Tim Xu

What is the significance of a single life amongst billions? How do you quantify the value one life brings to the world? When do you realize a life has been extinguished?

We are individuals on this Earth, six billion strong, each possessing a life no more or less great than the any other. Yet over the past several thousand years, we have developed the ability to form connections to one another, connections in the form of families, communities, civilizations. With this ability, we transcend our individuality and spread intricate webs amongst one another.

And with that we have learned love and empathy. We have learned to care for individuals beyond the unconditional and to place another’s well-being before our own. We have become stronger and smarter by coming together and working together. As a species, we have conquered Earth by sharing.

Yet at the center of it all lies our individuality. At this very second, tens of thousands of people are waking up in the morning while thousands others slip into sleep. Several thousand more are eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Others are walking, driving, swimming, talking, listening, flying, sailing. Our hearts are beating, our minds are working, our bodies are living.

But everyone is thinking something different. Each individual has his own goals, ambitions and desires. No two individuals share the same set of memories, thoughts, and connections. No two individuals share the same life experience. And so, ultimately, despite the gains we achieve by coming together, we are still individuals, unique in every way.

It really is beautiful. 6.7 billion people on this Earth, yet each of them so starkly unique. Every single person has a story to tell, a picture to paint, a song to sing. Together, every individual heart beat adds to the symphony of human life.

And yet there exists individuals who purposefully extinguish the lives of others. To abruptly and meaninglessly end another’s song and story is beyond cruel. It is unforgivable.

I didn’t know Annie Le, but I now know her story. We all know her story. And as corny as it sounds, she will live on in our hearts. Her killer sought to end her existence, but he only amplified her beyond life. He sought to bury and hide her in the ceiling and in the walls, but he failed.

Tonight, in the light of a thousand flickering candles, Yale showed that Annie will not be forgotten. Her life was extinguished, but her memory will not. And so, her killer has failed.

I only wish that there was peace. What does it take to achieve that?

Google Maps has been a very reliable tool since its inception – it’s high utility has made it practically ubiquitous in my car-going life. Today, however, it failed me.

I was driving to Paramus to proctor an SAT Practice Test, so before I left, I wanted to find a McDonald’s on the way so I can drive-thru and bring it to the classroom. After a quick search of “mcdonalds,” Google Maps gave me its usually reliable scatter of McDonald’s locations around my destination. I quickly found one that seemed on my route. It was on Rt-4 – perfect. Google Maps told me it was 247 Rt. 4, and I noted it was right before the Garden State Plaza.

When I drove by the area, there was nothing on either side of Route 4. I was quite confused. I drove all the way past the Garden State Plaza, made a U-Turn, and came back. Still nothing. I ended up going back and going to this McDonald’s, which was right past my exit. I had wasted about 10 minutes roaming around Route 4 trying to find this mystery Mickey. Instead of eating leisurely before the students came, I had to munch on french fries while they wrote their essay.

When I rolled past the McDonald’s driveway, I noticed that the address placard said “247 Rt. 4 W.” It seemed strangely familiar. When I got home, I checked the two McDonald’s locations on Google Maps. They had the same address. Then I noticed that the first one, the one I couldn’t find, was labelled an “Unverified Listing” in pale grey text. Well, I guess now it’s verified. There’s nothing there.

Now my question is: who posted this unverified listing, and why was it 1.8 miles away from the actual location?

So yesterday, a few friends and I went down to Six Flags: Great Adventure for a day. It was looking like a great trip at first, but by the end of the night, it turned out to be rather amazing and quite a great adventure. (ha. ha.) Up until 9pm, it was a fairly normal trip. We hit up all the good rides – El Toro (after a few breakdowns, it was still awesome), Nitro, Bizarro (the new Medusa), but not Kingda Ka, since it was unfortunately closed. We went on some water rides, some of the more relaxing rides – Batman, Great American Scream Machine – and chilled. It was a fairly standard affair. But at around 9 the night took a turn for the adventurous.

