I used to be that annoying friend who stood in front of store windows and couldn’t decide whether to buy something. I was terrified of making decisions. It got to the point where my friend would start counting “1, 2, 3” whenever I hesitated. What I didn’t realize then is this:

There is no perfect decision.

Internet gurus love mental models for guiding decisions. Clean rules for messy lives. Some entrepreneurs favor a famous one:

If it’s not a “hell yes,” it’s a no.

I like speaking with venture capitalists. They sit on unusually rich datasets, and over time, they get good at pattern recognition. Even if they are not building companies themselves, they understand the game and sometimes even shape the rules.

There are two types of decisions: Type 1 (irreversible) and Type 2 (reversible). This idea, often attributed to Jeff Bezos, frames them as one-way doors and two-way doors. Some choices are hard to undo, but most allow you to step in, test, and step back out if needed. The problem is that we treat ordinary, reversible decisions like permanent identity statements, when in reality most of what we agonize over are two-way doors.

My struggle with making decisions reflected something deeper. I was afraid of being accountable for the consequences of my own choices. It is easy to analyze, advise, and recommend when the final call belongs to someone else. That made me a great consultant. But being a founder is different. As a founder, you cannot hide behind frameworks or decks. You decide, and you live with what happens next.

Our backgrounds and career choices reveal our risk appetite. I never imagined myself anywhere near finance, yet I ended up liking financial PR. I still remember making a small mistake in an email once, and my boss nearly yelled at me, and said:

“Hierarchy is necessary in the financial industry. It’s there to avoid mistakes.”

Other people carry their own versions of this initiation story in different workplaces, with pens thrown across the room and management yelling at town halls. I sometimes felt like part of my job was to people-please, to read the room before I read myself, to adjust tone and posture until everyone else felt comfortable. On my good days, I could become incredibly good at it, almost fluent in anticipating what others needed to hear. But on my bad days, when the truth inside me was pressing against the surface and asking to be spoken, the performance would crack, and I would feel the tension between being agreeable and being honest.

Somewhere along the way, I realized the question I had forgotten to ask was the simplest one of all:

“Am I happy?”

I have changed my environment more than once, moving cities, reshaping my social circles, letting certain friendships fade while forming new ones, all with the belief that perhaps the answer I was looking for was external, that clarity might be waiting for me in a different skyline or hidden inside a more stimulating conversation.

When I moved from Shanghai to London, I framed the decision as an “intellectual pursuit,” as if I were choosing growth over comfort, depth over familiarity, and I convinced myself that if I could refine my thinking, sharpen my perspective, and become just a little more accomplished, a little more worldly, I would eventually arrive at a place where I felt at peace with myself.

“Don’t optimize for popularity.”

The other day, I was speaking with a group of tech bros who are obsessed with Twitter (or X), and someone in the circle reminded me of that. He meant that if your ideas are calibrated for applause, they will never be sharp enough to cut. I took that to signal the difference between being a leader and being a follower. However, I also argued that many successful women began by people pleasing, by reading the room well, by navigating power carefully before they had the leverage to speak freely. He added something sharper: just because those stories are visible does not mean they are the only path.

For a long time, I was worried about being liked. I struggled with not being a “yes” woman, and when that tension felt too strong, I withdrew instead of disagreeing. Only recently have I realized that receiving requests is not a burden but a gift. It means we are trusted, and it offers an opportunity not just to comply, but to lead.

Maybe I still carry the younger version of myself that I once tried to outgrow, the student who was too loud, too opinionated, the one who asked why one time too many and made teachers uneasy, the one my mother did not quite know how to contain. For years, I saw her as a flaw to correct, an edge to soften.

But somewhere along the way, I began to understand that the same restlessness that once made me “difficult” was also the engine behind everything I am proud of. It was the force that pushed me beyond comfort, that made me question assumptions instead of accepting them, that gave me the courage to leave cities, to start over, and to search for my own answers rather than just inheriting someone else’s script.

At breakfast before a hiking trip, I found myself opening up to my friend about my academic achievement stories, about what it meant to be at the top of the class, and about the emotional cost, the pressure, and the isolation that followed. I spoke as if I were confessing something unusual, almost embarrassing, only to discover that she, too, had been the top student of her entire year, carrying her own version of the same unspoken negotiations between achievement and identity.

As I listened to her story unfold, I found myself saying, almost gently,

“It’s ok to win.”

And she paused and replied:

“Just as it’s ok to lose.”

I used to dream of a bigger stage, a higher ceiling, a more electric world waiting somewhere beyond the one I was in, and I chased that horizon with the belief that expansion was the same as fulfillment, that scale would quiet the restlessness inside me. After years of striving, of stretching beyond my limits, and occasionally being handed the kind of humbling lessons that strip away illusion, I am beginning to see that part of who I am is not only defined by ambition or altitude, but also by something steadier, the capacity to be present, to listen well, and to be a genuinely good friend.

“There are some natures too noble to curb and too lofty to bend.” — Little Women

XOXO,

Your cute Asian girl

“You’re so white-washed.”

I froze.

My birthday party was the last place I expected to be psycho-analyzed. I stood there in my retro bodysuit, neon-pink tights, and a zebra headband, trying not to let my eyebrows jump off my face. I was probably holding a disco ball, too.

For a split second, I wondered if I should defend myself.

But the comment said more about him than about me.

We’re all addicts of something: validation, certainty, belonging. We move through an uncertain world, managing private insecurities, seeking comfort, seeking a place that feels like ours. And sometimes, in the middle of that search, insecurity leaks out sideways.

“We’re like a capybara. We’re just there.”

My cousin said it to me after our bike ride around Regent’s Park. We were sitting on a bench with cups of coffee in hand, watching other cyclists enjoy their croissants and small talk on a rare sunny Friday morning in London. People lingered a little longer than usual. The city felt softer.

He explained that, as an Asian man, he often feels his existence is harmless and almost invisible. In most settings, he is simply there. People do not mind him being there, but that does not mean he is actively wanted or centered.

There is a difference between being tolerated and being truly appreciated.

It is difficult to accept that our skin, our language, our culture, and everything our parents passed down to us can relegate us to side characters in the societies we move through. That we can grow up watching people who look like us serve narratives that are not ours to own. That we can be overlooked in media, underestimated in boardrooms, and treated as optional in romantic pursuits.

So we learned to be a little bit less threatening, less assertive, less opinionated, telling ourselves that maybe this was the way to fit in, that as long as we adapted, softened, we would survive, and that if we could just become a little bit more “white,” we might finally be accepted rather than merely tolerated.

But something is shifting.

A Chinese friend of mine, who is dating a French woman, once told me that the rise of Korean culture has made him more attractive in the dating market.

“Thanks to K-pop.”

He said it half-joking, but the humor held truth.

What looks like pop music is actually policy. In the late 1990s, after the Asian Financial Crisis, South Korea began treating culture as economic infrastructure. The government invested strategically in film, television, and music exports, launching what became known as the Korean Wave. Culture was no longer ornamental. It became an engine of soft power, national branding, and global influence.

And when perception shifts, desirability shifts.

Suddenly, East Asian men were no longer framed as background characters but emerged as central figures, heartthrobs, and tastemakers shaping the cultural moment.

Attractiveness, it turns out, is not purely individual. It can be geopolitical.

I grew up in post-colonial Hong Kong under heavy British influence, where names like Swire and Jardine shaped the city’s power structures and reinforced an invisible hierarchy of what was considered refined and what was not. Westernization felt less like a choice and more like infrastructure, the default setting for survival in a competitive international city.

There were moments when I wished I could be more British, just to blend in more easily, just to be accepted in a workplace calibrated to Western norms. Moments when, years ago, I mentioned weekend trips to Shenzhen with my mother to classmates and sensed a recoil, an almost invisible tightening in their expressions.

The calibration did not stop in school. It followed us into corporate culture. Happy hour conversations about ski trips in the Alps. Easy references to boarding schools and summer internships arranged through family friends. The comfort of cultural shorthand that did not require translation.

“Why is my life so tough? It’s been so tough.”

After years of trying to fit into elite rooms, I broke down in my mother’s arms, not long after my grandmother passed. The grief felt heavier than I expected. It was not just the loss of a person. It was the weight of everything I had been carrying for years. My mother held me gently and did not say much.

“Your whole family hasn’t made it out to be educated.”

As my aunt folded paper offerings and counted envelopes, she kept reminding me how much I had achieved on my own. She told me that somewhere in second- and third-tier Chinese cities, younger girls were looking to me for hope, that their mothers were sharing my writing and my stories with their daughters. That whether I realized it or not, I had already become an example of what was possible.

In rooms where I felt peripheral, I was central somewhere else.

While I was trying to fit into someone else’s definition of refinement, learning to host gatherings that met every expectation of Western etiquette, presenting myself in ways that made stakeholders feel at ease, internalizing that the safest way to do my job was to respect hierarchy and stay silent, and making calculated moves into new rooms and new cities for the sake of career advancement, I did not realize I was already building something of my own.

“Don’t you want to become a role model?”

As I grieved not just my grandmother but every loss along my startup path, I felt stripped of momentum. She had always been my center of gravity, the one who carried courage for me when mine ran thin.

And yet, even in that unraveling, another woman who shares my heritage reminded me that direction still matters, that where I am going carries weight beyond how I feel in this moment.

For generations, we were guests in someone else’s stories. Our cultures were tolerated more than celebrated, translated rather than understood. Classmates pulled their eyes back with their fingers. “Ching chong” became playground humor. Mock kung fu gestures filled school hallways.

For years, survival meant proximity to whiteness. We sent our children to private schools and boarding schools so they would not have to navigate the same ceilings we did. So they would have more options than opening a restaurant, a takeaway shop, or a corner store.

We were searching for a place where we could feel desired, wanted as we are. We needed proof that we could be visible on our own terms, that we were capable of rising beyond the bamboo ceiling.

Now, we’re in a world where matcha is no longer exotic. Boba is no longer strange. Sushi and bibimbap are no longer foreign novelties. What was once mocked is now mainstream. What was once peripheral is now aesthetic, profitable, and aspirational.

Maybe for the first time in generations, we no longer need to shrink to survive.

“I grew up wishing I were more white.”

You never needed to. The future already looks Asian.

XOXO,

Your cute Asian girl

“Why don’t you have a penis?”

“You can try to make yourself a penis.”

Misogyny is most dangerous when it is internalized by women themselves, turning into a cycle of pain we keep alive by repeating the stories we were taught.

Every one of us is born into a system. First, there is the immediate family. Then the extended family, neighbors, schools, and workplaces. These systems determine our access to healthcare, insider information, and informal protection.

History is written and rewritten by those who hold power. A story is already being told about us before we are born. Before we are given the tools to understand or challenge these systems, we are taught to accept our place within them.

A daughter married away is like spilled water. (嫁出去的女，潑出去的水。)

In agrarian societies shaped by chronic scarcity, power condensed into two enduring forms: financial power and manpower. Land, labor, and lineage determined survival. Within landholding families, men remained in the lineage after marriage, worked the land, and carried the family name forward. Women, by contrast, were expected to marry out. Any labor, fertility, or caregiving they provided would ultimately benefit another household rather than their natal family.

In practical terms, women were not treated as long-term investments expected to generate returns for their own lineages. From this material reality emerged a story, and from the story, a set of rules. Marriage was framed as women’s greatest protection and their primary path to security.

The story can appear cruel when viewed through a modern lens, but its function was not moral; it was structural. Few instruments are more effective at maintaining social order than a belief system that presents itself as natural, inevitable, and beyond question.

“Remember, just do what you’re told to do and don’t ask why.”

A family elder repeated this to me again and again, not harshly, but with a steady insistence that love and respect should be expressed through compliance rather than questioning, and that restraint, in this context, was the proper form of devotion. It was for my grandmother’s funeral, and sometimes, to love means making yourself smaller so the system can remain intact.

Within inter-lineage imperial governance, single-surname lineage families functioned as the basic units of stability. Bloodline ties reinforced order and continuity across generations, enabling large-scale coordination in the absence of surplus.

In contrast to Western political thought, which prioritizes individual rights, Eastern political traditions historically placed the system above the individual. This logic was impersonal by design. Stability was preserved not through individual protection, but through systemic coherence.

