Raven Tao
Raven Tao isn’t your average model, actress, TV host and radio personality—she also has “real estate agent” and “law student” on her résumé. She tells Andrea Lo about being different from other kids, falling in love with real estate and being a geeky bookworm.
My mother is Chinese-Nepalese and my father is English-Polish. I went to the French school here, and spent summers in Canada. We moved to New Zealand in 1997 because my mother was a little worried. From there we moved to Australia.
It was pretty confusing when I was younger. Now I definitely identify the most with Hong Kong, because it is in itself so incredibly multicultural.
My best memory growing up here was visiting the [now defunct] Tiger Balm Garden. I remember it as a beautiful experience. You step into this different world that happens to exist in such a metropolitan city.
I seemed to have this weird knack of attracting wild animals. While out camping [in Canada], other kids would be doing social things and I would be alone. My sister and other people came back to me surrounded by chipmunks and birds.
When I was 12, my best friend made me promise to go into a model agency one day—because she thought I was pretty.
I thought she was crazy for doing so, because I looked like Mowgli. If you put a picture of me next to Mowgli, it was like cut and paste. My sister still calls me that.
