My aha moment was when I was 12 years old. In the summer of that year, I saw my father walking between the kitchen and the dining room. And the light, or something, made me look at him very differently. I saw him for the first time as a human being instead of just my father. It almost took my breath away. My relationship with him changed forever.

My father was a fighter pilot in China. He was actually the first fighter ace in China, and did many, many heroic things during the war. He was a national hero, a man who was much larger than life. A person I looked up to. He taught me about the speed of sound when I was six years old.

I think most people reach a point when you realize your parents aren’t always going to be around. That they’re actually somebody you want to have a more personal, human type of relationship with. At that point I was only 12. But ever since, I saw my father as a real person, somebody who had his strengths and weaknesses. Somebody I wasn’t going to take for granted.

I think an aha moment is when you realize something that you haven’t realized previously. It’s something that happens in an instant and it just changes your the way you think about things.

I think it’s a growing up moment that everybody reaches. I just happened to reach it when I was relatively young, so I was able to benefit from it for a longer time.

I don’t think I’ve ever said that to my father or my mother at all. I think it must have been apparent to them that I was doing more things with them. I felt closer to them. They probably knew.