A Brief History of Me

Posted Jun 27, 2017 by Cici Chen

I was born in a small (by Chinese standard) town in the northeastern region of China on a cold winter day. At that time, my parents had moved to Beijing, but they couldn’t afford heating in their small Beijing apartment, so my mother went back to their hometown to give birth to me.

That => is a typical heated bed in northeastern China, essential for surviving the long winters.

Like most of my friends, I was an only child due to the government's strict One Child Policy. (The government changed it to Two Child Policy last year when they realized that there won't be enough young people to support the elders lol.)

I spent my childhood in boarding kindergartens and primary schools, which is very normal in big cities in China. My parents expected boarding school to train me to be disciplined and tidy; somehow that just never happened. I think for me it did the opposite. If no one told me to be somewhere at a certain time and do certain things, I'd just watch Netflix forever.

When I was 16, the year Beijing hosted the summer Olympics, I quite randomly decided to go to the U.S. for the remaining years of my high school. I loved my friends and my life in Beijing at that time, but I just couldn’t answer the questions: why not? Why not experience a different life and see what is it like in the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world?

I signed up to participate in an exchange student program which places students in public high schools in the U.S. for a year. A host family in Oregon chose to have me, and I said yes. When I landed in Seattle airport, the custom officer asked “What’s the purpose of your visit?”
“To study,” I replied. “I am doing an exchange student program.” The officer looked at my visa and raised his eyebrow. “Paisley? You’re going to Paisley to study?”
“Yes.” I answered feeling a bit confused. What’s that supposed to mean?
“Hm…Oh well. Good luck and welcome to America.” He said with a smile on his face.

It wasn't until I arrived in Paisley and learned that it was a town of 250 people, that I understood the custom officer's reaction. The town had one post office, one bar, one convenience store that sold gigantic cups for sodas, one restaurant, and one school - my school. There were 4 seniors in the 12th grade, and among the 9 students in my 11th grade, 6 of them are exchange students like me.

I couldn’t speak Chinese and stay in my comfort zone. It was impossible to be aloof and invisible in such a close knit community where everyone knew everyone, dated everyone, and was related to everyone. I was involved in everything simply because there aren’t enough people. I was in the school basketball team, rode in the bus for 8 hours on the weekend to go to another school for the tournament and sit on a bench when my team competed. My basketball coach was also a cowboy who rode horses and trapped cows. My classmates were cowboys and cowgirls who loved Taylor Swift and John McCain. I would never forget going to a pig competition thinking it would be pigs racing each other, but instead people walked their pigs around and the judges decided which pig was the best. To this day I don’t understand how it worked.

In hindsight, it was an invaluable experience to spend a year in a rural America, but I pretty much hated every second of it. It was a deep sense of “I don’t belong here.” So I applied to prestigious private boarding schools in New England for my last year in high school. By some miracle my dream school admitted me, and I was off to the polar opposite of Paisley.

Hotchkiss was as close to perfect as a school can be. Idealism was upheld and practiced. The campus was breathtakingly beautiful with a lake and gold courts. The school canteen had organic salad bars and ice-cream machines. World-renowned musicians and dancers gave performances regularly. And almost everyone you met was either a mind-blowingly over-achiever or a well-rounded and humble nobility of some sorts.

Despite not being the most popular kid on campus, I had an incredible time at Hotchkiss and it changed who I am in some fundamental ways.

Growing up watching American movies and TV shows, I had a fascination with New York like most people. NYU admitted me and there I went. New York was just fantastic as one has imagined, but going to school there was a decision that I really regret. Both academically and socially I didn’t thrive. However I started reading New York Times during college and grew to love quality journalism.

For one summer during college, I studied for 2 months in south of France in a school called Institut de Francais which specialized in teaching foreigners to speak French. Later on when I spoke to other French speakers, and told them that despite having taken some lessons, I literally couldn't even say "My name is blah blah" before I went to that school, no one ever believed me. It was really pure magic.

I took lessons in Art History and Films during my semester studying in Paris, and I became quite into art shows and old French films for a while. These days I spend most time watching mainstream things like GOT, but my fascination with the French culture continues.

After college I looked for a job in journalism in New York. It wasn't exactly the booming industry that was in shortage of foreign labors. I did a few internships while worked in a famous dim sum restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown called Golden Unicorn. I am a naturally people pleasing person and I really liked working in hospitality. My colleagues at the restaurant come from a completely different background than my privileged classmates at NYU, and sometimes that place felt like a second home in the big city.

I can not say that I had the time of my life in New York, but I met some great friends and it gave me many perspectives on what is important in life, and that is human relationships. I realized that we are social beings. You could be in the greatest city in the world but a good life is a life filled with meaningful relationships.

After five years in New York. I decided that it was time to return to China and pursue a career in journalism back home. I became an assistant to an American radio journalist who was interested in telling the stories of ordinary Chinese people that were not sensational and stereotypical. I learned an enormous amount about my own country and travelled to far away places that I had never dreamed of being in.

I also realized how naive and inexperienced I am, and that the road to being a great journalist is a very long one. After a year of working as a news assistant, I decided to take a break from work and moved to New Zealand to checkout the southern hemisphere.

By chance I learned about a school in Wellington that teaches web development to people who have zero coding experience. I signed up for the class and 4 months later, here I am making this website.

That’s it for now. To be continued…