Yanwen’s blog

On January 5 and January 8, a Monday and a Thursday, we visited one of the most crowded stretches of Brooklyn Chinatown—Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park. It was a unique experience. 

On the street and in shops, we heard people speaking Chinese dialects we could not understand. We were among Chinese, yet we did not feel that we belonged. There is something that we shared but that didn't lead to a shared reality.

One detail stood out immediately: cash. Far more people paid with cash here than anywhere else we had been. Some stores don’t accept credit cards at all. This reminded me of an old acquaintance in Kansas, who worked long hours in a Chinese restaurant and was paid half by check, half in cash.

In one store that did accept credit cards, the cashier asked to see our official ID to confirm that the name matched the card. This is the first time that I see this level of verification. In another, an employee stood on a high stool, surveying the entire store. She must trust her own eyes more than the surveillant cameras.

At one point, a store owner told us they accepted EBT—Electronic Benefit Transfer. It was the first time we had heard of it. We had to do some research to know what it means. Perhaps many customers used it here. Or perhaps we looked like one of those in need of government assistance.

At one shop, we noticed bags of dried shrimp. We had just bought some elsewhere, but I asked about the price out of curiosity. The seller said, “Five dollars a bag.” The price sounded reasonable, and out of courtesy, we decided to buy one. But when we handed her five dollars, she said calmly, “It’s ten dollars a bag.” We were stunned and decided not to buy it. She looked very displeased.

As we walked away, we replayed the moment. “I’m sure she said five,” I said. “That’s what I heard, too,” came the reply.

The question lingered: why did the price change after we agreed to buy? Perhaps some people find it hard to say no once they already say yes, and simply swallow the extra cost to avoid upsetting the seller or avoid discomfort or confrontation. The seller may have been counting on this type of people.

In a bakery store operated by some young girls, they accept Apple Pay. When we used it, the girl looked genuinely impressed—and praised us for being “vanguard.”

Later, I learned that Brooklyn’s Chinatown is shaped largely by immigrants from Fujian Province, China, especially the Fuzhou region. Their dialects, migration histories, and experiences differ greatly from those of northern Chinese like us. Perhaps there are other factors that made us feel different—of social background, education, and the ways people adapt in a new country.

Happy New Year!

Today I read a news story on social media about people returning Christmas trees to stores after the holiday. The comments were harsh. Many accused these customers of abusing generous return policies, arguing that if they couldn’t afford a tree, they should simply go without.

The story brought back a memory from my own life.

When my son was little, his daycare and elementary school required children to wear costumes for Halloween. A costume would be worn for a single evening, yet the next year he would want a new one. At the time, we were graduate students living in a small college town in Ohio. One costume cost roughly the same as a week’s groceries for our family.

So I did something similar to what those customers are now being criticized for—I returned the costume after Halloween.

As I read the comments condemning people for returning a fully used Christmas tree, I understand why the practice feels wrong to many.

Still, I don’t condemn people for returning Christmas trees after the holiday, just as I wish I could be excused for returning that costume years ago. For some families, this is not entitlement but calculation—a decision made under financial constraint. Moral judgment is easy when one has never had to weigh groceries against a costume.

Back then, I wished there were a way to rent a costume for one night, much like people rent tuxedos for job interviews. Today, I think rental services should exist for anything designed to be used only once—for interviews, ceremonies, holidays, or school events.

This isn’t only about helping low-income families. It is also about reducing waste and questioning our reflexive attachment to ownership. Not everything needs to be bought, stored, and eventually discarded. Sometimes, the more responsible choice—for families and for society—is temporary use rather than permanent possession.

Perhaps what unsettles people most is not the return itself, but what it reveals. When someone returns a Christmas tree or a costume, it shows that for some families, joy and celebration must be carefully budgeted.

Finally, this suggests a responsibility on the part of retailers. When an item is expensive, seasonal, and meant to be used for only a few days—like a Christmas tree—it makes sense to rethink the model altogether. Offering rental or buy-back options would acknowledge how people actually use these products, reduce waste, and remove the moral ambiguity that return policies now create.

Today marks the end of 2025—and with it, the close of the first quarter of the 21st century. I can't believe that 25 years have passed since the new millennium.

This morning, I chatted with my daughter and asked her to imagine who she might be at the end of the second quarter of this century. It was a simple question, but can be a disorienting one. Time, suddenly, felt less abstract and more personal.

Many of us want a better future, yet fail to make choices that truly support it. One reason is that we often see our future selves as distant strangers—someone we vaguely hope will be fine, but not someone we feel responsible for today.

Hal Hershfield, a psychology professor at UCLA, explores this idea in his book Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. Drawing on more than a decade of research, he shows that when the future feels remote, people are far more likely to favor immediate gratification over long-term well-being.

His findings are strikingly consistent: people who can vividly imagine their future selves tend to make better decisions. They are more willing to save money, to exercise, and to invest in themselves—professionally, financially, and physically. In short, they behave as if their future selves are real people worth caring for.

The key, Hershfield argues, is to build a stronger connection with that future version of ourselves. When we do, we become better at balancing present enjoyment with long-term planning.

One simple method is to have a conversation with our future selves—by writing a letter to them. In studies, participants who “interacted” with their future selves showed a stronger inclination toward long-term saving and self-discipline.

