"Where Are You From?"

Recently I was in Japan for vacation, quite often people would ask me: “Where are you from?”. When people ask that question, they’re usually wondering where the person was born and raised. Although, since I was also a tourist doing touristy stuff, they might want to know where I was traveling from, where I currently live. For me, it’s always tricky to answer that question as it might have many different meanings. Do I give a short straightforward answer, like most people do? Or do I give a fuller explanation and hopefully not bore them in the process? Today I’m going to go with the second option.

I was born in Harbin, a city in the Northeast China close to Siberia Russia. Harbin has the coldest winter among major cities in China, so people give it a pretty cool name, the Ice City. In winter, instead of normal PE classes, we take outdoor ice skating classes in school, we make snow sculpture as art projects, we also do hardcore snowball fights.

It could be tough growing up in a big city in China, as many kids are competing for limited resources, like good schools and good jobs. I was fortunate that both my parents are pretty progressive and were able to provide. Also, maybe because I was the only child, I was a bit spoiled. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted as long as my grades were good. I was able to spend most my time developing my interests and hobbies.

I was really into the German National soccer team ever since watching them playing in the 2002 World Cup Finals, and I follow the Bundesliga pretty closely. I always thought I would study German in college, and might became a translator or a journalist. However things didn’t go as planned. One day in high school, I was sitting in the classroom, hearing some school announcement mentioning “America” and “Purdue”, It was like the turning point of my life, and it was a crazy one. Before that moment, I never really had any thoughts about going to America, other than after watching that Russel Crowe movie “A Beautiful Mind”, I was briefly obsessed with Princeton and wanted to be a Physicist. That quickly died as I realized I didn’t have much talent in Physics. Anyway, I told my parents about this Purdue deal with my high school. I said “I think this might be easier for me than taking the college entrance exam here, plus I get to choose a cool major. ” They totally supported me. Two weeks later, I stopped going to school, and basically spend my last year of high school preparing for the Toefl test, which is like SAT for foreigners.

So, I came to America in 2008, leaving all my family and friends, but I was too excited and busy to feel lonely. I majored in Computer Graphics Technology because it sounds like a nice skill to have, and I got to learn how to design a video game, which I kinda did in my junior year. I helped a professor build a virtual simulation game that helps mechanical engineering students identify dangerous behaviors in the lab. I had several jobs during collage, from production crew for conferences, to web designer, and teaching assistant . Along the way I found my interest in interactive media. I made a choose-your-own adventure story type of interactive animation for my senior design project. So when I came across Jellyvision’s website, saw their work and thought – “I can do that!.” I created my audition in Flash, and they really liked it. So, that’s how I got here.

Now I’ve been in the States for more than ten years, I’m married and have a family here. My parents are still in China. It’s truly hard to say where my home home is, but I’m fine with that.