Cristina Yang

Background
Cristina Yang is a doctor of Korean descent raised in Judaism (her mother converted upon re-marriage) and a native of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. Though Yang has mentioned Jewish customs from her upbringing like Shiv'ah and at times has referred to herself as Jewish, she believes only in science and is a strong atheist. Her mother married Cristina's stepfather, Dr. Saul Rubenstein, an oral surgeon, three years after Cristina was born. Cristina's biological father died when she was nine years old in a car accident; Cristina watched her father bleed out before help arrived. She is a graduate of Beverly Hills High School and Smith College, and she earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from University of California, Berkeley. She earned her M.D. from Stanford University, where she graduated first in her class.

Overview
Cristina is incredibly focused and driven (even more so than the others) and is always excited about the chance to scrub in on a surgery. Extremely competitive, she is not above stealing and hijacking patients if it means getting in on an exciting surgery. Cristina has excellent surgical skills, and is the intern with the most medical knowledge. However, she has difficulties conveying her feelings and dislikes being touched by anyone, including her mother. She also has a poor bedside manner, and finds it hard to empathize with most patients.

Cristina values logic and practical thinking above emotional reasoning, but has undergone several emotional situations since becoming an intern. Because of the traumatic experience of watching her father die, Cristina is unable to handle the emotional loss from the thought of losing her loved ones. While she initially grappled with the concept of expressing her feelings, Cristina has gradually become more comfortable with sharing her inner thoughts. Nevertheless, she is still considered the least emotional of all the interns.

Character History
Cristina Yang became an intern at Seattle Grace after graduating from medical school. On the first day of the internship, she hit it off with Meredith Grey. Cristina soon fell out with her because she felt that Meredith was given surgeries because of Derek’s favoritism and her famous mother, Dr. Ellis Grey. However, Cristina apologized to Meredith and the pair soon became fast friends. Her frequent sarcastic remarks and lack of tact made it hard for people to like her, but her fellow interns gradually took to her ways and became friends with her as well.

In “Shake Your Groove Thing”, Preston Burke gave Cristina a cup of coffee, causing her to be taken aback by the gesture. Later, touched by the fact that Burke admitted to having made a huge error in a surgery, Cristina followed Burke into the on-call room and locked the door. They proceeded to have sex. The next day, Burke tried to get Cristina to define their relationship, but a commitment-phobic Cristina brushed him off. She found out later that she was pregnant in “The Self-Destruct Button”, and immediately scheduled an abortion. Unable to deal with her emotions about the pregnancy and abortion, she distanced herself from a bewildered, frustrated Burke, telling only Meredith about her pregnancy, as she was her 'person'. Meanwhile, her covert relationship with Burke came out into the open after George saw them kissing and told Meredith and Izzie. After the Chief told Burke that he could only be interim Chief of Surgery if he was prepared to sacrifice his personal life, he decided to break up with Cristina. Although she pretended to not care, Cristina was hurt by his decision and decided against telling Burke about her pregnancy. However while in surgery with Burke in “Make Me Lose Control”, she collapsed from an ectopic pregnancy and her left fallopian tube burst. Burke was shocked to find out about the pregnancy, but Cristina reminded him that he broke up with her. Despite that, he was the only one whom she allowed to comfort her when she could not stop crying from her grief.

The couple reconciled and officially became a couple in “Bring the Pain”. When Cristina and Burke went on their first official date out of the hospital, they realized that they have almost nothing in common. Burke also noted that Cristina is “very hard to get to know” and she agreed. Although their relationship was dysfunctional, it was still going strong as they were clearly in love with each other.

Another obstacle in her relationship with Burke was their different beliefs. Burke is moderately religious and believes in spiritual traditions, while Cristina is a strong atheist who believes only in science, and openly scoffs at any superstition and spiritual ideas. When she first found out about Burke's spirituality, Cristina was shocked, believing that a surgeon with his level of ambition and medical skill wouldn't have anything but a purely scientific mind. She began looking down on Burke for beliefs she considered irrational, while Burke was hurt and angry she wouldn't accept his spirituality. This clash in belief caused tension between Cristina and Burke, but it was subsequently resolved.

