Maybe one reason they do manage to communicate so well is that, for all their differences, they also have a lot of things in common.
They are both the same age. They are both university students. They are both members of the Facebook “community” and feel
comfortable with computer-mediated communication in general. And they are both fans of a particular animated story, the source of
which, ironically, is a culture to which neither of them belongs. And they both speak English. In fact, Ho Man seems to have much more
in common with her gay American friend than she does with her own grandmother, who is also Chinese. At the same time, Steven has
something in common with Ho Man’s grandmother that she doesn’t: they are both Buddhists.