One spark ignited it all.

It was 2023. My husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I started looking around online to find something interesting, which meant food, travel or books. I saw a festival in northern Virginia on one of those and booked the somewhat pricey tickets to attend. I was quite excited, as my experience of festivals in the Washington, DC area is somewhat colored by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

After the event, I was somewhat shell-shocked. We didn’t even stay the whole day, as it only took a couple of hours to do everything that was available, which were mostly product booths. There were some performers, and some talks but mainly kiosks selling items. For the amount we paid, the return on investment was very low. We couldn’t even get lunch there as they were overwhemed by the number of attendees. After being in line for half an hour, we ventured to a restaurant closer to home instead. I told my husband that I could probably plan something better, given my work and volunteer experience.

Did I set out to challenge myself this much? Probably not. The more I thought about the idea, the more excited I became. One of my favorite part-time jobs (until I had to quit after a few years since my full-time job got too busy) was that of a bookseller. I had read manga ever since I got hooked on it in high school and I saw a burgeoning interest locally as our manga section grew rapidly in size at the store. The onset of Netflix streaming included Asian dramas that would never had been televised by conventional platforms. K-pop also started to rise in power, as more Korean acts started blowing up on social media. On the other side of the coin, there were more violent acts against Asians in several major cities.

This was a great time to launch something that educated people on the different Asian cultures.