Yanwen’s blog

9/10/1026

Today is Teachers' Day in China.

I think we sometimes idealize the teaching profession. We like to believe that a child may forget individual lessons, homework assignments, or test scores, but remember the teacher who encouraged him when he was struggling, noticed that he was shy, praised his curiosity, or treated him with unusual kindness. In reality, that teacher rarely exists.

There is certainly a bit truth in that. Teachers don't just teach subjects. They can leave lasting impressions on the children they teach.

This may be especially true of elementary-school teachers, who play a very different role from college professors. An elementary-school teacher is not only teaching reading, mathematics, or science. Ideally, he or she is also helping a child discover how to learn and how to see himself as a learner.

At that age, children are still forming some very basic beliefs:

Am I good at learning? Is school a place where I belong? What happens when I make a mistake?
Do adults believe in me? Am I capable of doing difficult things?

A teacher's positive response to these questions can stay with a child for years.

Someone once asked me to name a teacher I still remember decades later—someone who had a far-reaching impact on my life.

Sadly, I couldn't name one.

That made me wonder: How many of us can actually remember our elementary-school teachers, decades after leaving their classrooms?

Perhaps not as many as we might expect. I'm not even sure how many of my children's elementary-school teachers they still remember today.

This makes me think differently about Teachers' Day.

Teachers certainly deserve appreciation. But I wonder whether we sometimes give teachers too much credit for shaping a child's life while overlooking the people who are there long before school begins and long after the school day ends.

A child's first teacher is usually a parent.

Parents teach not through formal lessons, but through everyday life: how to treat other people, how to respond to difficulty, how to handle mistakes, how to work, how to care, and what it means to be responsible. More importantly, children learn by watching their parents.

A teacher may spend several hours a day with a child for a few years. Parents are usually the child's most constant teachers and role models from the very beginning.

So perhaps Teachers' Day should remind us not only to appreciate teachers, but also to recognize the parents who are doing the teaching every day—without a classroom, a lesson plan, or even realizing that they are teaching.

Before a child ever has a teacher at school, he already has one at home.

9/9/2026

Last year, at my birthday gathering, we learned from the former girlfriend of a young relative that she and her boyfriend had ended their 12-year relationship because he had been seeing another woman. This was not the first time something like this had happened.

Last weekend, I learned that he is planning to visit us over Thanksgiving. I haven't talked to him about what happened last year, but this time I feel that I should.

He is 38 years old, an adult, and ultimately he is responsible for his own decisions and their consequences. So what can I say to him that might actually be useful?

I know what I don't want to say.

I don't want to tell him things he already knows. I don't want to say anything that will immediately put him on the defensive, make him feel judged or guilty, or turn the conversation into a lecture. I don't want to bring up how much his mother suffered and worried when she heard about what happened. That could make him feel emotionally manipulated.

So what can I say? Perhaps I can simply ask:

Why did you do it?

What would you do differently next time?

What was happening inside you that led you to make those choices?

What were you looking for when you were seeing another woman?

Was there something you were unhappy about but unwilling or unable to confront honestly?

Were there problems in the relationship that you didn't know how to deal with?

Twelve years is a long time to share your life with someone. Whatever happened in that relationship is now in the past, and the choices were his to make. But I hope he doesn't see this simply as the end of one relationship and the beginning of another.

I hope he can use this experience as an opportunity to understand himself better.

Most importantly, what part of this experience was about the relationship, and what part was about you?

Because if someone enters a new relationship without understanding what happened in the previous one, there is a risk of repeating the same pattern.

I hope he can arrive at his own conclusions.

A good relationship requires honesty, responsibility, and the courage to face problems directly rather than avoid them. But those are things he has to understand for himself. No lecture from me is going to make that happen.

If I do talk to him, perhaps I can simply ask:

“What do you think you've learned from this experience about yourself?”

Perhaps I should write to him, and then wait... if he ever replies.

A friend commented, “根据我的观察，这种在婚姻和恋爱关系上有三心二意，不忠不诚的行为是改不了的。除非等他有某种缺陷了， 身体、经济、年龄或其他弱化了的原因。

… 你如果真想和他谈谈，可以问问他为什么和前女友分手。 是因为性格不合，还是其他什么原因让他见异思迁。 如果他是没有commitment，就是玩玩而已的那种，那就没救了。 只能等他自己接受教训以后醒悟了。”

9/8/2026

I'm going to continue talking about the book I've been reading since September 3, The Way of Huawei Learning by Deng Bin.

In my previous articles, I wrote about how Huawei invested heavily in learning from Western companies such as IBM, studied the U.S. military, and used benchmarking against the best in the industry.

Another major source of Huawei's learning is its customers.

Why should a company learn from its customers? The author uses a joke to make the point.

Several philosophers are walking down a road when they see a hen about to cross from one side to the other. They begin debating why the hen would risk crossing a busy road.

One philosopher says, “It's hungry. It must be looking for food on the other side.”

Another says, “Its chicks are waiting for it on the other side.”

A third says, “Perhaps it's blind and simply doesn't see the cars.”

As they continue arguing, they bring in the theories of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to support their interpretations. They argue passionately but cannot convince one another.

Then a farmer passing by mutters, “If you want to know why the hen is crossing the road, ask the hen.”

The lesson is this:

If you want to know what customers really need, ask the customers.

Huawei believes that customers are the best teachers. The more demanding the customer, the more there is to learn. The higher the customer's standards, the more the organization is pushed to improve.

Japanese customers, for example, are known for demanding procurement and quality standards. Serving them forced Huawei to improve its quality management.

