00:00:02    <v Track 3>Welcome to Roundtable Potluck, where I share stories of people I admire. 00:00:07    <v Track 3>I'm your host Cindy Zheng, a registered dietitian and PhD student in nutritional sciences. 00:00:16    <v Track 5>Probably one of the biggest things I think about within the context of this 00:00:21    <v Track 5>work is all of the ways that people can be in between. 00:00:27    <v Track 5>And so, I am examining in-betweenness in this very highly specific situation 00:00:35    <v Track 5>for transracial Chinese adoptees. 00:00:38    <v Track 5>But how does this in-betweenness also manifest in other people's lives? 00:00:43    <v Track 5>And so, you mentioned that as an international student, one of the people on 00:00:48    <v Track 5>my thesis committee was biracial, half Asian and half white. 00:00:54    <v Track 5>He talked about resonating with many of the experiences that I described in 00:00:58    <v Track 5>my thesis as someone who's mixed race. 00:01:01    <v Track 5>For me, recognizing that, although there are highly specific contexts in which 00:01:09    <v Track 5>we experience these things related to our identities, 00:01:13    <v Track 5>they're also very universal experiences in many ways. 00:01:18    <v Track 5>And so, how can we find resonance? 00:01:22    <v Track 5>How can we find community in all of these shared experiences? 00:01:26    <v Track 5>How can we use them to build bridges across difference? 00:01:38    <v Track 3>That thought-provoking voice you just heard? That's Katie Reuther, our guest today. 00:01:43    <v Track 3>In this episode, I have the privilege of delving into the experience of Katie 00:01:48    <v Track 3>Ruther, a transracial Chinese adoptee and food studies scholar. 00:01:54    <v Track 3>Her unique journey offers profound insights into the discussion of identity, 00:01:59    <v Track 3>belonging, and the in-between. 00:02:02    <v Track 3>Ever wondered if the in-between is truly universal? 00:02:06    <v Track 3>Think about that post-graduation phase when you are not a student anymore, 00:02:11    <v Track 3>but your career hasn't quite settled. 00:02:14    <v Track 3>Picture the immigrant straddling two worlds, or the Beijing slash Shanghai drifters 00:02:20    <v Track 3>torn between city dreams and rural roots. 00:02:24    <v Track 3>This in-between is a dynamic space where diverse paths converge. 00:02:30    <v Track 3>Today, we are exploring it with Katie through a unique food perspective. Let's jump into it. 00:02:44    <v Track 1>Today, I am thrilled to introduce our special guest speaker, Katie Reuther. 00:02:49    <v Track 1>We bonded over at a conference in Boston, and it's so amazing to discover that 00:02:56    <v Track 1>we have so much common interests. 00:03:00    <v Track 1>So let me stop here and let you hear some introductions from Katie. Hi, Katie. 00:03:07    <v Track 2>Hi, everyone. Thank you so much, Cindy, for having me. I'm honored to be on 00:03:11    <v Track 2>the podcast and really excited to talk to you today. 00:03:15    <v Track 1>Great. And something special is that we both are having this Chinese cultural roots. 00:03:25    <v Track 1>And that's why when we prepare this podcast, I asked Katie like, 00:03:29    <v Track 1>okay, do you wanna do a Mandarin version of self-introduction? 00:03:34    <v Track 1>I think that's a very special way to 00:03:36    <v Track 1>engage our audience and start our conversation. So are you ready, Katie? 00:03:43    <v Track 2>Probably as ready as I will ever be. I'm so nervous. I have not really spoken 00:03:49    <v Track 2>Mandarin that much in recent years, so. 00:04:10    <v Track 2>But hi everyone, 大家好,我是Katie,中文名字是Meiyin,我在中国出生,在美国长大了,我六个月的时候被美国父母领养的,之后我随父母住在美国的,Vermont, 00:04:11    <v Track 2>佛蒙特州,这个州坐落在美国东北角,有些特别的是,我们家有个小农场, 我从本科开始学中文,更主动地跟中国人打交道并接触中国文化。. 00:04:46    <v Track 2>我在2018年和2019年回了中国两次。 这几年我一直在思考和探索我的身份和归属感问题。 For example, in the US, 00:04:48    <v Track 2>transracial Chinese adoptees and other Asians who are adopted by transsexual 00:04:57    <v Track 2>families, how do they know their identities? 00:05:02    <v Track 2>Where can they find a sense of belonging? As I studied food, 00:05:08    <v Track 2>I became particularly curious about the relationship between food 和身份认同和归属感之间的关系。. 00:05:13    <v Track 1>That's awesome, Katie. It must be a lot of processing on how to put up a Mandarin 00:05:24    <v Track 1>version of your intro, right? 00:05:26    <v Track 2>Yeah, I think I have probably a hard enough time trying to figure out how to 00:05:31    <v Track 2>introduce myself in English. 00:05:34    <v Track 2>But then yes, of course, adding the Mandarin layer on too is a whole other thing. 00:05:40    <v Track 1>Yeah. I want to ask in today's episode, 00:05:44    <v Track 1>also because my own curiosity, is your Chinese name, because I think that name 00:05:50    <v Track 1>is a beautiful name, and I wonder if there's a special story you can share with us. 00:05:57    <v Track 2>Hmm, I would actually love to hear your thoughts on the name as well. 00:06:02    <v Track 2>But yes, so my Chinese name was supposedly given to me by my birth parents in China. 00:06:09    <v Track 2>I was left at the Ningbo train station when I was a couple of months old, 00:06:15    <v Track 2>and I was left with a handwritten note that had my given name and also the date 00:06:20    <v Track 2>and the time that I was born. 00:06:21    <v Track 2>So I kind of grew up believing this story that that I had been told my whole life. 00:06:26    <v Track 2>And I think it's become a bit more complicated over 00:06:30    <v Track 2>the years as I learned more about the pretty complex and nuanced realities of 00:06:36    <v Track 2>international adoption from China and kind of learning more about the fact that 00:06:42    <v Track 2>the origin stories of many adoptees have actually been fabricated. 00:06:47    <v Track 2>So I think that I have some questions now about the truthfulness of my origin story. 00:06:54    <v Track 2>But yes, I potentially had been given that name by my birth family in China. 00:06:59    <v Track 1>Got you, yeah. And also it's amazing when I read your thesis on this cover page, 00:07:06    <v Track 1>it just like hit my heart because I think that's so special. 00:07:11    <v Track 1>And it's so significant, I think, as a thing to add it to your thesis. 00:07:15    <v Track 1>So that's where I'm like, okay, I wanna hear the story about this name. 00:07:20    <v Track 2>I really appreciate that a lot. I actually went back and forth quite a bit when 00:07:25    <v Track 2>I was finishing up my thesis as to whether I wanted to put my Chinese name on it or not. 00:07:31    <v Track 2>And I wasn't planning on it for the majority of time that I was working on my 00:07:35    <v Track 2>thesis until the last couple of weeks, and then I decided to add it, so. 00:07:39    <v Track 1>Yeah, thanks for sharing that. When you do the intro, there's a lot of keywords 00:07:45    <v Track 1>and also a lot of identities you decided to share with the audience today. 00:07:51    <v Track 1>So can you highlight the top identities you shared in your intro? 00:07:57    <v Track 1>And I don't know, maybe you can also do an English version of the intro as well 00:08:01    <v Track 1>so that people who don't understand Chinese can also learn a bit about you before 00:08:07    <v Track 1>we start more questions. 00:08:09    <v Track 2>Yeah, sure. So I was born in China and raised in the US. 00:08:14    <v Track 2>I was adopted by two white parents and I grew up in the Northeast US in Vermont, 00:08:20    <v Track 2>and I grew up on a very small farm, 00:08:24    <v Track 2>kind of a homestead farm, and I began learning Mandarin in college, 00:08:29    <v Track 2>and that was the point at which I got to know more people who were Chinese American 00:08:34    <v Track 2>and from China and had more contact with Chinese culture. 00:08:39    <v Track 2>I went back to China twice, in 2018 and 2019, And I began thinking much more 00:08:46    <v Track 2>about identity and about trying to find belonging and what that meant in my own life. 00:08:54    <v Track 2>Nowadays, especially in the 00:08:55    <v Track 2>last couple of years since I have been in grad school and just graduated, 00:08:59    <v Track 2>I've been thinking more about transracial Chinese adoptees or those who were 00:09:03    <v Track 2>adopted by white parents and for transracial adoptees and also for other Asian Americans as well, 00:09:12    <v Track 2>how we think about identity and how we go about finding a sense of belonging and where that is. 00:09:19    <v Track 1>Cool, yeah, that's the work we're gonna talk more today. 00:09:23    <v Track 2>Yeah, so to your question about identities, I would say that for sure being 00:09:29    <v Track 2>a transracial Chinese adoptee is the identity that comes to mind first and foremost 00:09:34    <v Track 2>for me because it impacts so many aspects of my life. 00:09:39    <v Track 2>And I think that I only started to more fully recognize the many ways that it 00:09:45    <v Track 2>has impacted me in the last five years or so. 00:09:49    <v Track 2>And it's probably, all of those things were kind of at the surface, 00:09:55    <v Track 2>but below the surface for much of my life, 00:09:58    <v Track 2>and then becoming an adult and probably having very normal adult growing pains, 00:10:04    <v Track 2>thinking about identity and like belonging, and then how that kind of intersects 00:10:09    <v Track 2>with my transracial Chinese adoptee identity specifically. 00:10:13    <v Track 2>So transracial Chinese adoptee identity is quite important to me as is just 00:10:17    <v Track 2>thinking about my identity as a Chinese American and what that means. 00:10:23    <v Track 2>And as I mentioned, I grew up in Vermont and so that's also a very important 00:10:27    <v Track 2>identity to me. I would say I have a lot of Vermont pride, so. 00:10:34    <v Track 1>Great, okay. Can you tell us more about Vermont Pride for people who know very little about? 00:10:42    <v Track 1>North, East, New England. 00:10:45    <v Track 2>Yes, yes. So Vermont is a state of about 600,000 people, so pretty small. 00:10:52    <v Track 2>It is located south of the Canadian border, and then it's situated between New 00:10:58    <v Track 2>York on the west, and then New Hampshire in the east, Massachusetts to the south. 00:11:05    <v Track 2>And it is quite an incredible place, in my opinion. I grew I grew up in kind 00:11:09    <v Track 2>of Central Southern Vermont in a pretty rural area. 00:11:15    <v Track 2>And it's, much of Vermont is predominantly white. And so I grew up with white 00:11:20    <v Track 2>family and then also in a predominantly white community. 00:11:23    <v Track 2>But the natural landscapes of Vermont are really, I think, what a lot of people 00:11:30    <v Track 2>envision when they imagine Vermont. 00:11:33    <v Track 2>So like very bucolic green mountains with red barns and silos and black and white cows. 00:11:43    <v Track 2>And yeah, I think it's a really special culture and community in Vermont. 00:11:48    <v Track 2>And I think that even as I come back now as an adult, there's much more to explore 00:11:53    <v Track 2>than when I was growing up. 00:11:57    <v Track 1>Yeah, that's amazing. Great, great pitch for Vermont. 00:12:04    <v Track 1>So that's the second identity you shared with us. Do you have another one? 00:12:12    <v Track 2>Probably race and ethnicity are the biggest things that I think about. 