Marriage, within this framework, was not primarily romantic or personal. It functioned as a mechanism of redistribution. Financial power and manpower were reallocated across lineages to preserve balance, reinforce alliances, and sustain the system itself.

“Your daughter is too Westernized.”

My mother was told this implicitly, as if there were no existing container within the system prepared to hold me as I am. But it did not mean that I fully belonged in the West either. Was a woman who had not married expected to belong anywhere at all, or simply water waiting to be spilled?

But I am truly, proudly, a Tang daughter, raised by a grandmother who sacrificed her entire life in service of the system, from an arranged marriage, to decades of labor, to naming an inheritor “without a penis,” in direct violation of what the system allowed. My very existence violated the rules. The system was never designed to contain me.

And yet, fighting the system also meant fighting who I am, because it is the same system that bore witness to my becoming, that moved through puberty with me, and that saw both my rises and my falls.

When my grandmother’s life was coming to an end, and I finally chose to stay, for once, I looked back from beside the coffin and saw that it was the system that held me when I needed it. The gendered violence I endured was only a reflection of what each of them had been forced to endure.

Kneeling in front of the coffin that held my grandmother’s body, I could not name what I felt. I was angry, sad, guilty, tired, and relieved all at once. All my feelings curled up inside me, seeking somewhere to rest, or to burst open.

I know that until her last breath, she saw me. After all, she too had once been a Weitou daughter, raised by her grandmother. From the very beginning, I was chosen to be protected and loved. She chose me, and she gave me everything she had, even when I did not yet know how to choose her the way she chose me.

How cruel it is to bet an entire life on a single person. I was never supposed to be an investment, yet I became one.

“I want to be a man in my next life.”

My grandmother used to say.

“I’m in a lot of pain! I’m in a lot of pain!”

One of life’s toughest choices is deciding between saving a body and letting a loved one go in peace. We often worry about what might happen, but when it does, we’re usually caught off guard.

When a body is in crisis, you call an ambulance. Next is data collection: checking temperature, oxygen saturation, heart rate, and blood glucose. A body can be broken into data sets like oxygen, carbon dioxide, heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose, and electrolyte levels. Oxygen is delivered through a cylinder when levels fall below a safe range. In extreme conditions, breathing is taken over by a ventilator.

Our bodies function when these datasets stay in balance. Each value moves within a range. In Chinese thought, this balance is called yin and yang. In medicine, values are shown as negative or positive. They are measured accurately, not just felt.

Data informs what happens next. But precise predictions are rarely possible, as values fluctuate constantly. Medical professionals make decisions and hold the responsibility and liability for them. Biology was my favorite subject in school. I find it fascinating to understand how a heart works to keep blood moving through the body and how our lungs sustain life with every breath.

My grandmother, yet, follows a completely different method. She believes certain foods warm the body, while others cool it. She would look at the color of my lips and make a swift comment on her thoughts about what was happening inside my body. Maybe that is why going to the hospital is such a frightening experience for her. Suddenly, she loses control over how to care for her body and has to accept that the wisdom she has relied on for years no longer holds authority there.

She probably never knew what a human heart actually looks like, yet she has always found ways to heal herself with the remedies she makes.

I find myself recalling old notes, trying to match them with the mental notes she might have, even though her mind may no longer be a clear place after the shock of intense ventilation and antibiotics.

Most of our bodies share similar limits, whether we like it or not. We pass through the same four passages in life: birth (生 shēng), aging (老 lǎo), illness (病 bìng), and death (死 sǐ).

We, as Homo sapiens, have long tried to interpret what death means. We keep searching for ways to delay aging, from ancient promises of immortality to modern anti-aging innovations that claim to slow the decline of our organs, from Qin Shi Huang to longevity guru Bryan Johnson. Alongside this, we have tried to understand the beginning and the end of life through inherited stories.

“We’re all just trying to survive.”

I said this and looked at my friend. We sat beside my grandmother’s hospital bed in silence, listening to her breathing through the ventilator and our own. It was also my attempt to soothe an anxious friend who could not help but imagine herself lying in bed.

We are all just looking for safety in an unpredictable, uncertain world, trying to make sense of a world that we are in and grasp for whatever security remains.

My spiritual journey has been a lot like Pi’s. He was raised in a Hindu family, then introduced to Christianity and Islam, and decided to follow all three. I was raised in a lineage family that practiced Taoism, then introduced to Catholicism at 6, Christianity at 10, and Buddhism at 13. It was not that I did not want to love God, but perhaps I would find belief easier if God were a woman.

We all share similar fears: fear of shame and fear of humiliation. Today, two fears in particular, fear of missing out and fear of looking stupid, often get in the way of decision-making, as Sequoia partners Pat Grady and Alfred Lin have pointed out. Many wrong bets are driven by psychological bias rather than spreadsheet errors, what they describe as a failure to maintain a “separation of church and state,” meaning not letting the thrill of the chase (emotion) bleed into clinical decision-making (truth).

Chinese religious traditions often emphasize samsara, the afterlife, and karma, focusing on cycles of return and consequence rather than a singular idea of heaven. Whether rebirth or salvation, we, as Homo sapiens, seem to find it hard to accept that we are nothing more than bodies made of data.

Ironically, we romanticize a kind of true love we would be willing to die for, even as we dismiss emotion-guided decisions in everyday life. From Romeo and Juliet to The Flower Princess (《帝女花》), my grandmother’s favorite show, love is remembered not for its practicality, but for its refusal to compromise.

In a world where marriages were arranged and individual choice was limited, our longing for love that transcends duty, survival, and reason became something sacred. These stories endure because they give dignity to feeling, suggesting that a life guided only by calculation may survive, but it does not fully live.

No matter how carefully we hide our brightest, or darkest, longings, near the end, on a hospital bed, every trace of fear has nowhere to hide.

A natural death turns out to be far messier than I could imagine. We move through moments of clarity and confusion, cycles of delirium, adrenaline-driven rallies, and episodes of terminal lucidity. It is hard to accept that the mind can no longer anchor itself in a logical, linear world. We spend our lives trying to optimize our patterns, yet sometimes, no matter how hard we try, the body refuses to be optimized.

“She couldn’t read, and I studied until I got a master’s.”

I sighed outside the ward. Accompanying a dying family member was overwhelming. There was nothing to do but watch the body fluctuate, waiting until the numbers no longer argued for recovery. Having briefly encountered so many different religions, I have yet to fully formulate, or put into words, what death means to me.

I struggled to believe that a body that once sang songs across Hong Kong now struggled even to take a proper breath. I had moved through cities, working hard to be as articulate as possible, and now I found myself speaking my Weitou dialect to comfort a mind. No matter how much we live, one day we return almost to zero. And when love can no longer be expressed through words, it must find another form.

In Chinese culture, there are two kinds of important gatherings: those for marriage and those for death (紅白二事). A woman takes her husband’s surname on the day she marries. My grandmother became Aunt Xi, defined by her marriage to my grandfather Tang Xi, when she wed at 22. Near death, as she moved between hospital rooms and surgery beds, after 70 years, she was finally called by her own name again: Liu Kam-lan.

Written in the week before the winter solstice.

“Your career and who you marry are the most important decisions in your life.”

People love quoting Warren Buffett on this, but it was the first time someone had said it to me. Not everyone sees it that way, but for those who do, they’ve probably either tried entrepreneurship or failed a few ventures already.

Our education system was unlikely designed to nurture original thinking. It was built to produce compliant workers, a system shaped by industrial-age values and, as many have pointed out, influenced by the questionable motivations behind John D. Rockefeller’s philanthropic initiatives. Conformity was rewarded more than curiosity. Obedience over imagination. Memorization over thought.

And yet, I have mixed feelings about John D. Rockefeller. I’ve read his 38 Letters to His Son several times. The advice he wrote for his own child does not align with the system he helped shape for everyone else. There is something painfully human in that gap.

I often wonder how we decided that work and life should be separate. How did we learn to accept that the thing that consumes most of our hours is not meant to be something we love, or at least something that gives meaning?

And honestly, who am I to speak like I know? I have not hit the entrepreneurial milestones I once set for myself. Not yet. My UK visa application was just rejected. I spent months proving I was a “promising” talent, only to be told I was not exceptional enough. At least not yet.

Maybe the reason I have never separated work from life is that I grew up in a family where work was life. I grew up surrounded by builders. Not bankers, not lawyers, but people who built the world with their hands. Our family home is still the home of my childhood, rebuilt piece by piece over the years. A vacation never existed in our vocabulary. My grandmother spent her entire life saving every cent, constructing properties on the land we owned, and providing for me in ways I did not understand until much later. Being a landlady meant contracts, receipts, negotiations, and family conflicts. That was my curriculum.

That world moves with history. The New Territories took their name from the 1898 extension of Hong Kong’s boundary under British rule. The decades that followed were far from gentle. It was a fierce, almost feral time when power could buy nearly anything. To own land was to command people, politics and business. And that power stretched far beyond Hong Kong, shaping the Chinatowns built across oceans.

Every inflection point creates winners. Just like the Opium War, the forced opening of the ports and the introduction of the security law, each moment reshaped our world overnight.

My indigeneity and my native Cantonese, the languages and textures that formed me, have become almost rare in my generation. These were the things I once found uncool, as if my identity was something I was meant to outgrow.

The entanglement of work and life can be self-destructive. I do not know how to explain my dissatisfaction when I have a roof above me and bread to eat. I grew up feeling lonely, and that loneliness returns whenever I sit in a taxi and see the glowing Bank of China building in Central, or when I run along my village trail that has slowly disappeared under concrete. Nothing is wrong with my life, yet it often feels like everything is.

Just when you realize life looks so perfectly constructed, you start to notice the cracks and pull it apart until an opening appears.

As a former publicist, maybe I’ve fallen a little in love with the thrill of a crisis. I don’t think I can grow fast enough without getting myself into a bit of trouble every now and then. I’ve questioned myself many times, why I choose to leave comfort, and why I get uncomfortable when life starts feeling a little too comfortable.

A friend once told me about her great aunt, who grew up in a privileged home in China. She became a journalist who stayed to document the Cultural Revolution, refusing to flee even when escape was possible. She died in prison after enduring repeated abuse. She was pregnant at the time.

“People want to find meanings in their lives.”

I made a light comment, imagining myself in her position.

As someone who has been part of many social movements, something in me stirs when I face a problem I cannot fix. I feel it in my chest, the way others who are just as desperate for change do too. We were raised to project idealism onto the world. And when the world refuses to match it, something inside us cracks. The hardest lesson, one I still fail over and over, is learning to pick my battles.

It is liberating to have a career as a woman, almost like buying my way out of the role tradition assigned to me. But the desire to prove others wrong is a dangerous fuel, simply because not every battle is worth fighting.

There are 0-to-1 people and 1-to-2 people. There are people who live through experimentation, and people who operate from frameworks.

After leaving my corporate job, I struggled to embrace the former. A mindset where every week demands a new iteration. No polished slides. No perfect decks. Only building, testing, and learning in motion. An exited YC founder coached me for almost a year, assigning KPIs and pushing me until the only answer left was:

“You need to throw away your old code.”

People romanticize startup life. The speed, the AI breakthroughs, the YC and EF halos. But in reality, I spent months filming shaky interviews, editing clips, tracking reactions, replying to comments, sending messages one by one, talking to strangers on the street, and interviewing LSE students in their study breaks just to understand how they behaved online. It was not glamorous. It was not Mayfair dinners or investor briefings like my former comms life.

Many nights I wondered if I even liked this work. But this is what 0-to-1 growth looks like. Unpolished. Obsessive. Powered by curiosity long before the metrics move.

It felt like a shedding when I packed away my corporate dresses and heels and chose sneakers, black shirts, and jeans instead. In my early jobs, I was not allowed to wear jeans at all.

“Being a founder and being an employee require two different sets of skills.”

Someone told me this when I pivoted away from being a founder. I do not remember who. But it is true. I am re-learning the basics I thought I already knew.

Maybe I have finally come to realize that not every battle is mine to fight. I spent years swinging at everything that came my way, only to learn that I had what I needed all along.

I used to believe pain was the engine that pushed us toward extraordinary things, that only through suffering could we learn how to live. I rushed to grow up, treating life like a race. But many of the battles I fought were battles within myself.

I am just a person, a human, a girl with two cats, moving through the world like anyone else, a face you might pass online without thinking twice. With every battle I lose, I find my way back to who I am. And only by meeting myself honestly have I learned when to surrender, and when to fold.

