Always a pleasure to be interviewed by Jimmy at Comic News Insider!☺️❤️

Past Lives might be my new favorite movie 😭 marriage of immigrant movies and mid 2000s romcom. I have so many thoughts that I have to process after seeing it. Cried a lot in the movie theater

Just a regular Tuesday tarot draw 😂

My book Everything Is Beautiful, And I'm Not Afraid, is featured in School Library Journal for using visual imagery to tell stories about mental health. So excited to see the book starting new conversations in classrooms!

ME: *looking at the Giving Tree* its giving tree

When the conjunction of my interests produces comics about Chinese idiom and awkward feline.🐯🍁new pages bc I can't do my regular work while it's so hot

This summer I got mouth guards, and for the first time in my life I'm not clenching my teeth while resting face. 😭 it was unexpectedly personal when I went with my mom and the dentist said "it's a sign of stress" something I never put into words that way.

Colorful breakfast🤤pumpkin, brown rice and farro porridge

Started a project I had wanted to do for a long time. Translating a piece of Chinese literature I often refer to as an inspiration for writing, on the subject of the Cultural Revolution.

Me to class: don't stress, just make the pages! Me making the pages: stress stress stress

Comic slides continues. Adapted @scottmccloud.bsky.social Understanding Comics for my class to teach form vs content

First day of class!!! Proud of my hand drawn slides, the only way I want to make them now

Excited to read!! The Infinity Particle by @wendyxu.bsky.social 🥳

Teaching a visual storytelling course on comics this semester!! Excited & a dream come true. I started drawing comics 10 years ago.

My cute lunch!! Soysauce eggplant, lotus roots, cucumber and fried rice 🥲

Alexandra Trese, Babaylan-Mandirigma of Manila, Sixth Child of the Sixth Child

Chinese dishes 😍 first time making fresh lotus roots myself

Soundscape of my studio is any Chinese dessert shop at closing time or small town barber shop😂 chill hk tw mando oldies

What a happy occurrence

Yesterday I went to a Chinese-English multi language exquisite corpse tattoo collective creation workshop in Queens. So happy something like this exists 💙

Latest work: I wrote about a giant painting in the Met that I visited often, its origin in China, and the complex world of identity translation & art dealing. Incredible illustration by the one and only @johnleedraws.bsky.social !!

For @yaoxiaoart.bsky.social 's piece about the Buddha of Medicine, housed in the Met, ransomed from Guangsheng Temple in Shanxi. Read it!! https://joysauce.com/how-an-ancient-chinese-painting-helped-me-understand-my-place-in-america/

The worst thing about jetlag is that the magical ability to wake up at 5am everyday does not last forever

which is now .15 more expensive

Back in NYC and took the subway, I missed the big public hallway energy 🔥

Back in the u s a aaa 🇺🇸

Thoughts: coming out as queer doesn't mean automatically "attractive" or matching to the ideal image of the kind of queer person inspired me to come out in the first place, but that's okay

Extensive security check before coming back to the USA. Must mean I'm headed the right directionnn Got my tarot cards patted down 😂

Noticing that it is a unique urge to document things in Asia as an automatic spectacle. Without posting photos of random third-world looking things, real thoughts really don't come that often

International travel is so cray; the moment I stepped into the line for the border & custom, I feel that sense of belonging again. Belonging only in the middle zone, the people that move all over the earth. No wonder we reimagine borders in our dreams.

Out of any other place I've been to (extensive travels in the US, been to most cities) I always felt happy returning to NYC. I think the only thing that tops it is my actual hometown which I just love very deeply.

Weirdest feeling before returning to an English-speaking country: like going to sleep, waking up in a hyper and anxious New York illustrator's body

In NYC I spend $70 on recreating the haircut I grew up with. Back in Tianjin everyone still sports the same cut for $3

Good morning from small town haircut

Last month, the Smithsonian APAC abruptly cancelled the annual Asian American Literature Festival. Trans authors speak out about the festival's politics that underlaid the cancellation. https://prismreports.org/2023/08/09/trans-authors-smithsonian-asian-american-literature-festival/

Something new learned after this long-anticipated trip to China: if metaphorically packing is the opposite and cause of unpacking, it is an activity simultaneously traumatic, difficult, and complicated

What's that feeling of coming back to nyc in 10 days and not knowing what that means 😳

Proof of life 💙

I don't think I've ever seen an animated movie about Chinese poets! 长安三万里 Def a deep cut in my movie going experience

Quote post with some blue art

Quote post with some blue art 💙🩵

Quote post with some blue art

Speaking Chinese everyday this summer has put my spoken English back in its "as a second language" state, but somehow writing prose is so freeing

me: want to find out who I really am if I didn't immigrate Also me: back home, reading fanfic till 3am, waking up thinking about reading fanfic

Only putting it out here on bsky for now, but I'm actively seeking commissioned illustration work for the last half of this year. Interested in covers, author book swag collabs, shirt designs, etc. but not currently open for sequentials. 💖

Latest Baopu on Autostraddle!

gets on new social media 👀 briefly questions new social media 👀 starts using new social media like old social media 🤦‍♀️

Current rabbit holes: 🕳 🕳 🕳 -Chinese translation of Edward Said's Orientalism -Social etiquette videos on Xiaohongshu -1300 yr old religious sites -Visual narratives in script form

New personal essay: unpacking my decision to write (and not write) and my experience with Chinese literature on Electric Lit.