00:12:15    <v Track 2>So thinking about being a transracial Chinese adoptee, being Chinese American 00:12:20    <v Track 2>and what that means, and then being Chinese American or being a person of color 00:12:25    <v Track 2>growing up in Vermont and having lived in Vermont for much of my life. 00:12:30    <v Track 2>And then I think that there are, of course, many other identities that I could 00:12:36    <v Track 2>also talk about, but I think those are probably at the core of how I think about myself these days. 00:12:43    <v Track 1>That's very cool. Yeah, thank you. 00:12:48    <v Track 1>So I think right now people will be starting. 00:12:52    <v Track 1>Want to learn more about your life because we just mentioned that you got your 00:12:56    <v Track 1>thesis finished up and can you tell us what your current life look like? 00:13:03    <v Track 1>Are you getting another job or what what's you up to right now? 00:13:09    <v Track 2>Sure so yes I just graduated with my master's in food studies so that was a 00:13:15    <v Track 2>two-year program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 00:13:18    <v Track 2>And I'm continuing to live in Pittsburgh right now, and I'm working on an academic 00:13:24    <v Track 2>journal article related to my thesis. 00:13:26    <v Track 2>And then also, I will hopefully be an adjunct professor in the spring teaching 00:13:32    <v Track 2>an undergrad elective in food studies at the same school that I just graduated from. 00:13:38    <v Track 2>And so those are kind of some projects that are brewing right now and I'm also 00:13:44    <v Track 2>doing an internship with a podcast and will be doing audio production there. 00:13:50    <v Track 2>And so those are a lot of kind of like personally fulfilling projects and maybe 00:13:55    <v Track 2>will be related to general like career trajectory. 00:13:58    <v Track 2>And then I'm also in the midst of trying to find a more full-time paying job too. 00:14:06    <v Track 1>But yeah, best ad alive. 00:14:08    <v Track 2>Exactly. Yes. So I'm definitely like right now on a very transitional stage 00:14:13    <v Track 2>and trying to figure out what is going to work in my life amongst all the other 00:14:19    <v Track 2>things that I've already committed to and really want to pursue. 00:14:22    <v Track 1>Yeah. Well, yeah, I think audience right now can know what exactly when I say 00:14:30    <v Track 1>common interest between us, right? 00:14:33    <v Track 1>Like food and food studies, even like trying to do research about food. 00:14:40    <v Track 1>And then we are very interested about cultural food practice. 00:14:44    <v Track 1>So that's why we are having this conversation because there's so many things 00:14:48    <v Track 1>we can talk about it. So that's our intro part, trying to help our audience 00:14:53    <v Track 1>understand your journey. 00:14:55    <v Track 1>It's not only this is a research work, but there's a lot of thinking behind that. 00:15:02    <v Track 1>So something I think will be so interesting, and I haven't heard that part of 00:15:07    <v Track 1>the story, your transition from your undergraduate in neuroscience and then 00:15:14    <v Track 1>master in arts, in food studies. 00:15:17    <v Track 1>So I think it's a very different discipline. 00:15:20    <v Track 1>So how'd that work out? 00:15:23    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah, definitely. I know it's funny because we met at the Food Studies 00:15:27    <v Track 2>Conference in Boston in June, but we haven't had a whole lot of time to talk 00:15:33    <v Track 2>more and get to know each other more, I would say, over the last couple of months. 00:15:38    <v Track 2>So yes, I majored in neuroscience in college, really purely just out of interest. 00:15:46    <v Track 2>I was interested in human behavior and biology was always one of my favorite 00:15:52    <v Track 2>subjects, I think partially because it was very tangible to me. 00:15:58    <v Track 2>And I, truth be told, didn't see a whole lot of other majors that really appealed 00:16:03    <v Track 2>to me. And so I was like, okay, I'll just go for this, even though I don't have 00:16:07    <v Track 2>any particular plans to go into neuroscience after college. 00:16:11    <v Track 2>I did not want to become a doctor. I didn't really want to sit in a lab for 00:16:16    <v Track 2>eight plus hours a day and do research. 00:16:19    <v Track 2>And so I didn't know where it would lead me if anywhere, but I decided to embark 00:16:24    <v Track 2>upon that journey. And I learned a lot and I think that I'm grateful that I 00:16:29    <v Track 2>majored in neuroscience. 00:16:30    <v Track 2>But at the same time, I had some internships in college that were food and agriculture 00:16:36    <v Track 2>related, primarily summer internships. 00:16:38    <v Track 2>And they were, most of them I would say were in the kind of nonprofit food access 00:16:43    <v Track 2>space. And I really loved the community engagement aspect of those internships 00:16:49    <v Track 2>and getting to know my own home communities better. 00:16:53    <v Track 2>And some of those internships also involved going out on farms and harvesting, 00:16:58    <v Track 2>meeting farmers and like connecting food that would have gone to waste otherwise 00:17:04    <v Track 2>to people who are in need of food and fresh produce specifically. 00:17:09    <v Track 2>So, that really inspired me, I think in many ways, and by the end of my time 00:17:15    <v Track 2>in college, I knew that I wanted to go into the food system. 00:17:18    <v Track 2>I think my neuroscience degree gave me a lot of skills that I might use in other 00:17:23    <v Track 2>ways, but it was certainly not the direction that I wanted to go after school. 00:17:29    <v Track 1>Yeah, fascinating. So when you say like neuroscience training also benefits 00:17:35    <v Track 1>you, can you give us an example then? 00:17:39    <v Track 2>Yeah, that's a great question. I think when I think about the skills that I 00:17:44    <v Track 2>might have built during my neuroscience courses and within that major, 00:17:48    <v Track 2>I think it's primarily thinking about research design and writing skills. 00:17:55    <v Track 2>I think those things are useful in all aspects of your life, absolutely. 00:18:00    <v Track 2>But I think that having that experience and being able to think about how to 00:18:06    <v Track 2>design a research project perhaps was useful in the last several years when 00:18:12    <v Track 2>I went off and did many of my own independent research projects. 00:18:17    <v Track 1>Yeah. Okay. That makes sense because your thesis work is at a level of PhD work in certain ways. 00:18:26    <v Track 1>It's a lot of literature review chapters and then moving on to define this methodology, 00:18:32    <v Track 1>justify why this is important. So I think that's, I can see. Yeah. 00:18:36    <v Track 2>Yeah. And And it's funny because I don't think that I typically make those connections, 00:18:41    <v Track 2>but I think that it did give me a lot of skills in many ways in just how to 00:18:45    <v Track 2>think about an approach to a project or how to make observations, things like that. 00:18:55    <v Track 1>Yeah, awesome, because I feel like for me, my undergraduate training, 00:19:00    <v Track 1>even though it's still about food is a very different way to understand food. 00:19:05    <v Track 1>It's like food science. So as you said, we were expected to sit in a lab, 00:19:11    <v Track 1>trying to do experiments, trying to improve certain things, like number related. 00:19:17    <v Track 1>But for me, I learned that I'm more passionate about communicating with people, 00:19:22    <v Track 1>I understand their behavior. 00:19:25    <v Track 1>And that's where I'm start thinking about nutrition education after my undergraduate learning. 00:19:31    <v Track 1>So yeah, I think that's interconnected in many ways. 00:19:35    <v Track 2>Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious for you thinking about what you've done in 00:19:40    <v Track 2>the past several years within the food system and now where you are in your 00:19:44    <v Track 2>PhD and when you look ahead, 00:19:45    <v Track 2>do you feel like you wanna change the track perhaps of going from more like 00:19:52    <v Track 2>hard science in some ways to more like people-oriented work or what does that look like? 00:19:59    <v Track 1>Wow, that's a great question, Katie. I think because when I do for science, 00:20:04    <v Track 1>a lot of way I'm thinking about the world is like black and white. 00:20:09    <v Track 1>I'm trying even to do a very black and white definition. 00:20:13    <v Track 1>But then when I understand more like people's ideas, 00:20:17    <v Track 1>lived experience, I think there's just so many great areas and that pushed me 00:20:22    <v Track 1>to, like, for example, my dissertation proposal will will use photovoice as a methodology. 00:20:29    <v Track 1>So this is a very community driven and it will be really, really hard even to 00:20:36    <v Track 1>start doing recruitment. 00:20:38    <v Track 1>But then if you were doing like food science project, I think you are trying 00:20:42    <v Track 1>to do ingredients blending or trying to do a lot of, I will say, 00:20:46    <v Track 1>like quantitative methodology regression models. 00:20:50    <v Track 1>So I think that's a very different way to understand. 00:20:53    <v Track 1>Right now, because I'm joining a very interdisciplinary lab, 00:20:56    <v Track 1>and I'm also leaving, studying in a very different environment than my master 00:21:01    <v Track 1>years, not urban at all, and then less diverse. 00:21:07    <v Track 1>But I still feel like those experience will help me understand the diversity, 00:21:12    <v Track 1>pushing me away from the black and white understanding of the food, 00:21:16    <v Track 1>but then trying to understand the cultural perspective. 00:21:20    <v Track 1>And then that's something I think is fascinating because it's hard to define 00:21:26    <v Track 1>in many ways. That's where I want to highlight people's voice. 00:21:30    <v Track 1>Yeah, I don't know if that's a good answer. 00:21:32    <v Track 2>Yeah, no, I love that. I'm so curious and we can definitely get back to your questions for me too. 00:21:39    <v Track 2>But I'm so curious if you think that your kind of reorientation toward the cultural aspect, 00:21:47    <v Track 2>if that is partially a result of living abroad and living in the US, 00:21:52    <v Track 2>having come from China, or if you think that that would have also happened if 00:21:57    <v Track 2>you had stayed in China and continued to live and work and study there. 00:22:02    <v Track 1>When I was living in New York City, I think the diversity of food is fascinating. 00:22:10    <v Track 1>I can always get my cultural food there, but then like moved to New Hampshire, 00:22:15    <v Track 1>a state like very similar to Vermont, it's very white dominant state. 00:22:20    <v Track 1>Really I didn't see a lot of like supermarkets like tailored to Asian people 00:22:25    <v Track 1>because we don't have a large population here. 00:22:28    <v Track 1>So those things really makes me feel like access to me is important because 00:22:33    <v Track 1>I'm studying abroad as an international student and there's like three years 00:22:38    <v Track 1>I wasn't being able to travel back and I was trying to connect my family by 00:22:43    <v Track 1>making something similar I was eating at my household. 00:22:47    <v Track 2>Yeah, that makes complete sense. I'd love to ask you more, but we'll save that 00:22:50    <v Track 2>for our next conversation. 00:22:51    <v Track 1>Great. I would like to hear something about Molly Anderson, a scholar I really 00:22:59    <v Track 1>like and I met her at the conference and she's the person. 00:23:04    <v Track 1>Mentioned to me, like, okay, I think you should talk to Katie Ruther. 