Thank you for the lovely bouquet.

“You have my genes.”

My mother said it offhandedly, after reading through the essays I’ve published so far. Even in translation, the words carried through, to my surprise. She claimed my writing talent came from her.

This newsletter began out of frustration, as if keeping a record of my hard-earned lessons and failed tests was the only way to make sense of them. It wasn’t something I expected anyone to actually even read. Every word I wrote, I wrote with fear, the kind that sits behind your ribs, whispering what if they don’t understand?

I still care too much about what people think of me, as if there’s a perfect image I’ve been fighting so hard to protect, a version of myself I’m terrified to disappoint.

My mother could probably see through the mess I was trying to write my way out of.

I spent years running away from home. I got a job in the city, stayed out as late as I could, made new friends, then moved to Shanghai and later to London. I was chasing a new identity, a life that felt entirely my own. I wanted independence, of place, of work, of thought.

Maybe I was running away from the very core of the problem, the tangled threads of love, guilt, and duty that tie us home no matter how far we go. And if there’s one person who could understand this version of me, it’s my mother.

My mother grew up on a farm, deep in the countryside of Henan province, a place shaped by scarcity, in a China still finding its way out of poverty. She met my father when Shenzhen was still a rough place to be. As the eldest daughter, raised to be the responsible and sensible one, my mother fiercely held on to her values despite not having much. She would fight to pay the bills, a very northerner thing to do. And that strength, that stubborn pride, was exactly what drew my father to her.

I was an accident, born out of pure, passionate love. My mother never imagined she would carry a child at 18. She took the risk to keep me and moved to Hong Kong to start a new life. No one can ever be fully prepared to become a parent at that age. You just do the best you can. And sometimes, you can’t foresee what follows: the storms, the sacrifices, the unexpected turns that come with the risks you choose to take so fiercely.

It’s the same with anything we try to do. We take bold risks with incomplete information, and for whatever follows, we can only keep learning, keep adjusting, and keep going.

“CEOs are learning to be a CEO, just as parents are learning to parent.”

I said to a friend. We used to think that anyone with the title must know exactly what they’re doing, but it’s not always the case.

My mother didn’t get to live her twenties the way I did. Her twenties began with breastfeeding, the chaos of new life, and the heaviness of growing up too soon. She was brave. And in every risk I take, every mistake I make, I carry that same spirit, or the same gene.

“I was the eldest daughter, and since I was young, I’ve been taking care of everyone.”

My mother rarely softened, but that day she leaned her head on my shoulder and said it playfully, almost like a little girl seeking comfort.

She hasn’t had many chances to be a little girl. She was pushed into a mother’s role early and has rarely had the chance to rest. She’s always been too scrappy, too pragmatic for indulgence. Now that my grandmother has fallen ill, she carries the weight of both the physical and emotional labor, the kind that keeps you awake at night, gripped by fears you can’t speak out loud.

“Daughters are expected to do free emotional labor.”

A friend said it plainly as I was caught between building my own life and caring for the people who gave me the chance to build it.

My mother traded her freedom for mine. She had me when she was 18, and now she’s read my 18 essays all at once.

Every parent wants their child to live the life they never had, but deep down, they fear that in giving them all the freedom, they’ll lose the last thread that keeps them close. She told me that the way I chose to pursue entrepreneurship is exactly like hers. And for a long time, I was afraid of that, afraid of becoming like her, of making decisions that would cost me more than I could bear.

But she was right. When I taught myself to type Chinese on my first computer, I was just like her, a young woman learning a new language so she could start again in a new place. After all these years, she still has a Mandarin accent when she speaks Cantonese. Though the way we’re perceived is different. In Mainland China, my Hong Kong accent is considered soft, almost foreign, a sign of distance. But in her case, it was a reminder that she came from somewhere else, that she didn’t quite belong.

She’s been fierce for so long. When she was young, it was a barbaric time in her village. She once saw her father and grandfather, honest, gentle men who never knew how to fight back, being bullied and beaten. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed a kitchen knife and was about to confront the bullies herself, until her mother and a few others pulled her back so hard that her clothes almost tore.

For a very long time, I forgot that she had a little girl inside. For the years I was working hard in Shanghai, I forgot that she didn’t even get a chance to visit Shanghai. The world was changing so fast, and I forgot that I knew how to get around China more than she does now.

I didn’t understand her world, or the world she’s coming from. And let’s be honest, I’m not sure if my mother actually wants me to.

“Hong Kong girls are very 'nails’.”

Someone casually commented at a friend’s birthday party. I grew up as a Gong Nui, a term for Hong Kong girls, often used to describe how materialistic or demanding we’re thought to be. I’ve suffered from my share of first-world problems: deciding what outfit to wear for which occasion, whether my bag matched my dress, or which pair of heels would make the right impression.

I have a friend who runs a tea business. Seeing her bring suitcases to events reminds me of my mother. For a long time, I felt a little uneasy that my mother worked so hard, even when she didn’t have to, instead of living the comfortable life of a tai tai (a well-off married woman who doesn’t need to work).

“You’ve started having a lot of grey hair.”

As a person who’s never really had to suffer financially, my mother started voicing concerns as I was pushing myself in the entrepreneurship path. My friend just said to me:

“You’ve grown a lot and gained a lot of wisdom.”

I was once told that having a good therapist is like having a container to hold you. It stings a little, because that’s probably what being a parent really is. I tried talking therapy, but I found writing to be a better way of holding myself together.

Writing has also become the bridge between my mother and me. Somewhere along the way, I found myself becoming that bridge for younger women who share my roots but never had the chance to grow close to Chinese literature.

Or maybe I was just tired of running away.

We spend so much of our lives searching for a container outside ourselves, forgetting that maybe, from the beginning, it was already built into us.

“Do what you need to do. I’m going to help you take care of everything here.”

It was the first time that my mother was giving me full permission to fail.

Maybe that’s what inheritance really means: not repeating the past, but carrying its courage forward.

“Anything is possible.”

Someone I worked for used to say that.

I’ll never forget it. It was the first time I’d heard someone speak with such unfiltered ambition. It almost scared me. I grew up being reminded of what not to do, never to think that big, never to want that much. The whole idea that “the sky is the limit” felt foreign, almost reckless.

Here’s the thing. The sexy and unsexy truth of being a founder is that it’s almost impossible to separate your work from who you are.

“I don’t know who I am.”

A friend said that during his self-introduction after selling his company. Even an exit can leave you feeling that way, so imagine how a failure feels. When your business collapses, it doesn’t feel like just the company failed. It feels like you did.

A friend’s mother took her own life after her factory shut down. She couldn’t bear the debt, the shame, the sense that she’d lost not just her work, but her worth.

The idea of being a founder is deeply romanticized, partly because of the visibility that comes with it. Investors take big bets, and they need faces, ambitious ones, to rally behind. But having a business takes far more than being visible or articulate.

In the late 1970s, China’s Scar Literature gave voice to a generation marked by trauma, writers who turned personal pain into national healing. Decades later, another kind of scar has emerged: founder scars.

It’s easier to read about building a business than to actually build one. The process itself isn’t glamorous. You’re convincing investors you have talent, convincing talent you have money, and convincing yourself you can hold it all together. Some days you’re the strategist. Other days, you’re just trying to get an ad to run or a form to load. You wear multiple hats, trying to keep the one that still fits your strength, while finding people who can wear the ones you can’t stand.

What you don’t see are the scars, the doubts, the emotional debt, the isolation that grows when your identity becomes your company. These scars don’t appear on pitch decks or press releases. They live in the silence between funding rounds, in the emails you never send, in the sleepless nights when your purpose and your survival start to blur.

On many days, in many hours, you’re calculating productivity and profitability, measuring every minute against an outcome. It becomes hard to be fully present, even when you want to be.

“I won’t be able to stop working if it’s my business.”

An ex-colleague once said that to me, an intrapreneur, not a founder. She was right. Even when I wasn’t working, I couldn’t stop thinking about my business.

In the startup world, first-principles thinking is celebrated. You’re always peeling back layers to get to the fundamental truth of why something exists.

Can I automate this? How can I solve this faster? How do I generate more output with the time I have? Why are we paying for this? Why are customers paying? Why?

It’s almost impossible to stop thinking, but you still need to pulse-check yourself, to avoid overthinking, and to stay focused on execution and what truly matters to your business. The reality is, you want to win by moving fast, but with speed comes breakage. If things aren’t breaking, you’re probably not moving fast enough.

That mindset, embracing controlled chaos in pursuit of progress, is, in many ways, deeply Chinese. It’s an engineering instinct shaped by survival: build, iterate, fix, repeat. (But that same mindset can be dangerous when applied to something as complex as a country. Check the podcast below!)

The 996 culture has become a global debate, especially in the startup world. The truth is, many careers demand a high level of dedication to succeed, especially when it’s a craft you’ve chosen for yourself. A lawyer friend once had to pull out her laptop during her grandfather’s funeral. The deal was on, whether she was ready or not.

Being a founder is the same. Even when you’re not ready, you still have to perform in your pitches.

A founder friend once told me that he and his cofounders would calculate the “value” of every person they met at a networking event, then update each other in a shared Slack channel. I can’t help but wonder, how much joy is left when every moment is measured?

“You need to enjoy what you do.”

A friend who spent 25 years in investment banking told me that. Another founder echoed it: the pressure never goes away, but there’s a strange satisfaction in surviving it. Every challenge you overcome becomes a scar, a proof that you endured.

Over 90% of startups fail. And yet we keep building, as if statistics don’t apply to us.

Maybe it’s not about proving we’re the exception, it’s the act of building, of trying, of breaking and rebuilding again, that becomes the story, the scar that heals into something worth remembering.

“You’re crying too soon. I’m not dead yet.”

That simple line takes almost all your strength to push out, each word catching on the edge of your breath. But even in weakness, you are commanding.

I’ve always lived under your giant wings. No matter how hard I fall, I’ve always known I’d have somewhere soft to land. For a long time, I thought it was a cage you were luring me into, the life you’d lived, the path you’d walked, the expectations I was so scared to repeat. I wonder how it must feel, knowing that the care meant to protect me once felt like nothing but a chain.

I’ve always wanted to grow my own wings and see how high I could fly. You’ve always feared I’d only be flying toward the fire. I thought you wanted to dim my light when you were just afraid the world would burn me for shining too bright.

Now, your body looks as light as a feather, so fragile that even a deep breath from me feels like it could blow your life away.

Growing up, we thought the adults who raised us held all the power. They made the rules, decided our routines, and shaped the world we thought we knew. They were the giants in our lives. They cast a long shadow when they walked, and we lived beneath them.

My grandmother thought the world was full of little dangers. She never let me into the kitchen or near the sink. She’d always find a reason that I was too young, too careless, too likely to hurt myself. This was her way of loving me, or the only way she knew how.

She couldn’t read more than ten words, including her own name. And yet, with those few words, she built an entire life, navigated a world that was never built for her, and somehow managed to raise me to believe I could read them all.

Maybe that’s where my hunger for learning began. Getting into a good university had always been my goal, as if I were trying to rewrite the story you were never allowed to live.

I met up with one of my former bosses in London after getting my second degree, and she said to me:

“You always said you wanted to study.”

I was surprised that my thirst for education was so obvious to others. Maybe because even during job interviews, I’d ask if there might be a chance for sponsorship to continue my studies.

That thirst for education might have seemed irrational to those who never felt it, but I’ve come to believe that education is the one investment in yourself that never depreciates.

“You’re the biggest hustler I’ve ever met in my life.”

My friends could see that instinct in me, that restless urge to want more and go after it. But maybe that wanting was my way of carrying you forward. The wings you once used to shelter me, I now use to lift us both.

All those years I spent chasing after a shinier life, running from one dopamine hit to the next, and now I’m here, in a room far from all that noise, holding your hand.

For the first time, I’m praying to all the ancestors you worshipped: Please ease her pain. Please share her pain with me.

If I could, I’d trade my living years for just a few more with you.

It’s those wings that have pulled me from storms, carried me through the darkness, and sheltered me when I couldn’t see the way forward. They lifted me when I no longer had the strength to rise.

You were there for every beginning: the first steps, the first falls, the first dreams I ever dared to chase.

