I'm proud to say that I came from the country that produced the world's most self-made female billionaires in the world.
I'm proud to say that I am able to speak both English and Chinese fluently.
But I wasn't always proud.
Today, I've learned to embrace the fact that I was raised as a Chinese daughter.
Lesson 1: Learning How to Deal with Being Underestimated.
My mother told me that my father was disappointed when I was born because I was a girl.
And that reason?
That reason was all it took to propel me to a 20 year long journey of compensation.
Ever since I could remember I was trying to make up and apologize for the fact that I was not born a boy.
When my mother took me to a hairdresser and cut my hair very short, the 6-year-old in me interpreted it as my mother wanting a boy as well.
(She later told me that she cut my hair out of ease of managing it and not her version of transforming me into a boy, but how I wished I knew that years earlier!)
Anybody who knew me in middle school or high school would remember me sporting a haircut fit for any boy, ugly glasses, in an oversized jacket, and grey sweatpants even on our free dress days in Catholic school.
I rejected my femininity in the hopes of subconsciously winning my parents' approval.
I tried incredibly hard but never managed to.
But the great side effect was that I learned to work on the internal parts of myself.
I was not only able to learn English in a year, I got all straight A's afterwards and went from being held back to skipping a grade.
The one great result from being underestimated and wanting to compensate was that I truly learned to work hard.
I learned to overcome hurdles that I set for myself.
I learned English without an accent.
And seven years later, I was accepted to Berkeley.
And for that I am thankful that I learned to deal with being underestimated in a way that helped me get ahead in life.
Because I was born a Chinese daughter, I was able to turn my weaknesses into my strengths, and because of that I developed a solid and unshakable belief in who I am and what I could do.
Lesson 2: Growing up with Hope
The second lesson I learned from growing up as a Chinese daughter was simply the incredible experience of growing up in China from 1996 to 2000.
It was a momentous time for growth and there was just so much optimism for China as a country.
People were buying homes for the first time in their lives, whereas before they could only settle for the best of what their company allocated to them.
This was also the beginnings of the stock market for China and the beginnings of ordinary people becoming rich.
When I was going to school, I would constantly hear of the great hopes of progress for China, and I was glad that I was raised in such an optimistic country that had great ambitious dreams for itself.
Of course China has its own shares of problems, and it's beyond the scope of this article to address, but I am immensely proud of the fact that I inherited its heritage but also its optimism towards the future
Lesson 3: Learning to Break Away from Tradition
China has its own battles of struggling with its own identity, and I myself had a similar experience.
For a very long time I followed all the rules, I did all the right, traditional things.
- I got straight A's all throughout my academic career.
I was the stereotypical Chinese daughter.
Yet I was completely miserable.
After a year of being out of college I finally decided enough was enough.
I was incredibly frustrated at the fact that I did everything I was supposed to but still failed by my own standards of happiness.
So I did the extreme.
I moved back to my hometown that I vowed to never move back to.
But also I started doing everything I TRULY wanted to do.
Because I was able to step back and take a look that what I truly wanted my entire life, I started to follow my path, as many Chinese women have done, by starting their own businesses.
I started my business teaching immigrants English, after my own personal pain of not being able to understand English as a girl in a foreign land.
And once I owned up to my own story, I started getting clients and built my business.
During that time I also learned to embrace my femininity and power as a woman not only with my dress but also my attitude that it was amazing to be a woman.
And all that I owe to being raised as a Chinese daughter, learning how to deal with being underestimated, but also thankful for growing up in an incredibly optimistic environment and also knowing when to break free from tradition and create my own identity.
I'm glad that because of my upbringing in China that I was not only not even questioning the ambition but living and breathing big goals and dreams as a Chinese daughter.
Whether it meant doing more or working harder, or combining experiences from different sources, growing up as a Chinese daughter has shaped me into the woman I am today, and for that, I would not trade it for being any other gender or from any other culture in the world.
x
Li
p.s. want to follow my journey as a Chinese-American in the business world? Follow me at @LiLinSays or read my blog at www.Li-Lin.Net