I was born in Berkeley, California, as the child of two Chinese immigrants who came to study in the United States. When my parents arrived from China, they got their first glimpse of America through the windows of San Francisco International Airport.

Years later, we were driving to San Francisco when my father reminisced about the first time he'd seen the city. My parents had thought San Francisco had looked like a trash dump, so unlike the images of the Las Vegas-esque metropolis that had entranced them on the black and white televisions in China. But as my parents attended university in Berkeley and we later moved to San Jose, I grew up loving and feeling very much a part of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

I wrote this piece after reading an article about an unprovoked racial attack on an elderly Asian American woman in San Francisco, as Asian American hate crimes increased in devastating numbers during the pandemic. The city I loved had once again presented its duality: we are always present in it, but it does not always accept us.