Tending my Internet archive.

J. M. W. Turner, Sunrise with Sea Monsters, 1844, oil on canvas.
This summer we’re introducing a series of new columnists. Today, meet Wei Tchou.
My parents visited me a few weeks ago, when I was feeling blue for the normal New York reasons: another breakup, a looming eviction, the smell of dead rats wafting up from the basement of my building. (The exterminator hadn’t been by in a while.) My father brought along a few things to cheer me up. The two-and-a-half pound tin of “European Formula” Ovaltine turned out to be something of a ruse; he’s diabetic, so my mother doesn’t normally allow him that sort of indulgence. But he also brought three beautiful, hard-to-find bottles of baijiu, a high-proof Chinese liquor, along with a memory.
“I was reading through my date book from this time in 1983,” he told me. “Thirty-three years ago, I was receiving a notice every week to arrive in Philadelphia to be deported.” Read More