Originally written in Chinese. This English edition is translated and lightly adapted from the original. It reflects a decision I made in the summer of 2026; references to future plans belong to that moment in time.
I quit my Wall Street internship. I’m going back to China to build something of my own.
But before explaining why, I want to tell you who I am—and how I ended up here in the first place.
I was born on October 13, 2005, in New Jersey. Legally, I’m an American citizen. But whenever someone asked where I was from, my answer growing up was always the same: I’m Chinese.
Because that’s where my roots are. China has always felt like home.
When I was only about two months old, my mother decided to leave her job at a clothing company in New York and return to China to start her own factory. As far back as I can remember, I grew up in China.
I was raised in Shanghai by my grandparents, who spoiled me into becoming a chubby little kid. The funny thing is, I was a chubby kid who loved sports. I played soccer with my older brother and started playing basketball with my friends in middle school. I just happened to remain overweight well into high school.
Then I went to the United States for high school. I realized that my weight and fitness were making it difficult to earn a place on the school’s top soccer team. My brother, who’s almost four years older than me, had already lost weight successfully. I figured it was time for me to learn how to do the same.
At first, I knew almost nothing about nutrition. I just started doing something. I cut out sugary drinks and desserts, kept eating everyday foods such as fruit, milk, and rice, and tried to eat more protein. Combined with the fact that I was still growing, those changes helped me go from chubby to almost skinny in about six months.
Looking back, I sometimes regret how aggressively I dieted. I was eating and sleeping too little, often waking at five in the morning to study because I was determined to prove I could do as well academically as my brother. Sometimes I wonder whether that period affected my growth. That’s only a personal suspicion, though, not something I can know for certain.
What I do know is that losing weight changed my interests for good. I became fascinated by nutrition. I started reading about how food affects our bodies, and I never really stopped. Even today, I love learning about new research and putting useful ideas into practice.
If I hadn’t become interested in nutrition through that first weight-loss journey, Protein Kitchen might never have existed.
Growing up, I was a fairly obedient kid. My parents wanted me to get into a good university, so I worked hard to do that. When I got to college, I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. But I thought earning a high salary would make my family happy and prove that my college years had amounted to something.
So, starting the summer after freshman year, I began preparing for the investment banking internship I hoped to land for the summer after junior year.
My college life revolved around three things: class, the gym, and soccer. I barely had a social life. Outside of my Korean roommate and a few people from soccer, I didn’t have many close friends.
The lonelier I felt, the harder I clung to recruiting. I convinced myself that once I had an offer from a Wall Street investment bank in New York, all the effort would finally make sense. My life would have an answer.
The truth is, since high school I’d often felt uncertain about what I was working toward. Sometimes life seemed like one long sequence of goals someone else had chosen for me. Finish one, immediately chase the next. There were periods when I felt deeply discouraged and struggled to see what I had to look forward to.
Part of the reason I cared so much about career success was that I didn’t know what else to build my life around.
The first half of sophomore year was one of my loneliest stretches in college. Almost every day was just internship preparation and working out.
And during that period, I met my girlfriend.
She was like a beam of light pulling me out of the tiny world I’d built around myself. Suddenly, there were things to look forward to that had nothing to do with recruiting: eating together, talking, going somewhere new, or just spending an afternoon doing absolutely nothing.
She showed me that life could be lived in more than one way. Not every moment has to be about pursuing the next achievement.
I’m incredibly grateful for her. You’re my lucky star, and a big part of what later gave me the confidence to pursue my own dream.
By the second semester of sophomore year, I finally got my first real investment banking interview—with Citi’s investment banking division.
I felt ready. I had spent so much time preparing that I knew all I needed was a chance to prove myself.
Around March 2025, I received the offer to intern in New York the following summer. I was ridiculously happy. Who would have guessed that once I finally started the internship, I’d decide to quit after two weeks?
Life has a strange sense of humor.
The story goes back to the summer of 2025.
For almost an entire year, I had woken up with a clear objective: prepare for recruiting. Once I got the offer, I suddenly had a full year before the internship and no urgent interview to prepare for. For the first time in a while, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
That space allowed me to ask a question I’d rarely stopped to consider: If nobody told me what I was supposed to do, what would I actually enjoy doing?
Before I started dating, I was extremely strict about food. I rarely ate indulgent meals. My mom used to joke that I lived like a monk. Once I had a girlfriend, I started sharing desserts and all sorts of foods I wouldn’t normally have chosen.
One week, I noticed that I had developed a habit of craving dessert after dinner. I wondered whether I could make desserts that tasted great and still fit the way I liked to eat.
So I bought a Ninja ice cream machine and started experimenting with high-protein ice cream.
I was genuinely surprised by how good it tasted. I began posting photos on Xiaohongshu, and around June or July 2025, I named the account 蛋白厨房—Protein Kitchen.
