University of Pennsylvania, Duke University

Every day in grade school I would stand up from my desk, my right hand placed over my heart, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I am a part of the idealistic legacies of America's freedom and equality, courtesy of brave revolutionaries, the defiance of civil rights leaders, and the ingenuity of inventors. The community and values that I was raised with were unmistakably Chinese: a rich and beautiful culture that is full of the equally brave, defiant, and inventive. Yet, there are obvious differences between Western individuality and Eastern collectivism, and Western modernity and Eastern…