Foreword: Within the last decade, Asian stories that decorate the silver screen have expanded past the international film category and have instead been celebrated across a variety of themes and stories. In the past, Asian representation was only present in ‘foreign language’ films and Asian-Americans in Hollywood were always cast as the ruthless warrior or the exotic dragon lady. However, Asian-Americans have climbed the steep ladder that the past has mounted, restoring representation and hope for young audiences. By telling the honest cinematic stories of Asian-Americans, stereotypes are being erased and heartfelt characters are being formed. These four collected pieces narrate the successes and growth of Asian-American cinema and document how representation has changed the lives of today’s Asian Youth. – Aubrey Meiling Evolution of Asian Representation in Western Media By Leila Wickliffe An opinion piece presenting the history of Asian representation in Western media and how characterization of Asian characters has changed— from the exotic foreigner character of Mickey Rooney to the dashing prince charming of Henry Golding. “The history of accurate and nuanced stories of Asian people has had its ups and downs, and progress is beginning to show. Mainstream media has reached a point where simply having an Asian person on screen is not enough. There is a difference between being on screen and being seen.” The Academy's Baby Steps By Yanitta Iew A personal essay recounting how the 2021 Academy Award nominations took big steps into diversifying the playing field, with many historical firsts for both Asians and women. “The moment I heard the nominees for the first category, Actress in a Supporting Role, I knew that this was going to be another year for us Asians in film. No, not only for us. I have a feeling this could be the most diverse Oscars in the history of the Academy Awards.” The American Narrative and Minari By Chris Fong Chew A deep dive into the meaning and background of the 2020 film Minari and how its story, background, and reception defines what it means to be (Asian) American. “As we are living through a particularly divisive and violent time in American history, we need stories like Minari that remind us of what it means to be American, and it was an absolute failure of the Golden Globes to say otherwise.” Michelle Yeoh Receives an AFI Honorary Degree By Amber Ting This collection would be incomplete without mentioning Michelle Yeoh– the Malaysian actress who has represented Asians in Hollywood for the past 26 years. An empowering piece about how Michelle Yeoh earned her well deserved Honorary Degree from the American Film Institute. “In the past, Yeoh has been vocal about the need for diversity and inclusion in the film industry, and she has paved a path for representation by bringing to life complex Asian characters on screen. Her role as Evelyn Wang is merely another demonstrative example. To this day, her flourishing career is one of the best examples of Asian excellence in Hollywood, and the doctorate is a deserved recognition of her talent.”

This month, over 1.5 billion people across the globe from different cultural backgrounds are celebrating Lunar New Year. In Chinese culture, the Lunar New Year is one of the largest and most culturally significant celebrations. From hongbao to haircuts and long-life noodles to night-long activities, the fifteen-day-long celebration is packed with many important traditions and superstitions to help ring in a new year. Yet for Chinese transracial adoptees, the celebration of the Lunar New Year looks slightly different. Despite being born in China and being of Chinese ethnic descent, Chinese transracial adoptees are adopted into non-Chinese families residing in different countries and, consequently, experience a disconnect from Chinese culture. Subsequently, many adoptees and their adoptive families have adopted non-conventional traditions to celebrate Lunar New Year. Growing up a Chinese transracial adoptee in the United States, I never felt fully connected to Chinese culture. My parents attempted to expose me to cultural events in my area, but I never felt a sense of belonging or inclusion. This feeling extended to Lunar New Year celebrations; my family would celebrate by decorating our house, going out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and exchanging hongbao, or red envelopes containing money and gifts. