It’s 9PM on Christmas Eve and you arrive at Tae’s door with a six-pack of Guinness, a phone charger, and a pair of fleece-lined pajamas. Her studio is a third-story walk-up, located halfway between a billiards bar and a 24-hour bodega on the Lower East Side. From the outside, it has the kind of dense granite façade that could almost require a doorman, but inside, the stairs creak, and the peeling paint on the banister has gathered in a pool of pastel green on the landing.
Read MoreJiro Dreams of Winchester
It was a few days before Commencement and we were eating at a sushi restaurant on Chapel. Seated next to us was a table of graduating seniors and their parents, so thrilled to stop paying college tuition, that no extravagance felt too great. Courtney and Kyle had each finished their last final exams, and along with Kyle’s fiancée Jean, the four of us were out celebrating, too. We wouldn’t have been able to articulate it at the time, but we were not just celebrating graduation, or even the end of the year – but what felt like something bigger.
Read MoreWhite Wedding, Red Wedding
The fireworks started just after midnight. The four of us – me, Andy, Rebecca, and Eric (their English names) – stood outside, waiting for them to go off. A large, red papercutting hung on the front door of the apartment complex, its Chinese characters signifying “double happiness” – two stick figures joined in an embrace, the perfect pictographic embodiment of marriage.
Read MoreAs Pretty As You Make It
It is 8 o’clock on the dot and the asphalt is spread out like a giant blackened fish – yellow stripe down the middle, white markings on either side like scales. The street is dark, save for an errant streetlamp and the light reflecting off the neon sign from the carpark across the street.
Read MoreFrom Malacca With Oranges
It was two days and thirteen hours before the New Hampshire primary, where back home Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, was inciting Americans to turn out and vote for him like it was their destiny. But halfway around the world, in the ethnically Chinese enclave of Malacca, people were met with a different kind of providence: the Lunar New Year.
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