Cristina Yang is introduced as a graduate from Smith College and a fellow surgical intern to Meredith Grey, Izzie Stevens,George O'Malley, and Alex Karev; the five of them working under Miranda Bailey. An atheistic competitive intern of Korean-American ancestry, she first desired to become a doctor after a childhood car accident which killed her biological father. Yang also suffers from dyslexia, and was raised in Beverly Hills, California by her mother and supportive Jewish stepfather. She has BA from Smith College, an MD from Stanford University and a PhD from University of California, Berkeley, making her a "double doctor". While her emotional pragmatism, competitive perfectionism, and logical nature lead many to view her as a cutthroat "robot", Cristina hits it off with Meredith on their first day and the pair soon become best friends and each other's "person", sharing the same "dark and twisty" sense of humor.
Cristina and Meredith's relationship is a defining aspect of both the show and the characters. Derek Shepherd once metaphorically compares the pair of women to E.T. and Eliott from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a set of characters linked mentally, physically, and emotionally. Cristina is second-closest to Karev, whom she affectionately calls "Evilspawn" and likes to tease.
What Cristina lacks in soft skills and medical nuance, she makes up for with her extreme technical prowess during surgery and her all consuming devotion to cardiothoracics and learning. She is dismissive of those she feels are beneath her level of skill, but never too arrogant to ask someone to teach her.