After much anticipation, i can finally reveal my first ever WTD OC, Du Ye Xian (or Ye Xian Du in the american naming scheme) aka the future owner of the jade of the Orient! 🐡🐌🦋🥠🀄
•Ye Xian is a chinese-american, her parents are both immigrants
•She is 12 in 1962, making her 58 by the time IT chapter two takes place
•She was born on June 19th 1950, making her a gemini on the american zodiac and a Earth ox on the chinese zodiac
•Her parents run the Jade Of The Orient when she's little before eventually giving it to her as an adult
•Her parents are named Du Xiao and Chen Yang Mi, Yang Mi runs the actual restaurant and cooks the food while Xiao handles all the finances and boring stuff
•Ye Xian's name comes from the chinese folk tale of Ye Xian, which is theorized to be an early version of the european tale of cinderella. It's about a girl abused by her step mother and half sister who finds a magical fish to grant her wishes which she uses to get to a lunar ball and fall in love with the emporer. Ye Xian's mom loved that story very much growing up, so she sought to name her daughter that. It's also why she has a fish necklace.
•Their family restaurants name is actually kind of offensive and outdated by todays standards, orient and oriental is not how you're supposed to describe asia or asian places, people, or things. Ye Xian's parents named their restaurant that in the late 1940's, a time when calling chinese people oriental in america was fairly common. Ye Xian's parents, wanting to acclimate the best they could in America, decides to name their restaurant with american terminology in mind. By the time Ye Xian is an adult and running it, even by the time she's decided she doesn't like the name much anymore, she sticks with it for her parents sakes.
•Ye Xian's parents immigrated to America in the 1940's after the USA and China actually started to get along after they became allies in world war 2. This was a time where being chinese wasn't seen as such a horrendous thing by the us government because it was politically convenient. It was also a very good idea for Ye Xian's parents to get out of china at the time given the country was about to experience the deadliest famine in history just 10 years later.
•A lot of Ye Xian's childhood growing up in the 60's were marked by a lot of racism and microaggressions. People tended to make fun of her for being asian with all the usual racist stereotypes you'd expect. They'd also make fun of her and her parents for allegedly being a commie, even though she's 12 and doesn't know what that really means. Even if people were trying to be nice they'd still usually insult her country by accident, implying that she must be glad to live in america instead of china cause of (XYZ reason here).
•Because of all the racist bullshit she has to go through she doesn't have many friends, although she does make an acquaintance with Rich santos because they're both from immigrant backgrounds and she thinks he's very silly.
•She is bullied by Patricia Stanton and the other patty cakes by proxxy, because she's fat and not white. Ye Xian is pretty sure she hates her guts.
•Ye Xian's personality is hard for other to pinpoint cause she doesn't talk much to other classmates since they're usually dicks to her. Most people assume she's just a docile shy little flower without anything interesting to say, but when Ye Xian's in an envirement she doesn't feel so alone in her actual personality shines through. She's quite witty and sarcastic, if she wanted to she could probably decimate patty in a verbal altercation but she'd rather not cause drama. She loves weird things, acting silly with her parents, and both chinese and american pop culture. People don't realize how much they're missing out on Ye Xian's vibrant personality by judging her.
•Ye Xian is also fat, which is something she also gets picked on for. She's fat because her family owns a restaurant and they're in the habit of shoving food in her face as an act of affection. They also tend to pinch her cheeks or her stomach in a loving way that she finds more embarrassing than endearing, but it doesn't bother her much at all. Really they love her the way she is, the only people who make her weight a problem are the people at school. They really love to point out how "funny" it is that she's fat and kids in china starve all the time. Haha. :/
•Ye Xian is straight and cis
•Her hobbies include: Cooking with her mom, collecting things, listening to records, studying bugs, junk journaling, and reading comics.
•She collects many things, trinkets, records, bugs, comics, ect. She's a bit of a hoarder.
•She's closer with her dad than her mom but truthfully she loves both her parents very much.
•Her favorite colors are Chartreuse and Brown.
•Her favorite animals are fish (particularly gold fish), partly because she just thinks they're cool and because fish symbolize wealth and prosperity in china.
•Her favorite food is moon cakes and her favorite drink is cranberry juice.
•Her favorite movie is 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
•She LOVES summer, she always gets very hyped every time it rolls around. She likes wearing sundresses a lot.
•Her love of fish is the reason why the jade of the orient has decorative fish tanks in the walls, she installed them as an adult.
•When she was little she always said if she didn't grow up to run the jade of the orient she'd become an explorer like captain james cook and catalog cool stuff she found
•She also has an affinity for pirate stories, whe she was little she used to place sea captain by herself
•She dislikes: Most people she meets outside of her family, having the fact she's chinese be brought up every 2 seconds, being the only chinese kid in town, anything that requires her to work with groups in school (they usually force her to do all the work), school in general tbh, having her weight brought up, scary movies, winter time, futurism, super advanced tech (she's the type of girl to think old stuff is usually better), sci fi, weird american terminology and phrases.
•Her pennywise fear is pretty complicated, it has a lot to do with her fear of current political happenings in china and a more supernatural fear. At the time wtd takes place there was a very real and disturbing phenomena of chinese people disappearing from local villages with no trace. It was a constant miserable fear for chinese people especially because it felt like any day someone you loved could go missing. The explanation for this has never been found but theories range from something supernatural to the slave trade, but Ye Xian and her parents are convinced it's the product of an enemy state hurting their people. This terrified Ye Xian, who had many relatives who still lived in china and she worried for day and night. This mixed with a late night movie viewing of the movie scifi robot movie kronos made her fear manifest as automaton men, robotic men sent here to take people you love and replace them. They look like janky old imitations of real people but with shiney chrome exterior and gears. The robots looked partially like your average robots and also partially like tin soldiers, which has to do with an old phrase about humanity killing each other to mass extinction until all that's left is "one tin soldier rides away". Obviously pennywise would turn into a fleet of these tin soldier men and chase her around the restaurant when she was home alone.
•About her parents: Her dad is a hobby writer who occaisionally sells short storys to the Derry Inquirer, and he's a very silly short king. He loves his wife with all his heart and loves his daughter even more. Her mom is a very gorgeous woman, she's more serious and confidant than her husband but she's not bossy or over bearing at all, she's just a bit more subdued in how she behaves. They're a very sweet family, and they're very tightly knit.
•Her family plays mahjong together a lot, it's a fun family tradition for them.
•Ye Xian works in the restaurant on occaision but for the most part it's very minimal because her parents don't wanna stress her out.
•Her voice claim is Rosalie Chiang (aka Mei in turning red)
•When she's older she goes back to china for a bit and meets her future husband, who's very himbo esque. She takes him back to america and they proceed to have three beautiful daughters together, you can even see on of them in IT chapter 2- she's the lady who walks in on mike smacking a chair against the table.
Here's what her bedroom looks like:
And here's her aesthetic:
And I wanna end this off by giving a special thanks to my good buddy Lalo who helped me write Ye Xian in a way I couldn't on my own since I'm so fricken white. They aren't chinese but are asian and live in a country with a very big chinese population so they could offer me advice, they helped with things like historical context and names, and i really appreciate it. Thanks buddy!
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