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that I am not alone in this sentiment. Countless Chinese adoptees around the world have had a similar experience to me where our adoptive parents have attempted to celebrate with us, though there is some disconnect from the culture that was essentially taken from us. As we’ve grown into our own identities as young adults, many of us have found new adaptive ways to celebrate the holiday. Chinese adoptee Miki Kent says she learned about Chinese New Year from her white cousins who lived in China. “My family always looked for ways to expose me to Chinese traditions and introduced me to Chinese family friends who would invite us to celebrations and parties. Many Lunar New Years I spent time with other adoptees from our agency at an Asian buffet, during the dragon dancing events. It was always so comforting to be around the other girls I was adopted with.” As an adult, Kent likes to spend Lunar New Year going out to dinner at an Asian American restaurant and going on adventures looking for mooncakes locally. She wears something red along with her jade bracelet gifted to her as a baby. Others have found ways to celebrate with others in the adoptee community. Chinese adoptee Shelley Rottenberg looks back fondly on receiving red envelopes from her adoptive mother during childhood. Rottenberg was raised in Ontario by a single-mother of Jewish descent. Although Shelly often felt removed from the culture, she credits her mother for trying her best to connect her with Chinese culture and traditions such as Lunar New Year. She remembers meeting up with other adoptive families through different organizations to Lunar New Year together. “All of the families would get together at one family's house,” Rottenberg explained. “They would have like a little box at the front where you could pick like a red envelope, they would do fireworks. And so as a kid, I celebrated it to a certain extent with other adoptees, but I don't think I thought about all of that as much as I do now. So as a kid, it's like, maybe I should have appreciated it a bit more.” Now as an adult, Rottenberg celebrates Lunar New Year with friends she made through her involvement with the organization Asian Adoptees of Canada. This is her first year of involvement in the Lunar New Year festivities, and she expressed her excitement prior to the event. This year, Rottenberg joined the members of her organization in attendance at a Lunar New Year festival and grabbed lunch at a restaurant after. This was also her first year celebrating Lunar New Year with a large group of adoptees since childhood. “I feel like I'm coming full circle by helping kind of plan and create that community for other adoptees to get together to do something,” shared Rottenberg. “Otherwise, they maybe wouldn't know how to celebrate on their own.” Likewise, Eryn Peritz, a Chinese adoptee from Long Island, New York, and current student at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania was also able to connect with Chinese culture and celebrate Lunar New Year through an organization she founded at her college called Bi-Co Asian Adoptees. “We're going to have a big or hopefully big decorating event where we go around camping and decorations like banners and fishes,” she explained prior to the holiday. “I'm very excited about it because I finally founded this club this year. I hope to include other adoptees in it and I hope that when people pass by the decorations, it’ll make them really happy.” Others have only more recently begun to truly look into traditions of Lunar New Year. “I wasn't quite aware of how deep and how complex these traditions went until later on, when I learned for myself these little things of what you're supposed to be doing. What's traditional, what kind of celebrations are out there,” said Jack Freeman, Chinese adoptee from the United Kingdom. When he and his sisters were younger, Freeman’s family mainly celebrated by cooking stir fry and eating prawn crackers at home. They also exchanged red envelopes with money. As Jack got older and gained more of a desire to learn about Chinese culture, he began his own traditions to celebrate. Freeman admits it has been tough finding a group of people or friends that celebrate Lunar New Year, he decided to embrace the culture in his own way. This year, Freeman spent Lunar New Year in London amid the celebrations within the city. For Lunar New Year, even though I don't feel fully connected with the celebrations and the traditions, I still want to celebrate in some way or do something around it,” admitted Freeman. “Because at the end of the day, it is part of my identity.” Despite having a large shared experience and collective identity, there are ultimately so many different Asian communities across the diaspora and many different aspects of Asian identity, and transracial adoptees are ultimately a small community within that. Chinese adoptees have a different shared experience from many others who celebrate Lunar New Year, and it is important to represent these experiences whenever possible. As Chinese adoptees find new ways to come into their Chinese identity and celebrate the traditions of the culture that has been taken away, it is always important to keep sharing these stories not only for other adoptees, but for the larger Asian community as well. Despite the disconnect from Chinese culture, adoptees remain a strong community and will continue to find new ways to celebrate their birth culture. Editors: Blenda Y., Phoebe H., Alisha B., Lang D.

