From Movement to Stillness: Ming Khor on Nomadism, Burnout, and Building a Life That Fits
Susan Su (00:25)
Welcome to Liminal Space, where we explore the threshold of identity, culture and experience. I am Susan Su, one half of the hosting duo. Along with my friend Matt, we've created this podcast for those who find themselves navigating the spaces in between, whether in between cultures, worlds or ideas. Each episode,
We delve into the rich complexity of modern Chinese stories as told by those who exist at its peripheries. Diaspora voices, spirit culture kids, and individuals who embody the bridge between China and the world and between tradition and innovation. Step into liminal space with us, where we find meaning in the transitions, the gray areas, and the moments of becoming.
Matthew Lu (01:08)
Today we have the pleasure of introducing a dear friend Ming Khor, who's an education entrepreneur, a former nomad, and an emerging content creator. So welcome Ming, it's great to have you man.
Ming (01:23)
Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Susan. It's really good to be here.
Matthew Lu (01:25)
Great. So kind of before we track your journey to China and also talk about what holds in the future for you, why don't you give us a little bit of context of kind of what people might know you the best for and kind of what you've spent most of your life building so far.
Ming (01:43)
Well, I am a traveler. I love going to different cultures and countries. Growing up, I grew up in the United States and growing up, my family would take trips back to their home countries of Singapore and Malaysia. So I grew up just experiencing many different cultures and it's become part of my identity. ⁓ After college, I took a full-time job in China as a volunteer teacher and I spent the last six years living in, actually not the last six years, but
Matthew Lu (02:01)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (02:11)
from 2016 to 2022 living in China, building a business around travel. The last four years I was a digital nomad, spending time in multiple countries in Asia. So I love, let's say, liminal spaces and trying to challenge myself with new perspective. That's what my friends would say I'm best known for.
Matthew Lu (02:21)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Awesome. Great. So you mentioned you have a mixed Malaysian and Singaporean heritage. So what was it like growing up where you grew up with kind of this mixed heritage? Were there a lot of other kind of Asian Americans around you? And also feel free to talk about, I guess, any any connections that you had with your culture at that time.
Ming (02:55)
Yeah, so I grew up in Washington, DC, which is already a very multicultural place. When you travel through the airport on the way back, most people there are people of color. So I grew up in a very diverse environment. growing up, I identified as Asian American. What I didn't realize is that my particular subset is actually a minority among Asian Americans, which is already a minority in the United States.
Matthew Lu (03:07)
Mm.
Right.
Ming (03:23)
So my parents are from Singapore and Malaysia. So at the time, these two countries were British colonies. So they were already kind of in between Eastern and Western culture at the time. Growing up, my parents actually spoke English as their mother tongue, which is not common for people of Asian descent. They both came from large families. Half of their brothers and sisters
Matthew Lu (03:33)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Ming (03:46)
were sent to Chinese language schools by their parents. The other half were sent to English language schools. So I guess I kind of grew up very used to cultural differences. growing up at home in DC, we had a mix of cultures. So we spoke English at home. Growing up, I didn't speak any Chinese. We went to... My parents are both Christians, so we grew up going to church. But we also celebrated Chinese New Year.
Matthew Lu (03:50)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (04:12)
So we had a mishmash of cultures and I guess I learned that I'm a naturally optimistic person. So my biggest takeaway is that there's a lot to enjoy from different cultures. And I think I latched onto this idea that I really want to find the selling points, the enjoyable things about different cultural traditions and being someone coming from different cultures, I feel like I have equal access to enjoy these things.
Matthew Lu (04:38)
Mmm, yeah.
Ming (04:38)
So Chinese culture
is not completely myself and yet it's not completely foreign. And American culture is what I grew up in. And so, yeah, I just find it a real position of privilege to be able to kind of step in and out of different cultural spaces.
Matthew Lu (04:53)
True, true, yeah.
Susan Su (04:55)
Yeah, no, thanks for sharing. And no, that's really interesting how both your parents, native tongues were English and that of that mixed environment that you grew up with. So you mentioned that you didn't have that much exposure to China growing up in particular. So tell us about your first experience in China. I assume that was your high school trip there as a volunteer. Like what?
Matthew Lu (05:04)
Mm-hmm.
Susan Su (05:25)
bark that trip or what led to that trip and what ⁓ what did you experience there in in China that would ⁓ that would yeah yeah that make you go back later
Ming (05:28)
Ha
Matthew Lu (05:30)
Mm-hmm. Was it life-changing?
Ming (05:34)
Yeah, it certainly was.
Yes, actually growing up, I really didn't have any close identification with my Asian culture apart from maybe, you know, once a year Chinese New Year greetings. ⁓ Like I said, my parents both spoke English at home. They both speak Asian dialects, but, you know, English was the only common language at home. And growing up, it was the time of
Matthew Lu (05:46)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (05:58)
Pax Americana, so I was very proud to be an American. I completely drank that kool-aid. And in fact, I really didn't want to have much to do with my Asian culture at all. When I became a teenager, I suddenly, something just switched in my brain and I suddenly started developing a craving. I hit my growth spurt is what it was. And I suddenly had a craving for Asian food. That was my first inkling that, hey, wow, there's this dimension to my culture, which is actually quite interesting.
Matthew Lu (06:00)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You
Ming (06:25)
like this noodles taste a lot more flavorful than pizza and fries. And I started incorporating Asian food into my diet. During our home trips to Singapore and Malaysia, I was excited to see the culture there. And I was like, hey, know, these ⁓ elements of Chinese culture, my heritage, things like Chinese characters, art forms like Kung Fu, I had a Kung Fu movie phase for a while. These things are actually really cool.
Matthew Lu (06:38)
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Ming (06:49)
and they're worth exploring. So I ended up taking a trip to China as a teenager. My parents signed me up for this volunteer trip and they said, all right, you're going to do something productive this summer. It was my junior year of high school. And all I knew about this trip was that I would be teaching English to college students and then also in a rural village. So two locations in one summer.
It was my first time in China. It was 2005. And I remember from the minute the plane landed in Beijing, capital airport on the bus, just looking at all of the construction going on outside. was like, wow, there's something special happening in this country. And the process of two weeks volunteering, especially in the villages in China, it connected me to certain cultural elements of China, which I can go into later that,
for some reason really spoke to me and activated the switch that, yeah, like I want to learn more. want to spend more time in this culture. I want to learn more about what it has to offer. And it led to all of my subsequent career and personal move since.
Matthew Lu (07:40)
Mm-hmm.
Susan Su (07:56)
Yeah, no, it seems sounds like that trip really did change, your life in a lot of ways. was there a particular experience, if you still remember from then that really struck, you, was there like any, any like just really cool story or experience from that trip that I think that contributed this life changing?
Matthew Lu (08:01)
yeah.
Susan Su (08:19)
this, I guess.
Ming (08:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So going to China, you're able to encounter experiences which deepen your understanding of certain cultural archetypes. So for example, as Asian Americans, we all know this trope of studying hard, right? Like your parents like...
Like, oh, we came to this country. You got to study hard so you can get a good job. And we kind of live it. I remember when I was growing up, there was this YouTube video, this guy named Eric, and his mom is berating him for not studying hard enough. It's really funny. So we kind of grew up with these ideas as kind of a half joke. And I remember, first time I went to China, I finally got to see this study mentality in the motherland.
Matthew Lu (08:40)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (09:08)
I remember
the English language school that I was teaching at, was a boarding school. And so the kids lived at the school and they would come, they were mainly college age kids and older. And I remember walking into the classroom at 11 p.m. and the kids are still studying. And they're trying to learn English by reading the dictionary. And I was like, this blows every single stereotype I have like.
Matthew Lu (09:28)
Yeah.
Ming (09:35)
Like to the next level. And for me, you know, it's not just something foreign, right? It's not like I have exposure to this mentality, but to see it like taken to the third degree in China, it inspires a curiosity to understand more. Right. And as I talk to the kids, I asked some questions like, you know, why do you study this way and learned about, you know, how it's kind of normal to kind of learn things by memorizing.
Matthew Lu (09:44)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (10:02)
And then on an even deeper level, why are you studying so hard? So what drives that? this idea that, you know, they want to access more opportunities and they see learning a foreign language is as critical to their future. you know, rather than seeing it as I think the benefit of being someone that's cross-cultural is that with a hand and with a stake in both cultures is that you don't see these behaviors as oddities, but more like
Matthew Lu (10:02)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (10:28)
opportunities to explore a part of yourself more deeply.
Matthew Lu (10:32)
Yeah, that's really interesting. I definitely resonate with that as well. think growing up in the US, for example, we kind of take the stereotypes as just like an aspect of the social environment that we live in. But if you kind of try to unpeel where these came from, and also if you want to unlock, the kernels of truth behind, aspects of reality that actually relate to
⁓ why, why we are perceived in this way. then those clues will all be in the motherland, so to speak. So yeah, super interesting. and so kind of on the topic, you, do this volunteer teaching, project. And then I remember, I think in a past conversation, you told me that like service learning and the service projects, or a really big part of your life growing up.
Right? So I was just wondering if you could touch a little bit upon that, especially because we'll get into Karoo in the future. And just wondering how, how would you say kind of looking back now, ⁓ those service trips that you went on growing up, how did they kind of shape the kind of person that you became or the kind of worldview that you developed?
