Grace Yi Tang has spent much of her life in transit, whether on her flight from Malaysia to the United States when she was 19, on the Coney Island subway with the conductor that would eventually become her life partner, or from English classes in Queens to waitressing jobs in Brooklyn to her job as a receptionist at KEISY in the East Village. We met up with Grace to talk about her childhood in Malaysia, taking a parental role from an early age, and finding a sense of peace in life’s most stressful moments.
on her morning and evening routines
No matter what time I get up, it takes me five minutes to get out of the house. I run to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and put on some clothes. I don’t like makeup, so I just put cream on my face — I use the Shiseido wrinkle smoothing cream. I drink coffee once I get to work, at around 10:15 or 10:30, since I don’t like to be late. I like my coffee light and sweet. My mornings are rushed, but when I get home in the evening, I take my time. I sit down for a while. Then I take a shower — I like Pantene products. After that, I go to bed. I’ll open a book, but after the first two lines, I fall asleep.
on her urge to run away
I was born in Malaysia and was seven years old when I first thought I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to stay over there. When I’d tell my parents that, they’d say no. They were strict, especially my father. When I was in school, he would say “No boyfriend. You cannot date anybody until you finish school.” One time, a male classmate called to ask for the homework. We had no cell phones then, so when the phone rang, my father picked it up. The guy said he was looking for me, and my dad said “What’s your name? What are you calling her for?” My classmate got scared. No one called ever again. But I didn’t rebel. I just went to school, and then after school, I would stay and do some work or go to the library and then go home.
on her memories of malaysia
My father was a teacher; he taught music, the Malaysian language, and some Chinese as well. My mom stayed home and took care of the house. As Chinese people, we were treated badly and unfairly in Malaysia. In school, Malaysians had to get 50 points to pass, whereas Chinese people needed 60 points to pass. And if you wanted to borrow money to buy a house, you were treated differently as a Chinese person.
We ended up in Malaysia because my grandpa came here from China to work and ended up staying. He sold chicken at the market. When I was a kid, he would always ride his bicycle to pick me up from kindergarten, and I’d go to the market with him. I would sit there with him for a few hours and then he’d take me to the movie theater. My mom would go see her family for a few days at a time, and it was a long drive — at that time, there were no highways, and to get anywhere, you had to drive up and down a mountain. I used to get carsick, so instead of going with her, I’d stay with my grandpa for a few days.
on her interest in fashion
In high school, was interested in art. I tried photography but couldn’t afford a camera, so I quit and stuck to drawing. I loved to see everyone dressed up. My father’s rule was that I had to wear a skirt past my knees or jeans. I wanted to be a fashion designer when I grew up and I started to wear clothes that I liked in secret. Then I graduated from college with a degree in fashion design. Once I started learning how to make my own clothes, I did it all myself. I never bought clothes anymore.
When we moved to the US, we came in a tourist group. We first started in Vegas, then California, then we flew to New York. In New York, everything changed because the US doesn’t accept Malaysian diplomas. I wanted to do my fashion degree again, but it was too expensive here. I never tried to get fashion experience differently either. It was just too hard. I was young when I got here and my English was not good, so jobs like that were hard to find. Nobody helped.
“My mom had a friend who loved the clothes I made. Every time she saw me in something I’d made, she was like, ‘I like this!’ When we left Malaysia, we couldn’t bring too much stuff, so I left all my clothes with her. I had a whole bunch and they were all her size. She was so happy I wasn’t coming back.”
on moving to america
I moved to America at 19. Two months after finishing my degree, my mom and I came here because my uncle had already moved here. My aunt — who has now passed — said that she would find a school for me when I came here. I was so excited. But when I got here, my aunt and uncle made me go work at our family restaurant — I didn’t even know what a waitress did. I just remember feeling like everyone was yelling at me. After the first day at the restaurant, I came home and my uncle handed me the menu. He told me to go take a shower and when I got out, he tested me. At that time, I didn't have a green card. I just had a travel visa. I had six months to qualify, and I thought my aunt was going to help me find a school so I could get a green card. But after working at the restaurant for six months, she still hadn’t done it. I didn’t get a green card, but I knew that if I went back to Malaysia, it would be hard to come back to the US. So I just stayed here, waiting for my green card for more than ten years. Eventually, my whole family moved here — my sister, my father, everyone.
