Julia Tai was born in Shanghai, China. Growing up, she found that food, holidays, and traditions greatly influenced her life growing up. Her mother was a homemaker, cooking fantastic meals, and her father was a member of the Guomindang (GMD) Nationalist Party of China, fighting against the communists. She also had two younger brothers and an elder sister. During the Japanese occupation of China, her family had to split up and go to different relatives' houses in order to not be captured. When the Japanese soon came into the French concession, her father was arrested. Dressed as Chinese, two Japanese officers came into their home and took her father, but only after he finished his breakfast. One of their servants followed her father and the officers down the road to the headquarters. Mrs. Tai’s father was soon released, and she remembers him telling their family how he and the officers had often had nice conversations. After his release, the family moved to the Chinese side of China in around November, a year before the Japanese lost the war. She recalls the move seeming like a vacation since she didn’t have to go to school. Only a few years later, Mrs. Tai moved with her family to Taiwan in 1949 just before the communists took over, when they realized their house was being watched. After graduating college, she moved to the United States for graduate school, with an interest in chemistry and a love for the periodic table. She earned her PhD in chemistry and became a professor at the University of Michigan, also becoming the head of the chemistry department. As a woman of colour, she was asked by one of her male colleagues to go back to her family, but she insisted on keeping her job. She finds her greatest accomplishment was having great kids and having good relationships with her relatives.