Dad wants me to be a princess, even now

Moments before I could lift my carry-on baggage to put it in the plane's overhead locker ahead of our recent holiday to mainland Europe, my father gently urged me to stop. He held its thick handles and lifted it with his thin arms, pushing it into place with a sigh.

"You should relax and be the lady, and let me do the heavy tasks," he said in a serious tone. "In the future, someone special will come into your life and take over such tasks from me, but that will never happen if you do everything yourself." I was stunned into silence. This was not the father I remembered from childhood, who trained me to study hard at school, asked me to earn my own pocket money as a teenager at a local coffee shop, and even taught me household chores so my life alone in London would not turn into a mess.

And now, eight years after I left home and started a new life in the United Kingdom, I realized for the first time that dad still has expectations for me to be a princess, to maintain some dependency and vulnerability, which are considered virtues of women in traditional China.