Another method is to change how we measure time. Years feel abstract and forgiving; days feel concrete and finite. When we think in days rather than years, time stops stretching endlessly ahead of us. The future begins to approach, one day at a time, and with it comes a sense of urgency.

So try this: imagine yourself 1,000 days from now—your 2028 self. Write them a short message. It can be a promise, a hope, or a reminder.

Three years from now, when you read those words again, you may discover that the future did not show up suddenly. It was shaped patiently, day after day, by the choices you made daily while it still felt far away.

I came across a book a few days ago with a quietly unsettling argument: Privilege Lost: Who Leaves the Upper Middle Class and How They Fall by Jessi Streib.

Drawing on 10 years of longitudinal interviews with more than 100 white American youth, Streib follows her subjects from adolescence into young adulthood. Her finding is stark: nearly half of those born into the upper-middle class eventually fall out of it. The book asks—who falls, how they fall, and why they don’t see it coming.

Streib’s central claim is that downward mobility is rarely caused by sudden misfortune. Instead, it results from unequal inheritance of resources: academic skills, institutional know-how, and financial support. Young people who receive these resources tend to reproduce their parents’ class position. Those who receive less enter paths of gradual economic decline.

In theory, these young people could compensate by acquiring resources through school, work, or community. In practice, most do not. Instead, they internalize identities shaped by what they lack—identities that discourage further investment in skills, credentials, or income growth.

What makes this process unsettling is the absence of drama, no scandal, no catastrophe, no obvious failure. Their parents are doctors, lawyers, corporate executives—people who seem to embody stability and success. Yet through a series of choices, their children slip slowly and almost imperceptibly downward.

Streib summarizes this as a mismatch between identity and resources. These young people inherit a middle-class sense of self and lifestyle expectations, but lack the concrete tools—financial, academic, or institutional—to sustain them. It is not so much what they do wrong, she suggests, but what they do not have.

Yet as I read the book, I found myself questioning what was left unsaid: the role of parenting.

A few days ago, I told my daughter—half joking, half serious—the story of our family’s migration across states: from Ohio, where my son was born, to Indiana, where my daughter was born, then Virginia, and finally Kansas. I told it like an epic journey, four people moving again and again in search of the American Dream.

My children grew up and are doing well—not because they inherited elite networks or abundant resources, but because they learned something Streib barely mentions: how to turn freedom into responsibility.

They were encouraged to pursue their dreams, but they were also taught how society works—its rules, its constraints, its trade-offs. They learned early that passion alone cannot put food on the table, and that dignity often comes from sustained effort, not self-expression alone.

They did not inherit social capital; they learned how to build it. They did not expect protection and safety net from their parents; they learned to create their own net and footing.

This makes me wonder whether the real problem is not identity–resource mismatch, but identity without substance, dream without hard work. While people celebrate independent thinking, rebellion, and “being yourself,” they often fail to learn how systems function—or how power is accumulated, negotiated, and sustained in a work place where there's no place for willfully "being yourself."

What Streib’s work reveals—perhaps is that class is not automatically reproduced by simply staying within one's comfort zone, but by hard-earned competence, not by baseless self-confidence, but by the mastery of rules of the society.

Streib is right about one thing: class decline is never a cliff; it is a sequence of choices. But what gives those choices direction is not identity or resources alone, but the formative discipline that precedes them.

A friend I often chat with at the YWCA once shared something her 37-year-old son had said. He told her he would rather raise a dog than a child, because a dog would never argue with him the way a child would. She asked, half-jokingly, “So you think I should have raised a dog instead of you?”

That question stayed with me. It captures a choice many people embrace today. This is not a debate about dogs versus children. It is just different ways of living, and different level of efforts and different expectations of what we want from life.

Raising a dog often reflects a preference for clarity and emotional stability. The labor and responsibilities are well defined, the affection is steady and unchanged over time, and the relationship offers companionship without deep psychological strain. A dog does not challenge your worldview or your authority. For many people, this simplicity is a conscious choice.

Raising a child, however, means choosing a life characterized by growth and change, surprises and challenges. A child, if raised well, will not remain compliant or predictable. They will develop their own mind, question you, disagree with you, and sometimes argue with you. These moments can be difficult, but they are also signs that the child is becoming an independent person.

For me, this is where the difference lies. Precisely because a child grows into someone separate from you—someone who can surprise you, surpass you, and even inspire you and reshape how you see the world—the emotional and intellectual rewards can be deeper and greater. The relationship might evolve over time into something closer to mutual recognition and respect.

While I fully accept that raising a dog and raising a child are different choices of life, and both can be valid, I also believe that when a child is raised with care, patience, and respect, the long-term emotional and intellectual richness of that relationship can exceed what a pet relationship can offer. The rewards are less immediate and far less predictable, but they are, for me, more enduring.

In many areas of life, the amount of what we receive is often related to the amount of what we are willing to give. Raising a child follows the same logic. It asks for sustained attention, emotional investment, and the courage to stay present through uncertainty. Because the investment is so large, the potential return—emotional, intellectual, and human—is also larger. Nothing is promised, but the scale of possibility expands with the scale of commitment. As with most meaningful pursuits in life, the outcome is shaped by the effort we choose to make. 

Finally, here's a Chinese saying, “种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆.” That is, you reap what you sow.