Lu Ruyi is fluent in Mandarin, Shanghainese, English and Japanese. At the age of 27, she has lived in eight cities, three in the United States and the rest in Asia. A Fulbright scholar, she holds a master's degree in education from Harvard, and has published a book about her cross-continental life - in Japanese.
Now working as a fund-raiser for the Juilliard School in New York, the high-achieving Shanghai native isn't driven by personal ambition or by overbearing parents. She relocated to Japan at the age of eight, when her father was accepted for further studies at Musashino Art University in Tokyo - among the first mainland artists to study in Japan. Lu and her younger sister went to a suburban school, and had to quickly adapt to life in the strange environment.
Lu is the epitome of a 'third-culture kid' (TCK), the term coined for young people who have spent much of their formative years in cultures other than their parents', the product of a globe-trotting childhood.
There's a higher ratio of TCKs here than many other cities: Hong Kong's position as an international metropolis has brought many well-travelled professionals and their families over the years.
Increasingly held up as typical citizens of the future, TCKs have been the subjects of studies and books for years, with scholars setting up organisations such as Interaction International to help them connect with each other and to explore their cross-cultural identities. Now, TCKs are coming of age and doing it for themselves, launching their own websites and publications.
Last year, Lu started a book project with Alexis Redding, a fellow TCK and classmate from Harvard University, to document the stories of people like themselves from Addis Ababa to Bangkok and beyond.
Their self-funded venture invites TCKs of all ages to write about their experiences for possible inclusion in a series of books, the first of which is due to be published at the end of this year or nearly next year.