On most mornings, while walking to campus, I come across a million smartphones carrying a million people. Bent heads and screensavers, a connectedly disconnected universe. A place where you would rather put on earphones than talk to the stranger nearby or fiddle with your phone gallery than create…

On Saturday mornings, I would take an one hour train ride with my parents to Grand St, the heart of the Fujianese, a southern Chinese province, enclave in New York City’s Chinatown, where their restaurant, their second home, laid. Menus were taped against the door outside to give…