Where are you from? 

I'm from Beijing, China. 

Where do you live now? 

I live now in Claremont, California, but that's mostly like nine months out of the year.

What is your name? 

So my Chinese name is 秦乐, and I guess the name I go by in the United States or in English the most is Alice. 

How did you get your name 秦乐? Or Alice? 

So 秦乐 is because the family is from my dad, and it's like obviously his last name and the last name of his family and the last name of like most people from his village. And technically, because from my dad's side, they had like this very traditional family name documentary. The second character of my name was supposed to be 丁, which meant to be the lineage to which generation you're in. But my mom thought that was ugly, so we didn't go with that. My family wanted to incorporate my mom's name and then like 宝, because means baby. I think they always liked 乐, they just liked what it means. And a story that I heard, and its validity could be questioned because I think I heard it when I was really little, is that my family were fighting and disputing like my name when I was born. And I was born before lunchtime, it was like 11 o'clock. And then after I was born, my grandparents on my mom's side came to visit my mom in the hospital, and they brought food for my mom. And my grandpa came to visit me in the hospital multiple times, and supposedly I saw him and started giggling. And he was like, wow, he didn't even know how a little baby like me  could laugh. And I think, so he was like, we should do 乐, since it means joy and laughter. And for a while there was this like notion because 乐 is like a 多音字 (polyphonic characters). They said that once I grow up, they will call me 秦乐 (yue) instead of 秦乐 (le). But then it never like caught on because 秦乐 (yue) just sounds so weird. 

And for Alice, my mom actually gave me the name. I think I was in first grade, that's when you start taking English classes and the English teachers in China all ask you for an English name, which I think, you know, like the first step of Anglicizing your identity. And my mom and I were watching the movie, Alice in Wonderland, and she was like, you should be Alice because my mom thinks Alice is a really brave person. And she was like, I want you to be brave and deal with these obstacles as they come up with the same type of courage that she has. And so I've been Alice ever since. And the first time I think I used the name, like Alice Qin was when I went to a theater camp when I was in middle school. And they were like, asking for your ID or like to give you a lanyard or something. And I was like, okay, my preferred first name is Alice. And then the last name is Qin, then they put that on an ID. That was the first time I saw those two names together. And I was like, this is really interesting. At the time, I felt a little bit weird because I was never Alice plus anything. I'm always like 秦乐 and Alice. And those two things sort of existed separately.

How do you navigate your daily life with your name?

So what I usually use as order names and stuff like that on Uber would be Becca. When I was in high school, my freshman year in high school, people kept asking me if I'm related to the senior and their name was Becca Qin, we have the same last name. And I was like, why would you say that we are related? And they were like you both have the same last name, I was like, whoa, that's really interesting. First of all, your name on Uber and Uber Eats shouldn't be your real name because it can be dangerous since they would know where you're getting dropped off and where you are living. It's very easy to find you. So I decided to use that Becca because it reminds me of the fact that there's someone called Becca that I have this serendipitous relationship with. And I'll always remember that it's me. In sort of day-to-day life in the United States, like most people call me Alice. I think everybody calls me Alice. And in selected few circumstances, I think my like actual first name still comes up, but then people, when they see Le Qin, in American, like in English logic, they would try to sound it out, it would be Lee Quinn. So I selectively tell people my Chinese name. And I told some people my Chinese name my sophomore year on campus, but a lot of them obviously don't use it. So the only people that still kind of use my Chinese name are like Chinese friends of mine. 

How do you navigate yourself through your online personas? 

In terms of online, my Instagram handle used to have my first and last name. Interestingly enough, when I was really young and taking English classes, like in elementary school, there's a teacher that taught me the anglicization of Qin is like, Ching. So I had always sort of anglicized my name that way. So I had my first and last name, both Chinese and English on Instagram. And I started to realize that I didn't want things that I posted to be so easily traceable to me, for many various reasons, but this mostly came out after the A4 things that happened. And so I thought that I should not have my last name on display and I should have myself so easily identifiable. Like Jenny Kim, from Blackpink, her handle on Instagram was lesyeauxdenini. And then I was like it's kind of poetic because I'm seeing this through my eyes as well. So I said lesyeuxd.alice, it literally means through the eyes of Alice. 

Do you resonate with your given names? 

As of now, I think that in terms of it's like resonance, I think I enjoy both of them a lot because I think that nicknames that my friends call me would be 乐乐. And it feels so meaningful when someone calls me that. And I think it has this additional weight to it. I think being Alice more often is because I'm more familiar with this version of myself. I don't talk in Chinese that often anymore, and it feels quite awkward when I do that. When I try to crack jokes on sites like Weibo, I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what the trendy languages are. And I think that being called Alice reflects the part of my identity that's been existing in the diaspora in the United States. I have an education from the United States and that English is my primary language of not only academic engagement, but just day-to-day life self-expression that I think is hearkens to that. So I think I resonate with both of them, they're kind of the keys to unlocking different parts of my identity, I would say. 

Is there a difference between naming yourself in Western media compared to Eastern social media? 

Yeah, on Weibo, my username is 秦下巴 and 下巴 is like chin. It sounds like I am a plastic surgery clinic, but I like it as well. And I think it’s a fun little name. What I realized is that when I was back home in China, throughout high school and college, especially my first year, I was online. I made a lot of friends who are younger Chinese people and refer to each other by their names on the digital space. So when I was in high school, I went to this training camp for yoga, at the time, my Wechat name was 团鱼 because I think I liked this idol from GOT7 and his name is Mark Tuan. So I put it as my name and folks from yoga would call me by my Wechat name. And so I think that it's really interesting to see in that context, my friendships that were found through online, I get referred to by my digital presence. On Twitter, I was active in Kpop fandom for a while.Instead of Alice, I wrote my twitter name as Ali, and people would call me kind of by that sometimes. I realized how I display names in self bios is what I would be called. Not only am I compartmentalizing parts of my life, but also like in many ways, protecting the documentation of my true self, if that makes sense.

Would you still choose to change your name to English if you would do it again? 

I think about this a lot. When I was applying to college, one of my history teachers said, would you like me to refer to you in your recommendation letter as Alice or as Qin Le? Because I know some people go through a name change in college, and a lot of times they use their actual name as opposed to this fake English name. To me at that moment, and I still think now, I'd say I like to use Alice because I feel very protective of my name. I don't wanna leave it out there for people to butcher it. And I think that I would much rather there be this sort of buffer between my Chineseness and the outside world so that people can not take a chance to mock it.  And I think about this a lot, for example, conversations like Ubers and stuff like that, I feel like I need to start lying more because they always ask where are you from? Once I say I am from China,  then it gets into this whole conversation about how's your English so good? I feel like I present myself as a Californian Asian, like I'm an Asian from the Bay Area or something. You can tell that I grew up with cultural security, but also that I like presenting in an American way in the sense of being very knowledgeable about pop culture and dressing particular ways. I think sometimes it's easier to have people entertain that facade rather than open up the gates towards this conversation that in a lot of times make me heavily uncomfortable and make me feel like my nationality has become this hyper visible thing that I need to defend myself from.

But when, for example, I have a school-issued lanyard and it doesn't say Alice, it says Le Qin on there. First of all, that's not my name. No one ever says my name like Le Qin, that's crazy. To me it's weird and awkward and people usually always butcher it. I just don't want to open myself up to the labor of having to deal with people who butcher my name. I feel kind of protective of this part of my identity. And I like that it's only shared with the people I trust. I think that creates intimacy with your name too.