I have always believed that the most interesting women live between worlds. They think deeply, dress beautifully, and move through life with equal parts curiosity and poise. The women I admire most are not defined by a single identity, but by the interplay of many. Intellect and aesthetics. Discipline and ease. Tradition and reinvention.
My friend Christy Liang is one of those women.
Ours is a friendship shaped as much by ideas as by experience. We met through the Hong Kong Ballet, where planning galas often gave way to conversations about books, education, and the question of how to live meaningfully. Over time, I came to see how naturally Christy moves between worlds that are so often kept separate. Academia and art. Rigour and creativity. Scholarship and style. We also discovered a quieter symmetry in our pasts. Both of us spent years in ballet training, Christy until she was fifteen, and I until nineteen, drawn early to a discipline that values precision, restraint, and the invisible work behind grace.
(From L-R) Inna Rodchenko-Highfield, Ariel Shrarkman Ghitis, Emelda Wong Trainor, Christy Liang, Michelle Erb Miller, Cinda McClelland Reynolds
Photo: Anna Koustas
We often joke that we are undercover nerds, the kind who care as much about a compelling argument as a well-cut gown. Beneath that humour is a shared belief that curiosity itself is a form of elegance.
Our friendship has also been an education. Living in Hong Kong, I often felt adjacent to Chinese culture, close enough to admire it, yet aware of what I did not fully understand. Over time, through friendship and shared experiences, that distance began to narrow. Traditions gained context, small details took on meaning, and what once felt opaque became more legible. At one point, Christy gave me a Chinese name, a gesture that felt both intimate and expansive. It was not just a translation, but an interpretation, a way of being seen within another cultural lens. What I have come to understand is that cultural fluency is not about collecting symbols or mastering aesthetics. It is about attention. It requires listening before speaking, context before participation, and a respect for what cannot be immediately understood. There is a difference between appreciation and appropriation, and it lies in intention as much as in knowledge. One seeks to learn and to honour. The other risks reducing something layered and lived into something decorative.
Mandarin Oriental Qianmen
Photo: Harold de Puymorin
When I visited Beijing to celebrate her doctorate, the evening itself felt like an extension of that same sensibility. Tucked within the hutongs, the Mandarin Oriental Qianmen offered a setting of quiet beauty, where candlelight and lantern glow softened the edges of ancient wood and stone.
Guests moved through courtyards and intimate rooms, the atmosphere shaped as much by conversation as by design. There were small, deliberate details that lingered. Handwritten notes at each place setting. Music drifted gently through the air. A sense that every element had been considered, yet nothing felt forced.
Christy Liang giving a speech at her doctorate graduation celebration, cake by Amanda Strang
Photo: Anna Koustas
The gathering drew from the Four Arts of the Chinese scholar, long considered the foundation of a cultivated life. Music as a practice of attunement. Strategy as a study in patience and perspective. Calligraphy as the embodiment of thought through gesture. Painting as an exercise in restraint, where what is left unsaid holds equal meaning. Encountered together, they felt less like separate disciplines and more like a philosophy. A way of moving through the world with intention, sensitivity, and depth.
Jingdezhen porcelain plates from Spin
Photo: Harold de Puymorin
If the classical scholar was defined by four arts, perhaps there is now a fifth. Not glamour as spectacle, but something quieter. A glamour of presence, of thoughtfulness, of knowing how to move between worlds with ease and intention. Looking back, what stays with me is not a single evening, but a feeling of expansion. A sense of having been invited to think more deeply, to notice more carefully, and to appreciate the layers that exist beneath both culture and friendship.
In a world that often rewards immediacy, there is something powerful in that kind of depth. Perhaps that is the truest form of glamour. Not something worn, but something cultivated. Through curiosity, through connection, and through a life lived with intention and care.
Editor
Michelle Miller ErbCredit
Lead Image: Anna Koustas
