About Me

Who am I?

I am an emerging Chinese-American writer living in the Washington D.C. area. I write a monthly column as well as poems, essays, short stories, and original Chinese tall tales. My full-length historical memoir, Once Our Lives, is my most treasured work. Born in Shanghai and brought up during the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, I am most interested in finding the universal in the human experience while celebrating the unique flavors of Eastern and Western life.

How did I begin writing?

I learned early in life about the power of words. Born in a Shanghai shantytown on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, I saw my honest father and others around him imprisoned, tortured, and even executed for the crime of using the wrong words. Shunned as political pariahs by family, neighbors, and friends, my family and I sustained ourselves with stories of adventure and past glory. Later, with the help of a borrowed radio, an eccentric British teacher, and a lucky assignment as a library assistant, I discovered and fell in love with Western literature, committing to memory the strange but beautiful sounds of Keats, Wordsworth, and Lincoln.

But it was in bed late at night, after scouring local parks for enough firewood to cook my family’s meal of rice, that I and my three young sisters heard the dramatic stories that now make up my treasured memoir. The four of us would listen to our mother, an aspiring actress in the early days of Asian cinema, recount colorful tales of pirates, prophesies, fortunes won and lost, babies sold in opium dens, glorious lives and gruesome deaths. Based on actual experiences and family lore from Post-Imperial to Post-Revolutionary times, these stories represent a wealth of colorful but lost Chinese history.

My love of words and study of language proved valuable when China reinstituted its famed National Examinations for the first time since the Imperial Era, winning admission to the famed Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages, and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English and 19th Century English Literature. Because of my command of English, I was assigned by the government to conduct national tours for foreign VIPs, writers, movie stars, and wealthy tourists. Through these contacts I was able to gain the intervention of a powerful U.S. senator (and later Presidential candidate), and was granted a visa for study abroad. I arrived in America with two suitcases and not much more. After winning several scholarships as the first foreign student in one of the nation’s leading university communications departments, I graduated with my master’s degree and a profound love for my new adoptive country.

I worked as an international communications specialist providing translations and writing advertising for Gallup, The Wall Street Journal, and the Getty Center. For more than 15 years now, I have also been a columnist for the Los Angeles area’s Santa Monica Star Newspaper. My passion for literature is deeply ingrained in the entirety of my life’s journey, and I take deep pleasure in every new piece that I create.

What other writers inspire my work most?

Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Keats, and Wordsworth, to name a few! As an English Literature major, I have an enormous love for the classics, and I feel that this love colors my own writing style. Among modern authors, I draw much inspiration from Amy Tan, Frank McCourt, Gish Jen, Lisa See, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Helen Zia.