What is your ethnic background?

I’m Chinese Canadian. My parents are from Hong Kong.

Edmonton, Alberta AKA E-town

The most random things inspire me now that I’m being mindful about slowing down and really taking a look around… a pink sky, flowers, good people watching, random acts of kindness, great performances, and all around every day people making it happen in their own way

 

Probably withering away in some 9 to 5 job: safe, and secure but claustrophobic and constantly unable to concentrate due to a wandering mind.

 

 How did your environment shape you?

 I grew up and lived most of my life in Edmonton, a prairie city with a small town feel. Edmonton has amazingly kind, genuine, compassionate people who really rally together to help each other out. As a result living in Edmonton has helped me maintain a certain sense of innocence because I’ve only recently moved away from a city full of people who’d do anything for me in a heart beat.

 

Being the child of Chinese immigrant parents in a mainly white city has shaped my identity in the sense that I was hyper aware of my race for awhile. My parents started a Mandarin Bilingual program within the Edmonton Public School system so my first few years of schooling were in classes with all other Chinese kids. We all got super high marks, we all came from the same kind of background and most of us didn’t have cable TV. I remember I was only allowed to listen to oldies music on the a.m. easy listening station. When I was integrated into a normal junior high school it was a real culture shock. I didn’t know what Much Music was, I didn’t know a lot of pop culture references, and I didn’t know how to act around all these loud white kids. I felt really lost.

 

By the time I was in high school, our city was facing the beginning of an Asian gang problem and I felt a real negative shift in how the Asian community was being viewed by the greater community at whole. When you don’t really understand everything that’s happening around you and you’re young, you can internalize a lot of negative stuff and mistakenly think it means something about you. But I think that environment, combined with the fact that I’m the child of immigrant parents was partly what made me fight to be heard, to get into media and go into acting. I want a different perspective out there in the mainstream.

 

 

I want to be remembered for being kind, authentic, genuine, creative, courageous, joyful and for being the kind of person who exuded positive energy. Wouldn’t that be a great footprint to leave in someone’s heart? I want to be remembered as someone who in spite of her imperfections, flaws and fears, found the courage to still evolve into someone great. I won’t get there overnight, but I hope I’m there by the time I go.

 

I admire a lot of different people for different reasons. I can’t pick one person, but in general, people become my heroes when they persevere through hardship, conquer obstacles within themselves, and as a result, thrive and inspire others.

 

 I dropped out of first year University to get a diploma for radio and television arts at a local technical college. Not the kind of thing Asian parents love to brag about but I think it’s what you do with what you know that’s important. Not everyone has access to the best education, but maybe that’s exactly what’s going to make you stronger and smarter in other ways.

I’m happy when I recognize abundance in my life. I used to think that just meant money and I was constantly unhappy because I always felt like I never had enough. Now I recognize abundance in the form of great friends, a family that’s always got my back, mentors who’ve come into my life at the right moments, and life experiences that open my eyes and heart to the world. I still have funky days, don’t get me wrong, but I fight like mad to be grateful for what I have. Consistent happiness is a learned state. I’m getting schooled a lot in that lately.

 

I hate public washrooms. You can’t avoid needing to use them though so I scope out nice hotels in the areas I haunt. When I need to go, I’ll try to run for a nice hotel bathroom rather than risk a Starbucks or gas station.

 

I think helping people find a voice is important because there’s something devastating about not being heard, or trying to speak out and not being taken seriously. In context to an individual, it’s a personal empowerment issue, and as I meet more and more incredible people I’m starting to understand how much difference one person can make by speaking out. I really believe people need the education, resources and support to know when and how to speak up for the change they want to see, and or be.

In regards to larger social issues, think of all the victims of war, poverty, crime, mental illness, hunger, social injustice etc. and look at how people not having a voice contributed to the problem in the first place. Or how not having a voice perpetuates the problem.

 

I’m focused on personal change right now. I’m no good to anyone if I don’t face things about myself that need work. In regards to that, I’m still learning how to find my authentic voice. I’ve spent most of my life being an insane people pleaser. I was always trying way too hard to do and say the right things to make people like me. Living like that made me so anxious and fearful and I just created mask upon mask to hide everything I judged as ugly. So I guess I’m learning to reverse all that behavior to be the change I want to see. I think it was Gandhi who said, “Be the change you want to see.”

 

Well shoot, I’ve got to tell everyone to read Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking. A lot of people know how six million Jews were massacred during WWII, but many people don’t know of the millions of Chinese who were slaughtered by the Japanese. The way Auschwitz symbolizes the Jewish Holocaust is the way Nanking symbolizes the Chinese Holocaust. And Iris Chang was this Asian American author who wrote a New York Times Best Selling book though brought the forgotten holocaust to light.

 

I first heard about The Rape of Nanking when I saw Iris Chang featured in a Reader’s Digest issue. Years later, I read an interview with Jin Tha MC on this very website, and he talked about how the book moved him to create an organization to educate other Asian youth about their history. I went out and bought the book after reading that 411 interview.

 

The Rape of Nanking changed my life in the sense that it inspired me to look into the life of Iris Chang (who passed away about a year prior to me reading her book). And just over a year later I ended up playing her in a feature film docudrama. I still want to play her in a full out biographical drama one day.

 

Also the Harry Potter books! Love them!

 

YES! High school flash back! Here we go: Grade 10 cheerleading, making up ridiculously elaborate stories to get out of my house, spilling a bottle of Body Shop dewberry perfume in my locker and stinking up the whole hall for weeks, highest marks in the district for Bio 30 finals, first kiss, first heartbreak, mean girls, bad boys, friends for life, grad parties, sneaking into clubs, getting into trouble, summer school, gunfire, friends getting hurt, growing up.

 

It was crazy how friends from different circles were getting shot in parking lots, and parties back in the day. We were just kids! I don't understand how some of us already had guns. We'd see each other on the news with faces electronically hidden and stuff. It's way too easy for beefs to escalate in Edmonton because it's a small place and rival groups run into each other constantly.

 

What does it mean to be Canadian? 

Being Canadian means being born with a million dollars in your mouth. Most of us just don’t realize what we’ve got to spend. I’m only beginning to understand how much I’ve taken for granted. After filming in China for the Iris Chang project and meeting people who truly have no options simply because of where they were born, I realize how ridiculously ungrateful I’ve been to be Canadian.

 

These days I’m gravitating toward orange. It’s bright and peaceful, and it reminds me of yoga and hippies and a place in Vancouver called Wreck Beach. Groovy. 

 

The beach. Home. Anywhere I can dance up a storm.

 

There’s no real definition that springs to my mind. Maybe that’s telling in itself.