“You’re stubborn as a donkey!”

This is my mom’s classic mantra.

This accusation stems from my eating habits. Always finish one dish, get bored with it, and then switch to another. Scrambled eggs with tomatoes — I must pamper those eggs first before eating the tomatoes. Spicy hot pot, a traditional Chinese cuisine, where a dozen ingredients are stewed together to create a spicy taste — I have to find my favorite duck blood first and then taste the other ingredients afterward. Two distinct flavors of Häagen-Dazs in one cup? No. I have no idea why it would sell for more than a single flavor. And the reason why I behaved this way has always been a mystery in my family.

“You’ll have to suffer when you grow up.” My mother complained.

Almost my entire childhood was labeled by my mother as a donkey — which means extreme stubbornness in Chinese — and she was the only one who described me that way. I loathed this metaphor; it was not a compliment, but something that made me look stupid, and my mother was insulting my mentality.

My distaste for donkeys lasted until I was in eighth grade, when my “donkey mentality” enabled me to become the first eighth-grader in school history to serve on the student council board. Because it has long been a school policy that students under ninth grade cannot run for the presidency, I became the only eighth grader on stage. I was still aware that an entire division of teachers and students was sitting in the auditorium. As the election began and I stood on the stage with the spotlight beaming on me, the pulse I could instantly feel and the slight quivering of my legs made me feel awkward. Before that, my stubborn belief was that people’s talents shouldn’t be limited by their age; my continuous observation of students’ unmet needs and ignored mental illnesses pushed me to that stage. And I succeeded by practicing my speech at 3:00 a.m. four nights in a row, by ceaseless bargaining with the teachers in charge, and, of course, by my stubbornness.

And the metaphor that had annoyed me gradually began to surface in the circle of my life.

When I repeatedly fell over on the ski slope that I had never stepped on before; when I was interning in a new media company and frantically writing plans, fixing media materials, and confirming client information for three months; when I completed mixed-method independent research as a high school student and thus stared at Nvivo the whole night so I could translate and analyze those scripts and data:

“She’s a stubborn girl.”

This is the most common remark I received.

And I seem to be gradually uncovering the answer to my “family mystery” in these moments. I enjoy each dish’s unique taste and flavor that bursts into my mouth, those flavors that linger on my taste buds, and those that belong to that dish and cannot be neutralized by other flavors. “That’s tasteless!” I always argued with my mom when she forced me to eat another dish when I didn’t finish this one. And for all the challenges I’ve had to encounter in my life, I’ve faced them like a unique dish — savoring the neurological thrill at the moment and focusing on it with my “donkey mentality.”

Yes, I’m that little donkey, who embraces every dish, moment, and challenge with my stubbornness.

Mom, I won’t lose out. I will still wholeheartedly immerse myself in the scrambled eggs, the duck blood in the spicy hot pot, and the singleflavor ice cream in the Häagen-Dazs container. That donkey mentality has brought me this far, became part of me, and will keep propelling me forward in my journey to discover who I want to be — and, of course, to relish every feast of the senses that life offers.