I have great genes

I thought I was writing my own story, but maybe I’ve been tracing hers all along.

“You have my genes.”

My mother said it offhandedly, after reading through the essays I’ve published so far. Even in translation, the words carried through, to my surprise. She claimed my writing talent came from her.

This newsletter began out of frustration, as if keeping a record of my hard-earned lessons and failed tests was the only way to make sense of them. It wasn’t something I expected anyone to actually even read. Every word I wrote, I wrote with fear, the kind that sits behind your ribs, whispering what if they don’t understand?

I still care too much about what people think of me, as if there’s a perfect image I’ve been fighting so hard to protect, a version of myself I’m terrified to disappoint.

My mother could probably see through the mess I was trying to write my way out of.

I spent years running away from home. I got a job in the city, stayed out as late as I could, made new friends, then moved to Shanghai and later to London. I was chasing a new identity, a life that felt entirely my own. I wanted independence, of place, of work, of thought.

Maybe I was running away from the very core of the problem, the tangled threads of love, guilt, and duty that tie us home no matter how far we go. And if there’s one person who could understand this version of me, it’s my mother.

My mother grew up on a farm, deep in the countryside of Henan province, a place shaped by scarcity, in a China still finding its way out of poverty. She met my father when Shenzhen was still a rough place to be. As the eldest daughter, raised to be the responsible and sensible one, my mother fiercely held on to her values despite not having much. She would fight to pay the bills, a very northerner thing to do. And that strength, that stubborn pride, was exactly what drew my father to her.

I was an accident, born out of pure, passionate love. My mother never imagined she would carry a child at 18. She took the risk to keep me and moved to Hong Kong to start a new life. No one can ever be fully prepared to become a parent at that age. You just do the best you can. And sometimes, you can’t foresee what follows: the storms, the sacrifices, the unexpected turns that come with the risks you choose to take so fiercely.

It’s the same with anything we try to do. We take bold risks with incomplete information, and for whatever follows, we can only keep learning, keep adjusting, and keep going.

“CEOs are learning to be a CEO, just as parents are learning to parent.”

I said to a friend. We used to think that anyone with the title must know exactly what they’re doing, but it’s not always the case.

My mother didn’t get to live her twenties the way I did. Her twenties began with breastfeeding, the chaos of new life, and the heaviness of growing up too soon. She was brave. And in every risk I take, every mistake I make, I carry that same spirit, or the same gene.

“I was the eldest daughter, and since I was young, I’ve been taking care of everyone.”

My mother rarely softened, but that day she leaned her head on my shoulder and said it playfully, almost like a little girl seeking comfort.

She hasn’t had many chances to be a little girl. She was pushed into a mother’s role early and has rarely had the chance to rest. She’s always been too scrappy, too pragmatic for indulgence. Now that my grandmother has fallen ill, she carries the weight of both the physical and emotional labor, the kind that keeps you awake at night, gripped by fears you can’t speak out loud.

“Daughters are expected to do free emotional labor.”

A friend said it plainly as I was caught between building my own life and caring for the people who gave me the chance to build it.

My mother traded her freedom for mine. She had me when she was 18, and now she’s read my 18 essays all at once.

Every parent wants their child to live the life they never had, but deep down, they fear that in giving them all the freedom, they’ll lose the last thread that keeps them close. She told me that the way I chose to pursue entrepreneurship is exactly like hers. And for a long time, I was afraid of that, afraid of becoming like her, of making decisions that would cost me more than I could bear.

But she was right. When I taught myself to type Chinese on my first computer, I was just like her, a young woman learning a new language so she could start again in a new place. After all these years, she still has a Mandarin accent when she speaks Cantonese. Though the way we’re perceived is different. In Mainland China, my Hong Kong accent is considered soft, almost foreign, a sign of distance. But in her case, it was a reminder that she came from somewhere else, that she didn’t quite belong.

She’s been fierce for so long. When she was young, it was a barbaric time in her village. She once saw her father and grandfather, honest, gentle men who never knew how to fight back, being bullied and beaten. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed a kitchen knife and was about to confront the bullies herself, until her mother and a few others pulled her back so hard that her clothes almost tore.

For a very long time, I forgot that she had a little girl inside. For the years I was working hard in Shanghai, I forgot that she didn’t even get a chance to visit Shanghai. The world was changing so fast, and I forgot that I knew how to get around China more than she does now.

I didn’t understand her world, or the world she’s coming from. And let’s be honest, I’m not sure if my mother actually wants me to.

“Hong Kong girls are very 'nails’.”

Someone casually commented at a friend’s birthday party. I grew up as a Gong Nui, a term for Hong Kong girls, often used to describe how materialistic or demanding we’re thought to be. I’ve suffered from my share of first-world problems: deciding what outfit to wear for which occasion, whether my bag matched my dress, or which pair of heels would make the right impression.

I have a friend who runs a tea business. Seeing her bring suitcases to events reminds me of my mother. For a long time, I felt a little uneasy that my mother worked so hard, even when she didn’t have to, instead of living the comfortable life of a tai tai (a well-off married woman who doesn’t need to work).

“You’ve started having a lot of grey hair.”

As a person who’s never really had to suffer financially, my mother started voicing concerns as I was pushing myself in the entrepreneurship path. My friend just said to me:

“You’ve grown a lot and gained a lot of wisdom.”

I was once told that having a good therapist is like having a container to hold you. It stings a little, because that’s probably what being a parent really is. I tried talking therapy, but I found writing to be a better way of holding myself together.

Writing has also become the bridge between my mother and me. Somewhere along the way, I found myself becoming that bridge for younger women who share my roots but never had the chance to grow close to Chinese literature.

Or maybe I was just tired of running away.

We spend so much of our lives searching for a container outside ourselves, forgetting that maybe, from the beginning, it was already built into us.

“Do what you need to do. I’m going to help you take care of everything here.”

It was the first time that my mother was giving me full permission to fail.

Maybe that’s what inheritance really means: not repeating the past, but carrying its courage forward.