“I feel like I grew up without knowing the words to describe what I was going through.”
I was excited because I hadn’t seen them in so long, but I was also extremely nervous.
What would they think of me?
I hadn’t seen them in over 10 years, and didn’t have regular contact with them either.
How would I be able to talk to them?
My grandparents only spoke Mandarin, and I can only understand basic regional Cantonese at best.
My pronunciation is even worse.
People I should have been exactly the same as.
But I constantly worried, could the native people walking the streets tell I was a foreigner?
But I remember wanting to cry whilst we waited for my dad to take that picture.
That was the last time I saw or spoke to my grandparents.
Noelle is an American-born Chinese girl.
Like most children of Chinese immigrants, she attended Chinese school when she was younger.
A familiar tale to many second-generation (and subsequent) Chinese immigrants, myself included.
Playing through this part, I didn’t feel like I was staring at my monitor watching a story.
Can you untangle history, culture and personality from your upbringing?
I hadn’t thought the struggles of younger generation immigrants would be laid bare alongside this.
Lei ensures we see Noelle as a complex person.
The textbook definition of the model minority, which certainly does not involve being in a queer relationship.
It wasn’t just empathy I felt for Noelle.
It was cathartic to experience a piece of media which depicted this struggle so openly.
“Theres just not a ton of media out there about growing up as a queer Asian American girl!
I feel like I grew up without knowing the words to describe what I was going through.
Lei also wanted South Asian players to relate to her characters as well.
There are further nuances to Lei’s representation of South Asian characters.
The sincere respect with which Lei handles Asian representation is clear.
She told me she drew on many of her own experiences when writing Butterfly Soup.
At one point in the game, Noelle tries to translate a poem her mum wrote.
The original Butterfly Soup released in 2017.
It was the Asian-American response to anti-Asian racism that affected Lei the most, she told me.
So what’s Lei got planned next?
“Maybe time will help me forget my conviction to never make a sequel again!”
At the same time, Lei hopes to see more progress within the games industry on Asian representation.
If one solo indie developer can do it, why can’t triple-A studios do it too?
We’ve seen indies and mid-budget games make progress.
Prey 2017’s Morgan Yu is a personal standout for me.
But Asian representation within the triple-A sphere is yet to make any substantial ground.
Like Lei said, she’s just a white character wearing an Asian skin.
We aren’t just a skin for writers to slip over their characters to masquerade in.