00:23:08    <v Track 1>So I'm like, wait, can you spell the name for me? I'm just like looking up the 00:23:12    <v Track 1>conference app and then reach out to you then. 00:23:15    <v Track 2>Yeah, I love that Molly connected us. Yeah, so Molly Anderson is a food scholar 00:23:20    <v Track 2>teaching at Middlebury College, which is where I went to college in Vermont. 00:23:24    <v Track 2>And I took two classes with Molly actually my very last semester at Middlebury. 00:23:31    <v Track 2>The first class was an agroecology class. 00:23:33    <v Track 2>And the second class was I think introduction to food systems issues. 00:23:39    <v Track 2>And both of the classes were really fascinating for me because I had grown up 00:23:44    <v Track 2>on a small farm, and my parents love to cook. 00:23:48    <v Track 2>And so I've always been surrounded by food and agriculture and like seeing the 00:23:53    <v Track 2>value in locally produced food and just like thinking about health and nutrition and home cooking. 00:24:01    <v Track 2>And so coming from that background where food was all around me and like very important in my life, 00:24:09    <v Track 2>and then thinking about the summer internships that I did in food access and 00:24:15    <v Track 2>then like kind of putting all those things together and looking at the food 00:24:18    <v Track 2>system from a more academic standpoint was I think also kind of a big turning point for me. 00:24:25    <v Track 2>Molly's classes were very engaging and in our agroecology class specifically 00:24:30    <v Track 2>it was very interesting because we took a pretty global approach to learning 00:24:36    <v Track 2>about agroecology and the basics of agroecology but also kind of how it's being 00:24:41    <v Track 2>implemented in various places across the world, 00:24:44    <v Track 2>how people think about it and what it is and how it's actually kind of a a simple 00:24:51    <v Track 2>and also very complex concept. 00:24:54    <v Track 2>And then we looked at agroecology in a more local context across Vermont. 00:25:00    <v Track 2>So every week we would take a field trip to a different farm and we would look 00:25:04    <v Track 2>at, yes, and we would look at what practices. 00:25:08    <v Track 2>Is that farmer using on their farm and how does it fit into our imagined agroecological 00:25:15    <v Track 2>framework or the framework that we have seen put forth by other food studies 00:25:20    <v Track 2>or agroecological scholars. 00:25:24    <v Track 2>So that really, I think, got me thinking about so many different things and 00:25:29    <v Track 2>it got me really excited about learning about food and food systems in an academic 00:25:35    <v Track 2>context, which is why I eventually went to grad school for food studies. 00:25:40    <v Track 1>Great, that's a great point to transition to your thesis work. 00:25:45    <v Track 1>So I can share with our audience the title, but I would love to hear your definition 00:25:51    <v Track 1>to help lay people understand some key concept you used in your title. 00:25:56    <v Track 1>So Katie, your thesis title, Navigating the In-Between Chinese Restaurants and 00:26:03    <v Track 1>Asian grocery stores as contested sites of belonging for transracial Chinese adoptees. 00:26:11    <v Track 1>So how about we start with the word in-between? 00:26:14    <v Track 2>Yeah, the title is a bit of a mouthful. But yes, 00:26:19    <v Track 2>so thinking about the in-between, this is something that I have not come up 00:26:26    <v Track 2>with myself, but something that many transracially adopted people talk about 00:26:31    <v Track 2>and people who have mixed identities, I would say. 00:26:33    <v Track 2>But thinking for transracial Chinese adoptees and from my own experience about 00:26:38    <v Track 2>this in-between space that we inhabit as people who grew up with white American 00:26:44    <v Track 2>culture in our families and around us, 00:26:46    <v Track 2>but also being Asian and looking different from our families and from the people around us. 00:26:53    <v Track 2>So this kind of translates to people around us making assumptions based on our appearance. 00:27:01    <v Track 2>So, for example, that we can speak Mandarin or that we have some type of cultural 00:27:07    <v Track 2>knowledge about food or about Chinese customs. 00:27:15    <v Track 2>And then we feel perhaps quite out of place when those assumptions are made. 00:27:21    <v Track 2>But then conversely, when we are in spaces where our kind of like white American 00:27:26    <v Track 2>cultural upbringing comes through, 00:27:29    <v Track 2>and we can connect with people over that, there's kind of a mismatch in our, 00:27:33    <v Track 2>like the assumptions people make about us culturally, based on our appearance, 00:27:38    <v Track 2>and then our ability to connect with people over white American culture. 00:27:43    <v Track 2>And so, 00:27:47    <v Track 2>yeah, this mismatch kind of between our internal and external worlds is what 00:27:53    <v Track 2>I think about when I think about this in-between space, 00:27:56    <v Track 2>like being Chinese and also being American and like being Chinese-American and 00:28:02    <v Track 2>like what do those things mean for us when we are so blended, I guess. Yes. 00:28:09    <v Track 1>Yeah. So I joined your virtual thesis event very briefly, but something I was 00:28:16    <v Track 1>amazed at is a graphic you showed to your audience when you were drawing your undergraduate, right? 00:28:23    <v Track 1>So can you describe that? I feel like that can help us understand the in-between. Yeah. 00:28:30    <v Track 2>Oh, I love that you brought that up. When I was a freshman in college, 00:28:34    <v Track 2>my first semester, I took a studio art class. 00:28:37    <v Track 2>And for my final project, I ended up creating an animation and it was essentially 00:28:44    <v Track 2>about my life growing up as an adoptee, transracial adoptee in Vermont. 00:28:50    <v Track 2>And one of the scenes that I showed in my thesis presentation is a stick figure standing at a mirror. 00:28:58    <v Track 2>And I drew the animation in a way that the face of the stick person is white 00:29:07    <v Track 2>or kind of blank part of the time, and then is completely colored in red. 00:29:12    <v Track 2>And then half of the face goes to red and half of the face goes to white. 00:29:18    <v Track 2>And then the face is erased again, and then it goes to red. And so it's kind 00:29:23    <v Track 2>of just this question of what am I? I'm like a mix of these things. 00:29:29    <v Track 2>I'm all of these things, but also not enough of any of these things. 00:29:33    <v Track 2>And so That's kind of where I see the in-between space. 00:29:38    <v Track 1>Great. Yeah, I think this word is better than another common term we see. 00:29:45    <v Track 1>The term is outlier. Outlier, I think, is simplifying the concept a little bit 00:29:51    <v Track 1>more like you're excluded. 00:29:53    <v Track 1>In between, it's like we are maybe dipping on both sides. Exactly. 00:29:58    <v Track 1>Okay, that's a good explanation. 00:30:00    <v Track 1>The next one I want to ask you is contested size. So it's kind of a very academic term. 00:30:06    <v Track 2>Yeah. So contested sites, I think thinking about this idea of Chinese restaurants 00:30:13    <v Track 2>and Asian grocery stores, 00:30:15    <v Track 2>especially in the context that I was talking to my participants about them or 00:30:21    <v Track 2>the spaces that I was thinking about in my own life, they're predominantly Asian spaces. 00:30:27    <v Track 2>So predominantly Asian staff and clientele in both of the restaurant and grocery store spaces. 00:30:35    <v Track 2>And so, as a transracial Chinese adoptee, 00:30:38    <v Track 2>I would go into those spaces, and I would be read by the staff or the other 00:30:46    <v Track 2>people in the space as someone who had grown up with Chinese language and Chinese 00:30:53    <v Track 2>cultural values and customs. 00:30:56    <v Track 2>And then they would treat me accordingly. 00:31:00    <v Track 2>So they would speak to me in Mandarin or Cantonese, or they would just assume 00:31:04    <v Track 2>that I knew where things were or what things were. 00:31:09    <v Track 2>And so there's kind of like a relief that comes with being in those spaces and 00:31:16    <v Track 2>looking like everyone else. 00:31:17    <v Track 2>So it's kind of a space of belonging in that sense. But also it becomes a sense 00:31:22    <v Track 2>of non-belonging when you are in some ways expected to perform an identity that 00:31:28    <v Track 2>people are assuming that you have. 00:31:32    <v Track 2>And so this idea of it being contested is that it is and isn't a space of belonging. 00:31:39    <v Track 2>I guess for me time and time again in those spaces, I was reminded of the things 00:31:46    <v Track 2>that I didn't know or that I couldn't do and I both fit in and stood out simultaneously. 00:31:54    <v Track 1>Yeah, so I think another way I'm thinking about it is like the in-between amplified 00:32:00    <v Track 1>in the sides you pick, right? 00:32:02    <v Track 2>Yes, absolutely. 00:32:04    <v Track 1>Okay, the final one is transracial Chinese adoptees. 00:32:08    <v Track 1>So I wonder, well, maybe you can add any sound literature review, 00:32:12    <v Track 1>like history of this adoptee system to our audience while explaining this term. 00:32:20    <v Track 2>Yeah, so transracial Chinese adoptees are children adopted from China who are 00:32:25    <v Track 2>adopted by primarily white parents, 00:32:28    <v Track 2>not always white parents, they could be of a different race as well, 00:32:32    <v Track 2>but I would say for the Chinese context, primarily white parents. 00:32:39    <v Track 2>For many Chinese adoptees who have white parents, there are children who grew 00:32:44    <v Track 2>up in single parent homes and also same-sex parent homes and then also heterosexual parent homes. 00:32:55    <v Track 2>But transracially adopted essentially meaning that we are not of the same race as our parents. 00:33:02    <v Track 2>And in China, I'm sure some people are aware of this in the audience, 00:33:07    <v Track 2>but just Chinese adoption coming out of the one-child policy primarily. 00:33:12    <v Track 2>China opened for international adoption in 1992. 00:33:17    <v Track 2>So there were over 80,000 children adopted from China between 1999, 00:33:25    <v Track 2>I think, and 2020, if I'm getting my stats right. 00:33:29    <v Track 2>And so that doesn't even include all of the of the children who were adopted 00:33:33    <v Track 2>between 1992 and 1999, of course. 00:33:36    <v Track 2>So hundreds of thousands of Chinese adoptees across the world. 00:33:41    <v Track 2>The US is certainly one of the countries that has adopted the most children from China. 00:33:49    <v Track 1>Okay, that's good. Refresh of the connections. 00:33:54    <v Track 1>So can you give us a snapshot of your research? Like what did you find? 00:33:59    <v Track 1>What stand out to you? Yeah, yeah. 00:34:03    <v Track 2>There's so many things, of course, unsurprisingly. So in my research, 00:34:08    <v Track 2>I ended up conducting 19 semi-structured interviews. 00:34:12    <v Track 2>11 of them were in person across three different cities, and eight of them were virtual. 00:34:18    <v Track 2>They were all with transracial Chinese adoptees between 22 and 30 years old. 00:34:24    <v Track 2>And through these conversations, I was interested in people's relationship to 00:34:31    <v Track 2>Chinese food and their experiences in Chinese restaurant, Asian grocery store spaces. 