Cooking and Cultural Exchange Conversations

Excuse me. Excuse me.

Would you cook for me for $100?

What?

Would you cook for me for $100? No worries. Have a good one.

I have a boyfriend.

I ask strangers around the world to cook me a meal to share a little bit about

their culture.

Oh.

And-

How much?

Not, you don't have to accept the money.

Oh, okay, for free.

Would you be down to set something up later in the week?

Um, sure, with my boyfriend.

Yeah, you-

And you can invite him

... you can bring, I'll, I'll bring, my girlfriend's right over there.

All right.

Yeah. She's mentioned her boyfriend three times.

Oh, okay.

Hello. Is, is that your boyfriend?

Yeah, that's my boyfriend.

Nice to meet you, dude. Where are you from?

Beijing, China. I moved here when I was in the 5th

grade.

Why did you move over here?

Because the teachers at my old school got arrested.

What? Actually?

My dad found this academy in Beijing that, like, practiced Waldorf

system.

Yeah.

This system was illegal in China, uh, because they want everyone to follow the

traditional system-

Yeah. Yeah

... like everyone turn out the same.

So we were in class, and, uh, the police came, and then our school

shut down. I basically was illiterate. Like, I only know how to speak.

I didn't even learn math until the 5th grade.

Really?

I attribute a lot of things I do now to that school.

Yeah.

Like, allowed me to have curiosity, to learn.

Yeah.

I know how to crochet. I can knit a sweater. We farmed.

We actually gave birth to, like, a cattle together, all the students.

This is the most random school ever.

My sister and I are identical twins.

This one's you.

No.

That's not me. He went to a casting with me yesterday,

and he was like, "I

can see how I could get you guys confused."

Really?

'Cause I can tell them apart. But when she's doing the whole modeling,

kind of, you

know- ... straight-faced thing, they, they look-

I love this

... yeah, they look very similar.

Oh, my gosh. I shuffled it too late, and look, this one's burned.

Oh, it's fine. It's fair.

Mm. When did you and your sister start working

together on business?

We had a lot of furniture, and we were like,

"Why don't we sell it online?" And we

earned, like, $5,000.

We used that in the stock market-

Wow

... using our dad's Social Security.

Oh my God.

So during COVID, my sister and I had a stock trading platform.

Did you make money in the stock market?

Yeah, GameStop.

You were in GameStop?

I was in GameStop too, but I lost money, so I-

Oh, okay. So-

Most people lost money.

So then we were doing such good markets, so I was like, "Why don't we start our own

community?"

So then we joined a lot of Discords, you know, as a 14-year-old girl, and then

they were like, "Oh, well, why is your name Rina?

Why is your name Amy?" Like, that's so weird.

Yeah.

They thought we were guys with nicknames. So we started subscription.

People actually paid.

Wait, how much money were you making from it?

I don't remember the exact number, but we had 40,000 members on the

community.

You had 40,000 members-

Yeah

... in your Discord?

Yeah.

Also, I'm curious, why did you say yes to this?

Um, I originally didn't say yes.

You actually said, "I have a boyfriend" four times.

Wow. Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

What are we calling this dish?

Steak bite slate with arugula salad.

Mm. Steak is so good. As promised, here you go.