It was a slow Friday night. After a long day of flying from Rome to Vilnius and walking around the new city, I decided to call it an early night. I stopped by a local grocery store, bought some tomatoes, cucumbers, mozzarella cheese, and a couple of canned white wine spritzers, and walked back to my hostel. It was a ritual I quite liked: exploring local grocery stores in new towns, taking my time to read labels, and trying to understand at least half of what they meant.
As I was eating the salad I had put together, I was joined by an Irish guy and a young German guy. We started exchanging pleasantries, talking about where we were from and what we were looking forward to exploring in Vilnius, and the conversation flowed easily. We finished our dinner, moved on to drinks, and kept chatting, when I noticed another person in the room. She was sitting quietly on the couch, silently listening to our conversation.
“Do you want to join us?” I asked her.
“Yes, I would like that,” she answered.
The next two hours held the most unexpectedly interesting conversation I’ve had in a long time. Within the first few minutes, I learned that she was from Taiwan and was twenty-four years old. She had been living and studying in Russia for the past six years. She was a budding young artist, only one year short of receiving her degree to start her career. I asked her why she chose Russia of all places, and if it was passion that took her there.
I saw her face crumple. Without holding anything back, she said, “My father, who is not an artist and knows nothing about art, wanted me to study art in Russia.”
She unraveled her story. “I was always into art, even as a kid. I loved creating comic art and dreamt of one day creating my own anime series—one with a high-quality narrative and pictures to match. At seventeen, I even had a full-ride scholarship for an art program at Tokyo University, the best place to study art, especially animation and illustration. However, my dad had different plans for me. Somehow, he believed that Russia was the best place to study art. He had this image in his head that old Russian men who drew portraits and detailed landscapes were the only kind of artists worth respecting. He gave me an ultimatum: either I study Russian Academic art and composition in Russia, or I don’t study art at all. So, I gave up my scholarship in Tokyo, packed my life into two large suitcases, and moved to St. Petersburg at seventeen to learn how to draw like seventy-year-old Russian men.”
As she spoke, her composure remained calm. Her voice didn’t rise a decibel, nor did her fists clench. But there was a sadness in her eyes and an agony in her voice that I could not unsee or unhear. I couldn’t imagine what she went through as a small-built, Asian teenager moving to St. Petersburg at an age when you hardly know who you are as a person, without speaking the language, without knowing the culture or the food, and most importantly, with no passion for the six-year undergraduate degree she had just signed up for, all just to meet her father’s dreams.
For the next six years, she tried to learn Russian, studied classic Russian art and composition, tried to make a friend or two to survive, and, most importantly, tried to survive the ego of old white men who constantly believed they were the best. She went through cultural and culinary adaptations, prolonged bouts of winter that enveloped her in blankets of loneliness, and the consequences and collateral implications of Russia going into a full-blown war with Ukraine in 2022. Yet, the most important battle she had to fight was internal: the attempt to forgive her father.
“How is the relationship with your father now?” I asked her.
She curtly replied, “It’s better, but I haven’t forgiven him completely.”
She told me she never gave up her love for illustration. She continued to draw comic strips and even made 3D models of some of her work in collaboration with a friend who was studying 3D design. She told me that once she completed her degree later that year, she planned on moving back to Taiwan for a short span, and dreamt of finally moving to Japan to study and work in anime art and illustration—whether her father approved of it or not.
The three of us stared at her, stunned. We didn’t expect this shy, timid girl on the couch to carry such an intense history. Suddenly, she broke into an excited smile. “Do you want to see my work?”
“Yes,” we all answered, imagining she would pull a small sketchbook from her handbag.
Instead, she ran to her room and dragged a giant suitcase back into the living room. She unzipped it, revealing rolled-up canvases, paints, and a chaotic assortment of pencils and charcoal. I laughed in disbelief. “You carry all this with you on vacation?”
She looked at me, dead serious. “I have to. In Russia, you cannot leave your valuables behind when you travel. You might not have them when you go back.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing. “Because of the war?” I asked. It was 2024, and the conflict was still raging.
“Partly,” she said. “And partly because someone will take your art and claim it as theirs. Most likely your professors.”
Before we could even react, she noticed the time and mentioned she had a cab arriving soon to catch a bus to Poland, her next destination.
I watched her pack up and helped carry her massive suitcases down to the road. Before she got in, I gave her a hug. “I really hope I see you again. You are such a wonderful surprise.” I meant it.
She hugged me back tightly. “I wish the same. It was so nice to have a genuine conversation with someone after so long. I hope I meet you again someday—I want to draw a portrait of you,” she said, stepping into the car and waving goodbye.