Ming (11:41)
Yeah, I think that I was really lucky to discover something that I connected with at a fundamental level at that age. You sometimes in life, you just stumble across something. Maybe it's planned. A lot of the times it's unplanned and it resonates with you at a very deep level. So for me, that was this trip going to China to teach English for two weeks. I call it a service trip. So there were three aspects that really stuck with me. The first was
Matthew Lu (11:59)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (12:10)
making friends and connecting with people across cultures. It just, and to this day, this idea that you can meet someone that is from a completely different background from you, maybe doesn't even speak the same language, has a completely different schooling, and yet there is something that connects you. So that to me is a very encouraging thing because it means that there is some sort of common humanity between people that is immutable.
And so, you know, it excites me because once you see things in this way, it makes me feel that there's a world full of people like this that I can connect with. And every single person is a portal into a new culture, a new way of doing things. It's a path to discover. So in my first service trip, that was the first thing that stuck with me, this idea that I have a way to make friends across culture and that there's people that exist everywhere that could teach me.
a new way of looking at things and I just have to find them, right? So that has been a fuel that has stuck with me to this day, 20 years since going on that first volunteer trip. The second thing was doing something meaningful with other people. So I love doing stuff together with friends. I love group experiences, especially when they're around something that is near and dear to my heart.
Matthew Lu (13:13)
Bye.
Ming (13:25)
So this idea of helping other people and also being helped by them and doing it together with your friends, to me, it unlocks this sense of goodwill that you have with other people that really I have not found in many social contexts, right? So, you know, growing up, you go to school, I'm sure you have friends at school, but you your task there is to study, right? In the workplace, you might have workplace colleagues. If you're lucky, you might be doing something that you love.
Matthew Lu (13:40)
Mm.
Ming (13:52)
But you have to follow a certain set of rules. You need to make money. When you do service, all of these, the primary goal of service is to help other people. And I find that the group vibes that are, I guess, generated through service is something that I find very powerful. And that's something that, to this day, I love helping other people with friends and just having this mutual exchange. And then the last one really quickly is China. So China in 2005.
Matthew Lu (14:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (14:19)
was on the move. People were hungry. And I think it's really exciting to step into a place where opportunities abound. They're just on the ground waiting for you to pick up. The energy of that type of environment is something that I find very inspiring. And I guess it's one reason which led me to pick entrepreneurship as a career. So those three things are what stuck with me from that first trip.
Matthew Lu (14:28)
Mm-hmm.
got it. Wow. Very, very poignant. I appreciate that. ⁓ So did you I guess, from that trip onwards, did you know that you wanted to be a so called entrepreneur after that? And, you know, is that something that you studied in college? I guess walk us through kind of the path of what we what you decided to pursue.
Ming (14:48)
Ha
Matthew Lu (15:07)
in college and then how that maybe connects to what came afterwards.
Ming (15:11)
So that trip happened in my junior year of high school, I 17 at the time. The next year was senior year. And I think because of that trip, it helped me realize that my interests are what I just said. So cross-cultural service, helping other people, China related. And it actually led me to choose international relations as a major. I minored in East Asian studies as well. Yeah. And at the time I thought I was gonna be a diplomat. So because of this inclination,
Matthew Lu (15:31)
I see.
Ming (15:39)
I actually chose to study abroad. I went to the University of Toronto. So I'm an American. I went to Canada for school. And for those who aren't in the know, Canada and America are actually very, different. ⁓ I remember it was, yeah, when I went into, when I matriculated, it was 2006. It was actually the height of US intervention in the Middle East on the, in the war on terror. And, and, you know, in the US we had this mentality that
Matthew Lu (15:44)
Mm.
Mmm, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (16:08)
Kind of like today where might makes right and and you know, you kind of drink the Kool-Aid that yeah We're gonna make the world safe and we're fighting terror and when I went to Canada, I got a completely different perspective on United States intervention abroad. So I love that it challenged my views at the time I was thinking yeah, I want to become a diplomat like I want to be on the front lines, you know doing negotiations and and
Matthew Lu (16:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ming (16:33)
you know, like being the face of my country, representing it abroad. That was my thinking at the time and throughout all four years of college. And I just want to say that I was so impacted by my initial volunteering trip that I continued doing it every single year. So as a senior in high school and as a freshman, junior, sophomore, and junior in college, I went back and I taught English in China every single year, you know, obviously changing responsibilities, obviously a lot of different lessons.
But that's how meaningful I thought the activity was.
Susan Su (17:04)
Wow. That just made me wonder too, since you said you went back like every single year and China was obviously developing very rapidly back then. So what were some changes you saw during ⁓ each year like coming back? Like I remember even as a child, when I visited every year there would be like a new skyscraper that I didn't know existed before that like just emerged. how was it like going back year after year and seeing these changes both?
of like maybe physically and culturally.
Ming (17:32)
Yeah, it was great. I feel like when I went, it was still in the early stages of China's opening up. So infrastructure was obviously, I'm going gangbusters. So the years that I covered were 2005 to 2009. And remember China was preparing for the Olympics in 2008. So from those early three years, I saw the construction of the bird's nest in Beijing. I also got to experience
Matthew Lu (17:51)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (17:58)
China during the Sichuan earthquake. So I was there that summer and I actually went to Sichuan to volunteer. So I was able to see the response. And it was just it was just incredible. Chinese people have I've always found Chinese people very welcoming and and getting to experience in different culture in different contexts from urban context to rural context in this environment of openness was just a real privilege. I have to say that
Matthew Lu (18:03)
Dang. Okay.
Ming (18:24)
my favorite, I guess like two memories stick out, mainly for their novelty. So the first was going to Beijing. There was a market called Hongqiao where foreign tourists could go and bargain for all sorts of things. So I remember and we would bargain for shirts and like swords and all sorts of trinkets. And that was like obviously a really super fun experience. And I think by
Matthew Lu (18:35)
Mm-hmm.
You
Yeah.
Ming (18:51)
2013, 14, these markets had completely disappeared. And then I also remember China as a country that was trying to figure out rules. So I remember like one time we were on a bus and the bus was going to the airport except it went down the wrong path. So it basically did a U-turn on that road, went against traffic to go back into the right path of the station. was like, that's just the way.
Matthew Lu (18:55)
Yeah.
Ming (19:19)
things happened in China. I found it fascinating that, you know, places in the world operated on their own rules. And obviously these things change over time as China became more developed. But it's really fun. mean, like, you're like, wow, this is like freedom.
Matthew Lu (19:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I don't think you could do that anymore.
Yeah, whatever makes it happen, right? Whatever we need to get the ship back on track, essentially. Yeah.
Susan Su (19:44)
Yeah, I China was like wild back then, remembering things from that happened when I was a kid and it was like, ⁓ that's not going to happen like nowadays.
Matthew Lu (19:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ming (19:53)
Yeah,
it's special. I think ⁓ what strikes me about that is I've come to realize that every season in ⁓ society or life is temporary. And you don't know if it's going to last a year, a day, five years, 10 years. So for me, that's really cultivated this mindset that you need to be grateful and be in the present and just enjoy the moment for whatever it is. I think that today people are kind of
tied to their concept of what life should be. But it's important to realize that things are temporary. And I actually think that one of the advantages of being cross-cultural or being used to liminality or in liminal spaces that you're primed to switch to the next thing, right? You you're in a very convenient position that, you know, you're adaptable. I think that, yeah, you you got to realize that things are temporary. But as someone that exists in a liminal,
Matthew Lu (20:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (20:46)
space with that conditioning, you're also very primed to move on to the next thing. for me, that's been helpful in my professional personal life.
Matthew Lu (20:54)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point. And kind of moving in the liminal, living in the liminal, gives you, it allows you to see the opportunities, I guess, like you said, to move on to the next thing, to jump into the next culture, perhaps. And also connecting the point of, you know, everything is temporary, everything is impermanent. I would say the same thing is true for your perception of like what culture or cultures you're built from.
Right? Because that's also constantly evolving, because it's constantly evolving and changing, that means that it's an impermanent thing. And that's something that I'm sure you feel when you're moving through or, you know, living in different countries and traveling to different places. Right? Yeah.
Ming (21:38)
Yeah, for
sure. For sure.
Susan Su (21:40)
Circling back then to kind of your life trajectory, kind of went off its head on like more China, like, wow, so then like, so you eventually would go back to China. But what happened between like, I want to be a diplomat and represent my country to like eventually becoming an entrepreneur in China? what was, yeah, what happened in college? And ⁓ yeah, yeah, how did that shift happen?
Matthew Lu (21:48)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (21:58)
Ha ha ha!
Matthew Lu (22:03)
Mm-hmm.
Big shift.
Ming (22:07)
Yeah.
Okay, so on a high level, the high level answer to your question is, I realize more about myself and my preferences, and I felt that those were best expressed through entrepreneurship. So I remember I really had this dream of being a diplomat, and I associated that with things that I thought were important to me. So number one, this idea of being part of something greater than myself. And number two, I guess just like the influence and prestige.
of these things. I carried this dream after college. So I decided after college that I wasn't ready to go into that track immediately and I wanted more real life experience. So I actually decided to become a teacher. I applied to this fellowship called World Teach. They used to, they're now defunct, but they used to send teachers, all over the world for teaching assignments of a year. China was a location of theirs. They also had locations across the
Oceania, other parts of Asia, Europe, and even Latin America. And then, so I did World Teach in Hunan for a year. And then I joined another nonprofit called Teach for China, which is kind of like Teach for America. They're a fellowship program, volunteer nonprofit that recruits recent college grads to teach English for two years in rural parts of China. So all throughout the entire process, I thought that, you know, the pot of gold at the end of
all these years of service is ⁓ becoming a diplomat. And I even took the test. I went back to DC on one of the breaks and I took the foreign service exam. I ended up getting to the second round, but I was rejected. And I think it was at the time, so it was during my third year in China. So one year of world teach, two years of teacher China, one, two, three years, I was getting ready to apply to grad school. And I was like, all right, life is getting real now.
