This is something that I haven't told anyone online.

I came to the United States only 4 years ago.

As many of you know, I've accomplished a lot in the tech industry over the past 2 years as a high school student, contributing my parts by making apps and doing freelance programming.

But what I want to talk about here, was the 2 years before that.

I was born in Kaiping, China, a city 200km from Hong Kong. I lived a normal childhood - going to school 8 hours a day, completing homework on time, and playing basketball at the court downstairs - just like any other kid in the neighborhood.

My parents' friends kept telling us that I had the potential to accomplish big things. Although I participated in our school's math Olympiad team, I couldn't comprehend what they meant.

Fast forward to June 2008, I've just completed 6th grade, and was getting ready to move to the United States. I didn't know what to expect. All I clearly remembered about the U.S. were huge hamburgers, easy schools, and the NBA.

So there I went. On July 30th, 2008, I landed in San Francisco International Airport. I had a little less than a month to get ready for school. Even with the help of family members, it was still difficult to understand everything around me.

When I stepped into my middle school classroom for the first time, I had no friends; I didn't know how the school was being run; I barely spoken any English; nor could I understand what the teacher was saying. Even though I had my little translator device with me at all times, it was still a struggle.

Meanwhile, two role models came into mind - Jerry Yang and Kai-Fu Lee. Both came from Taiwan, immigrated to U.S. at their teens, overcame the language barriers, and achieved extraordinary success in the tech industry. Jerry Yang founded Yahoo, Kai-Fu Lee worked as a top executive in Apple, Microsoft, and then Google.

I constantly told myself, "sooner or later, I can do the same."

After the 1st week of school, I started to do 3 things on a daily basis. 1) Learn the meanings of words that I didn't understand throughout the day. 2) Put the words into a sentence and say it until it flowed smoothly. 3) Use the words in a conversation the next day. I forced myself to learn at least 50 vocabulary words a day. It wasn't an easy task at all - I often stayed up until 11PM doing it.

In 3 months, I could at least have a clue of what's going on around me. I got used to the environment. I got used to the customs. I got used to the people. I decided it was time to move out of the ESL class. I decided to convince my teacher, fortunately she let me mainstream so I had more chance interacting with native English speakers.

In 6 months, I became comfortable with my new friends and found myself being more extroverted. I was no longer that shy student sitting in the back of the classroom. I was no longer that lonely kid eating at the last row of the cafeteria. Although my spoken English was still unarticulated and far from natural, I was at least brave enough to start a conversation and didn't feel bad about it.

In 12 months, things started to click after getting through the initial barrier. Before that, I couldn't ask a question when I didn't understand something because I couldn't even express what I didn't understand! But after 1 year, it wasn't a problem for me anymore to raise my hand and ask my teacher to clarify a word in simple English or ask a friend to explain it to me in context.

In 18 months, my conversational English was fine. I could go to places and hang out with friends with no problems. I even earned the highest grade in my English class, and received Student of the Month award. As I had more free time, I stumbled upon TechCrunch, and was permanently hooked into the technology arena...

Now, my English is still far from perfect. Besides focusing on my programming stuff, I still try to improve my English with every opportunity I have. There are many things I need to work on. You know, things like being natural when talking to people.

As I retraced these facts, I started to realize how many obstacles I've overcome in those two years. I worked hard every day, encouraged myself to interact with people. And most importantly, I never gave up. Without those two years of perseverance and determination, I wouldn't even had a chance to step into this wonderful technology world.

I am proud of myself.

PS: If you had a similar experience, email me so I can tell you something I've been planning for!

PPS: Thanks to Anthony Wong and Kevin Xu for proofreading this and correcting my not-so-perfect grammar.