My brother sent this (from 2021 though) to me last night, and it scratches an itch I didn’t know I had.

I was very much a third-culture kid. I grew up in overwhelmingly white Lodi (80-90% at the time, based on census data) with a family who had recently emigrated from China.

At home — which, until I was ten, was the back of a restaurant built in 1921 — there was Cantonese and Chinese culture. Outside, there was…pretty much everything else, and a lot of it was in direct conflict with what I was being taught at home. I think I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out how to balance the two, and where exactly my identity fits between them.

I’ve got a healthy obsession with San Francisco, and the Bay Area generally. Can’t imagine ever tiring of these sights.

(@ellykerwickart)