Yanwen’s blog

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.

9/25/2026

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节 (Zhōngqiū Jié)

Yesterday, a relative asked me about the Mid-Autumn Festival. I realized that although I don't remember much about its history, I remember clearly what the festival means.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhōngqiū Jié (中秋节), is one of the most important traditional festivals in China. It falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is usually full and bright.

The full moon has long symbolized reunion. For generations, Chinese families have tried to come together on this evening—to return home, have dinner together, look at the moon, eat mooncakes, and simply spend time with one another, like American Thanksgiving.

There are many legends associated with the festival. The best known is the story of Chang'e (嫦娥), who drank an elixir of immortality and flew to the moon, where she lived alone. The story is beautiful but also a little sad: immortality came at the price of separation from the person she loved.

Perhaps that is part of why the full moon has such a powerful meaning in Chinese culture. When we look at the same moon, we think of the people who are with us—and those who are far away.

Mooncakes are the festival's signature food. Their round shape represents completeness and togetherness. People give them to family members, relatives, friends, and colleagues as a way of expressing good wishes.

The same is true of the moon. We admire it because it gives us something to share. For example, a mother in Beijing, a daughter in New York, and a son somewhere else may all look up at the same full moon on the same night.

This is best expressed in the Chinese poem: 海上生明月，天涯共此时 , meaning, The bright moon rises above the sea; at this very moment, we share the same moonlight, though we are worlds apart.

The full moon is round. The mooncakes are round. In Chinese culture, roundness represents completeness and reunion.

More than a thousand years ago, Su Shi wrote, “但愿人长久，千里共婵娟” (Dàn yuàn rén cháng jiǔ, qiān lǐ gòng chán juān)—may we live long and share the same beautiful moon, even though we are thousands of miles apart.

Perhaps that is the enduring meaning of the Mid-Autumn Festival. We may not always be able to sit around the same table. But we can still look up at the same moon, remember one another, and feel connected across the distance.

9/24/2026

Anthropic has uncovered a large-scale dating-app scam involving a China-based app development studio that allegedly used Claude to create more than 20 dating apps.

Most of the “people” users interacted with on these apps were not real human beings, but AI-generated virtual personas.

According to Anthropic’s latest Threat Intelligence Report, the operation, identified as GTG-15001, was uncovered during an investigation in April 2026.

In just two weeks of observation, investigators identified more than 4,700 distinct AI personas that had exchanged messages with at least 25,000 users. On average, each fake identity interacted with more than five real people, most of whom apparently did not realize they were communicating with a virtual romantic partner.

The app developer, meanwhile, publicly claimed that all of its chat partners were real users.

The operation relied on a combination of AI and human workers. When a user became suspicious and asked to verify the other person’s identity—for example, by requesting a video call or asking to connect on social media—the scammers brought in real people to take over the conversation.

These human workers would participate in video calls or interact with the victim on social media, helping to convince them that the relationship was genuine.

But even then, the humans were not necessarily speaking entirely on their own. According to the investigation, some of their messages and conversation scripts were generated or assisted by another AI model.

The dating apps primarily targeted users in the United States. They also contained a third-party payment system that could be remotely activated.

Investigators emphasized that the operation did not involve any fundamentally new form of AI misuse. What made the case particularly alarming was its scale.

The case points to an increasingly industrialized model of online romance scams, in which AI can mass-produce convincing identities, sustain thousands of conversations simultaneously, and keep relationships going around the clock. Humans can then step in when a victim demands proof that the person on the other side is real.

The disturbing part is not simply that AI can pretend to be someone it is not. It is that AI can make deception cheap, scalable, and persistent.

But beneath the technology is something much older and more human: our need to connect with other people.

AI dating scams exploit one of our most fundamental needs—the desire to be seen, heard, remembered, and cared about.

In a world where technology can provide companionship almost on demand, how do we make sure that the people we connect with are real—and that we don't gradually replace genuine human relationships with convenient simulations of them?