these days, i feel like i’m drowning like my life is running from me, only to leave me to the shadows. i want to be 17, like the movies: i want to be kissed in the rain 17, walking on train tracks 17, i want to be messy, angsty, beautiful 17, not ghostly, exhausted, numb 17. i want to feel the butterflies of lust, feel the pain of a shattered heart— something. i need to feel something, for i’m not sure how much longer i can hold on. but for now, my words are my oxygen and we all know that there’s an end to every chapter, a closing of the pages, for i, and we, are finite. Editor(s): Cathay L., Joyce P. Photo Credits: Unsplash

Sherman de Silva, a faculty member from UC San Diego, led a research team in discovering new, suitable habitats for the Asian elephant population after losing about two-thirds of their inhabited ecosystems. Analyzing previous insights regarding the change in land use over the past 300 years, the historic suitable elephant habitat has suffered under the colonial-era land-use practices in Asia, such as timber extraction and farming or agriculture. As an assistant professor of ecology and founder of the elephant conservation nonprofit Trunks & Leaves, Silva noted the importance of the elephant population in her study published on April 27, 2023 regarding the rapid decline. She referred to the species as “ecosystem engineers” to the ABC News. However, Silva explained, the findings regarding the limited ecosystems are significant because Asian elephants are extremely adaptable and able to live in various habitats, from open and dry grasslands to dense rainforests. Meaning, the changing landscape of Asia underscores the fragmented spaces left for the survival of ecosystems without human inference. The late 1600s and early 1700s illustrated the beginnings of massive changes in elephant population decline as the land practices brought on by the colonial-era proceeded into the European industrial revolution. This massive exploitation of resources across the world led to inadequate habitat areas for the remaining elephants. In the mid 20th-century, the rise of industrial agriculture contributed to severe habitat loss. The 1700s continued holding habitats 100% suitable for elephant populations within the 100 kilometers provided, yet Silva and her team discovered the portion declined to less than 50% when comparing the appropriate ecosystems left in 2015. Her and her team mention the continued conflict between human-dominated regions as elephants adapted their behaviors to “co-exist” with the influx of communities in those suitable areas (as their responses vary due to human-modified landscapes). Mainland China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sumatra, and Thailand have all lost more than half of their previously suitable elephant ecosystems. Asian elephants, as of now, remain endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Editor: Chelsea D. Photo credit

Scroll down to the bottom to listen to the author read this piece! The emerald green door opens to a foreign land, a fantasy— not somewhere new, no; somewhere far too familiar, somewhere home. Pill bottles are scattered about the room, framing his bed. It’s been one year since I’ve stepped foot in that house, but no matter, because its distinct aroma, a blend of my uncle’s herbal Chinese medicine and dust, leave an imprint in my mind that is impossible to erase. Not that I’d ever want to, anyway. Perhaps it’s an off-putting odor for most, but for me, this scent is the magic you read about in fairytales, the magic that transports me back in time. In seconds, I can see the house blurring around me in a haze, while the photos in the albums fly at me, flipping faster and faster and faster; I am surrounded by history, storylines that existed long before me, stories that will continue beyond me. But this year, the house is still. A heavy fog has settled in, making the home its own. Something has changed; we go through the motions, laugh and chat, the same as always, but there is an unmistakable emptiness that plagues our every move. Each year, my mind races to observe any subtle changes to the house, but mostly to my chagrin, it’s frozen in time. This is the first year “time” has become painstakingly obvious, and I hate it. I hate the grains of sand seeping through the hourglass, unwilling to just stop. The house mocks me; rather, reminders of my grandparents’ mortality mock me— the collection of walkers and canes mock me, the lists of prescriptions mock me, the fact that my grandfather wore the very shoes he purchased to wear at his own funeral to my cousin’s wedding mocks me. I fear I have gotten too used to goodbyes. For as long as I can remember, it has been my immediate family leaving the rest. As a child, I failed to understand why