19 December 1981: Born in Beijing, China
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Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1986: I am in front row, second from left |
22 July 1987: Arrived in Boston, Massachussetts, USA
Here's a mugshot of me in my old passport |
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March 1988: My family moves to the New York City area, where my father becomes chairman of the Chinese Alliance for Democracy
June 1989: Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, many Chinese students and intellectuals take refuge in the United States where they are
greeted by my father and his colleagues
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Tiananmen Square, 4 June 1989 |
1990: My parents split up after a series of arguments, and my mother begins to suffer from a mental condition; she returns to China the following year, and I won't see her again until 1999
1991: I am mentioned along with my father in a book called Chinatown, written by an American author to discuss the recent Chinese immigrants living in America, including political exiles like my father
June 1992: My picture appears in a Chinese-language newspaper with some other people demonstrating in front of the Chinese Consulate in New York to protest the third anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre
November 1992: Visited Australia for 10 days, went to Melbourne (where my second cousin lives), Sydney, and Canberra
April 1993: Went sightseeing on top floor of World Trade Center several weeks after terrorists tried to collapse it with a car bomb - it was the last time I entered that unfortunate building
Good old Twin Towers (World Trade Center), now R.I.P. (courtesy Corbis Images) |
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December 1993: Father marries again, and I have a stepmother who I become close to
June 1995: Finished secondary school and accepted to Townsend Harris High School, a specialized school for the humanities
Summer 1996: Got my first job, a clerk at a fruit-and-vegetable market in midtown Manhattan
October 1996: My little sister Nina is born to my father and stepmother
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Stepmother with Nina, summer '98 |
December 1997: Met Mr. Winston Lord, a former US ambassador to China, in his luxury apartment on Park Avenue, had a nice conversation with him on political matters, he showed me pictures of him with world leaders, like France's d'Estaing, Poland's Walesa, and Syria's Hafez al-Assad, as well as domestic notables he'd worked with, i.e. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Dave Rockefeller
April 1998: Met with and became friendly with Wang Dan, who was the
leader of the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and just
freed from jail
Me with Wang Dan, April '98 |
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April 1999: Was accepted to three of the five universities I applied to: NYU, Cornell University, University of Chicago; chose to attend NYU because of the scholarship ($18,000/year)
June 1999: Graduated from high school
July 1999: Went back to China for one-month visit, stayed with my
grandmother and aunt in Beijing; met my mother for the first time since 1990, and my cousins on my mother's side for the first time (6-year-old and 2-year-old girl)
Me with cousin Deedee, Beijing, July '99 |
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September 1999: Began attending NYU; got a part-time job with a tour-operating company in midtown Manhattan, doing office work
Spring 2000: Decided to become computer science major during the height of the high-technology boom in the US
March 2001: Went on trip to France with other scholars at NYU; saw much of Paris, Versailles, Mont Saint-Michel (famous monastery by the sea), and the Normandy Landing Beaches (World War Two); met some of my family's friends living in Paris
11 September 2001: Was on my way to morning classes at NYU when the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center began, only 2 km away; I walked about 30 blocks with a friend to a power station where his father worked, and we stayed there until the metro started running again
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September 11 tragedy viewed from my school, NYU; this pic was taken after Tower 2 had collapsed as Tower 1 blazes furiously in the background |
Spring 2002: Had an internship at a small information technology company in the city
June 2002: Wrote an article about the 13th anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre which was published online for National Review magazine - the start of my freelance journalism career (see Writing link for all my articles)
January 2003: Earned certification as Microsoft Certified Systems
Engineer (MCSE)
MCSE certificate |
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May 2003: Graduated from NYU with a Bachelors degree in computer science
30 May 2003: Became US citizen
15 August 2003: Got job offer from BearingPoint, a large systems-integration company based in the Washington DC area
September 2003: Moved to northern Virginia for my job with BearingPoint - my first experience living by myself
July 2004: Visited China and saw my mother for first time since 1999; visited super-modern city of Shanghai for the first time
October 2004: Bought my first car, a 2001 Toyota Corolla
December 2004: Began attending Agape Mission Church in Elkridge, Maryland
February 2005: Was saved - accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and became a Christian
May 2005: Got new job as software engineer at Stanley Associates, starting 16 June
20-29 May, 2005: Life-changing trip to France, originally a personal vacation for sightseeing and visiting family friends, but turned into a major spiritual experience after meeting the missionaries that were sent to Paris by my church the previous year - I left for France as a believer, I came back to the US as a missionary