Bios

I am a Chinese. I was born in Beijing. My parents named me Liu Gang. In China the surname is always stated before the given name. It’s the opposite of English names. My father told me that when I was born he wanted to name me Duyi. In Chinese it means unique. At that time the trend was to use single character names, so he selected Gang as my name instead. To be honest, I prefer the name Duyi for two reasons. First, I like the idea of being “unique”. Secondly, my current name is very popular in China. Many people use this name. It causes a lot of confusion for me. I remember the first day I went to school. When the teacher called my name two of us stood up and said “Here”. We both had the same name. To avoid confusion the teacher placed us in two different classes, so she could distinguish between us.

When I grew up and worked in a big company I often received emails intended for someone else named “Gang”. I often had to reply to these emails. “You are wrong, I’m not the Gang you want to talk to”. It was a real time waster.

When I traveled abroad, customs staff often checked my passport for a long time. It made me think they were making sure I was not the wanted criminal named “Gang”. My family and I often stood waiting together in front of the customs table. This was another real time waster for me.

In China around 87,000 people use my name. The number one popular name is ‘Zhang Wei’, nearly 300,000 people use it. Nowadays, parents usually name their children choosing 3 characters to avoid the probability of having children named like thousands of others. Some parents even name their children with 4 or 5 characters.

I don’t think you can ever guess what my daughter calls me. She calls me “Chimpanzee”. I once told her that Chimpanzees are very clever. They use leaves as umbrellas when it’s raining. She liked that so much that she calls me ‘Chimpanzee’ or ‘Chimpan’.

Please don’t call me Chimpanzee. That name is reserved for my daughter to use. Please call me Leo or Gang.