After getting out of the (lame) Dark Knight ride, we headed over to Nitro. By now, it was pretty much fully nighttime and we couldn’t even see the rest of Nitro in the distance. You can usually see some drops lifting out of the woods. The line was fairly quick and definitely worth it. Nitro’s intensity increases dramatically when it’s almost completely dark. It was exhilarating, but we wanted one better – El Toro.

After we got off Nitro it was 9:45. The park closes at 10. We speed walked to the SkyRide and rode its cable cars across to the El Toro side of the park. When we got off, the attendant told us we had 7 minutes. “Good luck.”

And so, in flip-flops, we sprinted. When we got to El Toro, the regular entrance was chained up, so we just followed the crowd into the Fast Pass lane and then hopped over the railing into the regular line. A security guard came up right behind us, but he didn’t say anything. Then, halfway up the line, the fireworks started. Apparently, every Saturday night over the summer there’s a fireworks show at 10. It was actually a pretty legit show with some big flowers (is that what you call them?).

By the time we got to the ride itself, the fireworks were still going. It made the ride even more epic. El toro. In the dark. With fireworks in the background. Photos are forthcoming.

When we got back to the car in the parking lot, it was about 10:30. We were tired, but exhilarated. The way out of the parking lot was basically a second parking lot. It literally took an hour to get out of the general Six Flags area (turns out there was an accident by the I-195 junction holding everyone up). After a brief pit stop at Mickey D’s, we hit the Turnpike.

It was a relatively peaceful drive northward. I had to drop my friends off in New York City, so we headed towards the Holland Tunnel. I brought along my trusty GPS, so I thought I was safe. Wrong. The GPS wanted me to go local, so I got confused and ended up making a wrong turn at the VERY confusing highway junction, and in order to turn around the GPS led me into Newark International Airport. Eventually, we made our way to the Holland Tunnel. A few moments later, we were in New York City.

A quick disclaimer here: I have never driven in New York City before, let alone by myself. It was around 1:30 at this point, and I expected the streets to be relatively clear. That was a terrible assumption. Canal Street was packed. Fortunately, the drop-off point was only a handful of blocks down Canal Street, but I did manage to cut off a NYC taxi on the way there. It was a proud moment.

After I dropped them off, I was truly alone. The Holland Tunnel closes its outbound lanes (into NJ) after 1am on weekends, so I had to detour over to the Lincoln Tunnel. This time, my trusty GPS was, indeed, trusty and led me up 3 miles of the West Side Highway towards the tunnel. Apparently, New York drivers don’t know how to stay in lane, because the guy going next to me was constantly infringing on my lane territory.

But after a traffic-light-induced jam at the approach to the tunnel, I was in. Moments later, I was back in New Jersey. Wide, open, expansive, taxi-less New Jersey. Truly a fantastic place. Half an hour later, I was home.

It had been 17.5 hours, 180 miles, and one spectacular great adventure.

On Tuesday, we left Tennessee and drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We rented a condo there for a few days, and it was right next to the beach! The water was really nice (at least for the Atlantic..) and not that cold, with big waves. It was still ridiculously hot and humid, but at least there was a constant breeze coming off the water. It made it slightly easier to deal with the heat; in fact, it was pretty comfortable, despite 90+ degree heat. We threw a football and a frisbee around on the hot sand and just chilled. It was rather picturesque, with the sound of the ocean waves and random chatter in the background.

On Wednesday we decided to check out Myrtle Beach’s world famous golf courses (apparently Myrtle Beach is the golf capital of the world – who knew?). It was the first time I’d gone golfing for real and it was pretty fun. The best part was definitely driving the golf cart around: speeding over bumps and nearly flipping over the golf cart? Great fun. I ended up shooting a +57 on the 18-hole course, which is rather noob, but I’m okay with it.