00:34:35    <v Track 2>But beyond that, I was very interested in their general upbringing, 00:34:40    <v Track 2>their exposure to Chinese culture, their connection to Chinese culture growing up, 00:34:45    <v Track 2>and as adults, their racial identity formation, their views on Asian, 00:34:51    <v Track 2>Chinese, American adoptee identity, and also on community and belonging. 00:34:57    <v Track 2>And so we covered a very wide range of topics. And in fact, we probably only 00:35:03    <v Track 2>spent 25 or 30% of the time talking about food and food-related spaces. 00:35:11    <v Track 2>That leaves so much more unexplored data that I didn't even really include in 00:35:16    <v Track 2>my thesis because it was just out of the scope. 00:35:21    <v Track 2>But yeah, so it ended up being probably like over 30 hours of recorded conversation 00:35:27    <v Track 2>and probably over like 500 pages of transcripts. 00:35:31    <v Track 2>And it was really incredible to hear everyone's stories, 00:35:35    <v Track 2>of course, and just to see so many of my own experiences reflected back in food 00:35:41    <v Track 2>spaces and when it comes to Chinese food, but also just kind of across our lives as well. 00:35:48    <v Track 2>In my thesis, I thought the most about feelings of alienation, 00:35:54    <v Track 2>isolation, or foreignness in restaurant and grocery store spaces, 00:35:59    <v Track 2>and then thought about the feelings of loss and of grief that come in those spaces, 00:36:06    <v Track 2>as well as connection to culture and to community and ways that we are reclaiming 00:36:13    <v Track 2>what was lost in large part through cooking. 00:36:18    <v Track 2>And I actually a very unexpected part of my research was to think more about 00:36:25    <v Track 2>the role of Chinese cooking in interviewees lives because I was initially focused 00:36:31    <v Track 2>on looking at Chinese restaurants and Asian grocery stores and experiences there. 00:36:35    <v Track 2>But then Chinese cooking is a very big part of my own life. And naturally, 00:36:40    <v Track 2>many conversations ended up going toward Chinese cooking, and we talked about 00:36:45    <v Track 2>what that looked like in people's lives. 00:36:47    <v Track 2>And I wish that I had had more time to explore that, actually. 00:36:51    <v Track 2>And in the future, if I wanted to do more research related to this topic, 00:36:56    <v Track 2>it would probably be to delve more into people's approach and experiences to 00:37:02    <v Track 2>Chinese cooking at home as adults. 00:37:04    <v Track 2>But yeah, that's kind of like some of the things that I touched on. Awesome. 00:37:11    <v Track 1>Yeah, wow. That's a lot of work when you mentioned how many transcripts you have ended up. Wow. 00:37:17    <v Track 1>Can you imagine like, you just like go through line by line and understanding 00:37:21    <v Track 1>the people's experience? 00:37:23    <v Track 1>Yeah. So if people want to get some takeaway messages, what that will look like? 00:37:31    <v Track 2>Yeah, it's funny. I've struggled with this for much of my adult life in terms 00:37:37    <v Track 2>of research and like, what are the takeaways? 00:37:40    <v Track 2>What are the conclusions? What are the main messages? Because I I think for 00:37:45    <v Track 2>me, it's not only like hard to synthesize all of those things, but also just feels. 00:37:53    <v Track 2>Feels wrong in many ways because all of our stories are so large and complex 00:37:58    <v Track 2>and to like boil it down and reduce it to like a couple of things I find very difficult. 00:38:03    <v Track 2>But I think within the context of my thesis, it really was a thesis about identity 00:38:09    <v Track 2>and about belonging in the end. 00:38:12    <v Track 2>And so I had to wrestle with the concept of identity and what that really means. 00:38:21    <v Track 2>And identity for me emerged as a very fluid relational concept that is constructed 00:38:30    <v Track 2>through activity and interaction with others in a particular time and place. 00:38:36    <v Track 2>So really identity can be kind of ever-changing when you think about it in this way. 00:38:42    <v Track 2>We are both subjects and agents within our world, 00:38:48    <v Track 2>and while we may be independent agents in many ways kind of being able to act 00:38:55    <v Track 2>accordingly, we're also bounded by social and cultural constraints. 00:39:00    <v Track 2>And so just thinking about in my life, 00:39:03    <v Track 2>in the lives of my participants, and for other transracial Chinese adoptees, 00:39:08    <v Track 2>the ways in which we are able to take control over the identity formation process, 00:39:14    <v Track 2>but also the ways that we're constrained by our environments, 00:39:18    <v Track 2>whether that's immediate environments around us, or the social, 00:39:23    <v Track 2>cultural, political context in which we exist in America and the greater world. So. 00:39:31    <v Track 2>Ultimately, I would say it's, it became clear that consuming Chinese American 00:39:36    <v Track 2>culture alone is not sufficient to establish security in our Chinese American 00:39:42    <v Track 2>cultural identities and sort of realize an associated sense of belonging. 00:39:47    <v Track 2>And in the food realm, learning about eating cooking Chinese food are a few 00:39:53    <v Track 2>of the many ways that adoptees are creating and kind of owning the identity process. 00:39:59    <v Track 2>I would say that the stories that my participants shared about how they're doing 00:40:03    <v Track 2>this really speak to the fact that cultural identity and belonging are malleable, 00:40:08    <v Track 2>they're often unique, but they're also acquired in many ways through kind of an active process. 00:40:13    <v Track 2>Yeah. 00:40:15    <v Track 1>So I think if I remember correct, I think in your conclusion part, 00:40:20    <v Track 1>there's something stand out to me, I think it's one participant talking about 00:40:25    <v Track 1>like, it's okay, this in-between status. 00:40:29    <v Track 1>Because I feel like when we see this title, we are assuming we can get a clear 00:40:35    <v Track 1>cut, like we are between where, right? 00:40:38    <v Track 1>But then I think from your interview, it's interesting to hear this in-between is okay. 00:40:45    <v Track 1>So can you elaborate a little bit on that? 00:40:49    <v Track 2>Yeah, I think that is a major point that for me, I think I've also found this 00:40:55    <v Track 2>in my own life, but it was really reassuring for me to hear from so many of my participants. 00:41:02    <v Track 2>People within and outside of the realm of food are coming to have a lot of acceptance 00:41:11    <v Track 2>around their kind of in-between identities so they're, 00:41:16    <v Track 2>there's a lot more comfort around not being one thing or another. 00:41:25    <v Track 2>And so, for example, in the quote that you're talking about, 00:41:29    <v Track 2>I think there are actually many quotes that speak to this, but yeah, 00:41:33    <v Track 2>so like someone saying, I kind of recognize that I cook Asian American food, 00:41:39    <v Track 2>and it's sort of a reflection of my mixed identity as someone who is Asian, 00:41:47    <v Track 2>is Chinese, but also grew up in America. 00:41:51    <v Track 2>And I have access to these ingredients and this cooking know-how and this equipment. 00:41:59    <v Track 2>And I went to China and I studied abroad and I have some favorite foods from 00:42:05    <v Track 2>there that I try and recreate. 00:42:07    <v Track 2>And I recognize that what I make is not gonna be the same thing that I would 00:42:12    <v Track 2>get in China or even get in a restaurant here, but that's okay. 00:42:17    <v Track 2>And so I think that there, for me and for other people who spoke to this, 00:42:21    <v Track 2>there is this growing acceptance and this growing comfort that we can kind of 00:42:26    <v Track 2>exist in this in-between space and that's okay. 00:42:29    <v Track 2>And then also further thinking about what benefits actually come with that. 00:42:37    <v Track 2>And living in this kind of fluid in-between space can also be an asset in many 00:42:41    <v Track 2>ways. And so what kind of perspectives do we bring as people who inhabit this in-between space? 00:42:52    <v Track 1>Okay, I'm interested about the assets. Can you give a sample when your participant 00:42:58    <v Track 1>mentioned one of the assets, what that looks like? 00:43:02    <v Track 2>So funnily enough, I feel like there were not any concrete examples given in this case. 00:43:07    <v Track 2>But I really continuing to raise questions around our identities and trying 00:43:13    <v Track 2>to have a greater definition perhaps of what can exist under an identity label 00:43:23    <v Track 2>was very important to many people I spoke to. 00:43:26    <v Track 2>So having a very essentialized, imagined concept imagined concept of what being 00:43:33    <v Track 2>Chinese-American looks like, and that is, for many people, the classic immigrant experience. 00:43:40    <v Track 2>So your parents immigrated from China, and you grew up in a certain way. 00:43:45    <v Track 2>And feeling like, because I don't fit into that, I can't call myself Chinese-American. 00:43:50    <v Track 2>And increasingly being like, there are many ways to be Chinese-American. 00:43:54    <v Track 2>And so based on the experiences that we have had growing up in white families 00:44:02    <v Track 2>with white American culture. 00:44:04    <v Track 2>What can we kind of bring to the Chinese American experience? 00:44:08    <v Track 2>And for one of my participants, the upbringing that he had, 00:44:13    <v Track 2>the probably social and cultural upbringing he had in his white family and how 00:44:19    <v Track 2>he attributed his socialness, 00:44:22    <v Track 2>his ability to talk to anyone, his curiosity about people, he attributed a lot 00:44:28    <v Track 2>of that to his white parents and the ways that they exist in the world. 00:44:34    <v Track 2>And compared that to many of his non-adopted Chinese-American friends. 00:44:39    <v Track 2>And so that's just like was not something that their parents or their families 00:44:44    <v Track 2>really enforced or kind of demonstrated. 00:44:49    <v Track 2>And so that's definitely not a specific example of the in-between space and 00:44:56    <v Track 2>the assets that come along with that, 00:44:59    <v Track 2>but just thinking about the fusion of our identities and how growing up in white 00:45:05    <v Track 2>families can make us very different from non-adopted Chinese-Americans who grew 00:45:10    <v Track 2>up in Chinese slash Chinese-American households. 00:45:14    <v Track 2>I don't know, that's probably if I had a bit more time to think about it, 00:45:18    <v Track 2>I could think more specifically, but. 00:45:22    <v Track 1>Well, that's good to me then, the answer. I think it's hard to define because 00:45:26    <v Track 1>there are just like so many varieties over there. 00:45:31    <v Track 1>Even when it comes to assets, that can be very difficult to understand if there's 00:45:37    <v Track 1>a certain way, certain pattern. 00:45:39    <v Track 1>Any scholar, the work they are doing is very interconnected to their personal 00:45:44    <v Track 1>life. So when I read your literature review, I think this part is very interesting 00:45:52    <v Track 1>about your travel experience. 00:45:54    <v Track 1>So can you tell us that experience and how that connected or inspired you to start this thesis work? 00:46:04    <v Track 2>Yeah, definitely. And I guess going back to your question, I was just reflecting 00:46:09    <v Track 2>on it a little bit more too. And I'm curious about your, 00:46:14    <v Track 2>perspective on this as well, being an international student living in America. 