That, to me, is the deeper story behind dating scams. It is not only a story about fraud. It is also a story about loneliness, technology, and what it means to be genuinely connected to another human being.

Here is an important lesson: loneliness can make us especially vulnerable to someone—or something—that appears to offer exactly the human connection we long for.

Imagine a lonely person thinking, Wow, someone is interested in me. Someone remembers what I told them. Someone wants to talk to me and check on me.

Those feelings are real, even if the relationship is not.

Behind an apparently intimate relationship could be software—or people operating a system specifically designed to manipulate someone's emotions.

So what can we learn from this?

1. Don't mistake attention for affection.

Loneliness creates a powerful desire to be noticed and listened to. If someone regularly messages you, compliments you, asks about your day, and seems unusually interested in your life, it is natural to feel that you have found a connection.

But attention is not proof of affection, and affection is not proof of authenticity.

2. Take your time.

A genuine relationship does not need to become intimate immediately.

The safest response to intense online attention is simple:

Slow down. Give reality time to catch up with the relationship you are imagining.

Time allows us to see whether a relationship is consistent, whether the other person is willing to be verified, and whether the connection can move beyond carefully crafted online conversations.

3. Move from the digital world to the real world.

This is particularly important for older adults, who may have fewer opportunities for face-to-face social interaction.

If you meet someone online, eventually meeting in person can help establish whether the person and the relationship are what they appear to be. First meetings should take place in a public setting, and someone you trust should know where you are.

Research on older adults who use dating apps also suggests that determining whether online profiles are genuine can be a significant challenge.

4. Never send money because of an online relationship.

This should be an absolute rule.

Once someone you have never met asks you for money, treat the situation as a potential scam, regardless of how convincing or emotionally meaningful the relationship may seem.

5. Don't let online companionship replace real human relationships.

Older adults can become especially vulnerable to loneliness after retirement, divorce, or relocation. There is nothing wrong with seeking companionship or wanting to socialize with others. In fact, maintaining social connections is an important part of a healthy life.

But technology should ideally help us build more human connections, not fewer.

Join a walking group. Take a class. Volunteer. Find a swimming partner. Go to a community event. Have coffee with someone.

Use the internet to find people who share your interests—but whenever possible, let those relationships eventually enter the real world.

Technology can help us find one another. It should not become a substitute for one another.

9/23/2026

Since September 16, 2026, I have been writing about David Phillips's book High on Life: How to Naturally Harness the Power of Six Hormones and Revolutionize Yourself. Over the past few days, I have looked more closely at the six chemicals discussed in the book:

1. Dopamine (多巴胺)

2. Testosterone (睾酮)

3. Endorphins (内啡肽)

4. Oxytocin (催产素)

5. Serotonin (血清素)

6. Cortisol (皮质醇)

After spending some time thinking about these six chemicals, I came away with a simple idea:

Don't define yourself by how you feel in a particular moment.

When you feel down or discouraged, don't immediately conclude that something is wrong with you. Sometimes, your mood is simply being influenced by sleep, exercise, stress, social connection, daylight, physical activity, and many other processes happening inside your body.

For example, when you're feeling low, instead of simply lying there and waiting for your mood to change, you might go for a walk, exercise, or do something that makes you laugh. Physical activity and laughter can influence systems involved in mood and pain regulation.

When you're nervous about speaking in front of a large audience or facing an important challenge, don't immediately conclude that you're a coward. You might first stand up, move around, adjust your breathing, and use a simple pre-performance routine to help yourself feel more prepared.

When you're struggling to start something, don't automatically label yourself lazy. Ask instead: What would make me want to do this? Perhaps you can create a small reward, make the activity more enjoyable, or give yourself something to look forward to.

When you see on social media that your friends seem to be achieving more than you are, don't automatically measure your life against theirs. You may need to remind yourself that someone else's progress does not determine the value of your own life.

And when you're overwhelmed by unfinished tasks and ongoing problems, instead of simply telling yourself to “relax,” write down what's bothering you. Then ask what you can eliminate, resolve, postpone, or accept.

