(Published on Shanghai’s non-profit HerCentury)

I’ve been checking old places I went to on Google Street View, trying to remember names of classmates, looking up old cartoon movies we watched, and Lego sets we owned & other toys. I grew up in such wealth of love and space for creativity, even though we were just a working class family. I’m now 30 and living on the other side of the world, and it just hit me that all of this was due to my mom loving me and asking nothing back, not even now. I’ve always taken that for granted, but when other people tell me about their upbringing, it’s clear to me how different it can also be.