Apartment: Mingmei & Donna
Mingmei was accustomed to Westerners attempting to pronounce Chinese by now. She'd even taken her friend Kitane home to visit her family once and had seen how Kitane had adjusted to the culture once in the country. The two places were completely different, not just in language but with how they thought and so many other different aspects, as well. "Shi de," Mingmei nodded in agreement, but intentionally lowered her tone at the end of the "de", as way of clarifying that it was a falling tone at the end. She'd understood Donna's questioning tone and knew she wasn't saying it like that because she didn't understand it but rather for clarification, but Mingmei didn't want her new friend to say the word wrong if she tried another time. "It means yes, basically. I can help teach you more Mandarin if you'd like! It was my second language, though. I grew up speaking Cantonese, which is the local dialect where my family lives."
At Donna's other questions, Mingmei knew they were innocent. Every fiber of her being didn't want to answer because it meant speaking out against her family and her home country, but for all intensive purposes, she was here now. She lowered her gaze a moment to think about her choice of words carefully as she continued to prepare the flour for the dough. "I wasn't in California long, but yeah, I was in Los Angeles. Pretty exciting place, but I fit in more over here, I think. I did manage to visit China Town over there, though." She smiled gently at her new friend. "And it can be very difficult to go anywhere in China. You must ask permission from the right people and get the right documents. It's only polite. I was lucky," Mingmei amended quietly, "and lucky that my sister-in-law's husband was a very prominent businessman. Without him, I probably would not have been even looked at for a visa to come here."
"There, the dough is done!" she exclaimed triumphantly, then started to mold the dough into tiny circles for the dumplings themselves. "I'll start the chicken, then!" Moving over next to Donna, Mingmei started to dice the chicken into tiny pieces with a hand that had done this thousands of times over. "Sometimes the simple things are the best things in life, yeah? But someone as good with technology like you are must have a good brain for just about anything." A cultural thing: whenever a comment was made, give a simple, refined compliment in return, even if it wasn't considered that important. Never make someone feel awkward about themselves. It was so ingrained that sometimes Mingmei never realized she was doing it.
She tilted her head at the thought of Donna's brother, and smiled warmly. "I'd like to meet him some time, if I could. He sounds like a pretty talented person. He's in Gotham? I was there before I went home for a bit. Gotham is a bit strange, a bit dark. Too dark for me, I think. It was sad a lot." She lowered her gaze again to focus on her work just for a moment.
Back on the topic of the hotel, she smiled gently. "No, I wasn't. I left around March to finalize my visa, then came back here just this past week. Oh, there have been very many crazy things. You had someone walk into your mind? It sounds about right, for this place. It's really strange." She frowned. "I've had a journal for...nearly two years now about, I think. I mean, it was different before, but that's about how long I had it. I couldn't see anything when I wasn't here though."