None of these actions is a magic formula, and we should not try to diagnose our moods by assuming that one particular hormone is responsible. Human emotions are far more complicated than that.

But the framework gives us a useful way to think about ourselves.

How we feel is not necessarily who we are.

Our emotional state can change with sleep, exercise, light, stress, social interaction, physical activity, and countless other factors.

So perhaps the next time you find yourself thinking:

I'm useless.

I'm lazy.

I'm a coward.

I'm falling behind everyone else.

I'll never change.

Pause before believing it.

Instead, ask yourself:

What state am I in right now?

What might be influencing how I feel?

What is one small thing I can do to change that state?

We don't have to accept every thought our brain produces, especially when we are tired, stressed, discouraged, or overwhelmed.

Sometimes we don't need to change our entire life.

We just need to change what we do next.

And perhaps that is the most useful lesson I took from High on Life: before judging yourself, understand your state; before giving up, try changing it.

9/22/2026

Today marks the end of the last episode of 70 Up, the last installment of the longest-running documentary project in UK TV history.

Seven Up! began in Britain in 1964 as a one-off television documentary. Filmmakers selected 14 seven-year-old children—10 boys and 4 girls—from very different social and economic backgrounds: wealthy families, middle-class homes, working-class neighborhoods, and a children's home. 

The idea came from the Jesuit saying:

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”

This is similar to the Chinese say: 三岁看大，七岁看老, which emphasizes a person’s personality and character.

Here the filmmakers wanted to find out about social class: How much of a person's future is already determined by family background and social class at age 7?

Originally, nobody expected the project to continue for decades. But seven years later, the researcher who had worked on the first film, Michael Apted, returned to interview the same people at age 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63 and 70.

Thus the TV series became: 7 Up → 14 Up → 21 Up → 28 Up → 35 Up → 42 Up → 49 Up → 56 Up → 63 Up → 70 Up.

The latest and final installment, 70 Up, began airing in September 2026, bringing the experiment to its conclusion after more than six decades.

What happens to the children?

At seven, the children talk about things that seem simple:

• What do you want to be?

• What kind of school do you want to attend?

• What do you think about money?

• What do you think about marriage?

• What do you want your life to be like?

Then, every seven years, we see what actually happened.

Some followed remarkably predictable paths.

Children from privileged families had access to elite schools and universities and subsequently entered prestigious professions.

Others from poorer backgrounds left school early and entered working-class occupations.

But the story is not nearly as deterministic as the original premise suggests.

Some people moved considerably beyond their childhood circumstances. Others had apparently promising beginnings but experienced divorce, unemployment, illness, financial problems or disappointment. Some people who seemed destined for conventional success chose very different lives.

The real subject is circumstance versus choice

The question changed from initially asking: 

Does your class determine your future?

To this, after sixty years:

How much of our lives is determined by where we start, and how much can we change through our own choices?

The participants experience almost everything ordinary human beings experience: education, work, ambition, love, marriage, divorce, children, illness, aging, financial difficulties, death and regret.

Many themes emerge from their life stories.

First: social class.

Family background and social-economic status clearly matters. Education, money, connections and the neighborhood in which a child grows up can influence the opportunities available later in life.

Second: individual choices.

People are not simply prisoners of their childhood circumstances. Some participants make choices that take them in unexpected directions. Their stories demonstrate that social background influences a life without completely writing the script of their life

Third, life itself.

At 70, the question isn't really who became rich or who climbed the social ladder.

And that may be one of the deepest things Seven Up! ultimately teaches. A person's life cannot be adequately measured by social class, income, occupation or whether he or she “moved up.” Those things matter, but they are only part of the story.

The final chapter is therefore less a sociological experiment than a portrait of human lives unfolding over time. The Guardian makes essentially this point: the series began as an exploration of class, fate and environment, but ultimately became a much broader record of ordinary human experience. (The Guardian)