Thursday was beach day, and we spent pretty much the whole day out on the sand. The waves were pretty big, but I tried to boogie board anyway. It didn’t end well. We graduated to the pool after an afternoon in the ocean, and it was generally fun. It’s been a long time since I spent so much time in the water, but it was great. Lots of flipping and splashing and swimming all around. Yesterday we went to a nearby waterpark, which wasn’t crowded at all. There were quite a few slides, and a decent-sized wave pool. Good, relaxing fun.

This past week has been a fantastic break from the summer. Family vacations aren’t always the best, but this one was one of the better ones. It’s hard to go wrong with some relaxing fun on the beach!

In other news…fifty-seven more days until I’m back at Yale!

The park is quite beautiful. We spent pretty much the whole day driving up to its peak, then walking around its natural trails. Lots of walking and climbing (and falling) today, but it was pretty amazing. It also reminded me of what we can do to the beauty of nature, as a lot of the trees in the park were dead due to human-introduced bugs and acid rain from pollution. The dead, white, leafless trees stood as a gaunt and dramatic reminder of our sometimes terrible influences.

Most of those trees were along the trail to Clingmans Dome, which, at 6,643 feet, is the highest point in the park. It was a 17 mile drive into the park and a half mile hike uphill, but the view was fantastic. The mountains were blue, layered, and quite “smoky.” It was a great view, but again ruined by all those bleached, dead trees.

The dead trees ruin the view...

We then headed off to the Roaring Fork Nature Trail. We stopped a couple of times to check out the creek and went on one particularly long (1.5 mile) trail to see a 25-foot waterfall. Some of the scenery was truly breathtaking, but at the end of the day, it was just a lot of trees and greenery. There was really nothing to die for, which I guess was a little disappointing. Also, the wildlife was pretty much absent. There was a sign that said “Bears Active,” which got me excited; but alas, no bears interrupted our hike.

Grotto Falls, off the Roaring Fork Motor Trail

But there were definitely a lot of waterfalls, small and large, and it was worth the rock-climbing and sore legs. Whitewater rafting (I think) tomorrow!

Well, after a 10 hour drive through six states (NJ, PA, MD, WV, VA, TN), I’m now in a Comfort Suites in Kodak, a couple miles from Smoky Mountain National Park. It’s the first leg of our trip – we’ll be hitting up Myrtle Beach, SC in a few days! The drive was uneventful, i guess. But once we got out of it in Tennessee, the heat hit. It was hot, humid, and windless. Awful weather.

I’ve noticed something about this area – there’s not a lot of minorities. We were the only Asians there, and there weren’t a lot of other minorities either. There were a lot of old people and blondes. The rumors are true: lots of tall, blonde girls in the South. Oh and the “Smoky Mountain Parkway” is ridiculous. There’s a strip that covers maybe a mile on which every single building is either a hotel, a restaurant, a mini-golf place, a go-kart place, or a miscellaneous carnival type place. We went go-karting on a hilly and bumpy course. It was lots of fun.

We’ll be heading into the park tomorrow. Pics will be posted.

Well, now that it’s officially summer, I figured it’d be a good time to start posting on the blog again. A lot has happened since I got back from Mexico three months ago; I guess I’ll give it a cursory overview.

April was a roller coaster of fun. I got close with a couple of good friends, and there was just a lot of hanging out. Freshman Olympics and Spring Fling were two fantastic days – the month went by faster than I wanted it to. But by the end of the month, finals had begun and I basically moved to Bass Library. I was in there at least 12 hours a day, if not more, but I did do well on my exams. All the hard work definitely saved my grade in quite a few classes. And just like that, in the proverbial blink of an eye, my freshman year at Yale was over. It’s been over a month since I left school, yet sometimes I still wonder where freshman year disappeared off to. It’s incredible that it’s over. I wish I could do it all again. But I won’t go on a nostalgic trip now; I’ll save that one for when I actually remember freshman year as a tangible block of time, rather than the blur it is now.