Matthew Lu (23:37)
Wow.
Ming (23:58)
So I actually have to like, you know, I can't just like not have an idea of what I'm doing. I actually need to do some research and figure out what comes next. So I did something very simple. I looked at the employment report of some of these graduate schools that are set up for people that want to enter public service. So at the time I was considering international relations, public service, and I looked at the job descriptions, you know, and I started researching, okay, what exactly does a diplomat do? What exactly, you know, does like a research?
Matthew Lu (24:01)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (24:25)
fellow do and and then I realized that while they sound really cool I actually want like I'm actually not interested at all in the substance of the work. I remember after after like I this impression that you know as a diplomat you don't just get to do your own thing you need to represent the people in power and I remember after the US interventions overseas during the Bush era I was like do I really want to have to like
Matthew Lu (24:35)
Mm-hmm.
That's a lot of responsibility to hold on your personal face for a nation.
Ming (24:53)
know, defend this stuff if I don't personally believe it.
Well, I guess ⁓ some people are good at compartmentalizing, but for me, I've always had to be consistent. I need to be this passion, mission-driven person and do stuff that is aligned. so I just realized that I was not aligned enough with the roles and responsibilities of a diplomat to actually want to go and do it.
Matthew Lu (25:12)
I hear you.
Ming (25:23)
I have another point that I'll make about this sometime in the future of this podcast. But just to summarize my answer, my third year I decided that, hey, I don't think that the Foreign Service is the right avenue for my passions. I like the idea of business. think that, particularly entrepreneurship, I feel like it's a lot more like choose your own adventure. And so I ended up applying to business school after three years in nonprofit in China.
Matthew Lu (25:28)
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (25:49)
And I went to the University of Pennsylvania for my MBA and I started the program in 2016.
Matthew Lu (25:49)
Mm-hmm.
Gotcha. Very cool. So I remember us talking about kind of your experience at Wharton and how in the beginning you kind of felt like a little bit like out of it. You kind of felt like, I kind of have like imposter syndrome or like, you know, I'm going from international relations to entrepreneurship, but all of the people around me, like they seem to already have this kind of experience or they're, you know, in finance or consulting and whatnot.
Ming (26:19)
Ha
Matthew Lu (26:19)
So
what was that, what was that like process like for you, both in kind of finding your own confidence, that you can actually do what you want to do and execute on a vision and build a company. And what was it like kind of mingling with those types of people in that environment?
Ming (26:35)
Yeah, so when we discuss this today in the present, you know, with hindsight, everything seems so clear and strategic, but actually the truth is I only, had a very incoherent idea, a very incomplete idea of what I was getting myself into. I just had this high level notion that business seemed more suited to my needs and you know, like I was still driven by this achievement mentality. So.
Matthew Lu (26:43)
Right, right.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (27:00)
I wanted
to go to a school that had a reputation and also had a program for international relations. And that's it, right? I didn't have this very clear idea that, I'm really passionate about this. I must do this. This is all very incomplete. when I went to, when I matriculated in 2016, all I knew is that, OK, I'm going to Wharton. I'm entering a dual degree program that has a tie with international relations. So I feel like I'm going to be among my ilk, my academic ilk.
in this ⁓ program. And let's just take it from there. The only planning I did for my future was to look at the employment report for the school. know, this Asian practicality is coming out of me. And I saw that consulting, management consulting seems like a very highly paid and prestigious position. you know, like in a similar way that I understood the Foreign Service, you know, I also had the same assumptions about
Matthew Lu (27:36)
Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah.
Yes.
Ming (27:54)
these careers in the business field. know, management consulting seems like the way to go. They pay you really well. You get to talk to important people. They'll put you in five-star hotels. Yeah, it really strokes the ego. I think that's what I want to do. Yeah. So actually, I wrote my admissions essay on that. And you know, which is fine, right? Like at the time, you need to present yourself as you are and you figure things out as you go along.
Matthew Lu (28:03)
Mm-hmm.
fancy PowerPoints. Yep.
Wow, okay.
Ming (28:22)
And I remember going into school, they do these things called info sessions where employers come and they try and pitch the firm ⁓ to the MBA students. And I remember the first time I actually heard a management consulting job presentation, I was like, I really don't think this is for me. Like I have actually no interest in helping a big company make more money or cut costs.
Matthew Lu (28:30)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ming (28:49)
It sounds interesting, but I don't think I really care about this stuff at an intrinsic level. And so the first year was actually quite difficult because I felt like intuitively I knew that this was not my path. But at the same time, you don't know what else is out there. And even worse, you're surrounded by a legion of people who are extremely smart and sound like they have life figured out, who are all going in this direction. ⁓
Matthew Lu (28:54)
Yeah, yeah
Right.
Yeah.
Ming (29:17)
It can be quite disorienting.
Matthew Lu (29:19)
For sure. Like why, why does everybody want this thing that seems completely unappealing to me? Right? This, kind of ⁓ feeling can be quite disorienting. Right. So over time, ⁓ how did you kind of eventually find your, your own kind of more, more stable footing or how did you learn to, guess, listen to your, your, your self a little bit more and maybe block out some of these other
Ming (29:28)
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (29:46)
these other voices or influences.
Ming (29:49)
Yeah, so I think that I've always known that if I have some intuition about something, it's a signal to me that I need to keep pulling on that thread. ⁓ so what I ended up and of course, like practical experiences in life will help to guide and nudge you and they'll unlock different levels of experience, which is kind of an iterative process. So what I did practically in business school was first year was actually really tough.
Matthew Lu (29:57)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (30:16)
particularly the first semester. I actually remember, think like I'm conscious of this now, but I remember being so intimidated by my lack of an anchor that I would actually physically remove myself from campus every single weekend. I had a car at the time and I would drive two hours back to Maryland for the weekend.
Matthew Lu (30:28)
Mm-hmm.
wow.
Ming (30:40)
just to physically not be there. And at the time, I couldn't articulate why I was doing this, but in hindsight, I look back and I was like, yeah, you know what, it was kind of like self-care, this idea of going to a space that felt familiar, where I could be a little bit more grounded and not just be in this environment that is very go, go, go and lose myself in it. So that's a soft practice.
Matthew Lu (30:59)
Yeah, right.
Ming (31:02)
practical things that actually happened were I ended up getting an internship that summer that kind of checked the boxes for me. It allowed me to address some of the questions that I had about myself going in and give me clarity for the future. So the role was actually with Apple in their corporate social responsibility department. ⁓ This is not a traditional role that they hire for. It was, you know, I'm forever grateful for the manager that put this role.
Matthew Lu (31:21)
Mm.
Ming (31:29)
⁓ for hiring. She was from the labor and human rights department in corporate social responsibility. And as you know, Apple works with a lot of factories in China to produce their products. So they were looking for an intern that could help them do some analysis about workers in their supply chain. And I just happened to have the experience in Teach for China working with
Matthew Lu (31:41)
yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (31:54)
rural population, so I was a fit for the role. I remember I ended up beating out hundreds of applicants, not because I was more academically gifted, but just because I had an experience which was more aligned to the role. And that internship, it checked the boxes. So it helped me resolve a lot of doubts that I had about myself. So number one doubt, with my nonprofit experience, am I actually good enough to exist in the corporate world?
Matthew Lu (31:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, perfect fit.
Ming (32:19)
Well, Apple gave me an internship, right? So I felt I felt that check the box. Second, with my nonprofit experience, like, like, can I actually earn good money? Or like, is my skill set there? Apple paid a boatload of money to their interns. So that checked the box. And then the other was, I really want to see what corporate life was like. And I got that through the internship and I had enough of experience that I realized that this is really nice. But I still felt like
Matthew Lu (32:20)
Mm.
Yeah, can I support my living? Yeah.
Ming (32:49)
working for a large organization was just a little bit too removed from stuff that I cared about, right? So in my second year, I gave up a return offer and I made the decision that, I think that I need to figure out, I just can't find any job that really suits my interests. So I'm just gonna make my own job and yeah, yeah, yeah, and see if I can figure out. So that was the journey.
Matthew Lu (32:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Make your own. Yeah.
Susan Su (33:13)
Yeah, no, that's um, thank you for sharing and I think we definitely I think Matt and I can probably relate to many many aspects like from for me especially when you talk about your first year like really physically removing yourself from like Penn to be at like a safer space and I just remember like last year living in Shenzhen and doing like all those weekend trips just to not be in Shenzhen and being gross and that like hustle culture and
Matthew Lu (33:21)
yeah.
Ming (33:21)
Yeah.
You
Matthew Lu (33:29)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, exactly. Right.
Susan Su (33:39)
I just go visit Beijing, visit Matt, like whenever I had the opportunity, like, just gotta forget about my actual environment. I also think the, yeah, the part about like the Apple role definitely is, I think it's important to have that validation that even if it's not the role that like, it's not like something you will eventually go into like.
Matthew Lu (33:43)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (33:48)
Yeah.
Susan Su (34:02)
you mentioned you didn't take their offer, but it still gave you that validation that like what you were doing and what your background was like that was important. I know there are there's a lot of like news back in like the the 2010s, like if like, like Fox Home Workers like committing suicide and, and all of that.
