Mian Wang Chen

At night, when the house is quiet, I sit by my desk with a sketchbook and a pencil. The city outside is never really dark—neon signs flicker, and the hum of Taipei, Taiwan, never stops. But in my room, with the door shut, it's my world.

I draw everything—faces, animals, strange creatures that don’t exist anywhere but in my head. If I could, I would draw all day. But my father has other plans.

He owns a billion-dollar company, and everyone treats him like he’s made of something stronger than the rest of us. At school, my classmates whisper about how lucky I am. They see the cars, the vacations, the house. They don’t see the way he looks at my sketchbook, the way he sighs like I’m wasting time.

“You should be studying finance,” he says. “One day, this company will be yours.”

I nod, because arguing never changes anything. But when I visit my friend Jinhai’s house, I see something different. His parents aren’t rich. They work normal jobs, come home tired but still smile when they see his drawings. His mother puts them on the fridge. His father buys him new pencils when his old ones wear down. They ask him what he wants to create next, not what he plans to do with his future.

I envy that.

I once showed my father a portrait I drew of him. I thought, maybe, if he saw himself through my eyes, he would understand. He looked at it for a long time, then set it down without a word. The next day, a new math tutor arrived at our house.

I am twelve years old, and I already know this: privilege is just another kind of cage.