I found my way to a high school in Brooklyn, near my aunt’s house, that had a free English class at night. It was just a couple of days a week. Then my cousin was born, and my aunt had some postpartum issues. After she gave birth, she couldn’t walk, which meant she couldn’t take care of her kid. So I started to help and stopped going to school for a couple of months. I was at the hospital for a while because the baby had a high fever, and they needed someone to stay with him. I started learning my English over there, actually — the nurse was nice and taught me a little bit. At the hospital, I was changing diapers, feeding, and doing everything for a couple of months. I took care of him until he was a year old. And while I was taking care of him, I went back and forth to the restaurant to work. So I spent the mornings in the restaurant and took care of him at night for one year. And then I needed to stop. So I ran again, to a different uncle’s house.
on dating for the first time
I had my first boyfriend when I was 24. It was a bad experience. I found out he was gambling, so we broke up less than four months later. After that, I dated a lot of different guys. Eventually, my mom pushed me to go for this Chinese guy she thought was nice. I was like, “Mom, I don't like him.” But she pushed me. I gave him six months. He lived with his mother and was a mama’s boy. One time, I went to watch a movie at his house. At 9 pm, his mother came in and asked, “Aren’t you going home?” It was 9 pm! She told me to be careful because I was going home so late. I was like, 9 pm is late? His mother controlled him a lot. When we went out to hang out with my friends, he would say he needed to call his mom first. So I had to end it.
“My parents go back to Malaysia for a month every year. I went back recently for the first time after 16 years away. I got lost. Everything had changed. I didn’t know how to use the bus because the roads had all changed. I tried to find my friends, but everyone had moved. I finally found my best friend three years ago. We started talking, and I told her, ‘I’ll come back and see you.’ The plan is to go back this year.”
on navigating her new life in New York
Once I felt more comfortable in New York, I moved to Queens, with another uncle. I went to Queens Community College for one semester to learn English. It cost around $900. I was going for four hours in the morning, and in the afternoon, I went to work. The class was difficult. They only spoke English, to push you to speak it. But 90% of the students had phones to help them outside of class, and I had nothing. I had no Chinese-to-English dictionary to find out what words meant. I was using my cousin’s baby dictionary. I was on a good track, but shortly after that, I got sick with appendicitis and had a long stint in the hospital. It took me six months to recover. After that, I ended up finding another job at a video store. I was working over there, writing on posters. Easy stuff. And then I got a job working at a clothing store. That was a hard job. I worked there for seven years. I was running one boutique, then a second one opened, then a third, and the fourth was a big store. So I had to run four stores and I did the schedule, pricing, inventory — everything. I worked seven days a week.
It was hard to hire people at the time. The store hired a few women, and they just came to work when they needed money. They got paid, and then the next day they disappeared. It was such a big store, I didn’t know how I could run it on my own. I was working 18 hours a day. I opened the store by myself at 9 am and finished at 2 or 3 am. I’d go home, sleep for three hours, and then go back to work again. But I accepted it because I thought that was the job.
on her experience with the medical system in the us
When I had appendicitis, I first noticed that I was having stomach pain. I was in pain for a whole week. I saw the doctor twice. It didn’t help. And then finally, I couldn’t walk. So I had surgery in Brooklyn. After the surgery, I had a high fever. I was in the ICU for a night. The next day, they sent me to recovery and said everything was fine, but then the nurse made a mistake and I stopped breathing for a while. I didn’t know what happened. It got a little better, but five days later they tried to make me walk so that I could leave the hospital. One of the doctors was trying to send me home because I couldn’t pay. They ended up taking out the staples too early. Luckily my aunt was with me, and she got the doctor to come back to look. He finally found out that something was wrong. Eventually, ten doctors came and they were holding every part of my body. My hands, my feet, my head, everything. I had a tube in my mouth so I couldn’t talk. They didn’t give me a shot or anything, they just used scissors to open me up. In the end, I didn’t pay for anything because they made a mistake. But I couldn’t work for six months.
on finding love on the subway
I was living in Coney Island, and I ended up meeting a guy at the train station. I took my nephew to school on the train every morning, and it was his train — he was the conductor. The time I would take the train happened to align with this conductor’s schedule. I always tried to sit in the middle of the train, where the conductor was, because if something happened, I could just call for help.
He talked to me first. I would go in and sit with the kid and then, since our station was at the end of the line, the train would still have one to two minutes before it started to run. So he would come out to sit and say hello and we would start talking.
For a while, all we did was talk. And then, he disappeared. I think he was sick. One year later, he changed lines. He was on the F line. Coincidentally, I changed jobs, so I was also taking the F line. I was waiting for the F train at Broadway-Lafayette. And then when the train came, there he was! And I was like, “Oh hi! This is crazy.” After that, we were on the same schedule again, so we were talking again. And then, one day, he brought some spaghetti for me. I was like, “What would you have done if you didn’t run into me?” And he was like, “If I didn’t run into you, I would’ve eaten it.” He’s a good cook, and whatever he cooked, he’d carry it with him to bring to me. We started to become more serious, and we moved to Brooklyn together about one year later, in 2012. I was worried about dating someone who wasn’t Chinese, and I was worried about telling my parents. My mom said, “What’s wrong with you?” And I was asking the same question myself — what's wrong with me? But ultimately it wasn’t really important to me to date someone Chinese.
on taking care of her nephew
My nephew has special needs and early on, he couldn’t talk, so I had to learn some sign language so I could communicate with him and help take care of him. You have to teach them to do some sign language, and then after that, you can teach them to start talking. His school called me and asked if I wanted to work as an assistant. At that job, you needed to write reports in English. I said, “If the assistant doesn’t need to write a report, I’m fine. I can work but I can’t write the report.” But that wasn’t an option, and so I couldn’t take the job.
