Conversation in an Uber
“Hi! I’m Jas.” I got in the car.
“Hi!” The driver had a Chinese name. I noticed the navigation software she used was in Chinese, so I switched to Mandarin, “I can speak Chinese, too.”
“Ah, hi.” She sounded relieved, “you’re going to Berkeley?”
“That’s correct.”
“I was just dropping off a student who came from Berkeley to SF, and now I’m driving you from SF to Berkeley. Do you stay on campus during the week and come to the city on weekends?”
I smiled, “I’m not a student.”
“Ah, you look so young.”
“Haha, thanks, I’ve been working for a few years now.”
“How old are you?”
I answered.
“You’re the same age as my daughter! She lives in Boston now, she went to nursing school and now works there. She doesn’t have a boyfriend and doesn’t want to date. Each time I bring this up it upsets her so much.”
“I can understand that you’re coming from a place of care, of wanting the best for her. But yeah, bringing it up over and over again is a lot.”
“You sound just like my daughter.”
“When did you move to the US?”
“More than twenty years ago now. My daughter was in elementary school.”
“I moved fifteen years ago, to Canada. My parents decided to move back to China within a year, so I have been living without them since then.”
“Wow, very independent. Do you also have conflicts with your parents?”
“Yeah. It’s not easy to communicate. My parents’ generation — your generation — grew up in a very different society from the US of 2026. Even if we all stayed in China the whole time, the Chinese society has changed drastically over a generation, and we’re adding immigration on top of that. So I live in a world that my parents seem to not understand. They have good intentions, but the practical advice they want me to follow really doesn’t work.”
“OH MY GOD my daughter also tells me this! Exactly this!”
“I’m sure your daughter understands that you mean well, but I also think she understands her life better than you do. Ultimately she’s the one facing the consequences of her choices in life, even if the choice is yours. We live in a very individualized culture now, we’re all responsible for our own choices.”
“Do you see your parents often?”
I let it slip that my parents were divorced.
“I divorced my daughter’s dad too, when she was five years old. How old were you when your parents divorced?”
“When I was in university. I grew up watching them fight all the time.”
“Maybe the divorce has affected my daughter, maybe this is why she doesn’t want a boyfriend.”
“I’m sure she wants a happy family for herself. But in today’s America a woman can live a pretty happy life on her own. Being in a miserable marriage is worse than being single, and being single is worse than being in a happy marriage. So it’s not the case that dating and marrying makes you happy.”
“You’re so right. My daughter has not seen me very happy. I have lots of debt. I’m with someone new, a contractor. He has really bad credit, so he put all of his purchases under my name: an RV, a cybertruck, etc. His mother got very sick and passed away and he went back to China to be with her for 8 months, and stopped working here. I’d not had a job in 10 years, but I now need to drive Uber to make the monthly payment of the RV and the cybertruck.”
I was surprised, but not too much.
“My daughter told me that I was bad at picking men. She also said that I was bad at managing my own life. She said this to her dad too. She didn’t like how we had so many opinions on her life when we couldn’t even life our own lives well.”
“I can see where she’s coming from, yeah.”
“I gotta say, she has a point. I think I’m really dumb. I also don’t know why I agreed to buy the RV and the cybertruck just because he told me to. I cannot tell you why I did this. I’m in so much debt. It’s all under my name, not his. And now that he’s not working, I work a lot to make the monthly payment. I was so afraid when I first started driving Ubers. I didn’t know how to use the app. When I picked up my first passenger, I didn’t even know to press the ‘pick up’ button. Even the passenger was confused. I didn’t want to drive at night, I was scared. But each month I’ve been making more money than the previous one, and it’s been this way for a new months now. I think I’ve been doing a good job. I made [redacted] dollars in January, [redacted] dollars in February, [redacted] dollars in March, and I think this month I can beat March!”
“Wow, well done. I also think you’ve been doing a good job.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, it just all came out. But you seem like a good person. And it feels good to get this off my chest.”
“I’m glad.”
“You remind me a lot of my daughter. She’s exactly like you.”
I glance at the navigation screen. We’re in Berkeley now, getting close to where I’m going. I hesitate for a moment, to think about what I’m about to say.
“If I may be blunt for a moment — I don’t think you’re dumb, but I think there’s something that our culture hammers into girls that’s actually bad for them: obedience. Listen to your parents. Listen to your teachers. And if you are a woman, listen to the men in your life. Of course, ‘listen’ means ‘to obey.’ This makes us completely unprepared to navigate a society where responsibilities are pushed to the individual level. American and Canadian kids are always asked by their parents and teachers, ‘what do YOU think?’ They’re encouraged to think for themselves and make their own decisions from a very young age. We didn’t get that.”
“That’s completely right. You can see very clearly. Wow, I’m so glad that we got to meet. Oh my god… how did you know so well?”
“I’ve seen a lot of cases like this. Many of my mom’s friends have similar stories. I think it’s a pretty common problem in Asian woman, especially in the generations before mine.”
“Wow. It’s so good— I’m so glad that we met. Talking to you has made me so happy. I think this is my last ride of the night, I’m going home after I drop you off.”
She pulled over.
“Thank you so much for listening me.”
“No, thank YOU for opening up. It was really great talking to you. Stay safe on your drive home.”
“Thank you! Goodbye!”
I got out of the car, and opened the gate. I hesitated, wanting to turn around to wave to her. Something stopped me. I walked inside; she, presumably, disappeared into the night.