Matthew Lu (34:18)
Mm.
Susan Su (34:19)
So it's good that they had this role or they had this like department looking into just the factory workers and it didn't seem like he wasn't a good fit.
Ming (34:23)
Sure.
Matthew Lu (34:25)
Yeah. Wonder...
I wonder if it's still, yeah, still there. Like if they still have this department and if it's still like a functioning entity. Yeah. Okay.
Ming (34:29)
Yeah, I had a lot of fun.
They do. Yeah. Yeah, they do. They ⁓
you can check out the website. Their sustainability report every year is produced by this department. It's still there. And just, you know, one more response to you, Susan. I think one of my reflections through this process that I actually think that it's perfectly valid to seek validation from from, you know, structures in society. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.
Matthew Lu (34:44)
Cool.
Yeah.
Ming (35:03)
You know, your needs are different. You evolve as a person and during certain seasons sometimes you just need a bit of encouragement. I just think that at some point you really have to decide what is your priority, right? So do you want to exist in that space, you know, your entire life? Or are there other things that you pursue that might cause you to, you make a trade-off between what's safe and what you really want to do, right? So...
Matthew Lu (35:14)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (35:27)
Yeah, that's why, you know, no judgment, right? Like people make their choices in life and I just view everyone's choices as a representation of what they prioritize. My only hope is that, you know, if someone is struggling with figuring out which direction to go, I hope that people can have the courage to really go after what it is that they want inside at some point in their life.
Matthew Lu (35:49)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Susan Su (35:51)
For
sure, yeah. sounds like you did just that. mean, tell us about Furu then. Tell us about what you went ahead and built.
Ming (35:56)
haha
Matthew Lu (35:57)
Yeah.
Ming (36:02)
Yeah, so my volunteer experiences gave me some pretty solid ideas of things that I like. connect, these experiences connected me to fundamental attributes that I just appreciated. So I love travel. I just love going to a completely different place and experiencing the new culture. I love service as we discussed and I like to do this activity in groups.
Those are the three things that, you when I was doing my self-assessment, I was like, all right, I really care about these things and I wanna help people. So I came up with this idea that, all right, why don't I organize trips for other students to go and travel to communities that are different than themselves and do acts of service. So they could be things like teaching like I did, or doing analysis and reports.
Matthew Lu (36:50)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (36:52)
gathering stories from locals. I thought that these would be powerful ways to engage other communities and also help other young learners. So I just knew that this was something that had been good for me and I wanted to share it with other people. in my second year of business school, I was like, all right, well, now I need to graduate and actually make a living. So why don't I see if I can make a business out of this? So I started planning a trip. The trip was to Yunnan province and the concept was
⁓ There was a non-profit that I connected with that distributes water filters and they're looking for new project sites. So I thought, why don't I take a bunch of students to some rural schools in Yunnan, we'll do some site analysis and we'll see if we can discover some new sites that the non-profit can donate filters to. So I organized a 17-day trip. I ended up recruiting eight students for this program. Six adults came with me as mentors. We went out to Yunnan.
and we visited a couple schools and we helped identify sites. That was my first trip in 2016. Had a great time. Was able to charge people for this experience. So it was self-sustaining. And after that first trip, I was like, hey, this concept could actually work as a business. And I moved to Shanghai and I spent six years there, growing this company and we're still around today.
Matthew Lu (38:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, still around today. That's more than you can say for most entities that went through the...
Ming (38:12)
Ha ha!
Susan Su (38:16)
Yeah, wow. So how long, how did it like that first trip though, I'm curious, like, how did you figure out like, just the logistics of like, mean, seven, 17 days, like, how did you get the students? How did you get the students there? Like, what was like that? Like, yeah, yeah. And like, just get this all organized.
Matthew Lu (38:33)
Mm-hmm. That's a lot of people too, right? Like almost 20 people.
Ming (38:39)
Okay, so there's several different elements. The first element is you got to figure out what it is you're doing, right? So what is the actual mission? So based on this notion of help, I was able to connect two dots. The first dot is that my friend who runs a water nonprofit has filters to donate. He needs to find new sites. The second dot is that under-resourced schools in Yunnan, the ones that I was exposed to as a Teach for China volunteer,
Matthew Lu (39:00)
you
Ming (39:07)
have use for donations. So once I made that connection, was like, okay, you know, I could facilitate this, but you can't just give away stuff to people, right? You kind of need to do a needs analysis. You need to make sure that this is a good stewardship of the donation. Hence the need for an actual trip to go out there. So the second point, so first point is figuring out the need. Second point is, all right, I need this to pay for itself. So why, why like, so,
Matthew Lu (39:18)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (39:36)
Who's gonna pay for this and how do I organize it? And I knew that there are students out there who are looking for summer camps, summer activities. I did this as a volunteer activity and I paid money to go to China and paid money to cover costs and to support the organization. So I knew that people would pay money for this. So I created a PowerPoint and I started messaging everybody I knew and I said,
Matthew Lu (39:40)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (40:00)
Hey, I'm really passionate about this project. Do you know people that are in high school that are looking for things to do? And through the grapevine, I ended up getting in touch with a couple of parents. One of the students was a sibling of my classmate, and I would share with them about what I did. yeah, I ended up finding eight students from different parts of China, somewhere in the US.
And I distinctly remember in mid April, my first student paid me. ⁓ She handed me a check for a large amount of money that I had never seen before. It was not that much, but like a large amount of money for me. And as I took the check from her, like this thought in my mind, I cannot believe someone is actually paying me to do something. And I remember...
Matthew Lu (40:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ming (40:49)
Like it took all of my willpower not to rip that check out of her hands and just run to the bank and cash it. But thankfully I maintained my composure and over the next two months, April, May and June, we ended up getting the other students. You know, I sent them a trip itinerary, much in the way a group tour does things. I met them at the airport and we had a great 17 days in Yunnan.
Matthew Lu (40:53)
Ha ha.
Thankfully. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Wow, yeah, the first of many trips. also, yeah, Karoo and these service learning, experiential learning ⁓ projects that you do with students, that's also how, I guess, we came to know each other from the same industry, right? And so, yeah, kind of looking back at all of the different projects that you've designed or led for Karoo in different places, different types of projects.
Ming (41:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (41:35)
What would you say are like some of the characteristics or the attributes for the projects that were the most successful in terms of actually influencing the students in terms of actually impacting maybe the way that they saw the world or help them understand themselves or what they wanted to do better? Because I'm sure you've done a ton, right? And not all of them are equally as successful. And how, I guess,
Another follow up question is how do you define success now for these trips?
Ming (42:06)
Okay, I'll answer your questions in order. So I can think of two trips that were really meaningful. The first is in Shanghai, we work with an organization that supports blind and low vision individuals and their purpose is to educate other people about the needs of this community. So our program is a 10 day program with them, happens in the summer and the students will come.
Matthew Lu (42:25)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (42:30)
and they will work with these blind, so we actually work with blind and low vision athletes. So they'll work with these athletes, these Paralympic athletes to design a new sport, right? So in the past, and so the blind and low vision athletes, they spend the 10 days with the kids and they actually work with them. They give them real time feedback to design this game. Some of the games that have been developed are things like, you know, like a dart game for, which has a sensor.
Matthew Lu (42:39)
Okay.
Wow.
Ming (42:58)
that provides feedback to the player. you know, like even if you can't see what's going on, you know where the dart landed, something like that, right? The biggest takeaway for that program is I think all of the students that join our projects are good-hearted. You know, they genuinely want to help others. What I love about the program is that this might sound a bit cliché, but they really learn that they get helped as much from the experience as they help.
Matthew Lu (43:05)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Ming (43:23)
And
I love how they learn how to interact with people who are different on a basis of parody rather than looking down at people as objects of help. So every student has good intentions, but they might come in with this attitude that, like, you know, like I have full functioning eyes and so like, you know, I'm here to help. ⁓ Nothing wrong with that, but you might miss half of the learning, which is that, you know, you realize that you can
Matthew Lu (43:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ming (43:52)
other people, blind and low vision people have other skills and strengths. And if you open your mind, you know, you can definitely be helped with them. So I remember a girl joined and she was like very, ⁓ she was just like an introvert, right? And to her surprise, her co-designer, who was this blind, individual athlete was the most extroverted person ever, you know, always encouraging group participation. And over the course of the 10 days, she actually
Matthew Lu (43:57)
For sure.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (44:21)
you know, learn to develop more confidence. She felt safe enough to be invited into the group. And I was like, and while at the same time, you know, ⁓ leveraging her talents to design the game. And I was like, this is a perfect example of mutual interactions. Right. And I think that for me, you asked what defines success. It's really this, right. Like learning to interact with people on the basis of parody, on the basis of exchange. think that allows for connections.
Matthew Lu (44:27)
Wow.
Yeah.
Ming (44:48)
that for me, connections like these are pillars, right? Like their friendships is what they are. And, you know, I think that having good friends, having community, I mean, isn't that what we all, isn't that all something that we want in life? So for me, that's one of the attributes of success.
Matthew Lu (44:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that that's probably why, you know, this program and the programs that you do, they're a little bit different than maybe a lot of the the volunteerism service projects that we see in the mainstream kind of international education market, where it's really easy to kind of put together an itinerary, it's really easy to find someone, quote unquote, who needs help, right, or a group of people.
or an entity, and it's easy to send your little minions over and have them stroke their own egos and, you know, do stuff, right? But at the end of the day, I think a lot of those programs and colleges, of course, have now come to understand it's very limited in terms of how it actually shapes a person. And, you know, what you just described there, I think, if students can get any
percentage of that feeling, it definitely helps them mature a lot more and probably helps them grow in the right direction in the future.