The latter half of May represented the beginning of my summer. Moving out was a pain and leaving Yale was tough, but it was definitely a great change of pace to go from constantly worrying and studying to having precisely zero responsibility. I started working on marketing my summer job (Ivy Insiders) right away, working with my Co-Manager Jon on getting the groundwork laid for our SAT classes. I’ve got about twenty days left before those classes are due to start. I guess that means I have twenty more days until my relaxation ends. By mid-July, I’ll be teaching classes almost daily.

I’ve also got some web-designing to do over summer break. I already finished one, for the Davenport Pops Orchestra, and I’ve got two more to design and code. I actually spent a few days learning how to code layout via <div> and CSS rather than <table>. It’s truly revolutionized (and modernized) the way I do webdesign, and I’m pretty excited to get started on the next two.

But besides all that work, I’m just relaxing at home, watching movies, playing video games, playing basketball and frisbee, and really enjoying home before I go back to school in just over two months.

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy.

So last week, I went to Mexico with the Yale Concert Band. We went to Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Real de Catorce, and Monterrey and played five concerts. Below is a recollection of this most memorable trip.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Let’s start this one at midnight. At that hour, Criterion Theaters began showing previews. By 3:30, I had taken in Watchmen. At 5:30, with the sun rising behind the veil of clouds, I picked up my laundry from the drier. At 7, I finished packing and went to bed.

We left New Haven at noon on a bus to JFK. I think I fell asleep. In any case, we got to JFK several hours ahead of our departure time, so we amused ourselves with crossword puzzles and other fun stuff.

Checking in at JFK.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. By virtue of alphabetical seating and an empty last row, I was able to take 3 seats to myself, which was quite the luxury. At around 7:30, I saw Washington, D.C. from the sky. In Mexico, we relinquished our bags to various bellboys, not to see them until they sat outside of our doors at the hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Plaza Florencia, where Alan, my roommate, and I had a balcony with a view of several night clubs and a giant poster advertising “Los Monologos de la Vagina.” Cute.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

There was no concert that night, so it was a day of tourist activities. We went to Teotihuacán and saw its gigantic pyramids. The city is a couple thousand feet above sea level, so climbing the (really steep) stairs up the pyramids was an adventure. But we made a human Y on the Pyramid of the Moon and we hung out and made a human pyramid on top of the Pyramid of the Sun. We also got our introduction to haggling with the somewhat English-speaking peddlers and shopkeepers.

The view from the Pyramid of the Moon. You can see the sun pyramid to the left.

Our human ‘Y’ on the moon pyramid.

We left Teotihuacán and headed to lunch at a buffet-style restaurant. The food was spicy (predictably) but not too terrible. I tried out cactus, which wasn’t bad at all. We were entertained by our first mariachi band and some traditional Aztec dancers and drummers. After lunch, we went to a crafts warehouse, which happened to be on the same street as a Goth Market. Needless to say, there was a continuous stream of Mexican Goths walking past our buses.

It was still mid-afternoon when we returned to the hotel, so I joined a group and wandered around the immediate vicinity of our hotel. We found a pedestrian-only business area, where we saw a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Popeyes, a KFC, a Starbucks, and a sex toy store in close proximity.

Dinner was at a really nice restaurant with (yet another) mariachi band, singers, dancers, and alcoholic beverages as the set drink when we sat down. Within hours, people were dancing to the Mexican beat along with the dancers on stage. We did our best interpretation of their style.

The traditional dancers at dinner.
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The following is my finished essay for English 120: Reading & Writing the Modern Essay with Professor Ariel Watson. This particular unit is entitled “Writing about Place.”

Stripes and numbers, forests and lakes, long days and restless nights – the memories remain crisp. I remember the first time I stepped off of the bus at Fairview Lakes YMCA, up in the wilderness of northwest New Jersey. It was the August of 2004 and, fresh out of middle school, I had packed myself off to a weeklong band camp before my first marching band season. I had spent the previous weeks trying, and often struggling, to memorize the music, and now it was time to put those notes on the field.

