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I think if you're a 'tiger parent' early on, you don't need to be a 'helicopter parent' in high school.

There were only two other Chinese families in this town of 25,000, but to our parents, the determining factor was the quality of the public school system.

If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.

For my book, 'Age of Ambition,' I spent time documenting, among other things, the trials of young Chinese strivers who are bombarded by pressures unlike those that their parents faced.