Ming (46:06)
Yeah, I'd love to see that.
Matthew Lu (46:07)
Yeah, cool. I guess, you know, Kuru went pretty smoothly, I assume, in the beginning, of growing gradually, I suppose. And then when COVID hit, what kind of happened with the company? How did you manage this big transition or this this plague?
Ming (46:14)
Yeah.
man.
Okay. man. Okay, so COVID was a huge shock to us and really challenged the fundamentals of the business. I remember in 2020, I was actually in Cambodia when the pandemic hit and I got this news of this strange virus. Nobody knew what it was. But I just, this is the thing about Chinese people.
Chinese people are very quick and there were a lot of them in Cambodia at the time. And I just remember going on the streets of Phnom Penh and seeing Chinese business people going from store to store to store, buying up masks. And that was the signal to me that something is up. So the first thing that I did was, and I kind of mean this as a joke, was to change our business model. So after witnessing those people buying up masks,
Matthew Lu (47:03)
Wow.
Ming (47:16)
I went out to buy masks the very same day and I brought them back to China and I sold masks and because we weren't able to run our and I don't know if I should say this because I might get in trouble with the Chinese government but but you know for a time we weren't able to do any travel programs so I was thinking but we weren't able to travel I was thinking should I just send my staff out globally to like buy up masks and like sell in China like should we just become like a like an import company? You know obviously that didn't last and we were
left-facing, very real problems. We tried a lot of different things. We tried running online classes. We had one good season for that. But our identity is really not online. And I realized that in business, if you execute fast enough, you can always do something to make quick money if you the right trend. But if you don't really fundamentally care about it, it's never going to sustain itself. So for us, that meant trips. Thankfully, China had controlled the virus quite well.
Matthew Lu (47:54)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (48:09)
So we were able to get back to operation in 2020 that summer and things were okay. 2020, 2021 were years of growth for us. We actually ended up growing during that year. There was a lot of captive business within China, students that needed activities that could not go out. And we were just, you know, there at the right time, right place to provide service. 2022 is when the floor fell out and I learned a really hard lesson in business, which is that,
Matthew Lu (48:14)
Mm-hmm.
Sure. Yeah.
Ming (48:37)
as good as it is to be optimistic, you also need to manage risk. I had not managed risk very well. I had basically taken the signal of increased business during 2020 and 2021 as a sign that I should expand the business. And I increased hiring. We went from five people to 10 people and the floor fell out of the market in 2022. And I just found myself with my pants down financially. And I actually had to end up letting
Matthew Lu (48:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah
Ming (49:06)
a lot of the team go. So 2022, we went from 10 people to four people, very, very difficult psychologically. It definitely put me in some mild grade depression. When China opened up in 2022, I actually ended up coming back to the US to take an extended break. And the company has kind of been at this level since.
Matthew Lu (49:08)
Mm.
Mm.
Ming (49:31)
a lot smaller, about 40 % are pre-pandemic size. And I think ego-wise and psychologically, it was really tough for me. But what I've come to realize is that it actually fits my personality to run this type of business a lot more. You know, we are a seasonal business now. We are heavy in the summer. And the rest of the time, I'm able to travel and do other things.
Matthew Lu (49:34)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (49:57)
And I actually realized, once I got beyond that ego hit, I realized that this is actually a much more suitable lifestyle for me. And I'm actually glad that I was kind of thrown off this never-ending wheel of increasing expectations to be able to enjoy a slower pace of life and explore things that I never would have had the chance had I remained on that ⁓ hamster wheel of work.
Matthew Lu (49:57)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I hear you, Yeah, similar experience with me also running like my small consulting company in Beijing for a few years during COVID. And then dissolving it eventually and becoming more of like a freelancer, I think gives us a lot more flexibility, less stress as well. More
Ming (50:30)
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (50:38)
I guess control over how we want to spend our time, especially in the non busy seasons. And I think for you and I definitely we are people who are very interested in going out and acquiring very different types of diverse experiences and then letting those experiences kind of take root within ourselves, creating the cycle, which eventually I think we both believe that the.
the fruits of this experiencing will eventually appear elsewhere, maybe in something that makes money, maybe not, maybe in new connections, new projects, but in things that are ultimately fulfilling and sustainable for ourselves, right? Yeah.
Ming (51:17)
Totally agree.
Susan Su (51:20)
Wow. So, okay, we definitely have a lot of questions for your like nomadic lifestyle. But first, kind of want to, I'm kind of also just curious about, just Kuro in the beginning, because starting from that first trip, you seem to have recruited more like, okay, American students who take that trip to China, but then you
Matthew Lu (51:29)
Yeah.
Susan Su (51:43)
you then you yourself back to Shanghai and then started a company there and did this full time. So what was actually moving to China like? Like before you were there as like a volunteer, but then now you're there as a, like starting your own, running your own company. Tell us about that and just like living there, adjusting to things.
Ming (51:56)
Ha ha!
Matthew Lu (51:56)
Mm-hmm.
Like, yeah.
Ming (52:04)
Yeah.
So when I moved to Shanghai right after business school, was, how old was I? was 28 at the time. And my mentality at the time was, okay, I've had like my fun in life and I still wanna have fun in life, but you know, I now need to make a living. There's been a lot of investment in this 28 years and now I need to show that, you know, I can be productive. So I think I had this pressure that I need to succeed.
Matthew Lu (52:19)
Thanks
Ha
Ming (52:34)
And to me, success meant making money. And in my mindset, the way that I can make money and also maintain my independence is being an entrepreneur. So why Shanghai? I'd only been there once for my business school interview two years prior in 2014. And I thought, hey, this seems to be a nice city. It's halfway between Beijing and Shenzhen, the middle of the country.
Matthew Lu (52:56)
You
True, Yeah.
Ming (53:00)
Why not? Right? So on a whim,
actually, I just moved there. I'm not really a planner. So I just decided to move to Shanghai and set up our company there. I knew nobody. I kept in contact with a lot of connections from Teach for China who moved there. I had some business school classmates. And then I was at the time attending a church there. So some church friends. So that was my community. And
Matthew Lu (53:22)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (53:23)
you slowly like you share about what you're doing. You accumulate connections. But yeah, I went through the whole bootstrap entrepreneurship process myself. I never really like, I guess like, again, like, you know, you don't really realize like, I think you can articulate why you do things in hindsight. But at the time, you know, I didn't take investment, you know, I wasn't like, I just never really felt drawn to this like Silicon Valley style of entrepreneurship.
Matthew Lu (53:32)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (53:49)
Now I realize that it's because I really value control and doing things my way over making a boatload of money. But I remember at the time I was like, all right, yeah, I'm just going to rough it. So I did the whole bootstrap entrepreneur thing, working at... I remember the first two months I was working at coffee shops and I spent every day at the coffee shop and I memorized their soundtrack because they only had like 10 songs and I would hear that like 30 times a day. So I memorized their soundtrack.
like plan my time according to like when is this song, you when this song plays, I know I've been working for like an hour and then take a break. I don't even look at my watch and you know, I saw the flow of people coming in and out like the afternoon crowd. So that was my life. And eventually we upgrade to an office. I got staff. I can tell more stories about this that are quite funny. But yeah, I'm glad for the experience because because I think it was all a lot of fun. And, know, when you're in your late 20s, like, you know,
Matthew Lu (54:22)
That's hilarious.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (54:46)
Like,
yeah, you want to have stories. So, yeah, I have tons of stories. But yeah, we were blessed that we grew every single year. It was just the right time to enter the market. You know, there were several forces, increasing numbers of Chinese students going to the US. People still had a lot of disposable income. There was not a lot of competition. So it was just a good time to be in the market.
Susan Su (55:08)
Yeah, no, for sure. think those those few years, definitely, there's lot of growth was before the tech crap down kind of. So yeah, and I totally relate to the story of like, the bootstrap entrepreneur working at cafes. I think like when I my last company when we first started, we were just like, we had every single week weekly meeting at like, a different cafe in the city. And then we would, we'd work out a different cafes. And then we eventually got an office and like, wow, like,
Ming (55:15)
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (55:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. It's pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah.
Susan Su (55:37)
upgrade and no it's it's a vibe.
Ming (55:41)
Yeah, you feel
like you've made it. then, and then I remember, man, I remember, okay, so I remember like, this is a story that really touched me. I remember I was looking for my first office and I was considering between two office locations. actually I was, was, I was actually like strung up for offices, but my staff, my sole staff at the time said, you know,
we need to find an office. So I went out and I found this office and it was this like Spartan office in like, you know, like, like a manufacturing district in Shanghai. And I took my staff there and you know, clearly like it's, and she's like from Shanghai. So she's like someone with expectations about her working environment. And I remember like, she looked at me and she's like, she's like, gave me this look and I'm like, Oh gosh, she's going to leave. And she's like, Ming.
Matthew Lu (56:25)
Yeah.
Ming (56:32)
If you choose this office, we'll make it work. And I was like, that is like the most heartwarming message of loyalty that I've ever received for anyone. was like, all right, I cannot give her this office. I need to find a better option. So I was like, all right, I'm to give it one more day. I contacted the real estate agent and she took me across the street where they were opening a new coworking space. It was a brand called Distri, which was a
Matthew Lu (56:37)
Ha
Yeah, State for the work.
