Despite her petite 4ft.11in. 90 pound size Mei Li has proven she could hold her own with the big boys when necessary. Not that she really needed to most of the time, she just had this unexplainable desire to know the martial arts. There have been times however when she has needed to defend herself, but those opportunities didn't arise very often living in a town the size of Cassville, Missouri. With a population of approximately 3000 you can usually figure out who the violent crime offenders were on any given weekend. The ones who aren't in church Sunday morning are usually the ones sleeping off Saturday night's barroom brawl in the local jail. Since she is only fifteen the bar isn't where she gets her experience. Her experiences have come from ignorant high school predjudice, or boys that thought they could take advantage of her small size. The boys are just trying to prove their manhood and all the girls are having that problem. It's the predjudice that hurts the worse. Even though she has lived her whole life in Cassville, has grown up with the kids who were born there and knows their parents, there are still people who treat her differently, and sometimes even mean, just because she looks Asian.
Her parents adopted her from China when she was just an infant. They do what they can to include some of her Chinese culture into their lives. Her dad has always called her Gong Ju, which means Princess. Her name itself means pretty, or beautiful. But, living in the heart of rural America she doesn't get very many opportunities to experience her true culture. She is fortunate there just happens to be a man who lives there who is willing to teach her Kung Fu.
Since she has grown up in America she wants to live the American life, but she feels like she can't be fully American, but neither can she be fully Chinese. She used to work at Aunt Kathy's Cookies for awhile until they closed down. The owner of the Chinese restaurant said she can work there, but then she feels like she would just be allowing herself to be stereotyped. Some days she feels so lost, like she's wondering through life not knowing what to do or what lifestyle she should be following, sometimes she gets so frustrated she just wants to scream.
Even though it upsets her, every once in a while she asks her parents to tell her the story of her birth family. The adoption agency had the history of her birth family documented as it was handed down through the years. It actually starts out pretty cool, thinking how adventurous her great-grandparents were. Although she was adopted from China her family was from Tibet. Her great-grandparents left Tibet when the Dali Lama went into exile. They knew it was going to be dangerous especially being pregnant but they had to try to make it over the Himalayas to India. Naturally there is no way to prove the story, but the story that has been handed down is that although many people died, she was protected by the seti who, on occasion, actually took her into caves and laid around her keeping her warm with their fur. Then bringing her back the next morning. They eventually made it to India leaving behind everything they had ever known, but nothing could have prepared them for the life of poverty they experienced. They found work wherever possible. Some days they only had one meal and alot of times that was just enough to feed their daughter. As her grandmother grew up she learned she could use her beauty to her advantage. She could at least have a hot meal and a warm place to sleep. Needless to say she got pregnant at age fifteen. When her mother was two years old a couple of men came through town promising a better life in Hong Kong. Her grandmother, seeing no future where she was, packed up her mother and went in search of a better life. With all their glamourous promises, the life these men were offering was no different than what she had, just men with more money, and fancier gifts. Having nowhere to go, her grandmother was stuck in this lifestyle, and unfortunately because of her lack of education her mother had no choice but to live the prostitution lifestyle as well. In 1994 when her mother ended up pregnant she vowed not to raise her kid like that so she put Mei Li up for adoption.
Mei Li is grateful for the life she has, and to her birth mother for not making her grow up like that, but still she has that disconnected feeling. That longing of wanting to know her past. For now she has made her own vow. To do the best she can, go to college, and become an ambassador to China. She will make sure her own children know their heritage.
