always been a vessel to help tell the stories of the disenfranchised. Les Misérables is about a people’s revolution against their oppressive government; Rent is about LGBT+ artists trying to find their paths in the world; Sound of Music is about people fleeing the Nazis; Annie is about an undesirable orphan who climbs her way out of the system; Wicked is about unlikely friendships and fighting against a corrupt government. 

Then there’s Hamilton. Hamilton not only tells the stories of the disenfranchised, it is performed by the disenfranchised, and there’s something incredibly powerful about that. It takes a story about crusty old white men and transforms it into something that is tangible and relatable and colorful and beautiful in a way that it would be less so if it were not performed by incredible actors of color. 

I still remember the elation I felt when I learned that Phillipa Soo, the original cast’s Eliza, is half Chinese. I can’t imagine how other people of color, people who likely saw less representation than I did growing up, felt when they knew they were being represented by actors and actresses in what is possibly the most popular musical ever to be made and performed.

The cast that I saw with my friends did not have an Asian actor, but it didn’t matter. My cast was just as incredible and beautiful and colorful. 

The subsequent stripping of Chinese representation in the media I consumed after moving away from China has shown me just how much people of color are missing. I don’t need to see three-dimensional Chinese women in media for me - I know where to go to find it. But there are little Chinese-American girls who don’t get to see themselves on screen, and they deserve to know that they are badass and strong and vulnerable and sensitive and beautiful.

The world is a beautiful place because of its diversity. We are diverse in color, in orientation, in identity. The majority of our media makes us believe that cisgendered heterosexual white men are the only people who’s stories matter, and how boring of a world would it be if that were true? 

Besides, in today’s world, it’s a lot more believable and exciting and relatable when it’s people of color who are cheering that “Immigrants! We get the job done.” 


friendship

On Love, Appreciation, and Self-Acceptance

11:01 PM

For a long time, Valentine’s Day was my least favorite holidays.

It’s kind of funny - I love holidays. I love having excuses to shower people with gifts and show my friends my love and appreciation for them, and it’s why I like to go all out for Christmas. 

But Valentine’s Day? Valentine’s Day was a day where corporations took advantage of people’s consumerism, a day where couples were gross and loving, a day where single people would get left out and were forced to feel poorly about themselves for their singleness.

As someone who was perpetually single for a really long time, I hated Valentine’s Day.

Over the past few years in college, my best friend, Caitlin, has taught me to look at the holiday differently. She’s written me a card every year for those four years reaffirming her love for me and teaching me slowly that Valentine’s Day isn’t really about buying and receiving chocolates (although that’s definitely a plus because chocolate is great) or spending it with a significant other, but that it is just like any other holiday - a day where you are supposed to show your love and your appreciation for others.

Last year was the first time I started to change my ways around this holiday. Since Valentine’s Day fell on President’s Day weekend, I visited New York and spent the day with Alyssa, one of my loveliest and oldest friends. We watched Deadpool, ate good food, and had a good time.

This year, I wanted to make Valentine’s Day cards for a bunch of people that I love and wanted to show my appreciation for. 

A sampling of the Valentine's cards I made for my loved ones!

 I will be spending the actual day with Alyssa again. We’re planning on watching the Lego Batman movie. I can’t imagine a better way to spend the day of love with one of the women that I love to bits and has been there for me through a rather large portion (read: 8 or so years) of my life.

 I think Valentine’s Day is also a really good opportunity to reflect and think a bit about self-love as well. Loving myself has been a really long journey for me - it is definitely still a work in progress. 

I’ve always been a little bit too hard on myself, and it’s a hard habit to break.

Art, unsurprisingly, has become a rather good outlet and exercise for working on my self-acceptance. I’ve been drawing and painting since I can remember, and when I draw, the entire world melts away. Drawing helps me focus. When I’m not feeling well and I don’t feel ready to talk about it, I’ll sketch something or do some coloring, and it never fails to calm me and take my mind off of my troubles.

A few days ago, I wasn’t feeling my best about my self-worth and my self-love, and I wrote a poem.I’ve never written a poem before. Poetry was kind of this foreign, tangled thing that I didn’t understand and was too afraid to tackle. But I was feeling so badly about myself and so upset and so worthless that words just came out and turned into this sticky, complicated poem.

I haven’t titled it, but here it is.

—

A boy told me he loved me once.

It was at a time when I was too young -Too naive -I didn’t know what love was - and I said it back because it was what they did in the movies -

I thought I was broken once.

I thought I was broken because I didn’t feel different to the people I was told I loved -My little sister who everyone knew I loved but me -It didn’t feel like what they said it’d feel like in the movies -

I later learned that the love I feel isFierce, unwavering, consuming, burning -

I share my love with those who get close to me.

I spread my flames to those around me -
Lighting candles of love and appreciation -
I share it so it does not consume me.

Fierce, unwavering, consuming, burning -

I hurt easily because I give my flames too freely.

I told a boy I loved him once.
He never said it back.

 This is not what happens in the movies.

I give my flames too freely.

I didn’t know -When you give out all your flames -Fierce, unwavering, consuming, burning -There is nothing left for me.

—

One of my friends once told me that love was my biggest weakness. She said that my capacity to love made it really easy for people to hurt me, whether purposefully or accidentally. I once knew a girl in high school who I thought was my best friend, but when she graduated, she disappeared out of my life with no warning.

That may have been the catalyst for one of my greatest insecurities. I’m constantly a little bit worried that the friends I have and love do not have the same feelings for me, that my presence is just convenient for them but that they will discard me when it suits them.

My truest and most trusted friends, I think, are the ones where that insecurity has diminished.The insecurity is still there. Every time I make a new friend, or I reconnect with an old one, or I get closer to someone I was not as close to before, those feelings get drudged up. It’s a horrible thing to be constantly distracted by while forming new relationships, and it’s something I have been working on. I have yet to find a proper outlet to help me deal with them. 

What I can say, however, is that I think I have grown since Valentine’s Day of last year. I can say pretty confidently that I am more secure in my relationships and that I love myself a little bit more than I did before, and I think that is all I can ask for.

In the meantime, thank you to all of the people in my life who love me when I cannot. I love you all, and happy Valentine’s Day!