00:46:18    <v Track 2>But I think that, so I'm kind of making an assumption here, 00:46:22    <v Track 2>but perhaps you are also like existing in somewhat of an in-between space, 00:46:26    <v Track 2>like different from the one that I inhabit as a transracial Chinese adoptee, 00:46:30    <v Track 2>but also like kind of similarly feeling in between in some ways. 00:46:35    <v Track 2>And And for people who inhabit this kind of space, 00:46:41    <v Track 2>you kind of learn how to shapeshift, 00:46:46    <v Track 2>if you want to say, or like adapt, blend in, 00:46:50    <v Track 2>or just kind of fall into various environments and social situations and figure 00:46:58    <v Track 2>out how to adjust to those. 00:47:01    <v Track 2>And so I think that that is probably one of the greatest strengths perhaps of 00:47:06    <v Track 2>being in between and being able to figure out how to find your community or 00:47:12    <v Track 2>figuring out how to make home wherever you are or find comfort wherever you are, 00:47:19    <v Track 2>I think is a major asset and being able to think out of the box and a lot of 00:47:27    <v Track 2>ways to solving various problems that you may encounter. 00:47:31    <v Track 1>Cool, that's a good added information. 00:47:35    <v Track 2>Yeah, so to your question, I graduated from college in 2017 in February, 00:47:43    <v Track 2>and then I went to work on an organic vegetable farm that was a nonprofit for 00:47:49    <v Track 2>the 2017 growing season. 00:47:53    <v Track 2>And within that time, I really didn't have any contact with non-white community. 00:48:02    <v Track 2>And I felt increasingly far from the connections that I had made with Chinese 00:48:07    <v Track 2>language, the Chinese culture, and community in college. 00:48:12    <v Track 2>And so I decided that I wanted to go to China in 2018 to first and foremost, 00:48:18    <v Track 2>kind of improve and cement my language skills. 00:48:23    <v Track 2>And so I decided I wanted to do that in a very specific way. 00:48:27    <v Track 2>Many people were like, why don't you just go and teach English in China? 00:48:30    <v Track 2>And I was like, I don't want to do that. So I planned this trip. 00:48:35    <v Track 2>To go by myself to China to a variety of locations. 00:48:39    <v Track 2>I ended up planning the trip around experiences in food and agriculture. 00:48:44    <v Track 2>I went to spend time primarily in four different cities all over China and I 00:48:50    <v Track 2>worked slash volunteered slash interned at a number of those places. 00:48:57    <v Track 2>So one of them was a, it was kind of like a farm to table ecotourism inn. 00:49:04    <v Track 2>And then there was a mushroom production facility where we were, 00:49:07    <v Track 2>it was like a factory of some sort where we were essentially like packing and 00:49:13    <v Track 2>like starting mushrooms that would then be sent out to farmers to grow out. 00:49:18    <v Track 2>And then I was at a botanical research institute doing like communications and 00:49:24    <v Track 2>preparation for an international conference that they were holding. 00:49:28    <v Track 2>And then I was on an organic farm in Beijing. 00:49:31    <v Track 2>And so I had an interesting tour of the Chinese food system in many ways and 00:49:39    <v Track 2>got to experience different parts of China and met a lot of people, 00:49:44    <v Track 2>both foreigners and Chinese. 00:49:47    <v Track 2>And by the end of my time in China in August of 2018, 00:49:51    <v Track 2>I decided that I wanted to apply for a Fulbright grant, which is a US government 00:49:57    <v Track 2>grant that promotes cultural exchange between the US and other countries across the world. 00:50:03    <v Track 2>And I applied for the Fulbright grant to go back to China a year later to study organic agriculture. 00:50:09    <v Track 2>And I got the grant and I went back to China in 2019 and was there for the fall 00:50:15    <v Track 2>of 2019 doing a language program. 00:50:18    <v Track 2>And then I was set to start my research on organic agriculture in December and 00:50:23    <v Track 2>then be there for 10 months. And then, of course, COVID happened. 00:50:27    <v Track 2>So I had to come home, unfortunately, in February of 2020. But that's in short. 00:50:35    <v Track 2>A little bit about my time in China. Cool. 00:50:37    <v Track 1>And then I have so many questions after that. Yeah, so I think when you mentioned 00:50:43    <v Track 1>like a 2018 trip, I think you visit four different places. 00:50:48    <v Track 1>Is it more like a mix of urban and suburban or like rural? 00:50:54    <v Track 2>I would say it was a pretty good mix. 00:50:58    <v Track 2>I was in the first place that I went to, it was quite rural. 00:51:05    <v Track 2>So, yeah, it was probably not the best first place to go. I don't know, 00:51:10    <v Track 2>just because it was so rural. Like, no one spoke English. 00:51:14    <v Track 2>But it was great. It was, like, very immersive. And it was, I feel like, 00:51:18    <v Track 2>a very defining experience. 00:51:20    <v Track 2>But then, increasingly, like, I went to more urban areas. 00:51:24    <v Track 2>And then, when I was on the farm in Beijing, I was actually outside of the city. 00:51:29    <v Track 2>So also again, like on the rural side. So I got a pretty good mix, 00:51:33    <v Track 2>I would say of urban and rural. Great. 00:51:37    <v Track 1>Okay. Follow up on the Beijing side. Have you visited the Beijing farmers market? Yes. 00:51:42    <v Track 2>Yes. I went, I did go to one of the farmers markets because the farm that I 00:51:47    <v Track 2>was at actually had a booth. So I went one day with one of the staff members 00:51:52    <v Track 2>and I got to experience the farmers market. 00:51:55    <v Track 1>Okay, can you describe the experience a little bit more? 00:51:59    <v Track 1>Did you figure out any discrepancies between what you expect to see and what it looks like? 00:52:07    <v Track 2>I would say it was actually remarkably similar to farmers markets that I have experienced in the US. 00:52:15    <v Track 2>I actually connected with the woman who started, 00:52:19    <v Track 2>slash one of the people who started, the farmer's market in Beijing, 00:52:24    <v Track 2>who studied, who is Chinese, but studied abroad in Western countries and kind 00:52:31    <v Track 2>of brought that model back to China with the more Western farmer's market concept. 00:52:37    <v Track 2>And so basically, you envision people who are coming to sell their produce or 00:52:46    <v Track 2>whatever products they make. 00:52:48    <v Track 2>There was actually someone who made cheese, had gone to France and like studied 00:52:53    <v Track 2>cheese making and had a whole assortment of cheeses there. 00:52:58    <v Track 2>And so like many different types of products, but they have their tables and 00:53:02    <v Track 2>they have their products there and are selling basically direct to consumer. 00:53:07    <v Track 2>And I'm curious what your thoughts on this are, 00:53:11    <v Track 2>but it sounds like at wet markets it's not necessarily the producers who are 00:53:16    <v Track 2>going to the wet market to sell but it might be like a more intermediate person 00:53:20    <v Track 2>whereas at farmers markets one of the biggest goals of a farmers market is to 00:53:25    <v Track 2>have the producers there selling at the farmers market to be able to interact 00:53:30    <v Track 2>and engage with customers. 00:53:33    <v Track 1>Yeah, great. Okay, so the reason I'm asking this question, because I also know this organization. 00:53:38    <v Track 1>So I think the woman you mentioned here, I think I also maybe have the same group chat with her. 00:53:46    <v Track 1>And then I'm, I'm following on different social media platforms. 00:53:50    <v Track 1>And I visit their farmers market when I visit my boyfriend, he lived in Beijing. 00:53:56    <v Track 1>Second thing, I think it's interesting that you bring up the different concept 00:54:01    <v Track 1>between wet market and farmer's market. 00:54:03    <v Track 1>Because when I learned farmer's market in our nutrition class during my master years, 00:54:09    <v Track 1>I think the first thing I'm trying to compare to is the wet market I'm more 00:54:14    <v Track 1>familiar with because I think that's very different than the supermarket, right? 00:54:20    <v Track 1>We have here in the United States and also in China. So that's something I'm 00:54:24    <v Track 1>trying to say, Okay, farmer's market equals to wet market. 00:54:29    <v Track 1>But then I realized there's so many different things in the elements. 00:54:33    <v Track 1>For example, like direct to consumer is one key reason to have a farmer's market. 00:54:39    <v Track 1>But wet markets, I think, for a lot of developing countries in Asia, 00:54:43    <v Track 1>they have this tradition. 00:54:46    <v Track 1>Places, I don't think that's temporary. I think usually they will be at 24 seven-ish 00:54:52    <v Track 1>operations of this facility to help people get their food. 00:54:57    <v Track 1>Well, you won't see a one pound grounded pork package. Those like personalized 00:55:02    <v Track 1>things, I think it's similar to the farmer's market. 00:55:05    <v Track 1>So yeah, that's the interesting part when I hear you have a little bit more 00:55:09    <v Track 1>experience about learning food systems in China. 00:55:12    <v Track 1>Because the pandemic, I wasn't able to learn more about food system in China 00:55:17    <v Track 1>with my education in the United States, because I feel like a lot of things 00:55:21    <v Track 1>different, but I cannot tell if I'm not there, you know? 00:55:27    <v Track 2>Yeah, so many differences between wet markets and farmers markets that I'm sure 00:55:33    <v Track 2>I don't haven't thought of. 00:55:34    <v Track 2>And I like I really appreciate that you brought up the point of temporary versus 00:55:39    <v Track 2>more permanent establishments because I think that is a huge thing, 00:55:43    <v Track 2>especially when it comes to food access. 00:55:45    <v Track 2>But I would really love to talk to you about your experience and knowledge of 00:55:50    <v Track 2>the Chinese food system and observations of the food system in the U.S. 00:55:54    <v Track 2>In comparison at a later date. 00:55:58    <v Track 1>Yeah, we need to do a couple more in this year. Yeah, that'll be fun. 00:56:04    <v Track 1>So okay, since you are so interested in this agricultural food production, 00:56:09    <v Track 1>I think that may be related to your experience growing up on a farm. 00:56:15    <v Track 1>Do you think that there's a, you know, link I I can draw from that. 00:56:20    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that having grown up on a farm, 00:56:25    <v Track 2>our farm had animals primarily. 00:56:28    <v Track 2>So my mom had a vegetable garden, and then also we had sheep and horses and 00:56:36    <v Track 2>chickens and ducks and geese and goats for a little while. 00:56:40    <v Track 2>So I grew up taking care of animals day in and day out and grew to have a very 00:56:47    <v Track 2>deep appreciation for all of the care and all of the work that that takes. 00:56:52    <v Track 2>And just more generally, I think an appreciation for the natural world and the 00:56:58    <v Track 2>great outdoors and being able to like feel very connected to the land and the 00:57:03    <v Track 2>place that you're in and connected to the changing of the seasons and all of those things. 