Yanwen’s blog

9/11/2026

I recently read a disturbing article about medical errors.

A 2016 Johns Hopkins article reported on a study by patient-safety researchers who estimated that more than 250,000 deaths per year in the United States might be associated with medical errors. The researchers arrived at an estimate of 251,454 deaths by analyzing four earlier studies of deaths associated with medical care and extrapolating their findings to U.S. hospitalization data from 2013.

The researchers argued that medical errors were not adequately captured in official U.S. mortality statistics because death certificates generally do not have a separate category for medical error. They suggested that medical errors could therefore rank among the leading causes of death.

Importantly, the article does not portray medical errors simply as individual doctors being careless or incompetent. The researchers emphasized systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented healthcare systems, inadequate safety nets, and variations in medical practice.

The key message is:

Medical harm may be undercounted in official statistics, and improving patient safety requires improving healthcare systems. Patients can be harmed by failures in the healthcare system even when nobody intends to cause harm.

What does this mean for ordinary people?

I see several practical lessons.

1. Don't be a passive patient.

Actively participate in your own care.

If a doctor recommends a test, procedure, or medication, it is reasonable to ask:

• What exactly is this test looking for?

• What are the alternatives?

• What are the benefits and risks?

• What happens if I don't do it?

• When will I get the results?

• Who will follow up with me?

A good doctor should not be offended by reasonable questions.

2. Keep your own medical records.

This may be one of the simplest things an ordinary person can do.

Know your medications, allergies, major diagnoses, previous surgeries, test results, and important family medical history. Don't assume that every doctor you see has the complete picture.

This becomes especially important when you see multiple specialists.

3. Don't assume that “someone will follow up.”

This may be one of the most practical lessons.

Have knowledge of your test results. If you have an abnormal test, biopsy, scan, or blood test, know what happens next and when. If you haven't heard anything by the expected time, call.

A test being performed is not the same as the result being reviewed and acted upon.

4. Bring another person when something important is happening.

For a major diagnosis, surgery, complicated treatment, or difficult medical conversation, having another person with you can be extremely helpful.

Two people may remember more than one, and a second person may think of a question you didn't think to ask.

5. Make sure everyone has your current medication list.

Medication errors are one area where patients can sometimes provide an additional layer of safety.

Keep an updated list of your medications, including dosages, and bring it to appointments when appropriate. For a new doctor or a hospital admission, having the actual medication bottles can also be helpful.

6. Speak up when something doesn't make sense.

If one clinician tells you something that seems inconsistent with what another clinician has told you, don't simply assume that someone else will resolve the discrepancy. Ask:

“These two things don't seem to match. Can you help me understand which one is correct?”

It is being an engaged patient.

Finally, healthcare is a team activity, and the patient is a member of the team.

Doctors bring medical knowledge. Nurses, pharmacists, technicians, and other healthcare professionals bring their own expertise. But patients bring something no one else has: knowledge of their own body, history, symptoms, medications, and what has happened to them.

Ask questions. Keep records. Follow up. Speak up when something doesn't seem right.

You don't have to be a doctor to be a safer patient.

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。”

Another reader told me, "It's useless to talk to him. He's going to be 40 years old. You can't change anything."

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.