How I rediscovered pride in my culture by speaking Mandarin
I’ve never really thought myself as a rebel. Stubborn? Sometimes. Difficult? It depends on the person and the situation. But a rebel? Not really.
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I’ve never really thought myself as a rebel. Stubborn? Sometimes. Difficult? It depends on the person and the situation. But a rebel? Not really.
It was 2:16 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. I was hunched in front of my computer in a baggy T-shirt, no pants on, furiously pounding away at my keyboard. Line after line after line of angry, black text appeared as fast as my acrylic nails would allow me to type them. I thought about how I would burn Facebook to the ground if I had a chance to as I hammered out an angry, senior thesis-worthy response to yet another insecure, straight man who was complaining in a Subtle Asian Dating post about how women deserved to be nothing but sex dolls because no “female” wanted to date him. (And yes, if you’re wondering — those men really do exist.)
The bathtub itself took 30 minutes to clean and another 10 to fill. For a quick 20-minute dip, it resulted in quite a long series of catastrophes, including my almost dropping my laptop and my copy of Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China into the disappointingly soapy water. It was stress-inducing rather than stress-relieving.
The Beach
There haven’t been many moments that have shocked me much since August. Sure, moving to college and taking my first midterms — ever — were two eventful things but nothing unexpected.
In late February, I deactivated my Instagram account for about a week. On Monday, I said goodbye to my lovely 1,449 followers and pulled the plug. I might reactivate it in a week, either out of FOMO or a desire to showcase a cute picture but definitely more for the latter reason than the former. And in a month from now, I’ll be kissing my account goodbye for another week.
Dear Anxiety,
The bathroom was a lake.
Humans, by nature, love to measure things. Throughout history, civilizations and individuals alike have consistently created systems of measurement: Ancient Maya charted the skies and compiled a calendar to measure time; physicists work to calculate the scale of our universe; English bishop John Wilkins invented the metric system in the 17th century.
“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll forget?” I asked.
Euclid’s first postulate of planar geometry states that a straight line can be drawn from any two points. Postulates state what is, not what may be or what can be proven. Therefore we have to accept the postulate as true with certainty.