Yanwen’s blog

9/30/2026

I found this book at my son's home: A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism by Colin Baker.

The book is written in a Q&A format and covers many interesting and practical questions about raising bilingual children. One question caught my attention because I had never thought about bilingualism in quite this way:

“Is it better for my child to learn a language early to secure better storage in the brain?”

Interesting question that I've never thought of!

The book discusses an area of research that looks at how two languages are represented and used in the brain. For example, are the brains of people who learn two languages from birth different from those who learn a second language at school or as adults?

One frequently cited study by Mechelli and colleagues, published in 2004, compared 25 monolinguals, 25 early bilinguals, and 33 late bilinguals. The researchers reported greater gray-matter density in bilinguals than in monolinguals, with early bilinguals showing greater density in certain areas than late bilinguals. They concluded that the structure of the brain can be altered by the experience of acquiring a second language.

So, what exactly is gray matter?

Gray matter 🧠 contains many of the brain's neuron cell bodies, dendrites, and connections. It is found in areas involved in processing information, including language, memory, attention, and other cognitive functions.

Researchers have found associations between bilingual experience and brain structure, particularly in regions involved in language processing and executive control.

Think about what happens when you use two languages. Your brain may have to continually:

• select the appropriate language;

• suppress or ignore words from the other language;

• switch between languages;

• learn and retrieve different vocabularies and grammatical systems; and

• monitor the context and the person you are speaking with.

But bilingualism is not one single experience. The effects can depend on when and how a person learned the second language, how frequently the language is used, and how proficient the person becomes.

But for me there's one reason that's more important than gray matter.

Language is part of family and cultural identity.

If my grandson grows up speaking both English and Chinese, he will be able to communicate directly with more members of his extended family in Beijing. He will have access not only to two languages, but also to two cultural worlds.

A bilingual infant is not necessarily learning one language and then adding another. Babies are remarkably capable of distinguishing between different languages from very early in life. With enough exposure, they can develop two language systems simultaneously.

Managing two languages also gives a developing child repeated practice in distinguishing sounds and speech patterns, connecting different words to the same concepts, switching according to the person and situation, and paying attention to which language is appropriate.

So the goal is not to make the baby “study Chinese" but to give him enough Chinese, early enough and consistently enough, that Chinese becomes a natural part of his life rather than a foreign language he has to learn later.

This is an easy task. I don't need to give Chinese lessons. I can simply talk to him, sing to him, tell him stories, read children's books, play with him, and use Chinese naturally in our everyday interactions.

If he comes to associate Chinese with Grandma's voice, stories, laughter, and affection, I may be giving him something much more lasting than an advantage on a language test.

There is another reason bilingualism interests me, especially for my friends who are in their retirement years.

Researchers have been studying whether lifelong bilingualism may contribute to cognitive reserve—the brain's ability to continue functioning relatively well despite age-related changes or disease-related brain changes.

Some observational studies have found associations between lifelong bilingualism and a later appearance of cognitive symptoms associated with dementia. But this evidence does not mean that bilingualism prevents dementia, and it does not prove that bilingual people necessarily have healthier brains.

Still, the idea is fascinating.

Using two languages throughout life means repeatedly managing attention, switching between systems, retrieving words, and adapting to different linguistic contexts. It may provide one form of continual mental engagement that contributes to cognitive reserve.

So to my grandson, I will tell him: Learn Chinese because it connects you to people you love.

And if that lifelong connection also gives your brain a little extra exercise along the way, that is an extra bonus.

Perhaps that is what bilingualism ultimately gives us: not simply two ways of saying the same thing, but two doors into the world—and a way to keep both doors open throughout our lives.

9/29/2026

Last weekend, just after the Mid-Autumn Festival, I heard a news story on the radio about what happens to unsold mooncakes.

This is the first time that I heard of such news. It surely surprised me.

