To understand the engineer Tina Yu and how she became known as a traitor to her country, we must go back to the beginning: to those glorious and informative days of her childhood, when she sat in the back row of a blue minivan, on her way to Chinese school, a Sandy Lam CD playing on repeat in the background. It was the only CD in the car and it played on all their drives: to Chinese school, to airports, to cello lessons. Tina’s brothers, older and longer-legged, got to sit in the middle row, while she looked out the back window, fogging it with a dramatic sigh.
“Can we please listen to something else?” Tina asked her parents politely.
They would only turn the volume higher, telling Tina that it would be good for her Chinese, and how dare she insult one of the all-time greats like Sandy?
