How the American spirit fueled a Chinese Restaurant — A symphony of mechanical whirring coaxed my father awake. When he looked out the window, what he saw bewildered him. The vast wheat fields he saw from his apartment, perched on a slight hilltop, had undergone a remarkable transformation. …

And still raise a good human — Three years ago, I brought my son to our local Barnes & Noble bookstore to find a new bedtime story. While browsing, I stumbled upon “Anti-Racist Baby” in the children’s section. Curious, I picked it up to flip through its pages. …

Nostalgic musings of my son — I felt the scorching touch of the sun’s beam sear my forehead. I turned away into the shadow of the wall to shield my eyes from the light that seemed to intensify by the second. In my semi-conscious state, I felt the solar spotlight shift from my head to my…

Why I shifted from advocate to critic — For the longest time, I believed that genuine concern for social progress was inseparable from unwavering support for affirmative action, much like how one needs to balance both sticks to hold a pair of chopsticks. However, this perspective gradually eroded within me in recent years. Perhaps it was the constant…

A choreographed saga by a grand puppeteer — The Exposition A young boy wound his way through the crowd to a small open-air courtyard tucked away in a bustling neighborhood in Wuhan, China. The sun cast a warm halo over the streets as it began to set. Without his two brothers alongside him, the young boy found a…

How platitudes feed the soul and obscure debate — On a rainy day in April 2023, I grabbed major headlines in a highly circulated media outlet in the U.S. Chinese community. The article title proudly blared in Chinese: The Second Generation: “I Stand On the Shoulders of My Predecessors.” The article accurately depicted a momentous day. My father, who…

A family story of China’s failed experiment — My mother remembers exactly the moment when her childhood ended. Life had already fallen apart in China when my mother was born in 1948. …

A call to action to reject DEI rhetoric that tells us otherwise — I listened to an online lecture, whereby the speaker passionately advocated for more diversity and representation in the workplace. More diversity in the Board Room; more diversity in the C suite; more diversity in high places. In making a case for quotas, she proclaimed, “Because you cannot aspire to be…

A Collection of Palatable Stories of Growing Up — There is something about a sizzling bowl of soup that awakens our senses and unlocks the brain’s hippocampus. In fact, evolution has wired humans in such a way so that food often taps into our memory reservoir. Three soups come to mind when I reflect on the road of my…