I grew up in a little funny town called Xuzhou, in the countryside, very poor. We didn't have hot water. We were four children: three girls and a boy.

My children speak very good Chinese, and they translate for our American friends.

I grew up in China, but I live in the U.S. and I want my children to understand what's going on over there. They ask me sometimes, 'Are we Chinese or Australians?' My family are in L.A., New York and China, and they have the freedom to go back and forth, which is really, really nice.

There were times when we didn't have hot water or a phone line. But I guarantee you, we always had cable, and it was always on.

I grew up in a house my parents built together on a mountain in Tennessee. When we moved in, the walls were still going up, we didn't have hot water, and we turned it into an amazing adventure.

I spent eight years living without heat and hot water.