How am I supposed to fly alone? How can I beg time to give me more time?

I keep grabbing the nurse, asking for predictions, as if this were a problem I could solve. What symptoms? How many days? But all I’m left with are unknown variables.

A woman right beside us shouts at me for accidentally pulling the curtain she needs. I apologize, but she keeps going, her voice sharp enough that others in the room begin exchanging sympathetic glances with me. My grandmother later reaches out, grabs the nurse’s hand, and says,

“I’m from the Liu clan, married into the Tang clan.”

The nurse smiles and says:

“You’ve got the two greatest clans with you.”

Even at your weakest, you’re still trying to protect me. That protection comes from all you’ve devoted your life to, the family name, the rituals, the songs that echo through time.

The bridal lament was full of sorrow, a grief that mourned the moment a woman’s freedom turned into duty. You live by duty so I can live by choice. And perhaps the truest choice I can make is to carry your duty forward as my own.

“He brings the brain and she brings the beauty.”

That’s how her manager casually commented as they headed to a client pitch.

She bit her tongue, thinking, I didn’t go to the Ivy League to be told that.

As obedient as we’ve always been, she didn’t let her honest thoughts slip out. She swallowed them and tucked them neatly behind a smile.

It’s in those moments we’re mistaken for the intern, the fresh grad, the assistant, mistaken for supporting roles we’ve long outgrown.

“I don’t like to disappoint people.”

I said it to one of my previous bosses, sitting in a role that didn’t fit me. I could feel it in every nerve, knowing that I wasn’t where I was meant to be. The words left my mouth, soft but weighted.

What they didn’t know is that no one demands more from us than we already do ourselves.

As children, we learned to sit upright at the table, to let the elders start first, and to understand that every small courtesy was more about them than about us. We learned to tend to the small details so others would leave the room with a smile. Where people should sit. How much to put into the red envelope. What kind of gift suits who, and when to send the right greeting.

It was about showing up as expected, behaving as required, blending in, and not letting anyone down. We learned to read people’s faces like books. The twitch of an eyebrow, the difference between a polite smile and a real one. We learned to sense danger in disapproval until we forgot how to stand up for ourselves.

One Chinese New Year, I finally spoke the words I’d been holding back for years, tears streaming down my face as I apologized to my uncle and auntie.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble we’ve caused the family over the years.”

I said, as I dried my tears with my sleeves.

I’ll never forget how, growing up in a seemingly well-established family, I often felt like an outsider, aware of how dysfunctional my own family was in comparison. That splinter of shame sank deep into my bones and grew with me over the years, hardening as I did, until even my bones felt impossible to break.

We often underestimate how much people can see through us. Since I was young, I’d bring them small gifts from my travels, as if to repay the little debts I never spoke of. I guess they always knew.

It was also in the unsaid, a silent plea for forgiveness, and another for mercy: Please, we’ve already lost a father figure. There are no men left in this household. Please be kind to us.

“It’s not your fault. No children should be responsible for their parents’ doings.”

I paused, bracing myself for a harsher response that never came.

We grew up caring so much about what people thought of us. It always felt safer to expect the worst than to believe the best. We were reminded that kindness could be dangerous, that if we were too open, too trusting, we could easily become the prey in someone else’s story, the lamb led to the slaughter, the Little Red Riding Hood who mistook the wolf for a friend.

It isn’t always easy to keep faith in a world that keeps telling us to protect ourselves, a world where kindness can be mistaken for weakness. So we learned to be careful, kittens learning to dress up as wolves in a pack that bites.

Maybe the greatest fortune in life as a woman is to stay a girl a little longer, to stay as soft as a kitten a little longer before the world teaches you to bare your claws.

I never expected the room of safe deposit boxes beneath the bank to feel as cold and sterile as a hospital ward, that kind of chill that seeps into your bones. The air was thick with silence, yet the light was unnaturally bright, exposing everything, as if nothing could hide.

My grandmother led me toward her box. Her body moved in an unsteady rhythm, swaying gently with each step, every motion a negotiation with gravity.

It was my second time here. The box was packed full, stuck tight in its slot, and it took some pulling to get it out. Inside were small cotton pouches, each holding a piece of her past. She couldn’t stand for long. Using all her strength, she pointed for me to place the box on the floor. Her legs could no longer carry her the way they used to.

We took out the pouches one by one, tangled gold chains, old rings, pieces of gold that had lost their shine but not their stories. At the bottom lay stacks of cash bound with rubber bands, handled so casually you’d never guess it was her “coffin money.” Then, a rolled-up envelope. Inside was a thick sheet of paper. I’d never known a will could be more than a single page. It felt as heavy as the life it accounted for.

From the day we’re born, we’re marked by paper. A birth certificate when we arrive, an ID when we come of age, a trail of graduation certificates along the way, and a death certificate when it all ends. In modern life, our existence is traced through documents. But in her world, it was different: rice wine announced a newborn, sesame balls celebrated a son, and when life came full circle, her children would be wrapped in linen, not just in paperwork.

Life asks you to grow up in irreversible moments: when you hire your first lawyer, when you learn to read a will, when you realize you have to stand taller than your parents to protect the family.

“You need to protect your own land.”

My lawyer said to me before I left the meeting room. It felt surreal to be sitting on the client’s side in a sleek Central office, after years of sitting on the client-servicing side in corporate boardrooms.

We come into the world surrounded by hope, joy, and love. Watching her prepare for the end of life made me wonder why no briefing could ever prepare us for the final tasks.

I thought I’d be ready. I’d seen it once when I was 15. But I wasn’t.

Grief doesn’t end when the paperwork is signed. It lingers in the body, in the tension of a clenched jaw, in the swing of a racket.

On a tennis court, I hit every tennis ball with a burst of anger, gripping the racket as if it were the only weapon I had left. I let out:

“I’ve been criticized in my whole f**king life. I don’t need more criticism.”

I’ve tasted failure in my startup journey. I’ve never felt so defeated by life. In the middle of it, even well-intentioned advice could feel like a trigger, not at others, but at myself. That feeling that no matter what I do, I’m still failing everyone.

The lamb lost her herder. The kitten lost her shelter. She spent her whole life learning to survive without one. She was raised up in the wild and she’s unwilling to ever back down.

They see a cute Asian girl. What they don’t see is what it takes to stay gentle in a world that keeps testing your strength.

Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary, in his interview on The Diary Of A CEO shared that his most successful investments are in companies led by women, “particularly Asian women.” He went on to explain why:

“They set goals that they can achieve so that in the early stage of their businesses, they put growth rate targets like 15, 16% versus men at 30%. Very often men hit their targets 65% of the time, at least in my portfolio and women, 90 plus percent of the time.

And that keeps the team very sticky. They want to be part of it. So they don’t have a lot of attrition when they’re small. They don’t lose the head of financing and marketing. That works.”

The softness in the kittens, the gentleness in the lambs, one day would become their greatest strength. It will be the reason they survive and the reason they lead.

“I’ve wasted so much time dating, the years I should have been chasing something else.”

A friend nearing 30 is frustrated with her past choices.

Women in their 20s blossom like flowers opening for the first time, petals catching sunlight with a mix of shyness and curiosity. Half-bold, half-innocent, they carry both sweetness and fire, drawing in bees and sometimes, unexpected visitors too.

The flowers were eager to be noticed in a garden full of roses, lilies, and wild blooms, each encounter carrying the thrill of adventure and the sparkle of what-ifs.

We grew up believing there was a playbook for everything. A curriculum to follow: study hard to get good grades, get good grades to get into the right school, get into the right school to land the right job, get the right job to climb the ladder with promotions.

We entered our 20s carrying so much hope for the future, the possibilities, the adventures, the unknowns that felt just within reach. Until the curriculum fails.

We lived our lives relying on past datasets, shortcuts handed to us as if they held all the answers. But suddenly, those datasets are outdated. New variables appear, and the old models no longer predict the future.

Still, some of us are trying to rationalize the world we’re in. Some of us are trying to project our own patterns onto it. Both are ways of making sense of uncertainty, of holding onto a narrative when the old one no longer fits.

Living between the old and the new isn’t easy. Suddenly, the guidance we once craved feels obsolete, while the new rules are still too raw, too unformed. In the middle of it all, we search for a place to stand, a place where we belong, and where comfort doesn’t feel fleeting.

And sometimes, we convince ourselves that comfort can be found in a person.

“Dating is the worst ROI thing you can do.”

That’s what a friend in a six-year relationship said to me, frustrated at how many of her girlfriends spend their best energy on dating instead of their careers.

Can you really blame them? It’s only natural for a flower to stir with excitement at every visitor after her petals have been hidden for so long. And for every guest who lingered, she wondered if maybe this time, she was enough to make them stay.

But sometimes the flower forgets what she truly needs: the steady water and soil. She is meant to be nurtured and tended if she is to flourish beyond a single season.

We were so used to following the curriculum, believing it would make us worthy of love. And when we hit a wall, we began to wonder why, after all those years of trying, we still weren’t enough.

And we panic.

“I just want someone to fight for me, you know.”

Maybe the flower must learn that staying is a choice, and that she must choose herself, again and again.

“There’s no free lunch.”

That’s what I blurted out to a friend who was struggling to make ends meet with her creative work. It came out harsher than I intended. Later that night, I messaged her to apologize.

The best advice is often the honest one. But honesty also carries bias, as we tend to give advice through the lens of our own experience.

She wanted a partner who’d provide. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

“I just want to focus on my passion and take care of the family.”

She sighed.

The downside of pretty privilege.

Research shows attractive people are more likely to be hired and earn higher wages1, and plenty of influencers openly admit their looks have accelerated their careers. But what’s rarely discussed is the downside: the conditioning that tells us there will always be a Plan B, that a Prince Charming on a white horse will eventually arrive to save the beauty.

Beauty can feel like a built-in safety net. Someone will always step in, pick up the bill, shoulder the burden, or offer an escape route. I see this pattern play out again and again among some of my most beautiful girlfriends.

Disney taught us to expect a savior, a prince who would pull us out of whatever mess we were in and lead us to a happily ever after. We daydreamed about what he would look like, how we’d meet him, and the wedding that would seal the fairytale.

But Disney was not always the reality.

Your white horse comes with a price tag.

I always thought of Hong Kong as a city that empowered female leaders. I went to conferences, panels, networking events, and even high-end parties. I was so used to being in those rooms that it never occurred to me how exclusive they really were, or how what felt “normal” to us was considered “high income” for much of the world.

In my early 20s, I started hearing stories of Taiwanese flight attendants planning layovers in Hong Kong with a different goal: to meet a wealthy husband. The strategy, apparently, was running on Bowen Road or walking dogs in Mid-Levels, placing yourself in the right place at the right time, in the hopes of being noticed.

But why was I so surprised? Throughout history, societies have always curated spaces for matchmaking. Shakespeare lived in an age of entrepreneurship and exploration, where newly rich London merchants had money but not status. Their solution? Marry their daughters upward.2

From Elizabethan ballrooms to Bowen Road, the stage has sometimes carried a familiar purpose. The venues change, but the principle endures: orchestrating proximity to opportunity.

“Money or love?”

A friend once pushed me to give an answer. She’s married now, a self-made woman who’s navigated the fine art world with grit and grace, yet still holds fiercely to her values.

I couldn’t give her a clear answer. Somewhere beneath the surface, I knew the truth: in every relationship, my worth could be measured not just by love, but by intellectual and financial compatibility.

Throughout history, marriage has often been about consolidating power. My own family history has taught me the same.

What if the white horse also comes with a burden?

For years, I wanted to run faster than men, outscore them in school, and climb higher in my career. I carried a burning urge to prove I could do better and that I didn’t need marriage to validate my worth.

I wanted to stand on my own feet and claim my own space. Even when I dated men who seemed “good on paper,” I bristled at how quickly my value was measured by who I was with rather than what I brought to the table.

Between my hands, there is fire. I can make. I can build.

A fire to prove I have a place in the world, even if not everyone sees it yet.

A fire to prove I belong.

I nearly missed the point of womanhood itself: being underestimated can be a hidden strength. When the world expects less of me, delivering more becomes impossible to ignore.

And being a woman can be a gift: my worth isn’t always measured by financial output. That freedom gives me space to grow into the person I want to become, without the constant expectation to provide. Still, the narrative hasn’t always set us up for success.