On one occasion, a Japanese customer returned a batch of Huawei products. Huawei was initially puzzled because the products had passed its own quality inspections.

The problem turned out to be something seemingly trivial: the labels were not placed consistently.

A human operator could easily read the labels, but the customer used automated scanning equipment. Because the labels were slightly misplaced, the machines could not read them, and the entire shipment was rejected.

Huawei's internal review led to an important realization: product quality isn't limited to whether the product itself works properly. It includes every detail of the process through which the product is delivered to the customer.

From then on, Huawei standardized the position of every label.

A similar lesson came from British Telecom (BT), which subjected Huawei to an extremely rigorous supplier-certification process involving hundreds of detailed criteria. The certification took three years and presented Huawei with enormous challenges.

Rather than complaining about the requirements, Huawei went through them one by one, identified its shortcomings, closed the gaps, and systematically developed the capabilities needed to serve a world-class telecommunications operator.

These examples illustrate an important aspect of Huawei's learning philosophy:

A demanding customer is not simply a customer to satisfy. A demanding customer is a teacher to learn from.

In that sense, the toughest customers can become some of the best teachers a company can have.

9/7/2026

Before I return to the book about Huawei, I'd like to share an article from The New York Times, “9 Things Experts Wish You’d Do in Midlife to Increase Longevity,” by Dana Smith.

I read it a few weeks ago but didn't think much about it at the time. Yesterday, while talking with my son about the importance of maintaining a social life, the article suddenly came back to me.

The article offers nine recommendations for people in midlife:

1. Do interval training — not necessarily HIIT; HIIT is just one form of interval training.

2. Run errands with a friend — highlighting the importance of social relationships and activities for long-term health and mental well-being.

3. Eat fermented foods — such as yogurt, kimchi, kombucha, kefir, and sauerkraut.

4. Lift weights — resistance training helps preserve muscle mass and strength.

5. Include protein in every meal — the article cites a daily intake of roughly 0.8–1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight, rather than simply recommending 1 gram per kilogram.

6. Take the stairs — incorporating more physical activity into everyday life, with about 7,000 steps a day mentioned as a useful target.

7. Get the shingles vaccine — the article also discusses research suggesting a possible connection between shingles vaccination and lower dementia risk.

8. Make a list of your parents' chronic health conditions — so you have a better understanding of your family medical history. While lifestyle affects people’s risk for age-related diseases, genetics also play a role. Know your potential risks.

9. Go to bed at roughly the same time every night — emphasizing the importance of sleep regularity.

The article defines midlife roughly as ages 40 to 60 and makes an important point: many of the conditions that become apparent in old age—cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia—can have their roots much earlier in life. The habits we establish in midlife can influence how we age decades later.

What I find interesting is that the article doesn't reduce longevity to simply diet and exercise.

Social relationships, sleep, vaccination, family history, muscle strength, cardiovascular fitness, and ordinary daily movement all appear on the same list.

That gives us a much more balanced picture of healthy aging.

And perhaps that's the most important message: what happens in midlife doesn't stay in midlife. The choices we make today can become part of the life we live decades from now.

9/6/2026

Today I'm going to take a break from The Way of Huawei Learning by Deng Bin.

Yesterday, during my weekly video chat with my family in Beijing, my youngest sister told me about a conversation she had with her son.

Her son kept encouraging her to find an interest of her own. She mentioned raising fish and taking care of her cat, but he didn't think those counted. He told her that she needed to have a goal.

Then my sister mentioned playing a music instrument. She used to enjoy it, but she hasn't played for decades.

Her son replied, “Mom, your problem can be summed up in one word: lazy.”

My sister admitted that he might be right. And that was the end of the conversation.

But the conversation stayed with me. Three thoughts came to mind.

First, I think it is very kind of her son to care about how she spends her retirement life. Encouraging a parent to develop interests of her own is good advice. Having something we enjoy and look forward to can make retirement more interesting and fulfilling.

“Find your own interest” is actually valuable advice for parents of adult children. When children are young, parents naturally organize much of their lives around them—taking care of their needs, driving them to activities, helping with school, and putting their own interests aside. Many parents postpone things they enjoy for years.

I remember a friend telling me that when her daughter left home for college, she said to her, “Mom, find an interest. You need a life of your own.”

It sounds a little harsh, but there is wisdom in it.

Second, her son may have been right about the underlying problem.

My sister says she likes music. She used to enjoy playing the piano. Now that she is retired and has more time, why hasn't she returned to it?

Perhaps the problem really is a lack of motivation—or simply the habit of putting things off.

But third, calling someone “lazy” doesn't necessarily help.

I think this is the interesting part of the conversation.

Very often, we already know what is good for us. We know we should exercise more, learn something new, reconnect with friends, or pursue an interest we have neglected. The problem isn't necessarily knowing what one should do.

So the real challenge is execution: turning an abstract interest into a regular activity.

Instead of telling someone, “You're lazy,” if we really want to bring about changes, it may be more useful to suggest something concrete:

• How about playing the piano for 30 minutes a day?

• How about taking a music class or joining a music group?

• How about choosing one composer and learning more about his or her music?

• How about playing one song you love every Sunday?

These small actions turn “I like music” from an idea into action.

Perhaps this is true of many things in life. Good intentions don't automatically produce good results. Knowing what we want is only the first step. We still need to create a way to make it happen.

And sometimes, instead of telling someone what is wrong with them, it may be more helpful to give them a small, concrete step toward what they want.

Maybe my sister already has an interest and doesn't need to find another one.

Maybe she just needs to start playing the piano again.