I was born in China and I grew up in Singapore. But my lineage, it was a very patriarchal perspective of lineage. There are two types of “Wang”. We are the rare type of Wang. My father knows from his grandfather that our surname - Langya Wang [琅琊王氏]- can be traced back to the Qin Dynasty in Shandong Province. Then in the Song Dynasty, my family had a major migration to the Hebei, Beijing area. When the Communists took over, my grandfather was a landlord and was displaced to the countryside. They had all their stuff taken away and had to deal with the public humiliation and physical torture from the pidou 批斗 (struggle meetings).

My father grew up in the countryside and he got into really good university. He met my mom in Beijing and they got married. They had me and very soon after, he was recruited by a company to migrate to Singapore. And so he took that opportunity to bring my mum there and eventually bring me there. 

I grew up in Singapore. I did my undergrad in the UK. Then I got a research position in Canada and UBC to do my master. So that’s how I got here.

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Out of all these places that you've lived in, which to you feels like home?

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Ah… It’s really tough to say honestly. I think like finding home in oneself is something I've been practicing, like some kind of meditation perspective - coming back to oneself. One of the meditation practices of equanimity is to [look] at places without extreme attachment or aversion towards any sort of external people or place.

I do feel like my father, when they visited me in Vancouver, they like the community here because there are people with who have similar experiences as them. And so they feel like this is also a possibility for them in the future. That's why I say it's kind of an in-between of Canada and Singapore. Yeah.

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So what about Vancouver? What’s something here that you appreciate?

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One thing is its free speech. You know, the Goddess of Democracy at UBC, the statute. Yeah. That's really was quite an affirming symbol for me and for my friends. It is for a lot of people who feel like they don't have that anywhere else.