That entire summer, I mostly posted photos and text. Almost nobody cared. After two or three months, I had gained maybe one or two hundred followers.
Back at college, I realized the ice cream had one frustrating drawback: every batch needed to freeze a day in advance. So I looked for something easier that I could make whenever I wanted.
That’s how I got into protein smoothies.
Frozen fruit, milk, protein powder, and a decent blender. Simple, delicious, and easy to customize.
My first smoothie video did pretty well on Xiaohongshu—something like two or three thousand likes. I remember thinking, Oh my God. Mom, I think I’m about to be famous.
I’m joking. But I really was excited. For the first time, something I’d made had reached people I’d never met.
I kept experimenting with different smoothie flavors, often editing to Chinese rap songs. People sometimes complained that my background music was too loud or annoying. I didn’t change it. I liked that music, and it felt like me.
Between late September 2025 and early 2026, the account grew to roughly 20,000 followers.
Then I hit a wall. The videos started feeling identical, and because I rarely appeared on camera, I had limited ways to make them feel different. For the next two or three months, I barely posted—sometimes only once every couple of weeks.
Everything began changing in April 2026.
I started appearing on camera more, found a new way to film, and began taking Douyin seriously instead of treating it as an afterthought.
By mid-April, a few videos were getting traction. May was my summer break, and my internship wouldn’t start until June. I decided to post every single day.
I published a video on all 31 days of May.
On April 15, I remember having fewer than 100 followers on Douyin. By May 31, I had crossed 100,000.
But the number wasn’t the most meaningful part. I had started making longer videos that showed more of who I was: what I believed about food, exercise, health, and living well.
People began messaging me to say that my videos encouraged them to cook, exercise, or approach their lives with a little more care and optimism.
That was the first time I really felt it: I was doing something I loved, and it was having a positive effect on other people’s lives.
Protein Kitchen was no longer just a page for smoothie recipes. It had become a glimpse of a different kind of future.
When I got to New York, I quickly realized how difficult the internship’s schedule would be for me.
Deep down, I had always wanted to build something, to be a founder rather than simply follow a path someone else laid out. Of course, disliking an office schedule doesn’t automatically make you a good entrepreneur. But by that point, I had a real project that was growing—and it needed my time.
We were typically at work from around 7:45 in the morning until after 10 at night. There was usually only one day off over the weekend, and Sunday was a workday. Filming videos became almost impossible. Even finding time to work out was hard.
Plenty of people told me, “Just finish the internship. It’s only a couple more months.”
That was perfectly reasonable advice. The opportunity was valuable, and completing it would preserve more career options.
But I asked myself two questions.
First: If I quit, and Protein Kitchen ultimately fails, can I live with that?
Yes. I can.
Second: If I stay, stop posting for almost two months, and watch the momentum I’d just built slip away, can I live with that?
That was the outcome I was more afraid of.
Maybe two months away wouldn’t actually destroy a growing account. Maybe I could have come back stronger after the internship. I couldn’t know. But in that summer, I knew I was more willing to risk failing at something I cared about than to risk never really giving it a chance.
There’s something important I have to acknowledge: I grew up in a financially comfortable family.
My parents gave me a wonderful upbringing and the security to make choices like this one. Not everyone can afford to take the same career risk.
I’m deeply grateful to them.
That’s why I don’t want to present quitting an investment banking internship as some universal formula for success. I made a decision based on my own circumstances, values, and ability to handle the downside.
For me, a career has never been only about maximizing salary or getting the most prestigious name on my résumé.
I want to build something useful—something that helps people live healthier, better lives.
Of course I want to build a business that can support me and sustain itself. But I’d rather put the value I create for other people first.
I’m not returning to China just to make more smoothie videos.
My real ambition is to build Protein Kitchen into a brand that can last.
A brand that doesn’t manufacture health anxiety or insist that every other food is toxic. A brand that makes healthy living simpler, tastier, and a little more intentional.
Maybe one day that means healthier foods, protein drinks, electrolyte mixes, or other nutrition products. But I don’t want to sell things just because I have an audience. Anything we build should be something I’d happily use myself, and something that creates real value for the people who buy it.
I also want to document the process: the decisions, mistakes, product experiments, and the uncertainty that comes with building something from scratch.
I’ve always liked calling the people who follow Protein Kitchen our “spiritual shareholders.” It’s not actual equity. It’s a way of saying that I want you to witness the journey, have a voice in it, and feel part of what we’re building.
When I made this decision in the summer of 2026, I still needed to return to Atlanta for my final semester of college. My plan was to settle in China in 2027 and devote myself fully to this dream.
I don’t know how far it will go. I can’t promise success. But for the first time, I feel like I’m actively choosing the direction of my own life.
I used to work hard to become the person I thought everyone expected me to be.
Now I want to find out what I can create when I start living on my own terms.
Eat well. Live well.
This is Protein Kitchen. Let’s keep growing, one step at a time.
Peace.
