White people always guess me three or four years older than I actually am. One guy recently told me it’s because of how I present myself–I act older than I am. “It’s hard to talk to most twenty three year olds because they haven’t lived and there’s nothing to talk about,” he told me.

But Chinese people always guess my age correctly. When I tell them what white people say, they wrinkle their noses and tell me it’s so obvious that I’m twenty three.