One in a Billion

Have you ever lost your sense of purpose after your loved one suddenly died? Whom do you turn to find strength to renew your mind and spirit?

Born in Sorsogon, the Philippines, Loida N. Lewis, traces the roots of her …

Have you ever felt the need to know your family history as a way to become whole?

What can you remember about your parents’ immigrant journey or …

Have you stopped and considered what got you here? Who paved the way for you to learn and grow up in America? For first-generation Chinese American …

Do you have a hard time identifying with this kind of Chinese, or that kind of American, and wanting to create a third category of cultural …

Are you denying your roots if you ignore them? Why should one’s culture be a forethought and not an afterthought? Who defines your cultural …

How can you make a difference when you are still climbing the career ladder and have little money to spare? How much can you give when you already focus so much of your time and effort to gain acceptance, appreciation, …

Why would a Harvard-educated college graduate and medical school student get thrown out of a UCLA medical residency? What did he do wrong? What did …

Why does an American-born Chinese philanthropist want to help young Chinese in America reconnect with their roots? Why is that important? What seeded …

LifeChangers is about Asian philanthropists sharing stories about life-changing turning points that have shaped their mindset and inspired their philanthropic passion. Now, they feel compelled to change the lives of …

We kick off Season 6 “LifeChangers” today (August 26th)  with a limited special series.

LifeChangers is about Asian philanthropists sharing stories about life-changing turning points that have shaped their mindset and …

What would you do if you’ve written about becoming a Supreme Court justice, dreamed of a life and career in law, put in a lot of time and work to …

How far will you travel outside of your hometown, your neighborhood, your comfort zone, in order to see the world differently?

Why is it important to keep your sense of insecurity as your companion as you embark on your …

Should a Harvard education prepare you for failure?Should failure be normalized in the course of higher education?Or at the very least, would you …

How do I want to engage in the world?Do I want to be an academic teaching philosophy as a professor?Wouldn’t that be a very inward-looking, insular …

Many Harvard Asian American undergraduates I know with immigrant parents who are physicians receive a lot of pressure from their families to be a doctor. But not Divya Narendra, (Class of 2004)

While at Harvard, Divya …

Remember your college days dreaming big dreams, anxious about your grades, fearful about your future until one day, you find yourself in a different …

With less than ten days before Thanksgiving, my podcast team and I find ourselves counting the innumerable ways that we have been challenged, and the unpredictable opportunities that have come our way in 2020. 

So in …

Today, tens of thousands of Americans head to the polls.

Our choice of the next president - Donald Trump or Joe Biden - may be hard for some, but it …

Three in ten Americans blame China or Chinese people for the Coronavirus pandemic, according to the Ipsos Poll.  Anti-Asian harassment, assault and …

When was the last time you felt your life was turned upside down?

How did you find a way out? 

Last Spring when Covid-19 outbreak led to a series of campus closures, forcing tens of thousands of students to move out of …

As the Black Lives Matter movement spread across America earlier this summer, many Asian Americans began to reflect on their personal history of …

To whom do you feel indebted for your civil rights and citizenship status in America? 

Your parents or your parents’ parents? Or yourself?

Frankly, I had never considered this question until I came across Eileen …

Imagine this. 

You have Covid-19. 

You’re running out of breath. 

You’re inside a hospital emergency room getting a blood transfusion.

Suddenly this happens. There’s a leak somewhere.

Your bodily fluids spew and splash …

It’s been four months since the police shooting of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old emergency room technician of Louisville, Kentucky. Her tragic …

 Who can assure you when you can’t breathe? What do you need to hear from ER Doctors when you are in ICU? In the age of Covid-19, these questions are more pressing and personal than ever.

In Part 2 of our Season 5 True …

We kick off Season 5 today (July 14th) with a 10-part series True Colors.

True Colors is about the color of one’s character in times of crisis.

How …

She never ceases to amaze me.

Sanyee Yuan - a 20 something writer, actor, host, and Harvard graduate - is always chasing the next big opportunity …

What drives you crazy? 

How about being called just that - crazy.

If you are struggling with a mental disorder, you might lash out or turn inward. …

What’s wrong with bribing your 3-year-old with a gold star? Or, if you’re in China, it’s a red star.

Chinese American journalist Lenora Chu was a new …

Have you ever been tempted to trace your roots?

What might pique your curiosity if your mother refused to talk about her parents? 

For Scott Tong, he decided to find his home village precisely because no one seemed to …

What if your father called you after you two hadn’t talked for a year?

What if you were looking for a better relationship with him, and you were finding you were running out of time? 

In Part 2 of my interview with Mimi …

When was the last time you had a talk, or a fight with your father? 

