HeyJaredThe Day After Winter
My father escaped China in 1967. I spent years rewriting his memoir, realizing his story was far bigger than I understood. Artifacts, hard questions, and the story behind the story.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 9, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 6, 2026
Latest issues
Stay for Dinner, But Don’t Stay Overnight (opens the original)
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Generosity has limits, especially when stretched across months of housing and feeding two additional people on a factory worker’s salary. My fifth brother had given me breathing room to establish myself. Now we needed to use it. — Chapter 21: Different DoorsI originally started this Substack because I was advised that in this day and age for any memoir to be published I needed a platform. So I invited everybody I knew. I announced it on LinkedIn, my second post there ever. I posted on my long-do
The Great Networking (opens the original)
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My father loves to tell the story of my first trip to China to anybody who will listen. It was my parents’ first time returning since escaping roughly eighteen years prior. Now one would imagine his story would be about reunion. Seeing long-lost friends. Showing me where he grew up. Taking me to meet relatives I had never seen before.But he talks about none of this.His story is about me. How I thought China was dirty and demanded to be carried the entire time lest my precious shoes accumulate fi
Renaissance Man (opens the original)
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He glided across the teak with balletic grace, steel wool singing against the wood as he moved from square to square. A master craftsman making impossibility look effortless. I attempted to mimic his movements. By the tenth square, my shirt was soaked. By the thirtieth, my clothes clung like a second skin. The apartment contained 140 square meters of flooring and there were only three of us. We needed to cover about a third of a square meter per minute. At my pace, we’d be here well past midnigh
Long Distance (opens the original)
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His wife pulled me aside after dinner. “Your Chi-Chao is here almost every weekend, avoiding some of her classmates who try to ask her out. She cries for you,” she said simply. “Every time she speaks of you. Tears like rain. She saves every cent, eats instant noodles and discarded vegetables that the grocery stores don’t want. I told her to prioritize her nutrition. You know what she said?” She paused. “That she needs to save money to help bring you here.”— Chapter 26 - Letters of Introduction<s
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