There was a solitary map of the camp standing in the shifting shade of tall trees, framed by the sun-speckled ripples of the lake. I stood beside it quietly and watched as the other seventy members filed off the bus. I had seen their faces before, but they weren’t familiar. Many chattered excitedly – this was not their first band camp – while others, like me, stood sheepishly off to the side, uninvolved, unknowing, our hands in our pockets. Soon, I was walking up the gravel path to the cabins amidst the billowing dust and the cacophony of crunches that naturally accompany hundreds of footsteps. Insects and birds added their melodies to a raw, rhythmic soundscape so starkly different from the constant hum of suburbia. The loose canopy of leaves glowed in the midday sun, casting the rocks and fallen branches in an otherworldly green. This was the wilderness.

The cabins themselves were dark and humid. A single bulb in the middle of the room flickered slowly to life, illuminating ten blue mattresses in five bunks arranged along the sides of the room. There were small windows above each of the mattresses, letting in enough light to reflect off the dust particles, floating like snowflakes. I climbed up the dusty ladder to my bunk, spread out my sleeping bag, and sat at the edge, swinging my feet and chatting excitedly with my cabin-mates. We spent the afternoon exploring the cabin. To us, it was a novelty – even the dullest of details sprang to life. We opened toilet stalls, peered into the poorly lit shower, and fought over the cubbies that separated each bunk.

The call to dinner took us back down the gravel path to the mess hall, where we were introduced to its unfamiliar mustard-yellow floor tiles, pale orange walls, and chipped wooden tables. The spattering clanks of plastic and the chatter of a dozen simultaneous conversations soon filled the room as everyone grabbed a cup. A parade of camp workers brought out one steaming pan of food after another, and the drum major called the seniors to eat. We freshmen could only sip on our drinks – bug juice, the juniors called it – while we waited for our turn.

The next day was our first on the field. There was no shade here from the merciless August sun. My sweaty palms clutched my instrument loosely as we learned how to march. The sun and the swarms of mosquitoes crushed my expectations, and the romance of band camp soon disappeared. There was nothing fun about wiping beads of sweat with an arm already drenched in it. There was nothing exciting about forgetting to stop on the 40-yard-line the third time in a row. And there was definitely nothing romantic about the fourth “one more time” before a water break. Over the course of the week, we gained an intimate knowledge of that field. Its features are still familiar: the large patch of dirt by the left 20-yard-line, the baseball diamond in the back left corner, the shade of the two trees on the sideline that became the holy site for our water-break pilgrimages.

We spent our nights working on our music throughout the camp, divided into sections by instrument. My section chose a spot underneath a streetlight, facing the lake. Beyond the conical glow of the yellow light, the moon washed everything in pale blue. In that darkness, we played our music. We played to the invisible dragonflies that cut creases into the lake’s calm ripples, to the bats that flocked to thrown rocks, to the unseen singers of lonely chirps. We chased after the sheet music blown like falling leaves by a chance gust. We became brothers and sisters by laughing at each other’s jokes, by listening to the stories of bygone band camps, by playing our music in perfect unison.

Twelve months later, I returned. No longer a freshman, I stepped off the bus surrounded by my closest friends, all of us giddy with anticipation. Once again, we organized ourselves next to that map before heading up to the now-familiar cabins. Confident with experience, we didn’t stay in our cabins long. We threw a frisbee between and around other cabins. We helped unload the truck and deliver luggage to the freshmen, who sat on their bunks, swinging their legs.

The week progressed much differently this time around. No longer constrained by the novelty of the experience, we enjoyed the week more viscerally. The field faded in importance, and we approached our rehearsal time with ease rather than struggle. Instead, we looked forward to and relished our breaks, eagerly exploring the recreation the camp provided.

