When I was little, I never wanted to be a model or really thought of doing this job. I'm from a small city, Yongzhou Hunan in the south of China - not a big place for fashion.

You'll encounter difficulties at any job, and the best way for me to get through them is via endurance.

Fashion is a good job for a young girl. I like clothes - I like to play with clothes. I like DIY; I like to make outfit.

I hope that when people see Asian women, they realize we are all different. A lot of time with Caucasian people, they just group us together as Asian. But even with different cities in China, people have different personalities... We look Asian, but we still look different. We don't look the same.

Young men keep telling me they don't 'have it all' either. And they may have a point. But if you define 'having it all' as the opportunity to have a successful career and a family, I'd say this. When a man tells his coworkers he's going to have a child, no one asks him how he'll manage or if he'll be coming back to work.

Families with disabled children are praying for their kids to die before them because they have no support systems. They are very scared about who will take care of their kids and how their kids will have a dignified life after they die.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

My wife's family lives up in South Carolina, so we go back and forth quite a bit up there.