00:57:10    <v Track 2>And that experience I think has really led me to, 00:57:14    <v Track 2>a lot of the places and the things I've done in my adult life, 00:57:18    <v Track 2>especially when it comes to feeling probably a bit more connected to the agricultural 00:57:23    <v Track 2>and food production side of things as opposed to like the culinary side of the food system. 00:57:30    <v Track 2>And of course, there are like a lot of other things going on there. 00:57:33    <v Track 2>But I think that I have a lot of values that were instilled through growing 00:57:39    <v Track 2>up on a farm and also just the my interests and kind of the the work that I'm 00:57:43    <v Track 2>attracted to and the stories that I'm attracted to exploring often focus on 00:57:49    <v Track 2>experiences with agriculture and in the outdoors. 00:57:53    <v Track 1>Oh, yeah, I think this really set us to me because I think that set the baseline differently. 00:57:59    <v Track 1>It's kind of you can get your own meat from your farm versus a lot of people 00:58:03    <v Track 1>in growing up in different scenario, they will just drive to a supermarket, get their food, right? 00:58:11    <v Track 1>So I think that's just really, really different. And I'm wondering maybe you 00:58:15    <v Track 1>can talk a little bit more about like family parenting, because I think when 00:58:20    <v Track 1>we talk about food beside this identity, there's also like food memories coming up. 00:58:25    <v Track 2>Yeah, absolutely. I think on the food memory side, of course, 00:58:30    <v Track 2>a lot of the food memories I have are both outside on the agriculture side. 00:58:37    <v Track 2>For example, growing up and moving the sheep to different pastures, 00:58:43    <v Track 2>or like we would often slaughter our own sheep and chickens on farm. 00:58:49    <v Track 2>And so just growing up with that experience and being involved in that. 00:58:54    <v Track 2>But in the kind of more home cooking sphere, my parents have always really loved to cook, both of them. 00:59:02    <v Track 2>And my mom has always been like quite focused on the concept of authenticity 00:59:10    <v Track 2>and creating authentic dishes from across the world. 00:59:14    <v Track 2>And so like that comes to getting the right ingredients and like having the 00:59:19    <v Track 2>right cooking tools and more authentic recipes. 00:59:23    <v Track 2>And so my parents cooked Chinese food before they even adopted me. 00:59:28    <v Track 2>But after they adopted me, cooking Chinese food at home was the primary way 00:59:33    <v Track 2>for me to connect with Chinese culture, not having a very large Chinese-American community around me. 00:59:40    <v Track 2>And so my mom has many Chinese cookbooks that I would say are written probably 00:59:49    <v Track 2>for an American, white American audience typically. 00:59:53    <v Track 2>And they were written and published in probably the 90s, like early, early mid 90s maybe. 01:00:01    <v Track 2>And it's a lot of. 01:00:03    <v Track 2>Like highlights of Chinese cuisine from various regions. 01:00:08    <v Track 2>And we would on a semi regular basis have stir fries of various kinds. 01:00:17    <v Track 2>Or we would make dumplings at Chinese New Year or on the day that my parents 01:00:22    <v Track 2>met me in China in December every year. 01:00:26    <v Track 2>So we would have traditions around Chinese food every year in that sense, 01:00:31    <v Track 2>and also just eat it on a more regular basis as well. 01:00:35    <v Track 1>That's so cool. I'm really glad to hear how your mom like make efforts to create 01:00:41    <v Track 1>cultural appropriate foods, meeting her standards. I think that's really nice. 01:00:47    <v Track 1>And then sounds like cooking in a white dominant community to you is an accessible 01:00:53    <v Track 1>way to learn this cultural food identity. 01:00:57    <v Track 2>Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I think that's one of the things that 01:01:00    <v Track 2>really struck me when I was talking to other Chinese adoptees who grew up with 01:01:06    <v Track 2>white families in different geographic locations, 01:01:09    <v Track 2>often going to Chinese restaurants was the most accessible way for them to find 01:01:15    <v Track 2>and connect with Chinese food and culture. 01:01:18    <v Track 2>Whereas for me, I actually didn't grow up going to Chinese restaurants very often at all. 01:01:23    <v Track 2>And so it it was mostly just cooking at home that I was eating our version of Chinese food. 01:01:30    <v Track 2>And very rarely we would go out, about 30 minutes away is one of the bigger 01:01:35    <v Track 2>cities in Vermont and there would be a Chinese American restaurant that we would go and eat at. 01:01:41    <v Track 2>Or my grandparents lived in the Washington DC area and so if I would go and 01:01:46    <v Track 2>visit them, we might go out to a Chinese restaurant there and have a very different 01:01:51    <v Track 2>experience with Chinese food than I would in Vermont. 01:01:55    <v Track 2>But yeah, primarily my experience with Chinese food was actually cooking it 01:02:00    <v Track 2>at home as opposed to eating it out. 01:02:02    <v Track 1>Wonderful, great. And I just realized you also made mooncake over the weekend, 01:02:09    <v Track 1>right? Is it last weekend, right? 01:02:12    <v Track 1>Yes. So, did you bring it to your parents or how that celebration looked like to you? 01:02:20    <v Track 2>Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, I was in Pittsburgh the weekend before Mid-Autumn Festival 01:02:26    <v Track 2>and I decided to make mooncakes. 01:02:29    <v Track 2>And it's something that I had thought about off and on for many years, 01:02:34    <v Track 2>but had never really like committed to, but actually another Chinese adoptee 01:02:38    <v Track 2>friend of mine was making them. 01:02:40    <v Track 2>And I decided to make them as well. So I brought, I shared them with friends 01:02:45    <v Track 2>in Pittsburgh, and I also brought some up to Vermont and shared them with my family as well. 01:02:50    <v Track 2>And so it's a lot of fun now, 01:02:54    <v Track 2>I would say, to be able to cook and 01:02:57    <v Track 2>make many more Chinese dishes and 01:03:00    <v Track 2>like perhaps traditional festival foods 01:03:04    <v Track 2>and like share them with my family and and expand our repertoire of Chinese 01:03:10    <v Track 2>foods now from what we would eat when I was growing up to now my list of Chinese 01:03:17    <v Track 2>foods that I make on a pretty regular basis is quite large. 01:03:21    <v Track 2>And of course, it is hard in Vermont to even access a lot of those ingredients, 01:03:26    <v Track 2>which I have been thankful to be able to access like in Pittsburgh or other places that I've lived. 01:03:31    <v Track 2>But that is certainly, as you well know, a major barrier to being able to recreate those foods. 01:03:37    <v Track 1>Yeah, so you said it was the first time you made the mooncake when you sent 01:03:43    <v Track 1>it over the pictures to me. Oh my God, you look professional. 01:03:47    <v Track 1>I'm like, oh wow, Katie probably did this before, so that's why each one is so perfect. 01:03:53    <v Track 2>Oh, well thank you so much. Yeah, it's certainly, I think, for me being able 01:03:59    <v Track 2>to go off and make something like that. 01:04:04    <v Track 2>I know it's going to be quite a process, and I think just for me, 01:04:08    <v Track 2>mooncakes, making them was just a process because of all the steps involved, 01:04:13    <v Track 2>but the actual process itself I didn't find very difficult. 01:04:18    <v Track 2>But it might just be at this point because I cook and I bake quite a bit, 01:04:22    <v Track 2>and so I have a lot of experience with different things, and I don't find it 01:04:27    <v Track 2>too intimidating to try try something new like that. 01:04:30    <v Track 1>Nice. And then the way you learn making mooncake is not cookbook, right? 01:04:37    <v Track 2>Right, yeah. I think that's another great point is that I, for like the majority 01:04:42    <v Track 2>of my Chinese cooking, I actually do cook out of cookbooks. 01:04:45    <v Track 2>And for mooncakes though, like for the recipe that I used, I did use an online recipe. 01:04:52    <v Track 2>That's something that I actually don't do that often. I'm kind of like a purist 01:04:55    <v Track 2>in that way, I would say, and that I often use cookbooks, and I very rarely 01:05:01    <v Track 2>ever will go on YouTube and watch cooking videos or do anything like that. 01:05:06    <v Track 2>And so it's primarily just books and my own trial and error type experience. 01:05:13    <v Track 1>Yeah, I will say that's very different than many Chinese people living in China. 01:05:18    <v Track 1>The way they learn cooking, I feel like traditionally, it's from your mother or your grandmother. 01:05:29    <v Track 1>And scaling, measuring up, like using cup ounces, I think those things sounds absurd to my grandma. 01:05:34    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah, I definitely, just like talking to so many people, 01:05:39    <v Track 2>especially like watching people cook in China too, no one ever uses any recipes 01:05:44    <v Track 2>or like no one that I ever observed cooking 01:05:47    <v Track 2>and trying to like figure out if I wanna recreate this dish, how do I make this? 01:05:53    <v Track 2>And having to just piece everything together with pretty imprecise quantities 01:06:00    <v Track 2>or like ingredients and it just being really difficult to do. 01:06:05    <v Track 2>But I think that's quite common. 01:06:06    <v Track 1>Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, let's see. 01:06:11    <v Track 1>Getting a little bit off track, but I think we can also talk about the storytelling. 01:06:16    <v Track 1>In the beginning, you share you also do internship at a podcast project. 01:06:23    <v Track 1>And I personally think the research methods you use for your thesis has a lot 01:06:28    <v Track 1>of common with storytelling. 01:06:31    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I think storytelling is quite a large umbrella, 01:06:38    <v Track 2>I think, and the term can be applied in many different ways in many different contexts. 01:06:44    <v Track 2>So for my thesis, I used autoethnography and ethnography, individual qualitative 01:06:49    <v Track 2>interviews, participant observation. 01:06:55    <v Track 2>So part of my thesis was actually to go to restaurants and grocery stores with 01:07:00    <v Track 2>participants and talk about their experiences in those spaces and their impressions 01:07:06    <v Track 2>and kind of to figure out like what is their normal routine perhaps when they go into those spaces. 01:07:13    <v Track 2>And then I also held two focus groups with a number of the participants that 01:07:17    <v Track 2>were virtual focus groups. And we delved a bit more into specific themes that 01:07:23    <v Track 2>I had observed across interviews. 01:07:26    <v Track 2>And yeah, I think certainly like the methods that I used in my thesis are all 01:07:31    <v Track 2>like have connected threads to storytelling for sure. 01:07:39    <v Track 2>And I think for me, when I think about my interest and storytelling. 01:07:45    <v Track 2>I'm always interested in how people got to where they are today and why they 01:07:51    <v Track 2>think the way that they do and why they take the approach that they do to certain 01:07:57    <v Track 2>things in their lives and kind of like thinking about how their interests developed. 01:08:02    <v Track 2>I have found it really interesting that I'm always drawn to very minimum amount 01:08:08    <v Track 2>of production around stories. 