On the third day, we took a canoe and rowed it out to the middle of the lake. There was something soothing about the rhythmic swings and surges that accompanied each stroke of the oar, something relaxing about the smooth curls of waves that radiated from the tip of the canoe as we slid through the water. In the chaotic symphony of splashes and laughter we didn’t notice that we had entered perfect serenity. There was something tangibly peaceful about bobbing up and down in the middle of the lake, surrounded by nothing but water for a hundred yards each way. The same soft breeze that created the ripples in the water caressed our skin, and the same sun that lit the water’s crests in a warm yellow flame warmed our bodies. I leaned back and lied on the bottom of the canoe, ignoring the puddle of cold water that seeped through my t-shirt. I squinted and followed the gradient of the sky from clear blue to blinding white. A hawk crossed under the sun. I followed its graceful glide until it disappeared into the thick forest, then counted the trees into the hills until they became a messy blob of green and brown. An hour later, we slowly rowed back to the shore and went back to work.

Before I returned for my third year at camp, I was chosen as the drum major. Once again, my experience at camp was defined by rehearsal and the time I spent in front of my peers. I no longer noticed the cool wind ruffling the leaves or the midnight whisper of a nocturnal animal outside my window at night. The landscape had shifted – instead of the green and brown of trees and hills or the blue and white of the lake, I saw faces on the field. I watched them march, the uneven lines connecting their bodies shifting from squares to triangles to sliding slants across the stark, white lines. During breaks, I sat on my podium, observing their interactions, their laughter, their frolicking. The shade of those two trees that once shielded me from the sun became lines on the ground, outlining the group of kids seeking solace from that same overbearing sun. Their arms and legs crossed and touched to create a lattice, blending to form a remarkably new landscape.

And then it was over. I heard the last thud of a piece of thrown luggage as it hit the pile in the truck, the crash of the back door as it locked into place, and the rumble of the busses as they rolled down the driveway to pick us up. I also heard things fade: the blare of a trombone’s note piercing into the distance, the shrill of a flute rising into the air, the groove of several dozen pairs of feet shifting in unison. Everywhere I went that last day, things seemed still. In the cabins, I listened for the shuffle of kids jumping off their mattresses, but only saw freshly mopped floors and bare mattresses. In the mess hall, I listened for people clanking their plastic cups as they waited for a meal, but only saw chairs stacked neatly on the tables. At the lake, I listened for the smooth sound of four canoes splashing through the lake, but only saw the gleam of the setting sun slicing across the water. But when I listened to the doors of the bus close, and when I felt the wheels shake over uneven pavement as it pulled away from band camp, I only saw an empty camp and a lonely map, growing ever smaller.

The following is my finished essay for English 120: Reading & Writing the Modern Essay with Professor Ariel Watson. This particular unit is entitled “From Personal Experience.”

On the first day of pre-school, my new teacher asked me for my name, so I replied, “I want to go to the bathroom.” It was my first day of pre-school; I was four, and I didn’t have a lick of English in my head. Earlier in the morning, my parents had given me strict directions: don’t eat anything that doesn’t smell right; don’t take food from other children without asking; if you need to pee, tell the teacher “I want to go to the bathroom”; eat all the food in your lunchbox. And so, after my teacher asked for my name, I decided to reply with the phrase my parents had taught me in the morning. My teacher, my parents, and, I’m sure, many of the other children laughed. I did not. But I stood silent not because of embarrassment, but because of ignorance. Not only was I incapable of understanding my teacher’s question, I did not even truly comprehend the words that came out of my own mouth. Fortunately, there were no major consequences from my mistake – I did not become “I-want-to-go-to-the-bathroom” for the rest of the year. The teacher already knew my real name. In fact, she gave me my name.

In the most literal sense, my pre-school teacher forged my identity as an American. My parents had realized that my given Chinese name could be a liability for my social success and so, when they sat down with my pre-school teacher in the weeks prior to that first day, they asked her for ideas. They gave her my Chinese name, and she picked an English name that sounded closest to it. “Tim,” she told them. For the next fourteen years (and counting), I would answer to that name. My birth certificate reads ‘Xu Tianji,’ born in Xi’an, China, but since I was four, I have answered, as an American, to the name she gave me.

