Our Story

I was born in Taipei, where my parents met in college. We moved to Maryland in 1989, when I was one, and I grew up in North Carolina.

So I'm first-generation Taiwanese American. My parents gave me a life built on top of one I never saw. A city, a language, a whole world before me. I've always been curious about it.

One of the only stories I have about my dad as a kid is that he fell into a rice paddy once and came out caked head to toe in mud. His older sister took one look at him and screamed that he was a demon. I love that story. It survived because someone kept retelling it, and I want more of them. The funny ones, the scary ones, the ones that show me who my parents were before they were my parents.

There's so much I want to hear. What it was actually like to move to a country where they didn't speak the language. The traditions they held onto, and the ones they let go. What they think of the life they built here. How they see us now.

Years ago I asked my mom if we could sit down and record her stories. She said, “Can we do it in Chinese?” My Chinese wasn't good enough to go deep, so I kept putting it off.

Baohua is the answer. My parents can answer a weekly question in their own language, by text or voice, and the rest of us can read the story in both. My mom's excited to be our first customer. Honestly, I think I'm more excited than she is.

— Luke Lin, founder