“There are two great gifts we can give our children: One is roots; the other, wings.” – unclear; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Chinese Proverb
Hello World!
I’m Mingmei. I am a child of globalization and a native of the world wide web / aka involuntary third culture kid who is most of the time a bit disoriented but still finding out about how I fit into the society I find myself in at any given time. I try to make sense of it by indulging in mostly slice-of-life film and literary fiction, and by occasionally putting to paper how they resonate with my lived experience – among my favorite topics in a language that I always revert to for a precise feeling: über Entwurzelung, Wurzeln Schlagen und übers Wachsen / about the process of uprooting oneself, planting roots, and growing. Maybe you’ll stop by along the journey.
Here a more objective bio with a bit of nuance:
- National origin of parents: China (Sichuan/Chongqing and Hunan) – while I did spend much time in Chinese restaurants, I was also brought up between visits to Swiss circuses, Phantasialand, and Heide-Park and among Chinese acrobats – my parents came to Leipzig as academics from Beijing but ran their own intercultural agency
- Birthplace and natural habitat until age twelve: Berlin Tempelhof
- Adventure of moving abroad with one parent until end of high school: Boston North Shore suburb, where I tried to excel at academics as much as I could while I wasn’t able to access the excitement and diversion of European city life
- Poetry publications since middle school and winning a state-wide writing competition a year after coming to the US
- Freie Universität Berlin (B.A.), University of Manchester (M.S. Marketing), UMass Amherst (M.S. Business Analytics, it was my pragmatic era)
- Internships at Elisabeth-Ruge-Agentur, Hanser Berlin Verlag, marketing at Thalia; sales assistant at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus im Film&Fernsehen MuseumsShop, being back at my chosen habitat: among books and media