When I was two, my parents left me in the care of my mother’s mother in China while they established a new life in America. While I ran about in cloth diapers on dusty streets, they enjoyed their first meal at McDonald’s: a sixty-nine cent hamburger that they shared because it was all they could afford. I followed their trail a year later, boarding a fifteen-hour flight from Beijing to Detroit International Airport.

It had been a full year since I’d last seen my parents. Yet when my father first picked me up off the ground, I whispered into his ear, “Where’s our car?” Over the course of our overseas telephone conversations, I discovered that my parents had purchased a new vehicle. This was quite the luxury, one nearly impossible to attain for the average Chinese family at the time. Naturally, it trumped all else in my toddler mind. I was not interested in the sentimentality or emotion of the moment. Something far more important and exciting had captured my mind. During the drive home, I attached my face to the window, watching the hundreds of cars and their shining, spinning rims in awe. At one point, we stopped at a traffic light next to a large tractor-trailer. Moments later, I wondered why we were moving backwards.

In those early days, our apartment was on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise in the center of Detroit’s Wayne State University, where my parents did their graduate studies. I spent the first weeks at home with my grandmother, playing inside the apartment or outside in the playground. We were quite the pair, with no more than a dozen English phrases between us. But we quickly mastered the essential art of hand gestures and awkward grunts, our only method of communicating with the neighborhood children and their mothers. It must have been how the cavemen conversed tens of thousands of years ago. I would wave to say hello, then point from myself to the swing a few times, as if to ask, “Can I please use that swing you’re sitting on?” Finally, with a handful of nods or shakes of the head, I would either get onto my newly won swing, or storm away from the stubborn child who had refused my negotiations.

Of course, it did not always work. My parents often socialized with their fellow students, two of whom also had children of their own. They were older than me, the two girls, and they, too, had recently moved from China. Without a language barrier, we quickly became friends. However, they moved to America several years before I did, and thus already spoke English well. They readily used this advantage against me. Whenever they wished to ignore or exclude me, they did. I could only complain to my grandmother, “They’re speaking English again!”

A month later, the first day of pre-school came and passed. I learned English quickly – with no one there who could speak Chinese, pre-school forced me to speak English. By that Christmas, I was speaking in full phrases. By the next one, I was fluent. The girls could no longer ignore me by merely speaking English (though I quickly discovered that locked doors can be just as potent). I did not have to rely on wild hand motions – negotiating swings and see-saws became a matter of voice.

I could not have understood the significance of those first few months in America. In April of 1994, I was Xu Tianji, a Chinese toddler waddling down the dirty, cramped streets of Xi’an in hand-sewn pants and paper-thin shoes. By the time 1995 dawned, I was Tim Xu, an American boy running through the wide, grassy lawns of Detroit in cheap pants and sneakers. Perhaps that lack of understanding was exactly what enabled me to become so unmistakably American as quickly as I did. With an American name given to me by an American woman in an American city, I did not find my new identity – I was given it. I became Tim Xu not because I wanted to, but because my pre-school teacher thought it sounded like the name inscribed on my birth certificate.

I was too young to understand the remarkable nature of those opening months in America. I had passed through the ugly cruelties of adjusting to a new country relatively unscathed. Unlike my parents, I did not have to worry about my professional reputation, about creating a financial base from scratch, about starting over as an adult. My age, then, was my crutch, my get-out-of-hardship-free card. By the time I started kindergarten, I was more American than my parents would ever be. I had forgotten what life was like in China. Although I would not legally become an American citizen for another eight years, I was no longer a true Chinese citizen the day I stepped foot on American soil. At the age of three, I held only the most tenuous connection to a national identity. It was in the hurried process of learning English, of adapting to America’s culture that I assumed its identity and melted into its churning pot.

When I walked into that classroom for the first day of pre-school, I didn’t realize that all the other children looked different. Some were white, others black, but none were yellow-skinned. I didn’t realize the true difficulty of becoming fluent in a completely foreign language. And I certainly didn’t realize that this new ‘me’ could bring me so far.