Mooncakes sold in China generally have a shelf life of about 30 to 90 days. After they expire, they may be destroyed to prevent them from being resold or reused as ingredients. Some mooncakes that are still suitable for processing—without mold or other signs of spoilage—can instead be collected by qualified feed manufacturers and processed into animal feed. Recent reports say some factories buy leftover or expired mooncakes for this purpose, with different fillings fetching different prices.

I found it almost unbelievable.

A food once associated with festival celebration can become something that is no longer wanted by people and is instead processed into feed for pigs, cattle, and sheep.

On one level, this is a story about food waste and the challenge of producing too much for a short seasonal market. On another, it made me think about how dramatically our relationship with food has changed.

What a contrast to the time when I was growing up.

My mother often told us about her experience during the Three Years of Hardship (1959–1961), when China experienced a severe food crisis. The crisis was associated with the disastrous consequences of the Great Leap Forward and commune policies, together with natural disasters. Grain production fell sharply, and widespread food shortages and malnutrition followed. Beginning around 1960, the government introduced corrective measures, and agricultural conditions gradually improved after 1962.

My mother's memories were very personal.

She told me that she and my aunt suffered from such severe malnutrition that they stopped menstruating for about a year. Severe undernutrition can indeed disrupt or stop menstruation, especially when the body does not have enough energy to support normal reproductive function.

Many people experienced inadequate nutrition during those years. In the most severely affected areas, people sometimes resorted to eating wild plants and other things that would not normally be considered edible.

I was relatively protected from the worst of the food shortage because I was at a military daycare. My younger sister, however, was only a year old and stayed at home with my grandmother. As a baby, she needed milk and adequate nutrition at a time when even basic food could be difficult to obtain.

I grew up in a China where food was something that had to be carefully managed and controlled.

Today, I live in a very different food world.

We no longer question: Do we have enough food?

Instead, we worry: How should we get rid of the food that we don't want any more?

The contrast is difficult to grasp if you have not lived through both worlds.

For people who grew up with scarcity, wasting food can feel almost morally wrong. We learned to finish what was on our plates. We did not take food for granted because we knew that food could be difficult to obtain.

Today's younger generation has grown up with abundance.

Scarcity teaches appreciation, but it can also mean hunger, deprivation, and anxiety about having enough.

Abundance gives us choice and comfort, but it can also lead to waste or overconsumption.

We should be grateful for the abundance we enjoy today, but remembering the scarcity of the past can help us appreciate it more deeply.

9/28/2026

《读书郎》 — The Little Schoolboy

小嘛小儿郎，背着那书包上学堂。
不怕太阳晒，也不怕那风雨狂。
只怕先生骂我懒呐，没有学问啰无颜见爹娘。
朗里格朗，朗格里格朗。
没有学问喽，无脸见爹娘。

小嘛小儿郎，背着那书包上学堂。
不是为做官，也不是为面子光。
只为穷人要翻身哪，不受人欺负喂不做牛和羊。
朗里格朗，朗格里格朗。
不受人欺负喂，不做牛和羊。

Yesterday, while I was at my son's home, he played this song again for his baby boy: 《读书郎》 (Dúshūláng, “The Little Schoolboy”).

I learned this song when I was little. Years later, I sang it to my son when he was little. Now it is his son's turn to hear it and, perhaps one day, sing it himself. Three generations, one little song!

I have thought about writing about this song for a long time because I don't think my children fully understand the cultural background behind its cheerful, childlike melody.

Here is my attempt to translate it:

The Little Schoolboy

I'm just a little schoolboy,
With my schoolbag on my back, off to school I go.
I'm not afraid of the blazing sun,
Nor am I afraid of wind or rain.
The only thing I fear is my teacher scolding me for being lazy—
For if I learn nothing, how could I face my parents?

Lang-li-ge-lang, lang-ge-li-ge-lang.

If I learn nothing,
How could I face my parents?

I'm just a little schoolboy,
With my schoolbag on my back, off to school I go.
I'm not studying to become an official,
Nor am I studying simply to bring honor to myself.
I study so that poor people can rise up,
So that no one can bully us,
So that we don't have to live like cattle or sheep.

Lang-li-ge-lang, lang-ge-li-ge-lang.

