I'm Chinese, and I was just diagnosed with ADHD plus ODD a few months ago. My family was emotionally abusive though which played a part in my not getting diagnosed outside of home. That is to say, there was a lot of gaslighting about who I was (stupid, lazy, crazy, etc) versus who I should be (pious, graceful, clever, etc).
I think, more so than intelligence, just having that much emotional and psychological pressure to perform ended up disguising my symptoms for as long as it did. As the child of immigrants, you just don't want to stand out any more than you already do.
MASAYOSHI!
(also, thanks for writing this piece!)
Thank you for this piece. My family went to 'ga san' (Hakka for Qing Ming) on Sunday for my father and sister. While my father gets the whole shebang, we only say a short prayer in front of my sister's grave. I'm not sure if this is because of seniority or patriarchal relevance, but we at least acknowledge that they might see each other in the afterlife. Next Sunday, I'm going to visit another cemetery for my great-aunt's friends, and I imagine that when I'm in China this summer, we'll prepare offerings and incense for my ancestors there belatedly.
Omg, did you know that they made an anime based off of Edogawa Ranpo's mysteries?? The first two episodes covered the fricking chair story, and boy, was it an intro.
I feel this so much. I'm from Jamaica, but every time I go abroad, I find myself filtering my accent out to sound more American, enunciating syllables and slowing it down just enough that words get their own space to be heard. This is with the double bind of being an Asian person in the Caribbean where most people still doubt I was born here, or can't believe I speak Jamaican Patois or English that well.
This has also been my experience with Chinese, where I've had difficulty paring my Hakka accent down in order to approximate the standard Mandarin or Cantonese accent. I am used to being misunderstood no matter how carefully I intone though.
Thank you for writing this piece!
Re the bit about how even your family can other you in Gina Mei's piece, members of the full-Chinese side of the family have said mean things about my half-white grandfather in my presence before, and it's weird to hear that and wonder if they're including you too even if you're hardly (just an eighth) mixed. But, this is an a context where I only found out I was biracial as a teenager because my dad and sisters having ringlets never clued me in somehow.
It can get confusing to navigate, and the microagressions laid out on the journey don't help any.
My favourite tea is a TieGuanYin oolong which goes down really smooth, but roasted teas like genmaicha or mugicha are closer to the smokiness of coffee? Mugicha (roasted barley tea) is actually a really coffee-like tea if you're looking to take a break from caffeine. Genmaicha (roasted rice tea) is closer to sesame for me, but still full flavoured.
A good puerh tea might be harder to get a hold of, but steeps up into a rich heavy drink, if that's what you're into. There're also lighter floral puerhs which you might enjoy too? My personal metric for beloved teas is how many times I can resteep them though, which puerh and oolong meet readily. Mugicha, however is definitely a top rec if you're looking for coffee notes plus yield since the teabags are usually meant to be steeped in 2 litres of water.
Joining the recent ADHD diagnosis club (at 21 years old)! Just spoke about it with my psychologist and it truly is life changing to have the words to describe decades of seeming laziness and procrastination, not to mention the emotional issues. I'm going to move up a psychiatrist appointment to sort out the medication part next week-ish, but I wish you the best of luck!
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Galing 
Opus