What might trigger your urge to call him, or to reflect on what’s been missing in your relationship?

In Part 1 of my interview with Mimi Wong, a New …

Why would you give up all that you’ve studied or worked so hard for once you hit a certain life stage and decided to pursue what really makes you …

What will you find if you bank on the Internet to fulfill your desire?

How much money will you spend to make your dream come true in this digital …

If you’re a 20 something Asian woman trying to establish yourself as a writer in Tech, listen up. You can speak up, share your thoughts and yet, nobody hears you. You’re ignored.

That’s Eda Yu’s story.

In “Don’t Talk …

If you have spent a good chunk of your life studying and working like a robot, how would you know to wake up one day, and say “I am not a robot!” …

Part 3 of a Special Summer Series from Shanghai: In Context with Anita Xu: “How can this be...the rest of my life!?”

If you’d invested almost your …

Part 2 of A Special Summer Series from Shanghai: In Context with Anita Xu.

Can you imagine your life’s mission is to meet the expectations of your …

Season 4 kicks off with a Summer Special Series from Shanghai: In Context with Anita Xu- "Why Risk It?”

It’s an intimate conversation between digital …

What makes people in China laugh? Why would they spend time and money to go to a stand-up act by an American comedian in Beijing? And, who is he?

…

What is love about? Can you show gratitude without spending or giving money?

Can you show care without sacrificing your passion?

To truly show …

Are you the person you or your parents want to be?

Is your personal dream inseparable from your parents? Can it be? Should it be?

That is Angela’s …

What does it mean to be Chinese? 415 million Chinese millennials in China wrestle with crushing pressure to live up to a cultural identity and …

He grew up in a predominantly white suburban town in California.

His parents would take him travelling around the world for work since he was a child.

An unexamined life is not worth living.

What leads one to examine one’s life?

A surprise setback? An unforgettable encounter? An ongoing desire?

All of these experiences tend to re-emerge or surge in our memory as we …

She carries the good genes of music and science from the family.

Her grandmothers are physics professors in China, one of them plays the piano as a child.

Her father is a computer scientist, her mother is a medical …

Kira Omans was just four months when she was abandoned in a public walkway near a bridge in Zhongshan, China.

Not only was she discovered and adopted …

What would you do when someone tries to break you down, yelling at you saying “You’re the worst!?”

What would you do when no one believes in your …

What would you do when you hit a storm in the middle of climbing to the mountain top? Would you stop? Would you keep going?

She would keep climbing.

…

In America, the freedom of speech a First Amendment right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The right to speak our mind is not only valued in the …

It sounds like a simple question, “Are you Chinese?”

But why would someone ask it?  And what makes it difficult for someone to answer it?

Eric Liao, …

How often do you hear these questions - “How high have you scored? How many hours do you work? How much have you done?”

Quantity is, of course …

This year, I’ve promised my husband to be in Boston for Christmas and New Year. For the first time, it hit me how important it is to him that we celebrate Christmas, not in New York, or in Hong Kong (my hometown), but …

What Makes You Different? 

How often do you feel different from your peers in America? Under what circumstances do you find your values at odds with …

The first time I wanted to deny that I was Chinese, I was 17 years old facing another 17 year-old. She was tall, blonde and huge from Chicago.    …

Snap Judgments. Stereotypes. Implicit Bias.

They exist everywhere, across and beyond Harvard.

When I was a graduate student in the Regional Studies East Asia Program, I had experienced attitudes and comments that were …

I spent most of my 20s pretending that I had no fears. Fears are messy. They mess up my optimism, my can-do spirit, they hold me back. I turned a …

Before I launched my media startup in 2012, I never imagined that one day, I would form a company to create a digital platform for young people from …

Finding Love in America: Are You the One?  

Since I began dating seriously in my 30s, I found myself often asking if the guy I was seeing at the time was “the one” I wanted to settle down with for the rest of my life. …

What do you look for when you are seeking “the one?”

I believe the answer lies mainly in when you are looking and why. When I was in my 20s, dating in America was a form of self-discovery. “The one” was usually …

If you are a parent, what does your child’s name say about you?

In America, most parents pick a name that reflects the femininity of a girl, the strength of a boy, or their own personality and individuality. 

In China, …

Muyi Xiao first caught my eye with her urgently captivating photo collection titled “Married Young.”

It’s a story about teenage parents in China.

One …

I saw Mojia Shen for the first time in a YouTube video G(irls) 2015 summit after a friend told me she would make a great interview for my new …

A 16 year-old girl from Hebei province decides to come to America after spending nine years at a Chinese army youth school. She is 21 years old now. …