Death of a Chinese American

Mengyao Zhou was reported missing since Saturday, January 20th. In the busyness of moving our home, I did not hear the news. By the time I searched the Internet, she was already found dead. I could not shake the image of Mengyao's smiling face from web pages I visited.

I read various stories and many comments. I feel really sad for Mengyao and her family, and very concerned about how some people reacted to this tragedy.

The public disclosure were relatively brief: Mengyao was found in the trunk of her car in the parking lot of Santa Rosa Junior College (which is about 90 miles away from Stanford). Police said it was an apparent suicide. Her dad was notified by reporters instead of the police.

Because of the police statement, many people jumped to conclusion. In this case, the easiest answer seems to be that she killed herself due to stress, pressure and depression as a Ph.D. student. Otherwise, how could someone so young (23 years old), so bright (graduated from MIT, recruited to Stanford for Ph.D. in department of EECS at Stanford), with a promising future (already filed three patents from summer jobs and recently passed her qualifying exam) died such tragic death? When people at school said she did not seem depressed, others jumped in and said that she might be brilliant but did not have friends to confide in.

People want to explain the situation and move on. Whatever the truth, the saddest part is that some stereotypal assumptions may mask the investigation of a suicide/homicide case of a real person and a real family with their own share of happiness and sorrow.

On one hand, I know full well that depression can be masked, and there are individuals and families that would never admit they have problems. It is possible that even if Mengyao had problems, her friends and family members did not recognize the sign of stress and distress as everyone was busy with their own stuff, just like her. Besides, if people widely believed she was successful, there would be no reason to doubt that she was unhappy or having any emotional turmoils. After all, in this society, we tend to look at the outside behaviors and actions without going deep into the inside to understand another person's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and worldview. Did Mengyao have such high expectations of herself that any disappointment was too hard to bear? Could she be hiding her conflictual feelings (which we all have as human beings) behind those smiles and accomplishments?

On the other hand, the circumstances looked suspicious too. Why would someone who did not like driving drove 90 miles before jumping into the trunk of her own car? Is it probable (as some people speculated) that she was so smart that she actually staged her suicide to look like a homicide in order to comfort her parents? Could it be possible that she had an love interest in/near Santa Rosa? Was she planning to go away with someone to escape her scripted successes? Was there other students so jealous of her successes that they wanted to harm her? I hope police will continue their investigation until the mystery is really solved.

Scenes and stories from "Cold Case" came to mind, so many things could have happened. What is the truth? If she was murdered, I hope we find out who did it and bring that person to justice. If she indeed killed herself for whatever pressure and stress, I hope we all learn the lesson that there is much more to life than earthly successes. I pray that parents everywhere will enjoy the limited time we have with our children while we can because life and death are not really in our control.

All I can do is to pray for the Zhou family as they suffered tremendous loss and grief. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: ... a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance" (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4)

Copyright © 2005-2007 Winnis Chiang, Parenting ABC