01:08:11    <v Track 2>I am drawn to oral history, I think in part because it gives the narrator or 01:08:17    <v Track 2>the interviewee or the storyteller autonomy to say whatever they want to say. 01:08:23    <v Track 2>And then it is there for the record and it's unedited, essentially. 01:08:29    <v Track 2>And so I think I often have a difficult time I'm trying to edit and cut things, 01:08:38    <v Track 2>cut people's stories in various ways or direct them. 01:08:43    <v Track 2>And I think that probably comes from my own experience feeling like my story, 01:08:50    <v Track 2>my complete story has not been recognized and like not wanting to edit other 01:08:55    <v Track 2>people in that way and just feeling like I'm not an expert in anything. 01:08:59    <v Track 2>And I don't want to like have the final say on like whatever their story is 01:09:04    <v Track 2>that goes out into the world. 01:09:06    <v Track 2>But there's like a whole other side to that as well. 01:09:10    <v Track 2>But yeah, getting off track, I don't know, do you have any other specific questions about storytelling? 01:09:19    <v Track 1>Well, not necessarily. Well, the storytelling passion, I think is something I see we shared. 01:09:26    <v Track 1>The reason I'm also doing podcasting, personal interview, is because I feel 01:09:32    <v Track 1>like by learning their stories, I learned something. 01:09:35    <v Track 1>When I share this story, maybe someone will benefit from it. 01:09:39    <v Track 1>And I personally benefited because I was engaging in this conversation. 01:09:43    <v Track 1>And I think from a research perspective, sometimes it's hard because we still have bias. 01:09:48    <v Track 1>So it's hard if we're doing some editing, whether or not that can be you do 01:09:55    <v Track 1>a conclusion paragraph, right? 01:09:57    <v Track 1>So that's all those editing you added on the original story. 01:10:03    <v Track 1>LSW Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 01:10:06    <v Track 2>I think you brought up so many great points there. I think it's, 01:10:09    <v Track 2>part of it is, yeah, you learn so much about yourself and about the world when 01:10:16    <v Track 2>you hear other people's stories. And... 01:10:20    <v Track 2>With a podcast, for example, like being able to give other people a platform 01:10:25    <v Track 2>to tell their own stories is a huge thing for me. 01:10:28    <v Track 2>I think the other kind of like flip side of thinking about not wanting to edit 01:10:35    <v Track 2>things and wanting to leave stories in their raw form is, 01:10:59    <v Track 2>thinking about sides to all of this, trying to think about elevating under-told 01:11:04    <v Track 2>stories and giving people a platform to tell their completely unedited story, 01:11:11    <v Track 2>their experience, but also trying to figure out how can we make this information 01:11:16    <v Track 2>more accessible if someone is not going to sit down and listen to like an hour 01:11:22    <v Track 2>and a half unedited interview or there are many I think accessibility considerations too. 01:11:28    <v Track 2>So those are all things that I'm thinking about. Absolutely. 01:11:32    <v Track 1>Yeah, good point. Yeah, I like the accessibility discussion. It's hard. 01:11:38    <v Track 1>I feel really fortunate do storytelling is because there's also feedback from 01:11:44    <v Track 1>your audience. That part is also rewarding and very reflective to me. 01:11:52    <v Track 1>So one question I have here is when you're presenting your work, 01:11:56    <v Track 1>like thesis work or conference posts, I wonder what kind of interesting, 01:12:01    <v Track 1>inspiring feedback Did you receive? 01:12:05    <v Track 2>I think often it was from. 01:12:11    <v Track 2>People who had perhaps never considered any of the perspectives that I was presenting in my research. 01:12:18    <v Track 2>So that was one camp of people who were like, wow, I've never even thought of 01:12:22    <v Track 2>this. And it's given me so many insights and new perspectives and ideas to consider in my own life. 01:12:30    <v Track 2>That's certainly one response that I got. And then the other main response that 01:12:36    <v Track 2>I got was from other transracial Chinese adoptees or other adoptees within the community, 01:12:43    <v Track 2>just being really appreciative of having more research, more documentation, 01:12:50    <v Track 2>more records for history that explore the adoptee experience. 01:12:56    <v Track 2>Because like any human experience, it is very diverse, very nuanced. 01:13:03    <v Track 2>And I mean, my thesis has only really explored like a very, very small slice 01:13:09    <v Track 2>of even the transracial Chinese adoptee experience. 01:13:12    <v Track 2>I think I was really just very heartened to hear so much positive feedback from 01:13:17    <v Track 2>the adoptee community and recognition that I had put a lot of care into creating 01:13:24    <v Track 2>my thesis and that they felt that care and they just really appreciated, 01:13:30    <v Track 2>I think, the representation and to have more research out there that exists 01:13:38    <v Track 2>that kind of shows people that were here and that we have a very multi-dimensional experience. 01:13:44    <v Track 2>That's so cool. 01:13:47    <v Track 1>Yeah, I think it's about visibility. Like a lot of times those research can 01:13:52    <v Track 1>highlight people who are more like marginalized to the mainstream. 01:13:58    <v Track 2>Exactly. 01:13:59    <v Track 1>Did you ever share your work with your parents or your friends? 01:14:04    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah. So I have shared my work with everyone. Everyone within my immediate 01:14:09    <v Track 2>community and family and I've gotten very positive feedback. 01:14:14    <v Track 2>I think I'm lucky in a lot of ways in that my parents are very open to having 01:14:20    <v Track 2>conversations about identity and adoption and my experiences in the world. 01:14:25    <v Track 2>And I know that's certainly not true for a lot of adoptees. 01:14:30    <v Track 2>And in a lot of ways, I appreciate the journey of conducting my thesis work 01:14:36    <v Track 2>all of 2023 and even before last year as well, 01:14:41    <v Track 2>because I was able to really go very deep into my own experiences and to confront 01:14:49    <v Track 2>and interrogate a lot of things 01:14:51    <v Track 2>about my own experiences and identity, including with my family. 01:14:55    <v Track 2>And it opened up a lot of conversations with my parents and with friends about 01:15:02    <v Track 2>the multifaceted adoptee experience. 01:15:07    <v Track 1>That's so cool. And besides the adoptees community, another community I think 01:15:12    <v Track 1>you are very actively engaging is Asian farmers. 01:15:16    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah, definitely. Which is funny, because that's actually how you and 01:15:20    <v Track 2>I connected more, I think, is over this previous independent research project that I did. 01:15:25    <v Track 2>And when I was at the Food Studies Conference, other people, 01:15:31    <v Track 2>I was sharing with them about my work with Asian American farmers, 01:15:34    <v Track 2>and they were actually quite interested in that as well. 01:15:37    <v Track 2>So when I got back from China in 2020, I created this project to interview Asian 01:15:45    <v Track 2>American farmers across the US and it was a completely virtual project. 01:15:50    <v Track 2>I ended up interviewing 21 Asian American farmers and one fisherman. 01:15:55    <v Track 2>And I was trying to interview people who were more in our age demographic, 01:16:02    <v Track 2>so people who are like in their 20s and 30s. 01:16:05    <v Track 2>It was quite a mix of second generation or later generations, 01:16:10    <v Track 2>some adoptees, some biracial farmers. 01:16:15    <v Track 2>It actually all started by me reading this article, this Eater article written 01:16:21    <v Track 2>by Kathy the Urway in 2019. 01:16:23    <v Track 2>And it was essentially about a couple of Asian American farmers who were growing 01:16:29    <v Track 2>culturally relevant Asian heritage crops, and they were using their work in 01:16:34    <v Track 2>agriculture to explore their identities, their Asian identities. 01:16:39    <v Track 2>And I just felt like that really resonated so much with me and all the thinking 01:16:44    <v Track 2>that I was doing around identity and also food, that those things largely existed 01:16:48    <v Track 2>pretty separately in my mind and in my work. 01:16:51    <v Track 2>And then reading that article, I decided I really wanna talk to these people. 01:16:57    <v Track 2>And it was a year-long project. 01:17:00    <v Track 2>That is archived at the Library of Congress, so you can listen to the interviews. 01:17:04    <v Track 1> I need the link later. 01:17:06    <v Track 2> Yes, we'll definitely send that to you, so the audience can also access it. 01:17:11    <v Track 2>But yeah, it was, I think it was really the kind of foundation on which I was 01:17:17    <v Track 2>able to build the work that I've done in the last couple of years. 01:17:21    <v Track 2>And it gave me so many insights into the quote unquote, Asian American experience and how varied it is. 01:17:30    <v Track 2>Across the US and also what many of those experiences look like in the farming context. 01:17:38    <v Track 2>And so also completely recognize that the people that I interviewed are of a 01:17:44    <v Track 2>very specific demographic of the larger Asian and Asian American farming community in the US. 01:17:52    <v Track 2>But I think that I sought out those people because their experiences and their 01:17:57    <v Track 2>stories resonated with my own and with the questions that I was considering 01:18:02    <v Track 2>and the way that I grew up in my background. 01:18:05    <v Track 1>That's cool. A lot of things connect, like how they're using farming as a way 01:18:10    <v Track 1>to explore their identity. 01:18:12    <v Track 2>Exactly. 01:18:13    <v Track 1>When I read through your article, you shared the Flocklife article, 01:18:18    <v Track 1>you belong here, Asian American woman in agriculture. 01:18:22    <v Track 1>And then also thinking about your participant in your thesis work, woman dominance group. 01:18:29    <v Track 1>I wonder if you ever thinking about like how gender can be identity affecting 01:18:35    <v Track 1>all the discussion we have here. 01:18:38    <v Track 2>Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's certainly another huge dimension, 01:18:43    <v Track 2>which I honestly have not even fully jumped into. 01:18:49    <v Track 2>I think for adoptees, of course, it is very specific to, 01:18:56    <v Track 2>the context around Chinese adoption and cultural values around gender. 01:19:01    <v Track 2>And so, there's that. And then there's also as transracial Chinese adoptees in America, 01:19:10    <v Track 2>what the context around gender is and how that may differ too, 01:19:15    <v Track 2>depending on exact location in the US and what the time period is. 01:19:19    <v Track 2>So I think one of the biggest considerations in my thesis was that I only had 01:19:24    <v Track 2>one male adoptee participate in the study. So it was like heavily female or 01:19:29    <v Track 2>heavily people who were raised female and now identify as non-binary. 01:19:34    <v Track 2>But how do the specific social, cultural, 01:19:38    <v Track 2>and political factors of the last 20 or 30 years when we were raised, 01:19:45    <v Track 2>how does that impact the ways that we see the world and the ways that we see 01:19:51    <v Track 2>ourselves fitting in or not fitting in to specific expectations. 