Introduction

About Me and Why I Created the Centre

I'm Chinese and Taiwanese by ethnicity, and American by nationality, but I (at time of entry) will be living in Mexico. My philosophy in life is to "know where you're from, and know where you're going." I was fortunate to grow up in a family that placed importance on the former, and I was exposed to various aspects of Chinese and Taiwanese culture, politics, history, literature, and media at a young age. Due to the individual Asian Diasporas being close-knit in the community I grew up in, and the Taiwanese fascination with Japanese and Korean popular culture, I also was also exposed to a lot about Northeast Asia.

However, as I grew older, due to many internal conflicts with cultural identity, I developed internal racism for a period in my life where I rejected "where I was from". I felt I could not belong neither in American nor any Asian culture, nor Asian-American culture and I was resentful of what I felt was rejection what should have been "my people". I picked the culture most foreign, hence most fascinating to me, and began to spend more time trying to understand that, because at least in such a foreign culture, I knew I wasn't supposed to belong.

Fast forward a few years, and now I've resolved my cultural identity issues. My interest for different cultures and languages continues to grow... though this blog will only focus and Asian and African studies, inspired by the growing relations between China and the African continent... though not limited to such topics.

I eventually want to be a professor of dramaturgy, focusing on Comparative Asian and African Performance Studies. I'm interested in performance art for public service, oral history for performance, and comparative dramatic literature research and work. To understand performance art of a culture, especially the themes reappear in dramatic literature, one must also understand the history, sociology, and politics of a culture, so this blog will encompass multiple disciplines.

I created this blog because when I was in a International Relations master's programme at Tsinghua University I wasn't allowed to research politically sensitive topics (such as China's financial and arms aide to rebel groups (Mugabe in Zimbabwe) and corrput governments (Sudan) so I left the programme, but I still want to do independent research for fun. Also, I just want a one-stop website for others who may be interested in similar topics like me.

So, that is a bit about who I am, and you'll learn from my blog entries more about some of my interests!