Cristina’s commitment issues resurfaced when Burke gave her a key to his apartment and asked her to move in with him. She felt that they did not know each other well enough yet, but Burke convinced her to open up to him. Cristina introduced Burke to her extremely messy apartment and lifestyle, but Burke accepted her for what she was. She eventually agreed to move in with Burke, but secretly kept her old apartment. The truth eventually came out and Burke was mad that Cristina had lied to him. Burke later confronts her, “I am Preston Burke! And you, you are the most competitive, most guarded, most stubborn, most challenging person I have ever met! And I love you. What the hell is the matter with you that you won’t just let me?” Cristina replied saying that she gave up her apartment twenty minutes ago.

When George had a disastrous sexual encounter with Meredith and moved out of her place, Burke invited him to stay at his apartment. Cristina was jealous that George was able to relate better to Burke than she could, and she devised a way to make Burke kick out George himself. Insisting on her right to be comfortable in her own home, she went about naked in the apartment, and Burke was forced to evict George from their apartment.

Later, Burke became mad at Cristina when she unwittingly fell asleep during sex in “Damage Case”. During this conflict, Burke prevented Cristina from scrubbing in on several surgeries. This outraged Cristina, who hated the fact that her love life could have such a large impact on her work life. However, this argument ended abruptly when Burke was shot in the arm. When sent to the surgery room to help Burke during his intense, painful surgery, she panicked and fled, her turbulent emotions preventing her from acting. This event would impact her deeply, for she knew it wasn't like her at all to be controlled by her emotions in such a way. Later, she eventually returned to his side and held his hand.

As per Burke’s instruction, she went to check on his patient Denny Duquette. She was shocked to find out that Izzie had cut his LVAD wire in order to secure him a new heart. Against her instincts, she stayed and together with Meredith and George, helped Izzie in her endeavor. Soon enough, Bailey stumbled upon their plan and banned them from surgeries until someone admitted to cutting the LVAD wire. To her own surprise, Cristina insisted on sticking together and helped prevent the truth from coming to light. When the Chief decided to interrogate each intern individually, Cristina begged to Chief to tell her how to regain her business-like focus, saying that she's become an emotional wreck, the complete opposite of who she'd once been. She asked the Chief to tell her how to avoid being emotionally-affected so that she could continue being a great surgeon, but he refused saying that he did not want to be responsible for her becoming less human.

Burke’s recovery was not smooth-sailing and he discovered that he had developed a hand tremor. Burke later confided to Cristina about his hand tremor, and she replied saying “nobody has to know”. They devised a covert partnership to hide Burke's tremors from the other doctors. In her best supportive way, she managed Burke’s surgery schedule and scrubbed in on all his surgeries, so that she could take over whenever his hand became too tired to proceed with surgery. However, her exclusivity to rare surgeries incited jealousy and suspicion from the other interns. George subsequently witnessed one of Burke’s hand tremors, and confronted Cristina about it. She frantically denied it, but suffered a crisis of confidence and eventually confessed everything to the Chief.

Cristina’s actions jeopardized Burke’s chances of becoming Chief of Surgery, and Burke saw this as a huge betrayal. Both parties refused to talk to each other after the fallout, jeopardizing their relationship. Cristina eventually broke the silence, and Burke asked her to marry him. Cristina was stunned and only accepted his proposal after eight days of hesitation. However, she refused to wear the ring he gave her, saying she doesn’t do rings.

When Meredith was unconscious after falling into the water during the ferry crisis, Cristina fled after she realized she could not deal with the fact that her "person" was dying. Burke encouraged her to confront her feelings, and she burst into the trauma room and insisted that the doctors try to revive Meredith again. Meredith soon woke up, and an overwhelmed Cristina happily told Meredith that she was getting married to Burke, and Meredith was the one person she wanted to tell.

Cristina's life was further complicated when her former professor and lover, Colin Marlow, arrived at Seattle Grace. In a bid to win her back, he repeatedly came onto her and tried to sabatoge her relationship with Burke. On top of that, he joined the race for Chief of Surgery, so as to compete with Burke and impress her.

Cristina resorted to acting extremely affectionate with Burke, after direct attempts at getting Marlow to leave Seattle Grace failed. However, Marlow was not convinced by this and used the opportunity of a rare surgery to lure Cristina to his side. Marlow humiliated Burke in the operating room by belittling Burke's knowledge of cardiothoracics, and relegated Burke to just observing the surgery. After the surgery, Cristina comforted him. Unbeknownst to her, Marlow witnessed the entire thing, telling her she had compromised herself for Burke, and was no longer the competitive and driven person he fell in love with. She responded by saying that she's learned that "sometimes you have to think about other people."

Trivia

 * Cristina was the first to call Dr. Shepherd "McDreamy."
 * Frequently refers to George as "Bambi."