Susan Su (56:42)
No.
Matthew Lu (57:00)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (57:01)
Less well priced than we work. It was lower price than we work and naked hub at the time and they took me to their smallest office Corner off like like inside office no windows like 3,500 per month and and uh, and you know, much better environment and I was like, okay This is it and and I chose that and that was our first office and you know made my staff very happy to come along with me and uh, and that's how we started and then eventually
Matthew Lu (57:17)
Pretty good. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (57:30)
We moved to WeWork about, I think, two years later, and it was the one on Menjing West Road. I was only paying around $5,000 for a two-seater, but when we moved there with the nice, colorful couches, I was like, we've made it, Yeah, we're legit. I feel proud to invite people to this office now.
Matthew Lu (57:34)
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for coffee chats and stuff.
Susan Su (57:54)
Yeah, I know. It's all about the colorful couches. Oh my God. Our first office, we had the couches, we had like a view and like, yeah, we made it. We might be sharing this space with like 10 other startups, but like, no, it's a good, good feeling for sure. Yeah.
Matthew Lu (58:07)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (58:10)
Yeah, they had free
beer at the time, so my staff really liked that. It was a fun place to be.
Matthew Lu (58:16)
Mm-hmm.
Susan Su (58:16)
Nice,
Yeah, so I guess then moving, guess culturally then in Shanghai and also as you like you mentioned you love to travel, you love to relate to different like communities. When you first started both like living in Shanghai and taking students on these trips to different parts of China, like how did you feel like you fit in
culturally? Like were you able to, I guess, given your background, did you feel like you could relate to these people? Did you, were there like challenges or were things made easier because of what you'd had experienced before?
Ming (59:00)
Yeah, to be honest, overall in China, I've always felt extremely welcome. I think as an Asian American, locals view me as someone with whom they have less distance than someone who has no Asian heritage at all. So that's a huge plus. Improving my Chinese, being able to speak Chinese helps. And I just think the general vibe of China has always been very welcoming.
Matthew Lu (59:12)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (59:23)
I think that there's two dimensions that are worth noting. think that with any group, so like I said, so I think with any group, you won't connect with everyone, right? There's always a spectrum of people with different values and different priorities. So in any group, you will definitely find people that you can connect with, whether or not you are culturally connected to them or not, it's just a matter of finding them. So in China,
I think that I've had two dimensions of connection. The first one is people who share my values. So those values being eagerness to travel, liking service. I found those people both in Shanghai and as we've traveled. And then I think the other dimension is people who are more closely connected to nature. So immediate group that has that connection in abundance is villagers in China.
who are still like 40, 45 % of the population. And I really didn't realize this at the time, but every single time I went to the village, I was just astounded by how easily villagers navigated the land, right? So being able to use natural resources. I'm a big foodie, so something that I've become aware of is just how good food tastes in a village, especially when it's grown by people who are there and who know what they're doing. So that was a huge discovery.
Matthew Lu (1:00:10)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ming (1:00:38)
So those things have been things that, so to answer your question, I feel like increasing self-awareness about what's important to me has helped me be able to focus what I'm looking for. And so that comes in two ways, right? Finding people that share those similar values and connecting more closely to nature and developing those skills myself. And that's made the whole process of being in China
Matthew Lu (1:00:55)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:01:01)
easy and and to be to actually be fair it makes the process of being in any different culture easy because you know i know what i'm looking for
Matthew Lu (1:01:09)
Yeah, definitely. You know, finding people who are on the same path, even if you have very different, you know, upbringings or cultural backgrounds, it's really not a barrier at all. Right. ⁓ Yeah. And also, I guess, kind of looking ahead a bit more. So, so after you had been doing Karo for a period of time and, you know, taking it through COVID,
Ming (1:01:16)
Yeah.
Which is great.
Matthew Lu (1:01:35)
downscaling it, finding this new kind of approach that worked best for you. from then on, and then actually trying the nomad or itinerant lifestyle, like what was the decision making process like for that? Where you sold everything and decided to, you know, not keep a permanent home in any place and just move, you know, wherever the work brought you or wherever, you know, your travels brought you that's
Ming (1:01:51)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (1:02:03)
it sounds like this romanticized kind of idea, you know, traveling and living that a lot of young people, I'm sure, would look on quite fondly and with some envy. But so yeah, what prompted you to try that? And what was what was it like?
Ming (1:02:21)
Okay, so there are several factors. The first factor was that on a personal level, there were some situations that I had to resolve in Shanghai that made me realize that, yeah, maybe it was time to find a different living arrangement. And since I have the freedom to do that, or since I was pushed into doing that, do I want to find another place in Shanghai? Or do I want to, you know, try something new? So that was the first impetus. The second was this realization
Matthew Lu (1:02:44)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:02:49)
Sometimes during the pandemic, I just realized that a lot of the structures in the urban lifestyle are kind of like, like I just found myself less and less aligned with that, right? So I can give more examples later, but even things like, you know, like your morning coffee routine, you know, like getting your exercise, like going to the gym after work. I just had this moment.
Matthew Lu (1:03:02)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:03:10)
where I realize that certain structures exist and I'm used to them, but do I really like that? I actually love climbing mountains and climbing up and down terraces, the terrace fields, not necessarily lifting weights or running on a treadmill. And I love connecting with farmers and buying my food directly from them, not having some sugared beverage marketed to me and like...
Matthew Lu (1:03:16)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Ming (1:03:39)
it needing to be something to wake me up rather than something that whose taste I savour. So I just felt that there were a lot of attributes of the urban lifestyle which fit me less and less. And I was like, hey, I kind of feel like I need to see what's out there. So because of that realization and circumstances with my living arrangement in Shanghai, I was like, yeah, I think it's time to move. So I sold everything that I had in Shanghai.
Matthew Lu (1:03:46)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:04:07)
I constituted everything I had left into one backpack and I just decided to go visit places. Yeah, I started by visiting friends and that whole trajectory evolved.
Matthew Lu (1:04:08)
Mm-hmm.
Crazy. Yeah.
Mm So how many how many places did you end up ⁓ living in or traveling to throughout this period of time? And which which were your favorites and which were, you know, yeah, yeah, which were not not as as good for you.
Ming (1:04:27)
Ha
Yeah,
Okay, can't really badmouth any country, but there's no country to badmouth anyway, so they're all learning experiences. I probably visited about 25, 30 places. Some places I would stay for like a week, other places I would stay for up to one month. ⁓ The most memorable experiences was where I visited business partners. So villagers, nonprofits that are...
Matthew Lu (1:04:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:05:02)
working in rural areas who I have a work connection with. ⁓ There have been two locations that have really stood out to me. The first was Thailand. I have a really good nonprofit partner there. And I remember my partner took me to this partner took me to visit one of her friends who has the exact lifestyle that I want in the future. So this guy is living
Matthew Lu (1:05:07)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:05:27)
He's a Thai. He's very well educated in nutrition science and he lives on the edge of Chiang Mai and he basically built his own house. So the attributes of his house are that they are made out of recycled shipping containers. So I think it's really cool. He also farms his own banana trees.
Matthew Lu (1:05:37)
Wha- Wow.
Okay.
Ming (1:05:50)
So when I visited him, like cut down banana trees to enjoy bananas. He built his own fishing pond. And I was like, dude, this guy is like everything. He even built his own elevator to get up floors in his house. So that inspired me with, I guess, like the mindset of handiness, you know, being useful with your hands that I hope that I can have. The second place that was truly life-changing was visiting Pakistan this May. So I hired an accountant.
Matthew Lu (1:06:07)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:06:17)
through Upwork, they're a remote talent agency and the accountant just happened to be in Pakistan. I really got along well with them. So this May, I took a bus from Xinjiang across the congeria past the world's highest international land border at 5,000, 4,800 meters. And I visited my Pakistani accountants in a place called Gilgit and it was incredible. So yeah.
Matthew Lu (1:06:26)
Mm-hmm.
Wow. Okay.
Wow. Yeah, I'm sure you have a lot of really, you know, unforgettable experiences from the people that you meet on these travels. ⁓ But so, yeah, so after, I guess, a few years of doing this, you decided that it also wasn't the right kind of lifestyle for you, right? You still needed to find your roots somewhere, so to speak.
Ming (1:06:50)
Yeah
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (1:07:08)
So what was kind of that realization like, know, what in what ways was this itinerant lifestyle nourishing you and in what ways was it kind of also showing you that, you know, the next step for your life would be something quite different.
Ming (1:07:23)
Yeah, so the itinerant lifestyle is great because you get to see a lot of things. as I'm sure many people have said before, it can be quite tiring because you don't really have like a home to go to. You're staying at someone else's home. You're staying in hotels. You don't feel rooted. I think that for me, OK, so I was a digital nomad for about four years.
and for 2022 to actually three years, 2022 to 2026 this year. recently I have been home in Maryland, just hanging out with my parents for the last three months. I'm planning to be here for half a year. I wouldn't say that my desire for travel has changed. I would say that I needed time at home to focus how I want to travel. I plan to go back on the road in March, but this time
I am only going to do volunteering in rural areas. And my goal for this is I actually want to go through the process of helping people build stuff. So whether it's their homestay or just connecting with other volunteers who are doing communal living, co-living arrangements to get a better sense of, I guess, how that might manifest in my life in the future. I think I eventually would like to have a place of my own.
