I am Lisa Wu and I have been teaching at City Tech since 1993. I believe this was before many of you were born! When I started I was a grad student and now I have children who are older than you.
My name a mixture of my two cultural identities: American first name, Chinese last name. I am an ABC, American-Born Chinese. Wu is a very common Chinese family name. My family name Wu is called “mouth sky Wu” because my surname Wu is written with the character for mouth on top and the character for sky on bottom.
Here is my Chinese surname.
I really don’t know how to write Chinese, how to read Chinese, and I speak a limited amount of Chinese only enough to speak about simple things. As I get older I feel the pull of my Chinese roots, wanting to know more about the land of my parents, the story of my parents, the history of the Chinese side of me. In Summer 2018 and 2019, I travelled to China and taught at Xian Jiao Tong University.
I love learning languages and often wish I had studied languages as my major in college. I also speak Spanish. I believe that one advantage of speaking other languages is that you can travel easily and immerse youself in other cultures. I have been to Indonesia, Singapore, Spain, China in recent years. And in the USA, recently I have traveled to New Orleans (a great city), Los Angeles, upstate NY, and Ohio.
I like cooking and trying different international cuisines. I am learning to play tennis and do Zumba and swim laps regularly. I also play piano and have studied since I was 8.
A surprising fact is that I grew up in West Virginia. I participated in competitive gymnastics and was the first girl in WV to do a backflip on the balance beam. I have had a long and arduous educational journey involving studying chemistry pre-med then dropping out of med school and wandering and finally landing in NYC, working in publishing, and studying literature. It has been a long journey, but I am glad to be here. I have enjoyed my work and met wonderful students at City Tech.