So that no one can bully us,
So that we don't have to live like cattle or sheep.

I'm not going to get into the history of the song here. What interests me is what it reveals about the cultural meaning of education.

For today’s children, the most challenging line is: 只为穷人要翻身，不受人欺负，不做牛和羊.

Literally, it says that the child studies so that poor people can “turn their fate around,” so they will not be bullied and will not have to live like cattle or sheep. In other words, they will live like a human being.

The language may sound unfamiliar to young people today, but the underlying idea is surprisingly familiar.

Education has long been seen in Chinese culture as a way for an ordinary person to change his or her social status.

In the world reflected in this song in 1940s, the child didn’t have high expectations like becoming an official or gaining social prestige. He was studying because knowledge can help a poor person stand up like a man, with dignity, and have more control over his or her own life.

Today, a young person might express the goal very differently:

I study so I can get into a good university, find a good job, earn a decent income, and build a better life.

The language has changed, but the underlying belief remains remarkably similar.

Education is a means of changing one's life.

What has changed is our definition of what a “better life” looks like.

For a poor child in the era when this song became popular, education could represent something much more basic: dignity, freedom from humiliation, and the ability to live without being at the mercy of others.

For a young person today, education may mean economic security, professional opportunities, personal independence, and a comfortable life.

The goals are different. But the belief in the power of education is still there.

That may be one reason this little song has stayed alive for so many years.

I sang it to my son when he was a little boy. Now, he is singing the same song to his baby boy.

The baby does not yet understand a single word of it. But I think his dad will explain to him what it meant to a poor child in China in 1940s to dream of “turning his fate around.”

But perhaps that is how culture survives. Not only through history books, museums, or formal lessons, but through a parent singing an old song to a child—and then that child, years later, singing it to his own child.

Years later the little schoolboy is still walking to school, carrying his schoolbag on his back, and carrying the same hope: that learning can help him become independent, and more in control of his own life.

9/27/2026

We had a small family gathering on September 25 for the Mid-Autumn Festival. The baby in the family also turned two months old that day, making the day extra special. Besides dishes from a local Korean restaurant, we had dessert and mooncakes.

Yesterday, I had a piece of mooncake. 🥮 My love of sweets has been one of my weaknesses since childhood.

That simple piece of mooncake brought back a memory that my children might never know about unless I share with them.

From 1970 to 1974, I attended Tianjin Foreign Language School, a boarding school. Sometimes our breakfast consisted of mantou (馒头), steamed bread, and xiancai (咸菜), salted vegetables. I preferred something sweet.

I would take a steamed bun back to the dormitory and eat it with sugar that I had brought from home. Eventually, one of my classmates found out. I was publicly criticized for having a “decadent bourgeois lifestyle.”

Today, this sounds almost unbelievable. Why would eating a little sugar with a steamed bun be considered a serious problem?

To understand it, we have to remember what everyday life was like in China at that time.

During my childhood and until the early years of China's reform and opening-up, China operated a system of food rationing. Cash alone was not always enough to buy basic food. Urban families were allocated various coupons according to the size of their households.

Among them were:

粮票 (liángpiào), grain coupons. These were needed, along with money, to purchase staples such as rice, flour, and other grains. Without grain coupons, having money was not enough to buy them through the ration system.

油票 (yóupiào), cooking-oil coupons. These allowed families to purchase a limited amount of cooking oil according to their monthly allocation.

副食本 (fùshí běn), a non-staple food ration book. It was used to keep track of purchases of foods such as eggs, meat, sugar, and tofu.

Families received limited amounts based on their household size. These coupons and ration books were part of everyday life for many urban Chinese families.

China experienced serious shortages of consumer goods, and the rationing system was intended to distribute scarce necessities and ensure that people had access to basic food.

My father was in the military, and military families had a somewhat different supply system. As a result, we sometimes had access to things that were harder for other families to obtain, including sugar.

That difference made me stand out from some of my classmates. What seemed normal to me—sandwiching sugar in a steamed bun—could look like a sign of privilege to others.