“I think men just feel emasculated around me.”

A friend once confessed.

The startup world doesn’t have enough of us. Sometimes I wonder why. Is it simply because the game is actually built for financial upside? Or because, for many men, founding a startup is also about proving they can provide?

The other day, I bumped into a potential cofounder I had interviewed for my first startup. By then, I was onto my second one, with a clearer financial path. She questioned my decision:

“The money problem will never go away, right?”

She was right. Money is never enough.

Embracing femininity.

In many ways, I began to see the root of my fears. I was afraid of being trapped in the traditional Asian family dynamics I grew up watching. A life where I might feel overpowered in a family that didn’t raise me, where I’d never truly come first. At its darkest, I feared becoming someone’s property rather than someone’s partner.

I never dreamed of a “soft wife” life. I wanted to live a big life. Early in my startup path, someone older once told me:

“Maybe you’ll fall in love and realize all these things don’t matter.”

And later on, I did meet someone who said to me:

“I wouldn’t mind you being a trophy wife.”

It was sweet, in its own way, when someone offered me the passenger princess seat.

For the first time, I wondered if all those years of fighting, with myself, with the world around me, with the need to prove I could stand alone, were battles I didn’t need to keep waging.

At a Polish wedding party the other day, I learned about the salt and pepper tradition, a symbol that marriage means walking through hardship together.

I laughed with my Hong Kong friend about how different it is from our culture, where the bride is expected to wear layers of gold, as if wealth alone could guarantee happiness.

Maybe there isn’t such a thing as “happily ever after.” What we get instead is a vow, through sickness and health, through salt and pepper, through it all.

Fairy tales endure because they speak to what we crave: ambition, love, danger, survival, transformation. But what if the thing we crave most was never someone else’s rescue? What if it was the strength we find within?

“In the hiring process, I’d look for stories of trauma.”

A second-time founder told me this as we co-worked side by side a few months ago. He’s already exited once, raised $3.7 million for his seed round with the same cofounder, his older brother, and has the kind of track record that makes other founders lean in when he speaks.

Me? I’m also a second-time founder, but he’s made a lot more progress than I have. So when he shared his hiring philosophy, I listened.

He told me he couldn’t hire someone who was only after a salary. He was looking for people whose hardships and traumas had shaped them into who they are.

“I need to know what drives them.”

You might be surprised, but this mindset isn’t unusual in the startup world, especially when it comes to evaluating a founder’s profile. It’s something I never would have guessed.

Growing up in Hong Kong, the default was always to put on a polished front. You didn’t air dirty laundry, and you certainly didn’t talk about family trauma in public. The one thing you didn’t want was to bring shame to the family.

When I was looking for a cofounder, I started noticing patterns in how different incubators thought about talent. Entrepreneurs First, for example, seemed to favor PhD students. At one point, I even wondered if a PhD was the secret marker of a great founder. So I asked a Y Combinator alum, now a VC founder, what he thought.

He advised me to ignore whether someone had an Imperial PhD, but to:

“Find someone who’s hungry.”

Funny enough, I later joined an EF bootcamp, where I had a proper chat with a PhD graduate from École Normale Supérieure, one of Europe’s top science schools. I asked him the same question. His answer was simple:

“Find someone who has something to prove.”

Some tech founders are probably laughing at me right now. In a world where university dropouts are celebrated, or even university kick-outs if you think about Cluely, there I was, asking PhDs for advice.

I realized this isn’t just a hiring question for startups. Even a tech policy expert once told me:

“I’d rather hire a working-class kid.”

Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran had a further explanation:

“Rich kids know all about business as an observer, but they don’t know business as a player. Whereas poor kids tend to have had hardships. They’ve had to be a player earlier. They’ve had to contribute to the family, they’ve seen their parents struggle, they know the power of a buck.”

At a Techstars event in London, I overheard program managers telling founders how some VCs famously dig into childhood. The first question they might ask is:

“What’s the most traumatic experience in your life?”

Isn’t it strange that business is dressed up as rational and logical, yet it’s full of emotion?

And stranger still, Marc Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has linked drive to “guilt,” the kind that comes from family pressure.

Guilt is a strong emotion.

A few months ago, I spoke with a founder who had just joined the Antler accelerator. He’d spent a decade in the gaming industry, and he told me how much he wanted to solve a problem he felt responsible for, how much “guilt” he carried. At first, I had no idea what he meant. Then he explained: the games he helped build were addictive for teenagers, and he couldn’t shake the guilt of it.

Guilt.

Guilt is that blurry weight in your head that says you’re never doing enough. It argues that you deserve a harsher test, that ordinary suffering isn’t sufficient. Guilt is like refusing painkillers when you’re in agony, a shame-made anaesthetic you force upon yourself.

You tell yourself you deserve it, even when you can’t explain why.

Maybe it’s the sacrifices your family made so you could stand where you are today. Maybe it’s your parents, who never had the chances you’ve enjoyed. Maybe it’s an apology you never managed to say, and now it’s too late. Maybe it’s the words “I love you” that went unsaid. Or maybe it’s the love you couldn’t give yourself when you needed it most.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re just trying to make sense of our pain. Maybe the pain is simply there, a circumstance, the outcome of chance, a low-probability event landing on us, and nothing more. Yet we keep reaching for meaning. We want to be the hero of the story. We want our pain to count for something, to prove that it shaped us, even if we’re not sure pain was ever meant to carry meaning at all.

What if it doesn’t?

What if pain is just pain, and the meaning comes only from the story we tell ourselves so we can keep going, so we can make sense of who we are?

Guilt > resentment.

For a long time, I wrestled with it, the guilt of being far from home, of not repaying the people who raised me, of not showing up when they needed me.

But I also knew that if I lived only to meet other people’s expectations, I’d end up with something worse: resentment.

Asian students once came up to me asking how they could convince their parents to let them pursue entrepreneurship instead of a corporate job.

I gave them some practical advice, but the truth is, I battle with guilt every single day.

My first startup began as a project to help people with anxiety. In truth, it felt like giving myself permission to pause, to read, to look inward, to try to understand myself. As British psychotherapist Philippa Perry wrote in The Book You Want Everyone You Love to Read:

As a venture capitalist recently told me, even trading decisions, supposedly the most logical of all, are driven by emotion. So it’s no surprise that hiring is too. Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, said it best:

“Hire someone who gives a shit about the company and about their work.”

Maybe our superpower isn’t numbing the pain, but feeling it.

“My grandmother never throws things away, and now I’m struggling to throw things away too.”

I said, as one of the overloaded plastic bags split under the weight, spilling a mess of half-used things I’d grabbed from the kitchen drawer across the floor.

“They’re always like that.”

Moving gets harder the further along you are in life. Each year adds more weight. Books, furniture, memories, habits. Roots grow deeper with every season, drinking in more water and nutrients. To move means tearing at those roots. It gets more painful each time.

This time, it was particularly painful.

A few months ago, I almost moved to Paris for Station F. I loved the ecosystem, the density of founders, ideas, and energy that’s hard to find anywhere else. Paris carried the same magnetism that once drew me to Shanghai: a bridge between tradition and newness, a pride in its arts and culture.

Let’s not forget, Shanghai is often called the Paris of Asia. Before London, I lived in the French Concession. No wonder I found comfort on roads lined with French plane trees.

“I can sleep, work, and eat at the same place. It’s amazing.”

I told my friends.

In Paris, everything tech and AI-related seemed to orbit around Station F. People and events came to you. They even had an accommodation program you could apply for, plus decent restaurants on campus. My gay best friend lived there, and I could picture my mother being happy in Paris in a way she never would be in London.

Paris also felt like a place where I was less torn between the US and China. At VivaTech, its flagship tech event, you could see Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, and Joe Tsai, co-founder and chairman of Alibaba, all sharing the same stage. And of course, France had its own champion: Mistral AI.

A friend of mine, a venture capitalist, pushed back. He told me I’d have a better success rate in London, and even more so in SF.

My British public affairs contact put it even more bluntly:

“They’re French at the end of the day.”

I often think the way British people value grit, stoicism, and determination goes back to their “Blitz Spirit.”

“It seems like British people have a hard time letting go of the past.”

I joked to my friends once. But so does the culture I grew up in.

Maybe being torn between Britain and France was really about being torn between my grit and my rebellious streak.

In the software business, we often talk about switching costs. Moving from one system to another almost always means a drop in productivity at first. It takes time, money, and effort to adjust.

Moving to a new city, or even just a new home, is exactly the same.

And layered on top of switching costs is the sunk cost fallacy: the more we’ve already invested in the home, relationships, routines, the harder it feels to walk away, even when we know it might be better for us.

Each time, it means breaking old patterns, letting go of part of our identity in order to make space for new ones.

My decision to leave West Hampstead was a strategic one: I wanted to increase my agility, to stop my own roots from growing too deep.

If Station F taught me anything, it’s that quick decisions get harder when you’re carrying too many costs. Two cats, a full kitchen, and an Airbnb business in London made it impossible to treat moving as a reversible decision.

Yes, the move was strategic. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful.

It felt like an acceptance: finally letting go of the future I once imagined, and of the investment I’d poured into a place that no longer carried the promise it once did.

We give meaning to the things we own. We convince ourselves that our belongings define where we belong.

Each piece of occasion wear carries the memory of a graduation, a birthday, a wedding. Maybe what’s hardest to let go of isn’t the thing itself, but the people we can no longer hold onto.

As I navigated my career, I filled my wardrobe as if I were compensating for the childhood I never had. But no matter how many bags or shoes we collect, nothing can erase the feeling of being that child who had to settle for less.

My grandmother has lived 90 years. I have lived 30. My wardrobe is far larger than hers. Any additions to her closet were bought by my father, my mother, or me.

I remember how scrappy she was raising me, cutting my hair in ways I never liked, repairing our old clothes, and handing me second-hand dresses from my older “village sisters.” As competitive as I was, and still am, it’s easy to guess how much I hated it.

She doesn’t own much. But what she does own, she doesn’t easily let go of.

Maybe, in some way, holding on to things is her way of holding on to the people who are gone. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live 90 years and say goodbye, again and again. One friend after another. One family member after another.

Similar to the Brits, the culture I grew up in is also about holding on to the past. We worship our ancestors and honor what’s in our blood, our roots. My grandmother cares more about keeping rituals alive than about what she wears.

Many years have passed, and I’ve grown used to traditions that might seem strange to others. One day I asked a question I’d never thought to ask before:

“Why do you care about all these rituals so much?”

“It’s for you. I want our ancestors to look after you and keep you safe.”

What she doesn’t know is that I ride my bike around London without a helmet, and I’ve walked away from more than a few risky, dangerous situations.

Sometimes I think I survive them only because my grandmother asks the ancestors to protect me every day.

Moving, and downsizing, was also a reminder to myself that I can’t do it all alone.

Another trait I picked up from my grandmother, one that hasn’t served me well, is the reluctance to seek help. From the outside, people were impressed: a sponsored running event with 250+ RSVPs, an AI fintech startup launch that drew 600K+ impressions, always finding momentum whenever I had a clear goal in mind.

But what people didn’t see was how easily I could burn myself out. I worked until I forgot to eat.

Even though I lived just minutes from Hampstead Heath, I never managed a swim in the pond during summer. That will always be a small regret.

At least now, I’ve finally come to the realization that I don’t have it all together. None of us do. And that’s exactly why we need people around us.

Maybe the troublemaker my grandmother once saw has finally chosen grit.

“She’s a content creator.”

That’s how someone introduced me the other day. I smiled, but inside, I bristled a little. I’ve always been cautious about being seen as an influencer, even if I do fit the label. Not because I’m ashamed, but because it feels like shorthand for something smaller than I am.

The truth is: I want everything.

And that’s where the problem begins, because no one can have everything in life.

In school, I was good at everything — writing, math, science. Not to be arrogant. Just honest. I could do both the numbers and the nuance.

I was speaking with a former accountant recently. He casually mentioned he’d been reading my newsletter, then added with a half-smile:

“You’re a really good writer.”

I said:

“I think everyone should write.”

He paused.

“Finance wiped out anything creative in me.”

Is it inevitable that we have to choose between spreadsheets and writing?

I had the opposite problem. After spending years in public relations, I got slow at math, slow enough that even my ex-boyfriend used to laugh at me. I was constantly thinking in multiple currencies, and sometimes, it felt like a disaster inside my brain. But you know, running a business takes real math skills.