my family was always the one to leave. Traces of our presence were left behind, whether it was the empty Yakult carton I forgot to throw out, or the red bean bun my aunt had bought especially for my brother that he was saving for later. Our presence was marked by our footprints, erased as quickly as the next time the garbage was taken out or the next time my cousin snatched the bun up to eat it himself. The thing is, I’m not ready to say goodbye. It is far too early to say goodbye. You need to understand, I am the ghost in that house, not them. Voices swirl around me. The house is alive, fed by conversations and laughter, during the misty month of December. How I wonder how lonely my ye-ye and nai-nai are the other eleven months of the year. I have learned that our time on this earth is painfully finite. The sands of time are simply not in our favor. I long to be connected to my grandparents, I long to say the words “I love you”, but how can I when I lack the vocabulary to do so? Beyond my wallowing, though, I know I can’t do anything to change the past, the hundreds upon thousands of memories missed — the photos don’t lie — so I build, and I build, and I build— and I am far from finished. Editors: Joyce P., Leila W. Image: Pinterest

Dear Past Lilirose, Three years ago, you wrote a poem about autumn; yet it was mostly about missing home. It went, “the air smells like burnt letters and / grey skies, my heart aches too much i think / and i miss home the way / a teenager teetering on the edge of adulthood / misses their innocence-” How did you know that? Were you aware of the ways these lines would resonate with me, even three autumns & three bodies past? The only critique I have is that the dash should have been an em dash like this: —. This is probably not the letter you want, where your future self is marveling at a thirteen-year-old’s words & yearning for every season of life. This is also probably not the letter you expected, where your future self is neither dead nor wise beyond their years. Lower your expectations, love. You located stretch marks on the uneven terrain of your body last week, and you were delighted because you never thought you would live long enough for them. You really enjoy going with your Mom to the local Raley’s to buy oranges, but you still get irritated whenever she spends too long in your room. You dream about the juncture of a girl-who-lives-across-the-country’s neck and you haven’t texted her back in three days. Your vision has gotten worse. Your friends have gotten gentler. Your prayers have gotten blessings. There are two really big truths in life: 1. Ma was right—a cup of tea always helps. (I recommend raspberry leaf tea, which is a great colour.) 2. Everything will change. I mean this in ways both good and bad. Let’s start with the negatives; it’s bad because we inherently fear change. This summer, you go to a residential two-week summer program & have what you call “an honestly low-key very chill panic attack” in your empty dormitory. You heave for breath on your crinkly navy blue assigned bed. It’s your first time in a community full of writers & your first time away from home for an extended period of time without your Ma, and you are not doing well. The Ohio skyline laughs at you. Streamlined clouds & oak leaves peer at you from outside the window. Every time you rewrite a poem you still feel sick to your stomach. All those poor innocent darlings, slaughtered under your hand to create a new and better piece. You’re still in a friendship you said you would end two years ago. Last week you went to their house & doom-scrolled on Instagram together. But an instrumental thing you will learn as you age is that fear is not inherently negative. Because you are so afraid of losing your friends, you slip your hands into theirs & affix matching pins onto your tote bags. You whisper secrets like you’re girl-best-friends in second grade & you nap next to each other like you’re two-cats-under-sunlight. When you return home this summer, you redecorate your room one last time before senior year. Unaddressed postcards & tattered calligraphy & rip-off polaroids. The summer program was life changing & you are pretty certain of what you want to major in (spoiler alert: it’s English). You call yourself a poet without hesitation. Because you are so aware that every moment is so fleeting, you love each moment all the more. And perhaps even more importantly: I know you are miserable today. I know you were miserable yesterday, and the day-before-yesterday, and the day-before-the-day-before-yesterday, and so it goes on. That too is temporary, love. Home changes, as everything does. The unhappiness is not inherent to you. You are yourself and your consciousness, and your feelings will pass. It all passes. & I will be waiting here, at the end of it all. Love, August 2023 Lilirose Editor(s): Blenda Y., Chelsea D., Uzayer M. Photo Credits: Unsplash

