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When my dad came here, he came on a scholarship in the late '60s, and he went to Mississippi State. My dad is not a large man. So there's a little Taiwanese guy walking around Mississippi in, like, 1966, and I cannot imagine what that must have been like.

I think I've written about family and things in 'Taipei' which could be considered Asian culture.

Six months after that, I left Taiwan, first for Hong Kong and then for mainland China, where I spent another three months studying still more Chinese and generally kicking around the country.

The first time I went to Taiwan, there were cameras, paparazzi, TV stations outside my hotel twenty-four hours a day nonstop.

I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.

Growing up in Singapore, I wasn't allowed to visit China. So when I was finally able to go there after the country began opening up to tourism in the 1990s, I found it to be utterly astounding.

I'm just so happy to see my friends and fans in Taiwan, 'cause that's where I'm from.

When I was 11, I went to Puerto Rico for a month to stay with my grandmother. To see the way people lived there and experience my own culture was wonderful.

And it's difficult for the average American to understand why something like that could be so important and why a little small place like Taiwan would be so important to the PRC.

I was born in Singapore, and I lived there until I was 12. I had a very fortunate upbringing.