01:19:58    <v Track 2>And within the farming context, too, I think it seems that many new young farmers 01:20:05    <v Track 2>that are emerging in America are actually women. 01:20:09    <v Track 2>And so I think that that's of of any race. 01:20:12    <v Track 2>And so then like seeing that within the Asian American context, 01:20:16    <v Track 2>I think is also really interesting, like farming perhaps being a way for women 01:20:20    <v Track 2>to push back on expectations around them in many spheres of life. 01:20:28    <v Track 2>And that's also something that I I asked many of my former interviewees and 01:20:35    <v Track 2>people kind of spoke to that to varying degrees, 01:20:37    <v Track 2>but I wasn't able to really focus on that specifically in my research, 01:20:42    <v Track 2>but I think that's certainly another interesting piece of all of this. 01:20:50    <v Track 1>Yeah, well, yeah, that's definitely something after I read in your article, 01:20:55    <v Track 1>I'm start thinking more about like gender 01:20:58    <v Track 1>and also in my current research work, I'm working for my mentor, 01:21:03    <v Track 1>and she has interviews from New England farmers, and we start reading something 01:21:09    <v Track 1>about gender discrimination, some women farmers described. 01:21:14    <v Track 1>Potentially, maybe in your future work, I would love to see if you can dig deeper 01:21:18    <v Track 1>in that perspective, because I think that's very fascinating. Yeah. 01:21:23    <v Track 2>And similarly, I think with male Asian slash Asian American farmers in the American 01:21:30    <v Track 2>context, there are a lot of stereotypes and beliefs about Asian men in America. 01:21:36    <v Track 2>And so like, how does that also 01:21:38    <v Track 2>impact Asian slash Asian American male experiences in the farming sector? 01:21:44    <v Track 2>I think that's a whole other topic. But thinking about kind of the interactions 01:21:49    <v Track 2>between race and and gender, it's, yeah, it creates quite a complex experience. 01:21:55    <v Track 1>Yeah, so kind of closing our conversation here. 01:21:59    <v Track 1>Last time when we spoke, you asked me a very good question about like, 01:22:04    <v Track 1>beyond this Chinese adoptees concept, what your work can help other groups of 01:22:10    <v Track 1>people to understand their life, their identities. 01:22:14    <v Track 1>So I think about it. And then my answer, as I mentioned last time, 01:22:19    <v Track 1>I think for me, I sometimes feel this in between. 01:22:23    <v Track 1>For sure, I'm not Asian American. I'm an international student, but I live here. 01:22:30    <v Track 1>And when people see my color, I think they have a lot of assumptions about the 01:22:36    <v Track 1>way I'm doing my my work, the language I speak, by reading your work, 01:22:41    <v Track 1>it's nice to have this open discussion. 01:22:45    <v Track 1>And I can sometimes share feelings your participants shared with you in the conversation. 01:22:52    <v Track 1>So that's my answer. But I wonder if you think more about it, 01:22:55    <v Track 1>or if any other readers give you feedback on this question. 01:23:00    <v Track 2>Yeah, I think probably one of the biggest things I think about within the context of of this work is. 01:23:09    <v Track 2>All of the ways that people can be in between. And so, 01:23:13    <v Track 2>I am examining in-betweenness in this very highly specific situation for transracial 01:23:21    <v Track 2>Chinese adoptees, and a specific subset too of transracial Chinese adoptees. 01:23:28    <v Track 2>But how does this in-betweenness also manifest in other people's lives? 01:23:33    <v Track 2>And so, you mentioned that as an international student, And one of the people 01:23:38    <v Track 2>on my thesis committee was biracial, half Asian and half white. 01:23:43    <v Track 2>And he talked about resonating with many of the experiences that I described 01:23:48    <v Track 2>in my thesis as someone who's mixed race. 01:23:53    <v Track 2>And then there are like a whole host of ways that people can be in between as well in their lives. 01:24:00    <v Track 2>So yeah, I think just for me, 01:24:03    <v Track 2>recognizing that although there are highly specific contexts in which we experience 01:24:11    <v Track 2>these things related to our identities, 01:24:14    <v Track 2>they're also very universal experiences in many ways. 01:24:19    <v Track 2>And so how can we find resonance? 01:24:23    <v Track 2>How can we find community in all of these shared experiences? 01:24:27    <v Track 2>How can we use them to build bridges across difference? 01:24:35    <v Track 2>Those are some of the biggest things that I'm thinking about, 01:24:38    <v Track 2>and I think that within my work, 01:24:39    <v Track 2>I can often become hyper-focused on the transracial Chinese adoptee experience, 01:24:45    <v Track 2>but trying to zoom out from that and realize that this is just one of the many 01:24:50    <v Track 2>ways that people experience the in-between and trying to create space for other 01:24:58    <v Track 2>people to tell their stories about that in-between space. 01:25:04    <v Track 2>That's something that I've been thinking about a lot. 01:25:05    <v Track 1>Yeah. Yeah, I like the bridging difference when you mentioned it. 01:25:10    <v Track 1>I think that the way we should work towards together. 01:25:14    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>So my closing question here, I feel like you answered already. 01:25:18    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Do you have any exciting project you haven't shared with us? 01:25:22    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Yeah, yeah. Probably many stones still left unturned, many projects that will 01:25:29    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>be created in the future. 01:25:30    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>I think I'm in such a transitional period right now. I'm trying to, 01:25:35    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>like, figure out how to feel, um, well, this is this is interesting actually. So. 01:25:44    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>I kind of felt throughout the research process and my thesis that I had collected 01:25:50    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>so much data that I didn't even end up exploring in my thesis. 01:25:53    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>And there were so many other topics that came up that were related to adoption, 01:25:58    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>but not necessarily related to food, that I would certainly want to explore 01:26:03    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>those topics somehow, somewhere in the future. 01:26:08    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>And also, even if I wanted to look at adoptees and food, I had many directions 01:26:15    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>to go with that as well that I didn't touch on at all or didn't fully explore in my thesis. 01:26:21    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>But now that I'm finished with my thesis, some part of me also kind of feels 01:26:25    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>like a sense of closure perhaps in being able to really dive into my own experience 01:26:32    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>and to connect with more community. 01:26:34    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>And so I feel a little bit like I'm at at an intersection of which direction do I go? 01:26:42    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Do I continue going down the adoptee food path or do I continue just going down 01:26:49    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>the adoptee community path and identity? 01:26:52    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Or do I do something completely different? I think looking at food and identity 01:26:58    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>generally will always be a big part of my work in the future, 01:27:03    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>but I'm certainly trying to evaluate what projects I want to pick up now in the future. 01:27:10    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>So yeah, in answer to your question, the long way to say is, 01:27:15    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>yeah, I think I'm trying to. 01:27:19    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Keep the door open to continue many of the things that I've been doing, 01:27:22    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>but also to like make space for exploring other projects and other related topics, 01:27:30    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>but things in a somewhat different vein, just to see what comes out of it. 01:27:36    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's the reality. I feel like you need a team to 01:27:40    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>achieve what you want to. I hope you can find someone who are also very passionate 01:27:47    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>about this Chinese adoptee topics and identity. 01:27:50    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>And I think that can be a way to leverage your data. 01:27:55    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>And I think even this podcast today will be a great way to introduce your work. 01:28:00    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>And hopefully, people who are interested about it, you'll click the hyperlink 01:28:04    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>to read a little bit more about the abstract of your thesis. 01:28:07    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>It's nice, I can see how you're passionate about like being recognized and and 01:28:12    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>helping more people see this community. 01:28:16    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>So that's really nice. So anything you want to add? 01:28:20    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>I just, yeah, no, I just really appreciate all of the time that we've spent 01:28:26    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>together and getting to know you and talking about my work. 01:28:30    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>All of the questions that you've asked have been such thoughtful questions and 01:28:34    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>I'm really looking forward to talking to you more about your own experiences too. 01:28:39    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Katie, for giving us the time. 01:28:48    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Thanks for being part of our Roundtable Potluck today. 01:28:51    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>We are really curious, what did you think of my chat with Katie? 01:28:56    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Your thoughts matter, so share with us. 01:28:59    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Check out the links in the resource we mentioned in the show notes. 01:29:03    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>If you enjoy our talk, subscribe, rate, and review. 01:29:08    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Huge thanks to Katie for joining us. 01:29:11    <v Next steps (New Chapters after graduation)>Stay tuned for more. Until next time, take care and happy listening.