Summer scribbling HAGS in junior yearbooks. Summer stretching languidly into sunsets. Summer truth-or-daring wildness. Summer like a rabid dog Summer sky. Summer spitballing into closed pools. Summer slashing silhouettes across heat-risen horizons. Summer bikini, on sale 50% off. Summer slamming shoulder blades against apartment garage cars. Summer napping to the asphalt heaving like a second heartbeat in the record July temperatures, dreaming of siamese twins. Summer saying my name. Summer saying yours. Summer like the wrong side of a knife. Summer split open by car alarms wailing for recollection. Summer sizzling into overheated elastic bikini tops. Summer slinking back to mothers’ phone calls at 11. Summer aspirin for a pounding headache. Summer backdoor shut tight. Summer, hungrily breathing goodbye. Editor(s): Blenda Y., Uzayer M., Alisha B. Photo Credits: Unsplash

THE SUMMER THIS BODY TURNS 16 I’M GONNA BE NOTHING MORE THAN A SOUNDLESS PLEA– TURN MY KNEES JAM-SMEARED AGAINST CHAINLINK FENCES & CHLORINE DIVOTS & A FALLEN GOD’S WORD. & I don’t know, love, I’d like to say I understand Judas but you know how it goes on and on. what confuses me, really, is how every damn year my words fly out of me endlessly like locusts in a plague & I & I CAN NEVER FIND MYSELF AGAIN. IF THERE ARE ANGELS ROAMING THE STREETS I’LL LET THEM BUY ME A DRINK. I’LL FIT THEIR NAMES BETWEEN THE RIDGES OF MY TEETH, BETTER THAN MY OWN TO find myself hanging laundry & doing grossly normal things. Somehow, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing– I haven’t started answering either. Instead I palliate bread with raspberry jam, treat my numbed mouth with kindness. Sort my mail, admit that every love poem I write with “You” is about more than one person. They say angels now come in any form they can, ornate themselves in thrifted bikinis & cowboy boots & psalms out their car window. If divinity can quietly shapeshift, I can too. Start mornings with beginner’s yoga or reading a bookstore-fresh recipe book or even saying your name again & again. The truth is that there are no ulterior motives other than vowing to never turn & JUNE WATCHES ME HALF-CRAWLING OUT OF MY WINDOW, DIVINE INTERCEPTION THROUGH BEER CANS WHITTLING MY MOUTH INTO PRAYER & PRESSING MYSELF UP AGAINST ANY WRONGDOING I CAN FIND, LIKE THE wrong sides of knives against myself. There is no need for x-rays of possibly broken ribs or misaligned bleeding. Your last injury was a paper cut. Your last score was zero, at least, upon the body. SUMMER WILL BE WILD. / SUMMER WILL BE WILD. SUMMER WILL BE WILD. / SUMMER WILL BE WILD. Summer will be gentle. / Summer will be gentle. Summer will be gentle. / Summer will be gentle. Editor(s): Alisha B., Uzayer M., Blenda Y., Luna Y. Photo Credits: Unsplash

every time i am not quiet it does not come naturally to me like every time i have tried to retract as though i am an ever clenching fist i am pried open and studied like a common specimen unique only in that i give way too easily and emit a scream that sounds like a song my melody is indecipherable and the lyrics are as you like it so my prongs attune to the pulse of your want and i say the words that make you soft it is only when i am silent lips stuck like a leech to warm flesh that i do not accept the saw that threatens to cut me open like the log down the flume when my words do not ebb and flow like the river you often skip pebbles on that i am withering, tinged with a browned hue i am in need of your callused, leathered palms to sprout me where the soil rakes fertile far from where the ripples crash on i am really contracted to the ground where i can never confess a single violence or reckon with my debts to the gardener subject to a thousand portraits where i can hardly recognize myself in the frame and still i am aching to unfurl my leaves yearning to photosynthesize the scraps of sunlight i receive into fumes that i breathe hot and heavy like the cloak of a cloudy summer heat heaving into my throat and coaxing the words out of my lungs Editor(s): Chelsea D., Alisha B., Blenda Y. Photo Credits: Unsplash