“When I’m mad and don’t want to argue with him, I speak Chinese. He doesn’t understand me, so he starts laughing. And when he’s mad, he speaks Spanish. And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Then I’m laughing too.”
on working at a massage parlor
I’ve been working at KEISY for ten years. At the time, they were trying to find someone to cover the front desk and my friend told me about the job. I was still recovering from my surgery and I didn’t want to work, I just wanted to rest. But I started working one day a week. And then one day turned into two days and then more. I worked at the KEISY in Chinatown — that was the original location. Now there are two and I work at the one in the East Village. I do some translations and make appointments, mostly. I didn’t know a lot about Eastern medicine when I started. But it's a good place to work because it's something new to learn. Sometimes I need to test the treatments there, but I don’t like it. A lot of people like the pain, but not me.
on finding peace at work and at home
When I’m at home and I need to calm down, I take a shower. I hide in the shower and take a hot steam. After that, everything is better. After work, I used to go to the YMCA in Chinatown for yoga classes and the sauna, but now it’s way too expensive, so I do yoga at home. Sometimes I watch videos, sometimes I do it from memory.
Recently, I’ve been feeling some hormonal changes — menopause is starting. And now my periods are kind of crazy. One month it comes, one month it doesn't. And they don't come on time. When I start getting angry, I know my hormones are out of whack. So I don’t talk to anyone, I just stay quiet. At work, I always tell them, when you see that I'm not talking, just stay away, because I’m in a bad mood. So I sit at the desk and watch a movie and try to block things out.
on deciding she didn’t want kids
I see a lot of situations where people get married, have a kid, and then get divorced, and it leaves the kid upset. I didn’t want something like that to happen to me. And I’ve been taking care of kids since I was ten years old. I took care of my cousin in Malaysia. When my uncle came here, he left his kids in my house for me and my mom to take care of. The younger one was 6 months old. I went to school, came home, and took care of her. And I also had to take care of my grandma. She was sick. She couldn’t walk or talk. So I had to change the diapers, give her a shower, everything. It was kind of a nurse's job. And then here, I took care of my cousin and helped with my nephew. So I’ve taken care of a lot of people.
on traveling everywhere she can
I travel once or twice a year. When my partner and I travel together, we usually go to the Dominican Republic. He has a house there. We used to stay for three weeks, and now we stay for three months. We just came back from Amsterdam. I loved it, but he didn’t — he hates the cold weather. Which is funny, because we went in July. The temperature was 72 degrees, but it was too cold for him. We were all in tank tops and he was in a sweater.
My favorite thing to do on vacation is have a drink and look at the view. I’m lucky because my sister plans everything, books the flight, and books the hotel. I find somewhere I want to go and then I call my sister. We have a lot of fun. On a sister trip, we plan what we're gonna do each day — but then we change it at the last minute.
“After working at KEISY for ten years, I like to think that it’s my family. I work to be happy. And if I’m not happy anymore, I’ll leave. No one is going to tell me to do another ten years. No matter how much you pay me. At my old job, they told me they’d pay me a little more to stay. I was like, ‘No, it’s not about the money.’”
on how she spends her free time
I watch a lot of Chinese soap operas and dramas. I like legal shows and medical shows. A little bit of everything. It's good for keeping up my Chinese. I also like cooking Chinese food – soup, chicken wings with teriyaki sauce, ribs. We love spicy food. I like going to bars, too — I usually drink some kind of daiquiri or an Aperol spritz. I have a group of girlfriends who all live in Flushing. They were customers at the boutique and we became close friends. We hang out once a month. They have kids, so I go over there and meet them. I’ll also go hang out with my mom and nephew.
My partner and I like to watch movies — usually action movies — or play pool together. We have a pool table downstairs. And we like to go drinking and dancing. Sometimes he just wants to dance, so I play Spanish music and he dances. I try to learn but I’m not as good a dancer. He gets annoyed and he’s like, “Listen to the beat!” But I’m not used to it. I need time. And then he gets mad, and I'm like, “Okay, then you dance by yourself!”
on the best parts of her train rides
I like to take the train. My commute takes me about an hour and fifteen minutes. And anywhere I’m going, I can call my partner and ask him which train will be the fastest — it’s very convenient. Usually, when I’m on the train, I play games on my phone. Farm games, or sometimes math games. But sometimes I put my phone away and just look at the people on the train. I really like to look at people in the morning. How are they feeling: In love? Angry? I just like to look at people. In Malaysia, when I was learning fashion design, I took the bus and the ferry to the island. And on the ferry, everyone was talking and listening to music, and I would look around at the people. It was nice.
grace’s favorite spots in new york city
My uncle’s restaurant is West New Malaysia in Chinatown. I love this place in Brooklyn called The West and this bar is in Brooklyn, close to Bedford, called Dynaco. It’s a good bar.