Matthew Lu (1:08:21)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:08:41)
and I view this next year of travel as a way to get more relevant experience. ⁓ The other thing is that, as I'm sure we all agree on, I think family is really important to all of us. And six months at home with my parents has been really life-giving. Just a chance to invest in them a little bit more deeply and have an adult relationship with my folks. We get along very well. We have similar interests.
Matthew Lu (1:08:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ming (1:09:07)
While I've been home, I've been able to do things like take them to work out, keep fit, keep strong, go support them in some of their work. And I think that that has also clarified that family and relationships are very important. And I do want to have a certain type of relationship. And I hope that the travel can kind of help me define the attributes that I'm looking for in relationships in the future.
Matthew Lu (1:09:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, makes sense.
Susan Su (1:09:35)
Yeah, and I think it's definitely, definitely important to have kind of a period of stability to kind of reevaluate. Because when you're always traveling and you're always on a go, it's hard to like find that quiet space where you can actually contemplate or reflect on like what you're going through and decide how to like, best optimize the next steps. it is like, yeah, it's like a revitalizing yourself in this, like,
Matthew Lu (1:09:57)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:10:03)
Right.
And I love it. I think that it's important to listen to what your body is telling you. So I physically felt tired. I felt unmotivated to go places. And I think that, you know, that's your signal that you need some time to rest. ⁓ yeah, a little bit of burnout. I think that, you know, at a certain level, you have to fight societal expectations, right, in the West and also in China.
Matthew Lu (1:10:12)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, a little bit of burnout perhaps, right? Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:10:29)
You're just conditioned to think that you need to be doing something with every hour and every season of your life. And I would challenge on two levels, right? Like I think that being still is not doing something. Like being still is also doing something, you know, in a different way. And also, yeah, just life isn't this hamster wheel.
Matthew Lu (1:10:37)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I see you've picked up a lot of ⁓ Eastern philosophy in your time in China, A lot of wisdom. The Buddhism, the Taoism. I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear it.
Susan Su (1:10:51)
Good luck.
Ming (1:10:56)
I have.
Susan Su (1:11:00)
Yeah,
yeah, it's hard to get yourself out of that that hostile mentality for sure. It's like, but no, it's getting used to. But so what what are you working on now then? And how are you prepping for ⁓ for the future? What is the what is the outlook?
Matthew Lu (1:11:08)
Mm-hmm.
The vision, yeah.
Ming (1:11:19)
Yeah, so I'm
still really, okay, I'm still really excited to run my company because we're a lot smaller. It only takes about two, three months out of my year, mainly in the summer, which leaves me nine to 10 months to think about other things. As I travel, I really wanna do some writing. So I started a sub stack and I also wanna tell funny stories. So I also started a YouTube. So I've been trying to diligently fill my travels, reflect on them and...
Matthew Lu (1:11:39)
Yeah.
Ming (1:11:43)
What I really want to do actually, you know, so during this process, I actually realized that I don't really care about how big this is. Originally, I thought I was like, all right, yeah, like I have a company. I'm to start all these like YouTube sub stack. I'm going to like double, triple my income. And then and then I realized this is just more work. But what do I really want? Yeah, more money would be great. But what I really want is I feel like the process of doing this helps me develop more clarity on what I like about travel.
Matthew Lu (1:11:57)
Yeah.
Ming (1:12:11)
which allows me to spend my time more purposefully. That's number one. And the second is these things are beacons to attract people that have similar interests. And what I really want is just to find more friends that have similar interests that I can either go visit or have adventures with. And yeah, like I said, relations and family are the most important to me. And these activities are ways to strengthen the signal to find people.
Matthew Lu (1:12:12)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:12:36)
that are like me, myself.
Matthew Lu (1:12:37)
Yeah, absolutely. I feel that 100 % as well, ⁓ especially on our sub stack and our writing and also the newsletter and in this podcast as well. Like, of course, if it eventually makes some money, that'd be great to cover the subscription costs for all the platforms that we need to make it. But at the end of the day, I think it's one way to kind of just transmit your own values and the things that you care about outwards and to hope that
Ming (1:12:44)
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (1:13:03)
You know, can meet interesting people who are aligned with that and you know, the possibilities seem endless. So, yeah, certainly I think if you don't have like a financial goal for something like this in the, in the beginning, it also makes it more sustainable and more likely that you'll be consistent, and that you won't like start getting tired of it. Right. Like with the podcast, I think still every time, even though we have a certain
I guess, workflow and structure now. It's still just so much fun to have like an engaged long form conversation with, you know, friends and friends of friends and discovering and rediscovering like your stories and sharing that with others. think that's, you know, that's what I like about it. Right. So yeah. Plug the Substack definition. Definitely. We'll have it in the description and the, and the channel and yeah.
Ming (1:13:47)
⁓ Likewise.
Susan Su (1:13:49)
Yeah.
Matthew Lu (1:13:55)
I see some potential there for your YouTube content. You're definitely trying to do some interesting editing with the choose your own adventure stuff. ⁓ And yeah, I think although it's time consuming, I'm sure it's a labor of love.
Ming (1:13:56)
Thank you.
Yeah
Yeah
I love it. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for your encouragement.
Matthew Lu (1:14:15)
Sure, So kind of rounding out our conversation, you've had so many different experiences. We've already gotten many morsels of wisdom sprinkled here and there throughout the conversation today. But say, you know, if you had one to three kind of pieces of advice that you think you would want to share for
Ming (1:14:26)
Ha
Matthew Lu (1:14:37)
young people who are feeling a little bit lost, who are feeling a little bit pressured to follow a certain kind of lifestyle or meet a certain set of expectations, just based off of your experiences, what are some of those pieces of advice that you would like to share with them?
Ming (1:14:52)
Yeah, so the first is that follow your passion is definitely still alive and kicking and relevant in 2026. I feel like there's a lot of, you know, genuine headwinds in life, right? So the job market, people worried about AI. And you know what, I find that you need to feed yourself, but passion is what makes life worth living.
If other things are truly stripped away like your ability to make an income you will find you know, like the ability to pursue your passion Will all exist and if that's important to you like like you'll find a way to do it and that can be a fuel that can be a Complementary fuel to money to keep you going in life. So I think that even if you look at things from a very practical standpoint Passion has utility for me. Like I just I just love it and
Matthew Lu (1:15:31)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:15:39)
I love certain things and I want my life to be constructed around those. But even if you're very practically driven, think passion is a utility. The second thing, oh, I had one more. he'll come to me.
Matthew Lu (1:15:49)
All good. Yeah. Facts though.
Yeah. Unpassion. Passion is something just like it, it's something that we float around so much we use in conversation without really thinking about what it means. And like you said, the utility that's behind it. And yeah, something like passion that's so ubiquitous, it becomes overrated. But then I think when concepts become overrated, they eventually become underrated. And so yeah, that's definitely something that
I want to also kind of just emphasize a little bit for especially for young people in high school or even in college. It's not just like an abstract thing, right? It is actually a source of inner motivation.
Ming (1:16:31)
The other thing I want, I want to encourage people is to think outside the box. So one thing I've realized through my travels is just how small my world is, right? And there are a lot of structures in place. Some of them are cultural, some of them are societal, some of it is, you know, the government that, that I guess, lock you into a certain way of doing things. And these are very deep structures. They're not easy to challenge, but
Matthew Lu (1:16:57)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:16:58)
So sometimes you find yourself in a system that doesn't really speak to you and you can even get depressed if you feel lost in that system I just want to encourage people that There are eight billion people on this planet all living in different systems one of the biggest benefits of travel has just been Taking me out of my bubble and just experiencing different ways of life. The reason that I found Pakistan so Mind-blowing is because the region that I visited
showed me a vision of what it looks like to have white collar skills, but also a very close connection to the land. ⁓ You know, I grew up in a city. I really didn't have that exposure. I just thought that, you like you work for a company and then you just buy whatever you need. When I went to Pakistan, highly educated society, they have the skills to do remote labor and perform white collar jobs like accounting, AI optimization, stuff like that. But at the same time, because it's in a
Matthew Lu (1:17:32)
Hmm.
Mm.
Ming (1:17:54)
isolated part of the Himalayas. They all know how to farm. They all know how to make use of the land. If nuclear war happens and they're isolated, they don't even need to prep. They'll just be able to live, right? So that's an example of how I took myself out of my bubble. I experienced something very different and I came away so rewarded with an expanded mindset of what's possible. if you are a young person and you're feeling depressed,
Matthew Lu (1:18:06)
Yeah.
Ming (1:18:20)
or you're feeling like there's nothing out there for me, well, that's simply not true, right? There's endless number of lifestyles out there, but you do have to put in effort to find them. And then the last thing I'll say, my third point is that if you have a cross-cultural background, you have a head start in doing this, right? You are used to switching between cultures. Doesn't mean that there isn't some friction there, but this is your asset in life, right? Sometimes I think that Asian Americans, we kind of feel like we don't necessarily fit into Asia.
Matthew Lu (1:18:42)
Yeah.
Ming (1:18:47)
into China, we don't necessarily fit into America, we're kind of invisible. Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that you have the chameleon ability to go anywhere and do anything. And that's a huge gift. But it does take some, I guess, like training to leverage and to discipline that use of the skill. That's, know, thinking in this way is already outside of the box. No one in school is going to tell you that you have this gifting and you should use it.
Matthew Lu (1:18:59)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ming (1:19:15)
Right? So this is an easy practice to level up that skill.
Matthew Lu (1:19:15)
Yeah, yeah.