Foreword: Sweet. Sour. Salt. Bitter. Umami. The five fundamental tastes. One of the most faceted and unique experiences an individual could have with other people’s cultures— as well as their own— is through food. Given that flavor is 80% aroma and 20% taste, the joys of new or familiar dishes are a multi-sensory journey from instant ramen noodles to slow-cooked curries. However, it can be even more salivating to tuck into the different tastes of conversations, ideas, and opinions that permeate modern consumption. How people make connections with others or alone, contemporary activism, corporate greed, tradition and revision – all of this can be found in five pieces written from and by the Asian perspective with each one corresponding with a specific taste. What will be your favorite flavor? – Hannah Govan [SWEET] Mukbang Culture By Josie Chou An opinion piece detailing the definition, audience, controversies, and appeal of mukbangs in a digital age of content creation and seeking out comfort in the least likely of places. “For some, mukbang videos elevate hunger and cravings. Others find that there is something incredibly satisfying about the crunch and the gooey textures that seem to melt in their own mouths. And for those eating a meal by themselves, watching mukbangers can make their dining experience livelier. “ [SOUR] Whole Foods Is a Hoax (And So Is White Activism) By Isabelle “Billy” Agustin An opinion piece intrigued by Whole Foods as a key study for the increasing phenomenon of businesses exploiting movements, such as environmental activism, for profit and treating it like a trend rather than a sincere strive for change. “There was a clean aesthetic to [Whole Foods], all Mason jars and vegan diets. Saving the earth has turned trendy, with nature-themed slogans plastered onto T-shirts you can buy at your local Target or Forever 21. The irony astounds me.” [SALT] food By Sarah Mathai A poem about the magic of cooking in Indian culture, especially for women, and how not being able to participate can be an isolating experience. “I am kicked out the trailer / everytime the kitchen is used. / because I have fire in / my fingers, my mother reasons, / and red hot flames / in brown man's skin / is called terrorism / in a country like / this.” [BITTER] Food Apartheid in the Pacific By Olivia Stark An opinion piece about the global history of oppression in the Pacific islands' contemporary foods, and why it’s important to learn the historic background of food in modern day. “We have extensively explored the ways in which cultural foods are an expression of love, a tool of communication, and a tie back to our roots. So, what do you think happens when these foods are actively erased by an oppressive power?” [UMAMI] I tried Hoisin Duck wraps from (almost) every UK supermarket By Hannah Govan An opinion piece exploring British supermarket’s fascination for the Meal Deal hoisin duck wrap, the components and history behind ‘hoisin duck’, and why these supermarkets cherry-pick Asian flavors despite the minimal shelving dedicated to Asian foods and businesses. “If I were to sample (almost) all hoisin duck varieties in supermarkets, which one is the top bird? What are supermarkets inspired by and possibly aiming for? In other words, I wanted to know how low the bar has been set. Based on historic tradition in contrast to modern practice, how far has the bar sunken - modestly or devastatingly?”

Foreword: College essays, permit tests, senior prom, moving out– these are all changes that I, a rising senior in high school, am preparing to enter. But there are also smaller, less distinct ones– a last night time drive with a group of friends, a broken pinkie promise– the perpetually shifting tectonic plates of the transition from high school to whatever lies beyond. With all these changes comes a plethora of emotions. I am scared to get older, yet exhilarated at the promise of novelty. I am already preparing for homesickness despite the time stretching from now to graduation. The pieces in this collection perfectly encapsulate this theme of Coming of Age, ranging from advice about college applications to poetry about high school relationships. -Lilirose Luo The Pressure Cooker: College Applications - Ella Ip An open letter on the toxic culture of college applications, and advising younger students on how to best navigate it. “This year is my last year in high school. It’s scary. SAT, extracurriculars, essays, and my GPA are always coursing through my mind. “ bearing summer, bare - Yunseo Chung A doomsday poem about the in-between transition of summers. “in the end it’s just / the heartbreak of another summer / come only to pass / bearing the bodies of the burning, / bare.” Morning in the Life of a 21st Century Student by LiLi Xiong Snapshots of a day in an average high-schooler’s life– and the larger social issues that play into it. “You meander through the hallways, teenage angst kicking in. What do you do before class starts? Lean against the lockers? Scroll through your phone, reading whatever depressing news just broke? Or do you go find your friends?” Humidity - Mithila Rohit Tambe A poignant poem chronicling the delicacy and beauty of teenage bonds. “Our strides are parallel. The clouds / are as white as hanboks, / and we are shocked / by the insanity of breathing."