Growing up on Instagram didn’t help either. I learned how to make something average look amazing: how to frame a moment, add a filter, and create FOMO out of thin air.

“I can make trash look like gold.”

I joked to a friend.

I think, deep down, I wanted to be seen as smarter than just an influencer or content creator. It’s a profession with a low barrier to entry; anyone with a phone can start, and it’s often unfairly associated with average intelligence.

I didn’t want to be dismissed before I even opened my mouth.

The other problem with being an Instagrammer is that it blurs the line between self-worth and engagement. It’s not easy to separate who you are from how many people are watching. Just because someone reacts to your Story doesn’t mean they care about you. And just because someone doesn’t react doesn’t mean they don’t. The danger is that it’s just enough junk dopamine to distract you from focusing on what really matters.

Personal boundaries become blurry. Suddenly, people from another continent can access you at any time. And it’s not just about attention, it’s about exposure.

Five years ago, I shared a video showing how young children have become vulnerable to predators on social media. It was part of a digital experiment. The results were disturbing. Underaged girl accounts were getting DMs asking for explicit photos and videos, all sorts of disturbing messages.

These days, my girlfriends and I, and even their friends, are all getting DMs from the same guy.

Suddenly, it becomes “normal” for some people to enter a stranger’s private space so casually, so confidently, as if the boundaries were never there to begin with.

“You match with these guys, and the next thing they do is start sexting and asking for pics.”

Obviously, OnlyFans has to be part of this conversation. Believe it or not, when I was exploring ways to monetize my account, I actually went around asking friends. Most of them had at least 35k followers.

A well-known photographer and filmmaker in Hong Kong told me:

“A legitimate journalist recently asked me if she should quit her channel to pursue OnlyFans videos. I guess that’s the money now.”

The ROI of Instagram isn’t obvious. You can have followers, engagement, and visibility, and still not know how to turn that into actual income. The life you see on someone’s profile rarely reflects the full reality.

Instagram creates the illusion that access is guaranteed. But maybe we’ve forgotten: we value what we invest in. If we don’t invest in anyone on a deeper level, how are we ever going to build a real connection? A DM isn’t an investment. Liking a Story isn’t either.

Commitment challenges you to grow. But these days, there are plenty of exit routes from discomfort.

A British guy, only 25 years old, told me:

“My friends and I are moving to Thailand to find a wife if things don’t work out in London.”

I asked him:

“Does that mean you’re buying love?”

He shrugged, still being honest:

“At least I’ll provide and she’ll love me.”

What people are facing isn’t just fear of commitment. It’s the choice paradox, the illusion that there’s always someone better. But someone becomes better when you actually invest in them.

As someone who’s worked in influencer marketing for years, I remember feeling uneasy about one part of the job: evaluating people based on follower counts and brand partnerships.

Suddenly, humans were reduced to data points: engagement rates, past collabs, audience size. And I started asking myself: who am I to decide who’s worth paying attention to, just based on numbers?

In the startup world, there’s a term called vanity metrics, surface-level numbers that look impressive at first glance but don’t reflect real business performance. Living on social media doesn’t mean knowing how to run a business. I learned that the hard way.

These days, when founders reach out for help, I hesitate before pointing them in another direction. After all, this is my domain expertise. I should support social growth. I recently helped a team launch their seed round, and our campaign hit 600k social media impressions on the launch video. But deep down, I know impressions and follower counts alone aren’t always the answer.

One thing’s for sure: social media has become social currency, and that currency now drives investor appetite.

Over time, I built a kind of content muscle, the ability to sense what will land, what will catch, what will resonate. It’s not something you can teach in a course. It’s part intuition, part repetition. You post enough, test enough, observe enough… and eventually, you just know.

Living on Instagram as a woman also comes with a kind of anxiety, the fear that my perceived value will depreciate over time, like an algorithm that favors youth and novelty over depth and growth.

But then there are women like Taylor Swift, reminding us that reinvention is the real algorithm. Her The Life of a Show Girl album announcement and that engagement post with Travis Kelce both shattered Instagram records.

“The female artists I know of have to remake themselves, like, 20 times more than the male artists, or else you're out of a job.”

I’m not sure this anxiety is unique to women. But as my friend, also an ex-founder and content creator, once put it perfectly:

“Being a content creator is no different from being an entrepreneur. You stay consistent, listen to data, collect feedback, and keep iterating.”

After all these years, the one thing I’ve learned to control is my consistency. So here I am, back to publishing on a Sunday.

“People from the Tang family are known to be wealthy and clever.”

I met up with a group of people from Hong Kong and ended up chatting with one woman for a while. Eventually, I mentioned my family heritage.

I felt a bit hesitant about the reputation we carry, so I casually said:

"I don’t always have the perfect resume, you know."

She replied:

"Being clever isn’t about the resume. It’s a trait."

I get where the perception comes from. When your family has a thousand years of history, 30 generations of iteration, and a handful of wealthy, brilliant people who stood out, it’s not surprising that a certain reputation follows.

But the trickiest part about reputation is that it can be both a gift and a cage.

2014 was a strange year in Hong Kong, a time when generational conflict began to surface. I remember one of my clan aunties getting visibly annoyed by what she saw as youthful ignorance. She looked at me and said:

“We’re Chinese. We’re the offspring of the dragon. We support China.”

She actually had a point. I grew up on the Lung Yeuk Tau Heritage Trail. Lung means dragon. It was in the name, the land, the stories.

What she didn’t understand was that my youthful ignorance wasn’t one-sided.

I think a lot of writers are overthinkers, or maybe it’s the other way around: a lot of overthinkers become writers. Back in school, both my Chinese and English essays were often printed out and handed to the whole class. My Chinese teacher always assumed I’d go on to study Chinese Literature. So did the Chinese Literature teacher, especially since she also ran the drama club, and I’d won the Best Actress award at the Hong Kong School Drama Festival. Writing was also a way for me to connect with my mother. Every now and then, she would leave comments on my Chinese essays and tell me that she, too, had been a good writer when she was young.

At one point, I wanted to become a doctor. Then I thought I wanted to be a journalist. Eventually, I ended up working in public relations. I was surrounded by reporters, but I soon realized that news had become a product, something crafted for consumption. The true form of writing, the kind that moved people, wasn’t something I was exposed to anymore. Everything was driven by the need to grab attention, to fuel spending, to sell things people didn’t need. Sometimes I did get to write, especially when it came to arts and culture. And among international news outlets, there was still some room, a bit of space, for nuance, context, and craft.

Maybe that’s what drove me to keep improving my English, the hope that I could connect with that world, and maybe one day, actually write. My career gave me access to the Foreign Correspondents' Club communities in both Hong Kong and Shanghai. I have a lot of respect for people who dare to write, even when it means living on small paychecks, short-term visas, and occasionally having the police knock on their doors.

Because of the type of work I was doing, I was connected with people who held a lot of information, and I had access to data the public didn’t. I was literally the one deciding what information to release and how it would be released.

Looking back, it felt refreshing, like my world was expanding, one layer at a time. That little village girl who grew up with an illiterate grandmother could never have imagined being included behind closed doors, in some of the highest-stakes environments. She was never supposed to be there. And yet, somehow, she was.

As I said, reputation can be both a gift and a cage. It’s a gift to carry a name, to be part of something bigger than yourself. But it’s also a cage, because it hands you a pre-written script you never agreed to. No one ever asked how I wanted the story to be told. No one asked if I wanted a different ending.

I only learned about Heung Yee Kuk, a village governing body, or “an empire of rural leaders”, when I sat down with a British Partner at my previous firm in Hong Kong. That was when I realized how much power we carried just through a surname.

It took an outsider, a Gweilo, to tell me, which makes me think, maybe I was expected to be ignorant all along.

And the more research I did, the more I began to uncover, like a random politician's name my grandmother used to mention. Christine Loh. I never thought twice about it, but it turns out she was the woman who ended up rewriting my life. She was the one who submitted the 1993 amendment that changed the inheritance law for women in the New Territories.

Like how the chairman of the London Chinatown Association is also a Tang.

I was ignorant of the forces that shaped us, the expectations placed on women, the loyalty that sometimes outweighed merit, and the influence we carried in Hong Kong and beyond, not just as a family, but as something larger.

On my last trip to Hong Kong, I went camping in Kam Tin. While I was there, I realized I had ended up in yet another Tang village.

Part of my entrepreneurial instinct and also my curiosity is asking open-ended questions to understand what people are thinking. I got to speak with a group of people my age who had grown up in a Tang village as outsiders.

One of them said,

“I would've loved to be a Tang. Come on, they're the landowners of the New Territories! Saying you're part of the Tang family carries a lot of pride in this region.”

And later:

“Wait… don’t tell me you’re a Tang?”

I often feel like I’m walking a tightrope. There’s so much I want to say, and just as much I can’t say online. But I’m grateful that there are people like British journalist Matthew Brooker, who can document the rich complexities that Hong Kong people live with.

How much pain can a city carry?

I’ve asked myself this question throughout the years.

As I ventured out of a village, then a city, then a country, even a continent, my question evolved:

How much pain can a country carry?

Born in 1995, I belong to the Anxious Generation, the first in history to go through puberty with a smartphone in hand. Here I am, anxiously writing and publishing on Substack, trying to make sense of a story that was never fully mine to begin with, yet somehow always lived inside me.

My auntie was right, I’m a dragon. Because of what I carry and what I choose to do with it now.

If you ever visit Hong Kong and want to learn more about the Tang Clan history, you can follow this hiking guide recommended by Thomas Hale at the Financial Times. It’ll take you through ancestral halls, walled villages, and traces of family stories.

Cover photo credit: Rainbow Chan, an artist whose music honors and preserves the female culture of our Weitou people.

“How can you let strangers in your place?”

Someone asked me this once, genuinely concerned for my safety. I’ve been renting out a spare room through Airbnb for the past two years, and I get where the worry comes from. But here’s the thing: I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker.

Moving from Hong Kong to Shanghai was a career gamble based purely on intuition. Leaving behind a stable corporate job to relocate to London? Another leap of faith.

Hong Kong.

My family home is about 1.5 hours from the city. As someone who used to bike to school for most of my life, I really struggled with the long commute, especially squeezing into a packed train at 7 a.m. I guess I’ve always had a bit of claustrophobia.

To fix that problem, I started renting in the city. I tried both flat shares and living on my own. There was a time when I deliberately forced myself to live in a tiny shoebox apartment, just to remind myself:

This is how much I’m earning now. If I want a better lifestyle, I need to work for it.

Meanwhile, my life looked completely different on the outside. I was attending glamorous fashion events. Prada, Fendi, Tiffany & Co., you name it.

I didn’t feel insecure about the contrast. I genuinely enjoyed the free canapés from five-star hotels, meeting fascinating people, and taking selfies with childhood celebrities.

Shanghai.

I found two of the three places I lived in Shanghai through Airbnb, except for the second one.

My second place in Shanghai was inside a chaotic commercial building on a busy main road. Two agents showed me the flat. One woman was fine, but the man chain-smoked cheap cigarettes and spoke in a way that instantly put me off. That kind of energy ended up bleeding into the experience of living there.

At the time, I didn’t think the building itself mattered. I thought if the inside of the flat looked decent, I’d be fine. I was wrong.

By the end, they tried to keep more of my deposit than they were supposed to. I still remember standing in the flat, arguing with them and refusing to leave until it was resolved.

The one good thing? The place was big enough to fit a giant cat tree, which Dobby and Macey absolutely adored.

The last place I lived in Shanghai was in the French Concession. It was originally listed on Airbnb for short-term stays, but I ended up signing a long-term contract directly with the host.

I loved being surrounded by the old plane trees planted in 1902. They gave the whole neighborhood a soft, distinctly Parisian feel.

My cats clearly enjoyed that apartment too, especially the little balcony where they could sunbathe and watch the world go by.

London.

When I finally got my visa to the UK, it was the day before my flight to London. I didn’t have time to arrange accommodation ahead of time, and I arrived in September during the peak season.

I spent the first month of my MSc degree hopping from one Airbnb to another.

With two cats.

I had no idea how the London rental market worked. My first Airbnb ended up being in a council house. I didn’t even know what a council house was.

