February ’22: Storytelling is a Superpower

What kept you up at night with excitement this year?

I asked this question to a good friend from high school over winter break. We hadn’t caught up in a while and dove straight into the juicy questions as soon as we could in our conversation. His answer went something like this:

“During first few month of school, my small friend group would stay up in a small common room and just talk, ask random life questions. All four of us have pretty different backgrounds. Different stories of how they got to where they are. We didn’t know each other that well [at first], but it was nice hearing other peoples opinions. It became a game asking people questions called, ‘you don’t really know me.'”

Likewise, I’ve become close friends with people in college through their stories, not parties or sporting events. The most striking similarity we share is our love to hear about each other’s differences.

Peking Melancholia

Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi in Farewell My Concubine

Written as entertainment during quarantine. There may be historical inaccuracies.

During my first year in America, I came to the conclusion that there must be a different definition of gold here. And a different definition of beautiful, too. That is, in person, America was not what I envisioned the “beautiful country” to look like. Back in China, gold was elaborate headdresses towering atop silky hair, ornate dragons that guard the emperor’s throne, and sycees that sang as they clinked against each other in my silk pouch. Here in San Francisco, gold was the persistent yellowed dust that clung to the streets, the stain on old uncles’ teeth as they blew clouds of silver smoke from their parched lips, and the myth of fortune that only laboring fools still clench between callused fingers. And so, the Gold Mountain was indeed real — the caveat unknown to hopeful immigrants was that gold manifested differently. Very differently.