Scroll down to the bottom to listen to the author read this piece. Whenever I meet with my Vietnamese, humanities professor, he always brings up the idea that "my prince charming" is coming– a rich prince who will sweep me off my feet and love and support me forever. Over the past two semesters, I’ve met with him at least once a month with another (male) student. Meetings typically consist of listening to my professor’s extended philosophical lectures and providing updates on how our classes are going. And at some point in the meeting, he talks about marriage and eventually his expectations for my nonexistent love life. At first, I saw his concerns for my marital status as a joke and at times heartfelt. He’d tell both of us that we need to find people who we respect and who respect us. People who we can talk to and constantly learn from and who support us. But the conversation would always end with me and my need to find a husband. With the constant push for marriage at each meeting with my professor, I considered finding a guy to pretend to be my boyfriend in order to temporarily satisfy my professor’s concerns. This idea made me think of the viral boyfriend rental services that have popped up all over East Asia, digging into the true purpose behind them rather than the silly tourist attraction that the media has painted them as. In the US, modern relationship standards have led to the normalization of hookup culture and the preference for "partnership" rather than the legal act of marriage. In Asian countries, specifically Japan and China where boyfriend rentals are popular, marriage is still seen as an exchange between two families in which the family of the groom secures the continuation of their family line, and the family of the bride is assured that their daughter will have a supported, happy life. This pressure is especially prevalent in China due to the effects of the One-Child policy that has produced more men than women, resulting in a smaller pool of “opportunities” for the men to continue their family line. An additional outcome of the One-Child policy is that since boys are favored over girls, the girls of China who were kept were encouraged to be as strong as boys and to get an education. “A girl with a degree equals a boy,” says Leftover Women’s Qiu Huamei. But this encouragement has backfired on the parents of these Chinese girls since they have learned and gained independence through their education. In China and Japan the derogatory term “sheng nu” or leftover woman, has been created to label educated, professional women in their mid-’20s and ’30s who are still single. This label is what initially prompted the boyfriend rental business which has allowed “leftover women” to temporarily satisfy their parents’ concerns for a husband. It is a paradox of a situation with young girls being told to be equivalent to a son only to grow up and be told to marry as soon as possible. This same paradox was reflected in my discussions with my professor. He’d tell me that as a young girl, I needed to be assertive and independent, but he’d also tell me about the benefits of a husband and how he’d be the one to support me. Our last meeting for the year was for dinner where he promised we’d meet his wife. In attendance was my professor, my male peer, a girl from his other class, myself, and, as promised, his wife. As we slurped down our bowls of pho, my professor did his usual routine, giving notes on philosophy, asking about our finals, and providing marriage advice for us girls. For most of the dinner, his wife was very quiet and the only exchange of words we students had engaged in was our initial greeting. But as my professor got to the point in his conversation when he specifically addresses the girls about finding an intelligent man to rely on, his wife interjected and defended that we “are independent women.” In China, “strong woman” is another derogatory label pushed onto ‘older’ women who remain unmarried. These women are strong women. The women who tried to make up for their gender by earning a degree, obtaining a well-paying job, and becoming self-reliant. But neither a masters degree nor a doctorates is equivalent to a parent’s dream for a MRS. degree. While this contradictory push for girls to become ‘strong women’ but also marry young is heightened in China and other Asian countries, the issue is still relevant in America. This contradiction became prevalent in the US after World War II. During the war period, women followed Rosie the Riveter into the workforce, proving they could do "men's" work, and do it well– performing as ‘strong women.’ But when the war ended, gender roles were reinstated and women were expected to go back to the kitchen and be stay-at-home moms, painting the 1950s American Dream household we know today. A similar reversal occurred with the popularity and later condemnation of China’s “Iron Girls.” While men also carry this burden of securing marital status in order to confirm the continuation of their family line, they are allowed more freedom for when this task needs to be completed. Additionally, boys are encouraged to become strong, independent men. But for girls, the dream to become a strong, independent woman is often not advertised– if it is, know that it is temporary and contradictions live in our path. To be a truly strong, independent woman means to be strong and independent, whether it is encouraged or not. To become deaf to the labels thrown into our ears. To be married or not to. To be a woman who pursues what she wants. Ariel became a human, Cinderella made it to the ball, Bell saved her father, Tiana got her restaurant, and Mulan won the war– but they also happened to fall in love. A prince charming may be part of the journey, but he is only a part, not my whole. Editors: Lang D., Claudia S., Leila W.