Flat hunting in London with two cats was harder than I expected. So, I decided to negotiate directly with the landlady and became the lead tenant. After that, I found flatmates to share the place.

That landlady had seen it all. A true businesswoman. She warned me about putting three girls in one flat and said the energy could become competitive. She said other things too, but I won’t repeat them here. They cross certain stereotype lines.

Things didn’t go well in that flat.

Looking back, I take full responsibility for my part. There were definitely things I could’ve handled better. But at that point, I was exhausted, tired of flatmates, tired of moving, and tired of distractions.

What I really wanted was space to focus on building my startup in peace.

Since my first startup was a marketplace, I figured that learning how Airbnb works from the “seller” side would be valuable down the line.

So I took a risk.

Building a home.

Since it was my seventh move, this time I wanted to make it stick. I was also about to turn 30 and felt ready to build a home. I picked West Hampstead, a more convenient version of my dream neighborhood, Hampstead.

And because the flat number was 16B, the same as my childhood home, this place meant even more to me.

People don’t talk enough about this, but setting up a home is a real skill. It takes design thinking, especially when you want to run an Airbnb. Some key considerations for me were:

• The place had to allow cats, and leather sofas were a no-go. Too easy to get scratched.

• It needed to be a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment so I could have my own bathroom.

• The guest room required an en-suite bathroom, so I could enjoy privacy most of the time.

• The location had to be welcoming to tourists without being overly touristy or attracting the wrong crowd.

• I wanted a neighborhood that was balanced, safe and comfortable, but not too exclusive, so I could trust guests would meet a certain standard without the area feeling too gated or sterile.

• And, knowing how London works, a nice postcode was a good to have.

Further research I did:

• I connected with an Airbnb host in the neighborhood to learn about his experience firsthand (thanks Ammar).

• I used PriceLabs to check historical performance data for the area.

• I kept in touch with former Airbnb hosts I’d stayed with and asked them lots of questions (many, many thanks to Superhost Akos!).

Running an Airbnb is a business, but it’s also personal.

Over time I realized getting great reviews isn’t about having a perfect place, because honestly, there’s no such thing as a perfect Airbnb. What really makes the difference is communication.

I found out that some people who book my place aren’t just booking a space. They actually want to meet and chat with me. And without me even asking, the guests I connected with would leave 5-star reviews.

Guests don’t want to feel like they’re just a transaction. They want to feel genuinely welcome. It’s way more about feelings than I ever expected.

Becoming a Superhost pushed me to become a better operator, a clearer communicator, and a sharper product thinker. Here are some key learnings I’ve picked up along the way:

• It’s much easier to deal directly with a guest’s complaint and find a quick resolution than to rely on Airbnb Support. Arguing with customer service rarely works, and even when it does, it takes way more time.

• If a guest has a complaint, always find a way to make it right. Let them cancel if they’re unhappy, and offer a small gesture like a chocolate bar if you mess up on minor things.

• For bigger issues, an apology alone isn’t enough. You need to find a solution or at least show you’re making an effort.

• Find a local community of Airbnb hosts early on. Having that network makes it easier to find backup plans and support when things go sideways.

• Don’t underestimate how mentally and time-consuming running an Airbnb really is. Sure, guests have been ID-checked by Airbnb, but that doesn’t stop you from worrying every time you let strangers into your space.

• Be ready for moments when Airbnb messes up, whether because of regulatory changes or technical glitches. Don’t expect to always hit your target occupancy rates.

The home in me.

As I write this, my Airbnb hosting journey is coming to a pause.

I never expected entrepreneurship to be such a deeply personal journey, one filled with extreme highs and lows. I’ve always believed I was resilient enough to handle it. But recently, I realized it’s been unfair to my family to keep putting them through unnecessary worry.

In chasing my career goals, I forgot how much time and space I hadn’t been able to give them. I was moving around a lot, and in the process, I left them carrying more than their share.

My grandmother, who’s in her 90s, is facing declining health.

This chapter, running Airbnb, building startups, and living far from home taught me what “home” really means. It’s not just a place. It’s people. It’s presence. It’s knowing where you’re needed, and showing up.

Now, it’s time for me to show up not for strangers, but for my own family.

More cakes to come x

“Do you have a car? Do you have a house?”

That’s the question people commonly ask in Shanghai. It’s not meant to be offensive. It’s just direct, a shorthand for assessing someone’s “readiness” for adult life. And when it came to dating, things could be just as… pragmatic.

A while ago, a LinkedIn connection messaged me after reading my “Cute Asian Girl” piece. We finally had a chat online. He told me he used to study social issues in China while attending high school in the UK and recommended a few documentaries to me.

They were all about “leftover women” (Shèngnǚ 剩女), a label for women who remain unmarried past their late twenties.

It took me a week to realize: oh. I guess I fit that label now.

Wait… did he just subtly tell me I’m a leftover woman?

When I was 17, a controversial reality show called Bride Wannabes (盛女爱作战) swept across Hong Kong. The show followed several older women navigating the dating scene, highlighting how difficult it was for professional women to find love in their 30s. They were dubbed “three high women,” a term that refers to women with high education, high income, and high age. The internet exploded with mockery and memes.

Later, when I was in Shanghai, the drama Nothing But Thirty (《三十而已》) was everywhere. One character, Manni, was an ambitious saleswoman at a luxury store, trying to climb the social ladder through marriage.

“I just want to find someone rich, interesting and handsome.”

The first time I encountered the idea of a “marriage market” in China was in 2017, during a trip to Chengdu.

I was walking through a park when I noticed aunties and uncles putting up posters, basically physical dating profiles, to help single men and women find a match. I was 22 and backpacking a lot back then. Marriage wasn’t something I was thinking about at all.

As I strolled around, a guy shyly handed me a piece of paper and walked away. It was a small printout with his age, job, what he was looking for, and his phone number. It was actually very sweet. I still remember one line: he wrote that he wanted to find someone to love and take care of each other while living a simple life.

A marriage market is just one of those things you stumble upon in People’s Square, a place that looks like any other park, until you realize the umbrellas are covered in dating résumés.

“Bamboo doors match with bamboo doors; wooden doors match with wooden doors.” (竹门对竹门，木门对木门。)

It’s a Chinese traditional metaphor about social compatibility in marriage or relationships, often referring to how people should pair with others of similar family background, social class, or economic status.

At the marriage market, parents gather to exchange detailed profiles of their children, age, height, job, income, education, family values, personality traits, even Chinese zodiac signs. Education, in particular, carries enormous weight.

Since the late 1990s, rising university enrollment has made educational prestige a key filter in Chinese relationships. Elite schools now shape not just careers, but marriages, reinforcing assortative mating and consolidating privilege. Well-educated couples tend to invest heavily in their children, passing down status and opportunity.

Chinese pragmatism around dating can feel jarring to outsiders. But beneath it lies a long-standing cultural logic, one still shaped by deeply gendered expectations.

“Men fear choosing the wrong career; women fear marrying the wrong man.” (男怕入错行，女怕嫁错郎。)

Growing up, I was reminded of all these beliefs again and again in a traditional family.

On The Innovation Conversation podcast, someone asked how, as someone coming from one of Hong Kong’s oldest lineage families, I could be affected by traditional expectations. I answered honestly:

“I’ve been told I should be married since I was 23. And to this day, I’m still considered a disappointment.”

Investors poured over $5.3 billion into dating and social networking companies in China in 2020. On a recent trip to Shenzhen, I noticed how common marriage counseling studios have become. You can spot them easily next to a beauty salon.

Given how often my single girlfriends complain about dating, it honestly feels like a fun and meaningful problem to work on. I even built a dating CRM at a hackathon with two guys, and one of my friends absolutely loved the idea.

It’s a mistake to assume all Chinese women expect a man to have a house, car, and top degree.

China is vast, and regional cultures shape women’s values and expectations in very different ways. Shanghainese women are often seen as stylish and financially independent, frequently managing household finances. Beijing women are known for being outspoken and sharp, shaped by the capital’s intellectual culture. Guangdong women tend to be pragmatic and family-oriented, while Dongbei women are stereotyped as bold, humorous, and unafraid to take charge.

But one thing’s for sure, intercultural dating isn’t always easy. Western and Eastern expectations around love, commitment, and emotional responsibility can be very different.

A Western friend once told me about women who, after breaking up, would demand compensation for having had physical intimacy without marriage, as if unpaid emotional debt had to be settled. In more extreme cases, things escalated: toy snakes sent in retaliation, lawyers involved, even property damage. One friend had his place trashed and said he could still see his clothes hanging from a tree outside his window.

I used to feel uneasy knowing some single women moved to London just to find a man. They were in their late 30s, tired of dating in New York and Shanghai. I wondered, why make such a major life decision just to improve your odds of mating?

But I forgot something simple and deeply human: the desire to feel wanted and loved.

The same guy who first told me about the concept of a “leftover woman” also shared that he went through depression at 18. Growing up as one of the only Asian guys in an almost all-white school, he faced constant romantic rejection and it left a mark.

During my journey of interviewing users for my first startup a Chinese student who’s pausing university told me that she got eating disorder as she was PUA (a term in China used to describe manipulative, gaslighting behavior).

It’s important to remember: marriage isn’t a cure-all. Problems don’t vanish just because you tie the knot. In Nothing But Thirty, one character enjoys a glamorous trophy-wife life until her husband cheats. Another opts for stability and a quiet 9-to-5 marriage, only to end up divorced.

“They say marriage is a safe harbor but if everyone wants shelter, who’s willing to be the harbor?” (都说婚姻是避风港，都想避风谁当港啊?)

One thing I do believe: who you marry may be the single most important decision of your life, whether you’re a man or a woman.

The idea of a leftover woman is both a social label and a cultural judgment, reminding women that their value has an “expiry date.”

As a former One Child Nation, China is now home to a generation of women carrying the weight of being the only child, with the expectations of two parents and four grandparents resting on their shoulders. Despite the government's shift to a two-child, then three-child policy to combat the declining birth rate, social and economic pressures continue to discourage young people, especially women, from having children. The burden of care, career, and tradition often falls disproportionately on them.

On that same 2017 trip, I also traveled to Lugu Lake in Yunnan, home to the Mosuo people, often called the “Kingdom of Women.” In their matrilineal culture, women don’t marry in the traditional sense. Instead, children take their mother’s surname, and inheritance passes through the female line.

It was an unexpectedly eye-opening journey for me. I never would have guessed that a woman could be expected, or even allowed, to live such a completely different life.

Turning 30 didn’t feel nearly as dramatic as I imagined it would. If anything, the anxiety came before the birthday. This creeping fear that I hadn’t achieved enough, that I was somehow behind.

Now that I’m here, 30 feels… fine. I still feel young, energetic, and ready to start a new life, a new career, a new chapter anytime.

I may be leftover but I’m not left behind.

“Can you speak Cantonese? I’m tired of hearing your English.”

I’ve heard that line a few times in my life.

As someone surrounded by many native English speakers in Hong Kong, it stings, especially when it comes from someone who looks like me, who grew up in the same place, in the same culture.

The people who make comments like that are usually perfectionists who’re hard on themselves, and even harder on others.

And I know that because… well, I can be like that too.

Some of the nicest people I’ve worked with weren’t locals. They guided me, gave me thoughtful advice when I needed it most, and never once made fun of my English.

It’s strange, then, that I often felt more supported by westerners than by my own people.

Let’s be honest: Hong Kong people can be mean. If you didn’t know that already, now you do.

Our parents would tell us it would've been better to give birth to Char Siu (叉燒), barbecue pork, than to us. That’s a real saying:

“Better to have birthed pork than you.” (生嚿叉燒好過生你)

And some of us even grew up with physical punishment. I recently had an open conversation with friends and realized how many of us share this collective trauma. The feather duster (雞毛掃) is practically a symbol of our childhoods. My grandmother beat me with one so often that all the feathers eventually came off and just a bare stick was left.

And in local schools? Things aren’t all that different.

Hong Kong YouTuber Emi Wong recently shared an experience from her school days: one time, she and a friend forgot to fully button their school uniforms. As punishment, they were made to stand in front of the entire school. Later, a teacher told Emi’s mother that

“in the past, only prostitutes dressed like that.”

One local student even shared her experience with the Education Bureau, comparing her time in a local school to that in an international school. She said studying in a local school felt like being in a prison: she had to sit still, wasn’t allowed to eat, drink, or even use the bathroom during class and she was constantly buried in homework.