And so I was criticized for it.

Looking back from 2026, the memory feels almost surreal.

Today, a child can walk into almost any supermarket and see shelves filled with cookies, cakes, candy, ice cream, and dozens of kinds of sweet drinks. A mooncake, once a special seasonal treat, is now available in countless varieties.

My childhood was almost the opposite. Some things that we take for granted today were precious because they were scarce.

In an unexpected way, that scarcity may have protected us from something that is difficult to avoid today: too much.

I certainly don't think rationing was a good thing. But there is one lesson we can take from that period.

Sometimes having less teaches us to appreciate what we have. Having more gives us freedom, but it also requires more self-control and wisdom over the freedom that we have.

From a mooncake in America in 2026 to a steamed bun in a boarding-school dormitory in Tianjin more than half a century ago—what a journey, and what a change!

The baby who turned two months old at our family gathering will grow up in a world of abundance that I could not have imagined when I was his age.

Perhaps one of the gifts we can give the next generation is the stories of what life was like when we had much less.

9/26/2026

Yesterday I listened to a Chinese podcast about how the hosts started a radio station in the 1980s, when people still commonly referred to Beijing as Peking.

As they talked about those early days, I suddenly felt that I was listening to history. Something that happened more than 40 years ago, when it was simply part of someone's ordinary life, can suddenly become meaningful again when someone tells the story today.

Their conversation reminded me of a discussion I recently had with some old classmates about writing.

One question naturally comes up:

What can I write about?

For someone over 70, there is something we have that younger people don't yet have: decades of lived experience.

Writing can turn that experience into something that can be remembered, examined, and passed on.

You have witnessed changes that younger generations know only from history books. You have made mistakes and learned from them. You may have raised a family, built a career, experienced losses and successes, moved from one place to another, and watched society change around you.

But when we are busy living and working, it is easy to accumulate experiences without ever stopping to examine them.

Writing makes us slow down.

When you write about something that happened decades ago, you may discover that you understand it differently today. You begin to ask: Why did this happen? What was I thinking at the time? What did I learn? What would I do differently now?

In that sense, writing is not simply recording the past. It is a way of making sense of it.

Some of those experiences may become useful to other people. Some may simply become a record for your children or grandchildren. And some may be valuable only to you.

That is why the value of writing is not only what a writer gives to readers. The act of writing can give something back to the writer.

Writing can also be a form of independence in later life.

A person who continues writing in later life often develops—or already possesses—qualities that are valuable far beyond writing:

A reflective mind.
She doesn't simply experience things; she asks, What does this mean? Why did this happen? What can I learn from it?

Inner motivation.
Without a boss, paycheck, or deadline, she still finds a reason to sit down and work on something that matters to her.

Independence.
She doesn't need constant entertainment or other people to tell her how to spend her time.

A desire to contribute.
She may feel that the knowledge and experience she has accumulated shouldn't simply disappear with her.

Patience.
Writing is slow. It requires sitting alone, thinking, revising, and sometimes receiving little recognition.

A continuing sense of identity.
Retirement can take away a professional identity—doctor, teacher, manager, scientist, or engineer. Writing can become another way of saying, I am still someone who creates.

A tolerance for solitude.
Writing often requires considerable time alone. But being alone is not necessarily the same as being lonely. Solitude can give us space to think, remember, and create.

Perhaps this is one of the gifts of growing older: we have accumulated enough life to have something to say, but we also have enough distance from some of those experiences to see them differently.

We don't have to write a memoir. We don't have to be professional writers. We don't even have to believe that anyone else will read what we write.

What seems ordinary to us today may become history to someone else tomorrow.

The people on that podcast were simply telling stories about a radio station they started 40 years ago. Yet to me, their memories suddenly became a window into another China—a China that younger people know mostly through books and photographs.

That made me think: perhaps our memories are not as ordinary as we think they are.

We have lived through a piece of history.

Writing gives us a way to leave a small record of it—not because everything we experienced was extraordinary, but because an ordinary life, honestly remembered, can become meaningful to someone who comes after us.