Diana Chao:
20-Year-Old Artist, Writer, Scientist, and Philanthropist

 

On the afternoon of March 16, 20-year-old Diana Chao rushed from New Jersey to Manhattan’s YouthBridge conference to share her story with New York high schoolers. It is a story of a Chinese immigrant striving to not only overcome her own challenges as a child but also connect through a message of empathy, with everybody who has ever felt lonely or helpless.

For a girl whose favorite food is sesame ice cream, and who’s so frank and down-to-earth, it’s hard to believe that Diana published a novel at age 13, received recognition from the U.S. Navy for her research on dengue fever at 16, worked for NASA and became the only girl in California to receive the 2016 Presidential Scholar Award at 17, became a special columnist for the American Astronomical Society at 18, was admitted to Princeton to study physics at 19, and even found time to create her own Vogue-featured photography studio along the way.

 

Surmounting Hardship

In elementary school, Diana emigrated from Guizhou, China, to Claremont, California, with her parents. Getting used to a new environment was already difficult for the child whose English vocabulary included only “hello” and “thank you”; this, along with her parents’ nonexistent English, made her feel “really helpless, really so helpless.”

“It was just very disappointing,” Diana said. “But I was already here, so I could only press on. So, from a young age, I tried to help my parents with anything I could.”

Looking back, she said that her parents’ scanty English helped her preserve her Mandarin. “I had to translate for my parents from a young age.”

But learning the new language was a nightmare for Diana at first, like for all newly immigrated children. “I remember that I always cried in fourth grade, and I thought ‘how could I possibly catch up?’ But then I just studied extremely hard, and I didn’t sleep until 2 or 3 in the morning.” Diana’s gaze became lost as she recalled her past. “I thought at that time that if I wanted to learn English well, I would need to study hard.”

A year later, she utterly shocked her English teacher.

“That time I got 100 points. No one in the class had 100 points. The teacher was astonished. He said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ But he knew that I didn’t go and copy other people, because nobody had a perfect score.” Diana remembered, “At that moment, I thought, ‘I can stay here.’”

Yet with all her achievements, she was still concerned about her pronunciation. As a result, despite being “very, very introverted,” she chose to step outside of her comfort zone and participate in her school’s debate team—a club that has deterred even many native English speakers.

The debate team required high levels of patience and endurance. The referee always called her out: “I think you seem to make a lot of sense, but I don’t fully understand.” But Diana Chao did not waver. She practiced with pencils or chopsticks between her teeth every day and honed her pronunciation with fervor.

“To immigrants from Guizhou or other places of the world, what do you come to America for? It’s to pursue a dream, right? As they say, the American Dream, but this dream does not take a quick minute to achieve. My parents worked hard and set a good example for me. I learned from them that enduring hardships will result in success.”

 

 

Redemption Through Writing

In tenth grade, Diana founded Letters to Strangers, a nonprofit organization that provides help to those who feel depressed and hopeless. Founded in 2013, Letters to Strangers has since impacted over 25,000 people—and this all began with Diana’s personal experiences.

In eighth grade, Diana developed bipolar disorder. She felt utterly alone, she said. “Even if everybody in the world stood by my side, I wouldn’t have been able to feel their presence.” At that time, she spent her weekends helping out with her parents’ store. “My shifts would get as long as 13 hours.” Because she was busy manning the store, she had little time to do her homework or to enjoy her youth with friends, like other kids. “At that time,” she said, “I just felt … it was painful to the point where there seemed to be no point in continuing anymore.”

When Diana climbed out of this low point in her life, she started to think about how she could help others who have “gone through the most trying experiences find an avenue to cry for help.”

“How could I take advantage of my second chance at life?” she asked herself. “My earlier difficulties were a hole I dug for myself.”

To make the most of her experience, she started to write letters. Since she didn’t have many friends at the time, she wrote to herself. To her, these letters were a chance to write down everything on her mind and find inner peace. “I hope to share these experiences of my youth with others. I hope that in giving them to others, I can help them find a way to ask for help,” she said.

Letters to Strangers now works with people who struggle with mental illness, including youth, orphans, refugees, and others. Through writing anonymous letters, members convey their heartfelt thoughts to strangers, effectively establishing a human connection. To this day, the organization has reached more than 25,000 people all over the world. Diana hopes that the empathy developed among those struggling with mental illness can help them pull through.

 

 

Finding Her Place

From her freshman year of high school, Diana was reluctant to mention her immigration status since she felt pressure to socialize with her peers and was sometimes met with discrimination or ridicule. But after traveling back to China a few times, she became interested in Chinese music and ended up learning how to play the traditional two-stringed instrument called the erhu. As a result, she gradually developed pride in being Chinese and felt that she could begin to face her dual identity.

“Any Chinese-American has a feeling that they may be too American in China, too Chinese in the United States, and I think this feeling may last forever. But this does not mean that it is a bad thing.” She now finds that her Chinese identity often allows her to look at problems from a different perspective, and that the rich and proud history of the Chinese is a unique attribute that she carries with her.

Diana’s current photography studio, Moonglass Studios, features many works with rich oriental colors. Fans, swords, lanterns, bamboo forests, lotus flowers, and Japanese ukiyo-e are among the most important elements in her photography.

“The long history of the Chinese people also has a spirit that is very different from that of Americans. If we can combine these two things together, I feel that makes us stronger.”