100 % Yeah, totally agree with with all of those points. And I think, you know, Susan, I we see these points reflected in our personal journeys, and eventually kind of what what helps you stick, what helps you stick apart from the from the crowd and what helps you kind of develop your own, I don't want to say brand, but I guess your own reputation for being a unique human being like being original, having your own experiences and eventually
building a life from that, is self-sustaining, both spiritually and emotionally and economically, of course, like holistically. It requires you to go out and acquire these rare experiences and have the time to consolidate them and to reflect on them and to prioritize like which parts of your life you want to spend time kind of adding skill points into as you level up, right? So that eventually, you know, when
Ming (1:20:10)
Ha
Matthew Lu (1:20:13)
we're level 30 or 50 or 100, our lives will look very distinct from each other. And we won't have to compete in the same, I guess, formulaic routes that society has given us. Because people will know us for what we do. And the people who want to connect with us or want to work with us, they'll know what we stand for, and we'll know what they stand for and we'll more naturally, I suppose, make things happen. That's kind of
my my vision of how things ought to be. Yeah.
Susan Su (1:20:45)
You
Ming (1:20:47)
So when are you running for president on that vision?
Matthew Lu (1:20:50)
I guess,
yeah, maybe in 20 years Josh will run as president and then I'll be vice president. I don't think they'll accept like Asian American president first, but I will assassinate Josh. Yeah. And then I will become the first president, ⁓ first Asian American president that way. So that's, that's, yeah.
Susan Su (1:21:02)
We can assassinate me. Yeah. Great minuscule boy.
Ming (1:21:05)
Okay.
in 20 years after
Susan Su (1:21:13)
20 years after. Yeah,
Ming (1:21:14)
Trump's sixth term.
Matthew Lu (1:21:17)
Yeah, yeah.
Susan Su (1:21:17)
yeah. Now when the man passes, it's all us. It will take over. Whatever is left, yeah, we'll rebuild. but yeah. Yeah, thanks for sharing your advice. It's really cool to see. ⁓
Matthew Lu (1:21:22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Whatever is left, I suppose, of America. Just kidding.
Ming (1:21:24)
You
Matthew Lu (1:21:31)
Yeah.
Susan Su (1:21:39)
just to see the similarities and also differences from every time we ask this question to our guests. But I think we...
Matthew Lu (1:21:45)
Mm-hmm and Ming is
very you're very eloquent but also in a down-to-earth way and I'm sure a lot of our listeners appreciate that
Susan Su (1:21:52)
Yeah, yeah, no, you really are. You're like, like one, two,
three, like, yeah. ⁓ man, man.
Matthew Lu (1:21:58)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ming (1:21:58)
business school training man, that consulting training.
No, but I really appreciate the opportunity and the work that you guys do is much needed and important. And I'm just so honored that I can be a small part of it. yeah, looking forward to consuming the rest of the content that you guys produce.
Matthew Lu (1:22:11)
Aww.
Susan Su (1:22:15)
Yeah, this is super fun. just to wrap things up then, the little fun thing we do at the end with all of our guests is that the recommendation, but you get to pick the category and then Matt and I will have to kind of put on the spot to also give a rec in that category. So, what is your category and what is your recommendation within that
Matthew Lu (1:22:15)
Awesome.
Ming (1:22:37)
⁓
My
recommendation. Okay.
So I have to give a recommendation.
Susan Su (1:22:43)
So you pick the category, yeah, and then you give your recommendation within that category. And Matt and I will have to give ours in that category you picked.
Matthew Lu (1:22:43)
You can pick the category and then give your rec. Yeah.
Ming (1:22:50)
Okay.
Okay, just one word or do I give an explanation?
Matthew Lu (1:22:55)
Yeah, you can give some context.
Susan Su (1:22:56)
That's
fine as long as like however long you want to you want to go on about this.
Ming (1:23:01)
Okay,
favorite thing to add, like favorite spread, or favorite spreadable thing on food.
Matthew Lu (1:23:10)
wow. Okay.
Susan Su (1:23:11)
you
Wait Ming, what's yours?
Ming (1:23:14)
I go first. Okay, so I love setting myself up for an answer. Okay, so mine is honey. And the reason I say that is I recently got some really nice honey from my farmer friend in Yunnan. And it made me realize, I guess what high quality honey is. So the honey that I got comes from a wild area where the bees are allowed to free range and collect
Matthew Lu (1:23:20)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:23:39)
nectar from all sorts of flowers. The farmers do not add sugar water, so they don't feed the bees sugar water and they don't add syrup to the honey and the taste is incredible. So if you've ever heard of Manuka brand, ⁓ it's similar, yeah, so it's similar production process and I like so tasting this honey just suddenly made me realize ⁓ all the hidden attributes that go into something that we take for granted.
Matthew Lu (1:23:54)
Yeah, yeah.
Ming (1:24:05)
It also made me realize that there's a lot of great stuff out there that is unbranded, that is equally as good as the branded stuff. And I love discovering that because, I don't have to pay thousands of dollars for it. And yeah, I just feel like you've discovered something special. So for me, favorite spreadable thing in 2025 and six is honey.
Matthew Lu (1:24:06)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Susan Su (1:24:25)
Wow, well that made me want to sample some honey now. feel like I definitely have not appreciated honey as very much like at all, but no, that's fascinating. Yeah, if they have a Taobao, if they have like a store link, yeah, yeah, let us know. Matt, do you have something yet or I can go for...
Matthew Lu (1:24:26)
Beautiful, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:24:35)
I'll send you some later.
Matthew Lu (1:24:38)
It's good with tea.
red.
⁓
Yeah, I think I'll just go for pesto. I pesto's my go-to spread if I have to spread something on like toast or you know anything that's otherwise kind of bland and just wanted to add some instant flavor. It's like the pesto is the prelude to a good sandwich. So yeah, I don't cook as much as I should.
But ⁓ what I do, think Pesto is a good go-to. Yeah.
Susan Su (1:25:16)
Can't go wrong, honestly. Basil's great.
Matthew Lu (1:25:18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, what about you Susan?
Susan Su (1:25:19)
Yeah.
So yeah, I feel like as soon as like minks that spread and like, okay, I got this. Cause I love Kaya jam. yeah, it's for those who don't know, it's like a Southeast Asian Coke, Pandan, coconut spread that people usually eat for breakfast. They put it on their toast. And I think ever since having it for the first time in Singapore a few years ago, I've been like obsessed.
Ming (1:25:26)
Yeah
Matthew Lu (1:25:29)
Okay.
Susan Su (1:25:47)
and I lugged a few jars back from Singapore and they don't sell them here in the US. I think I find some on Amazon for 30 bucks or something. You have to really go to these specialty stores to find them. So every time I'm back in Asia, I will get some from Asia. They would sell them in Hong Kong. I remember when I was visiting Hainan, they had a big niang ruo, some immigrants.
Matthew Lu (1:25:47)
Mm-hmm.
Really? Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Susan Su (1:26:14)
cultures there and they had a lot of kaya jam. so, yeah, but I, whenever I always bring it back to the States and I put it on toast and yeah, and I dip it in the soft boiled eggs. That's the traditional way. That's my favorite like breakfast probably.
Matthew Lu (1:26:27)
Mmm.
Ming (1:26:28)
Hmm.
Matthew Lu (1:26:30)
You got the
affirmation, the approval from Ming.
Ming (1:26:32)
I approve. should... Well, I mean,
Susan Su (1:26:34)
Yeah? Yes.
Ming (1:26:37)
don't bother spreading it. You should just eat it. Like, eat it directly.
Susan Su (1:26:39)
No. ⁓
Matthew Lu (1:26:40)
Like ice cream.
Susan Su (1:26:41)
Like ice cream. No, it's just, I feel like for me it's a little too sweet to eat directly or maybe it's just the brand that I've gotten but like I love it on like a toast or like yeah or even like on pancakes.
Matthew Lu (1:26:48)
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:26:54)
Well, I really think that you should experiment being liminal with this product, which means that in this country you need to deep fry it and put some cheese on it and see what it tastes like.
Matthew Lu (1:26:57)
Mm-hmm.
Susan Su (1:27:01)
Oh my god.
Matthew Lu (1:27:01)
⁓
yeah, in a side of pesto perhaps. Sweet and salty. ⁓
Susan Su (1:27:05)
Wow. They're both green. They're both green. can smell.
Ming (1:27:10)
Actually, you know what
I would do is I would put that on like pizza crust like so stuffed crust pizza with like kaya
Susan Su (1:27:16)
So look at dessert pizza. That'll be good. Yeah, no, but it definitely needs to be easier to find Kaeya here. I know you can make your own with pandan leaves and extract, but it's... Yeah. I'm sure Ming knows way more about Kaeya than I do, though. I mean, you're giving your background.
Matthew Lu (1:27:18)
That could be interesting, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:27:32)
A lot of work.
Matthew Lu (1:27:32)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ming (1:27:38)
I love it. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I love a good kaya.
Susan Su (1:27:41)
Yeah. All right, then. Well, thank you. Thank you both for the recs.
Matthew Lu (1:27:41)
Awesome.
That's a wrap on today's episode of Liminal Space, where we navigate the thresholds of culture, identity and experience. If our conversation resonated with you, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review or share your own story with us. We'd love to hear what you've discovered in the spaces in between and join us next time as we continue to explore what it means to live in the liminal. Bye!
Susan Su (1:28:13)
Bye!
Matthew Lu (1:28:13)
See ya!