We’re being reduced, shaped and minimized into a version of ourselves that fits in. My grandmother used to remind me:

“One who is in the forefront will be attacked first.” (槍打出頭鳥)

Maybe that’s why it’s not always easy for us to step outside our comfort zones. Why we judge ourselves (and others) so harshly. Why we second-guess every move.

“It’s cringe."

That’s the easiest excuse we tell ourselves to stop trying. And it’s the easiest judgment we cast on others who dare to try.

I’ve been publishing essays weekly for three months and posting on LinkedIn daily for two months. People have started reaching out, inviting me to events, and connecting me with others. This has become my way of showing my value and sharing the information I had once withheld.

And trust me, my face looks like this sometimes.

But here’s the thing I’ve come to realize:
Cringe is a gift.

It means you’ve grown. It means you’re not stuck in the same emotional or creative place. Cringe is a receipt. A receipt that proves you tried. That you cared.

Maybe the problem was never cringe. Maybe the real issue was fear, fear of being bad at something, fear of being seen before we’re “ready,” fear of failing in public.

I once had a YouTube channel full of chaotic and embarrassing videos from university. Me talking to the camera, making montages, romanticizing little moments of life. I deleted it all. Too cringey.

But what I forgot was this:

Cringe is the cost of consistency.

Cringe is the down payment on progress. Cringe means you had the guts to start.

So yeah, be cringe. Be a little bit silly.

I mean, what do I know?

After all, I’m just a cute Asian girl.

(And by the way, both my English and Mandarin have improved a lot over the years.)

My new MacBook had an accident at a hackathon and now it’s like this… yet, I still published :)

I grew up listening to Taylor Swift, the ultimate soundtrack for a girl dreaming bigger than her hometown.

Most of my childhood was spent in a suburb, far from the city lights. It was the kind of place where street lamps disappeared after 8 pm, and the silence was broken only by stray dogs and the relentless buzz of cicadas in the summer.

One time, a high school guy friend offered to walk me home, until he got too scared of the pitch-black roads and decided to leave me halfway.

Growing up in a remote place taught me a thing or two. Like how to handle an extremely aggressive crowd of dogs. And because entertainment options were limited, I spent most of my time reading books, watching TV shows like High School Musical, playing video games, and strumming my guitar in the study room.

Despite my love for country music, I’ve never been a talented singer, though that didn’t stop me from hoping for years. I’ve got a Little Martin with me in London, and a proper Taylor waiting back home in Hong Kong.

If you’ve read The Mom Test, you’d know not to trust it when your mother says you’re good. My aunt sings properly, so I’m pretty sure my mother always knew I’d never make it as a singer.

But being 20 and hopeful was a beautiful feeling.

It broke my heart when, years later, I found out that Taylor Swift’s father was an executive at Goldman Sachs and that he had invested in her original label, Big Machine.

The girl who soundtracked my dreams of making it out had a safety net I never knew was there. I’d always thought of her as the small-town country girl who got bullied in school and made it big through sheer talent and hard work. That was the story I held onto because it made me believe I could do it too.

I still love her. And honestly, I don’t know if I wish I’d found that out sooner.

Because, like I said, being 20 and hopeful was a beautiful feeling. Believing it was possible, even just for a while, gave me the courage to try.

And I did try, just not in singing.

I grew up with my grandmother, who spoke a dialect called Weitou, a language close to Cantonese. I was often bored at school, but I was endlessly curious about the world beyond my little village. So I threw myself into learning English and absorbing Western culture, bit by bit.

When the chance finally came, I fought hard with my family to let me turn down a TV broadcasting offer from City University of Hong Kong and go abroad instead.

That choice eventually worked out well for my path in the city.

I found myself working at golf tournaments, fashion parties, restaurant launches, and art events. Suddenly, I was orbiting a world I never imagined I’d be part of, close to people I once thought were untouchable.

I felt like I was on top of the world. Young, free, and invited to the best parties in the most glamorous corners of metropolitan cities.

But my insecurities only grew bigger as I got older. I didn’t actually fit in. I wasn’t one of them.

“Which international school did you go to?”

“Which girls’ school were you from?”

Questions like these reminded me, subtly, but constantly, that I was a guest in a world built for someone else.

As I made my way into elite firms like Edelman and FGS Global, the voice in my head wouldn’t let up.

You don’t belong here. They’ll find out.

“You’re from Hong Kong. You went to the LSE.”

I never thought I’d hear someone say something like that to me. But I knew exactly where it came from, because I used to feel the same way. I just didn’t have the words or the courage to say it out loud.

To say how much, as someone without the right logos on my resume or the right labels on my life, I often felt like an outsider in a world I was supposed to belong to.

And the truth is — I did want to be part of that world. Desperately.

One of my childhood friends watched me slowly destroy my voice in those years.

I was trying to be a city kid, hanging out with other city kids. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of partying, and a lot of pretending I knew who I was.

But underneath it all, I was still that girl from the village, just with better clothes and worse hangovers.

Eventually, I tried therapy.

Over time, I realized that therapy isn’t always about fixing. It’s about framing. It helps you reposition your story, so you can acknowledge your past and finally see yourself.

“You’re a self-made woman.”

That’s what my therapist told me more than once. And it surprised me, because I had never thought of myself that way.

Maybe the belief that I wasn’t self-made was exactly what kept me going. Because no matter how hard things got, I’d always think:

There are people who have it harder.

The other day, I caught up with one of my closest friends from high school. We hadn’t spoken in years. He’s now living somewhere near Manchester with his wife and newborn.

He messaged me after seeing my HK01 interview, and it was only then that I found out I was probably one of the first from our high school to attend the LSE.

Talking to him meant a lot.

He had witnessed how crushed I was when I didn’t reach my target scores in the public exam. He knew I struggled with anxiety before I even had a name for it.

He told me, “Maybe you were just overthinking your answers during the exam.” And he reminded me gently, without judgment, that I was only 18. That I still had time. That I still had hope.

Now, 12 years later, I’ve proven that he was right. I got into a university that my younger self would’ve never even dreamed of. And for a while, I lived the life I always wanted — abundant, independent, and hard-earned — as a corporate professional in the heart of the city.

We don’t always notice when we’re breaking barriers, because we’re too busy surviving them.

During my journey of looking for a cofounder, I met an Asian woman who grew up in London. She told me how she used to look into the backgrounds of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, searching for clues, hoping to find someone like her in their stories.

She never did.

Because when you look closely, many of the world’s most celebrated “self-made” men had more than just ambition:

• Steve Jobs was adopted into a stable middle-class family, attended Homestead High in Silicon Valley, and had access to early tech circles through neighbors and friends, including HP engineer Bill Fernandez.

• Bill Gates grew up in a wealthy Seattle family. His mother sat on the same board as John Opel, then the chairman of IBM. She helped connect Microsoft with IBM, a relationship that led to one of the company’s earliest and most important deals.

• Elon Musk grew up in apartheid-era South Africa in a wealthy family that owned an emerald mine. He attended private schools, and his first venture, Zip2, was funded by his father.

And the Taylor Swift kind of story is happening everywhere. Chinese “nepo baby” Shen Jiarun, daughter of Chinese actor Xiao Shenyang, recently debuted as K-pop soloist Nina. Her agency, BNB Music, is reportedly fully funded by her parents.

But you know what? Those are just noises.

The only way to get better is by putting yourself out there, even when your voice shakes.

My friend Joey Thye did go on to become a singer. When we used to busk together, I was constantly panicking, overthinking every move. She, on the other hand, just showed up and did her best, without caring so much about what people thought.

And that taught me something. Your mindset can matter so much more than where you’re starting from.

As a startup founder now, I’ve found myself becoming that naive 20-year-old again, still believing that no mountain is too hard to climb.

And maybe, even though I’m no longer 20, being hopeful is still a beautiful feeling.

I carry all those past versions of myself with me — the village girl, the anxious teenager, the outsider in the room. They’re the reason I’m still climbing.

And even though I didn’t become a singer, someone else in the family did: my grandmother.

She performed traditional bridal laments at places like Tai Kwun museum, and her voice was featured across mainstream media outlets.

She sang our stories before I even found the words to write mine.

She recently came down with a fever and is still in the hospital. More than anything, I wish I could be in Hong Kong whenever I wanted, to visit her, to be close to home. I’m building a life that will make that possible. And I hope it won’t be too far away.

Lastly, I’m sorry.

I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. But maybe that’s just how I carry her strength, in a different form.

Everyone wants to scale. But what if scale isn’t the flex we think it is?

Just 2 days ago, Pavel Durov, the elusive founder of Telegram, announced that his 100 biological children will inherit his $13.9 billion fortune.

Elon Musk, who has 14 of his own, used to call him “Genghis Khan.”

Oh… Durov even plans to open-source his DNA…

Scalable tech. Scalable wealth. Scalable genes. Ok, I hear you…

Alexandr Wang recently stepped back from Scale AI after its $14.3 billion deal with Meta. And he said he’s waiting for Elon Musk’s Neuralink before having kids. A brain–computer interface.

Some tech billionaires seem to have a… let’s say, uniquely “innovative” way of thinking about family.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the “one-person unicorn” dream, a vision hyped up by people like Sam Altman.

And I get it. All the startup hype around infinite scale can be lowkey demoralizing for people who still trade time for money: consultants, creatives, agency builders.

But there’s something deeply underrated about the agency business model, especially in a world that wants everything to scale.

At a boutique firm, you can choose:

✅ Who you work with

✅ When you work

✅ How much you charge

✅ What projects you say yes or no to

One of my previous bosses used to hang up on clients who wouldn’t take her advice. That’s the kind of boundary that comes from owning your time.

You get to choose not to work with assholes. I once heard a story (unverified but horrifying) about a billionaire who expected staff to kneel while serving tea. Here’s the thing: with an agency, you can walk away~

Everything comes with a cost.

Tech startups sound cool. Scale is seductive. More users, more impact, more recognition…

But it can also mean more complexity, more pressure, and less room to breathe.

When you have billions of users, you’re carrying the weight of billions of problems.

When you hire hundreds of employees, you also take on hundreds of personal, financial, and emotional responsibilities.

Startups get glorified because they could go big. But agencies offer something many founders lose: peace of mind.

The other day at a co-working space, I saw a startup founder in a phone booth completely losing it, yelling, slamming the desk, full-on meltdown mode. Just pure outrage.

It went on and off for about 30 minutes. I think he was in an online meeting the entire time, just cycling between silence and explosive frustration.

When people say they want to start their own business, I don’t think they’re always dreaming of a startup.

They’re not chasing unicorns. They’re chasing something else entirely:

• Financial stability

• Creative control

• Freedom of movement

• A sense of identity tied to meaningful work

Freedom to choose how they spend their time and who they spend their time with.

Maybe that’s why so many people are pivoting to life coaching, executive coaching, and even relationship coaching.

Because it’s one of the few business models today where your time, your story, and your presence are the product.

Engineers can’t fix everything. Engineers can’t solve every problem. No matter how smart you are, some things are simply out of your control.

Even Apple’s prompt engineers had to beg the LLM not to hallucinate.

The good news is, there are plenty of successful tech founders who started out running agencies. They sold their time, mastered their craft, built relationships. And from there, they launched products that scaled.

One notable example is Mailchimp, originally a side project inside a web design agency. It was entirely self-funded and eventually grew into a SaaS giant, leading to a $12 billion acquisition by Intuit.

The most recent case is Fyxer AI, an email productivity tool that secured a $10 million Series A led by 20VC after reaching $5M ARR in just 10 months.

What many overlook is the foundation behind it: before launching Fyxer AI, brothers Rich and Archie Hollingsworth spent nearly 8 years bootstrapping Fyxer People into the UK’s largest virtual Executive Assistant provider.

Before the AI, there was the agency. Quiet, unsexy, but essential.

Female entrepreneurs created a record number of new businesses in the UK in 2022, with 151,603 companies launched by women.

The women I’ve spoken to who run small consultancies? They look relaxed. They know they have time for themselves, for their families. They have time to be present. To mother, if they choose to.

I don’t think any of them were waiting on AI to raise their kids. And unfortunately, eggs are a lot less scalable than sperm.

TL;DR: If you’re building a calm, profitable, self-owned business, you’re not behind. You’re just scaling on your terms.