I came to English embarrassingly late — not until sixth grade — and have been locked in an unresolved relationship with the language ever since. Decades in, I remain a work in progress. I also spent a few years on Chinese calligraphy, only to conclude that some battles are better left unfought. The English struggle continues; the brushwork does not.

My approach to hobbies has always been enthusiastic and entirely unprofessional. I picked up Chinese chess as a child back home and never quite put it down — I have a particular fondness for the cannon opening, which I deploy with great confidence and mixed results. Table tennis came next, then basketball in middle school, then football (a sport I eventually had to retire from after proving too dangerous to my teammates). Running and hiking have stayed with me longer than most — there is something about moving uphill that helps on difficult days. I hold a sixth-generation lineage in Foshan Kung Fu, which sounds far more distinguished than my current form would suggest. More recently I have taken up badminton, frisbee, and pickleball, the last of which I discovered during my time at UTD. I also spent an embarrassing stretch of university thoroughly addicted to Honor of Kings; these days I return only occasionally, though Li Yuanfang remains my hero of choice.

My reading life began with Journey to the West and every passage in my primary school Chinese textbook, and has wandered far and wide since. I found my way through the comic magazines and serialized web novels of middle and high school, and eventually to the works that have stayed with me longest — Lu Yao’s Life and Ordinary World, Chen Zhongshi’s White Deer Plain, and several of Mo Yan’s novels, from which I came away with a much richer sense of what Chinese literature can do. I have also read broadly in world literature, though I confess I absorb it more slowly. Cooking has become my latest project, especially since living abroad has made a proper Chinese meal feel like a genuine act of happiness. Results are, let us say, steadily improving. Somewhere in all of this, I am trying to build a life that moves forward without losing its sense of ease — working hard in each season, while making sure to stop and take in the view, both of the world and of the journey itself.