My dad’s Facebook profile says that Jan. 1, 1970 is his date of birth.
All his co-workers have been convinced that he’s 10 years younger than he actually is — probably because of his youthful grin and trendy hair.
Whenever I visit China, everyone asks me: “Where’s your dad? You look just like him, but you’re nothing like him!”
His energy fills up the entire room, sometimes suffocatingly so. The louder he is, the more soft-spoken I become.
I used to shrink myself in the backseat when he would drive me to school, staying as quiet as possible, so he’d forget I was there and drive straight to work instead.
He would tell me stories of growing up in the final stages of the Cultural Revolution. Skipping school to visit the zoo, becoming a Red Guard despite the fact his grandfather was a landlord because he was so well-liked, catching cicadas to race them for fun because he didn’t have television — I absorbed each of those vignettes, mentally adding them to this mythical picture of my dad I had in my head.
A lot of what I did in high school, I did to make him proud. But I also did a lot to make him angry, disappointed or just confused.
When he moved to the U.S. in his early twenties, he met my mom and they pursued The American Dream together. He converted to Christianity, became a Republican and to this day disapproves of many of my “lifestyle” choices.
This year, I hesitated before telling him that I was switching my major to photojournalism. On the phone, he wasn’t surprised.
