Yanwen’s blog

When I spoke with my Korean student about the book that I wrote about, Delivering Food: The World of a Female Rider and China’s vast internal migration from countryside to city, our conversation drifted to something global, about migration across the U.S. southern border—about people leaving Central and South America in search of work and a better life. The systems differ. But the underlying force often feels the same.

As the Chinese saying goes, 人往高处走，水往低处流 — “People move toward higher places just as water flows downhill.” It captures something basic and human. Water does not go against gravity; it follows. Likewise, when opportunities concentrate in cities, people follow.

In this sense, this is not just Wang Wan’s story. It is a pattern.

Like millions of others in China, Wang left a small rural town for a big city. In the United States, migrants cross national borders. Different histories, different systems—but the same pull of urban promise and the same push of rural limitation. Cities glitter; villages are in poverty.

Wang Wan was born in Guancheng Town in Shandong Province. In her account, migration there is not exceptional—it is tradition. From childhood, leaving was treated almost as destiny. No one taught the young how to remain; they learned instead how to go outside the village. The “outside world,” especially Beijing, shimmered with the possibility of status and good income.

The desire to leave stretches back generations. In the 1950s or 60s, her grandfather pushed a wooden cart all the way to Beijing with his family in search of survival. An accident forced them to return, but the impulse never vanished. Village after village continues to send people outward—across provinces, sometimes overseas—for work, study, or marriage.

Economic pressure intensifies this movement. Illness, funerals, weddings—especially the cost of securing marriages for sons—all require money. In Wang’s village, men leave for years to finance their children’s futures. Some return only for harvest before heading back out again. Leaving becomes not just personal ambition but family obligation.

For Wang herself, the pressure to leave was also deeply personal. As a divorced woman in a small rural community, she felt suffocated by gossip and judgment. She writes that staying would mean being swallowed by whispers. Her father regarded her divorce as humiliation and avoided social contact out of shame. When she later became a food-delivery rider, he felt further disgraced, as though her work were morally suspect.

For her, leaving was not only about income. It was about space, peace of mind and anonymity in big cities. It was about reclaiming dignity.

And perhaps that is what we often miss. When we look at migrants—whether in Beijing or at the U.S. border—we tend to see crisis, politics, or statistics. But beneath all that lies something simpler: the human instinct to move toward survival, toward place of hope, toward a wider horizon.

In my next essay, I will turn to what happens after the leaving—what it means to live inside the system that pulls so many in.

2/11/2026

In 2014, Ben Edelman, then an associate professor at Harvard Business School and a legal scholar, became widely known for a $4 dispute with a small Chinese restaurant near Boston. After noticing that he had been charged more than the prices listed on the restaurant’s outdated online menu, he began a series of increasingly forceful emails, citing consumer protection laws and threatening legal consequences. Even after the restaurant apologized and offered compensation, he refused to let the matter drop.

The email exchange was later made public. What might have been a minor matter quickly turned into a public relations disaster. Many saw the incident not as a principled stand, but as a disproportionate display of power — a Harvard professor trying to ruin a small family business over $4.

The episode damaged Edelman’s public image and became part of broader concerns about his judgment during his tenure review. He was ultimately denied tenure. What began as a trivial issue became a cautionary tale about how intelligence, principle, and ego can collide — and how losing perspective in a small conflict can carry lasting consequences.

First of all, a tenure-track professor at Harvard is not fighting for $4. So what was he fighting for?

First, being right  Some people are wired to correct errors. When they see something wrong, they feel compelled to fix it. For highly analytical minds, correctness is not just a preference — it is identity. Once the issue became a matter of principle, backing down is not an option.

Second, the escalation trap  There is a psychological pattern at work: once we invest time and energy into an argument, we double down. After the second email, then the third, it is no longer about the original issue. It becomes about winning at any cost. About not losing face. About proving something — to others, and to ourselves.

That is when people lose sight of the big picture.

It is easy to laugh at Edelman’s poor judgment. But if we are honest, we often behave the same way. We 死磕到底 over something small. We insist on winning a trivial argument. And in the process, we risk 因小失大 — losing something far more important than the original issue.

The real question is this: when I am absolutely convinced that I am right, can I still pause and zoom out? Can I ask myself, What does this situation require from me as a human being — not just as a thinker?

Intelligence is powerful. But without calibration and perspective, it can delete empathy and humanity from our hearts. And when correctness becomes the only thing he cares, he can make very costly mistakes, no matter how smart he is.

Delivering Food: The World of a Female Rider

Each year when I return to Beijing, I notice more waidiren—non-local migrant workers—moving through the city. They are everywhere, much like migrant workers in the United States. With a sociologist’s curiosity and an anthropologist’s instinct, I often wonder about the individual stories behind each face. What brought them here? What did they leave behind? I make a habit of striking up conversations, trying to understand why they chose to leave their home villages.

Recently, I came across a nonfiction book, Delivering Food: The World of a Female Rider, written in 2024 in Chinese by Wang Wan. In it, she recounts her life as a food-delivery rider in Beijing.

The book has drawn wide attention in China. As a memoir and a social documentary, it offers a first-person account of life inside the huge gig economy. Wang writes candidly about the daily realities of platform labor—long hours, algorithmic pressure, physical exhaustion—and her book quickly rose to the top of China’s nonfiction bestseller lists in 2025.

But this is not merely a story about delivery riders. It portrays a new social class emerging in China’s megacities: people from rural areas who are highly mobile yet permanently temporary—neither unemployed nor secure, neither invisible nor protected. They are essential to urban life, yet remain on its margins with their families far away in countryside. That tension is what lingers with me long after I finished the book.

What moves me most is how Wang describes preserving dignity—not by escaping the system, but by learning to breathe within its narrowest spaces, to keep moving—quietly, endlessly—through its cracks. Perhaps that is why the book resonates so deeply with readers. It touches a truth many recognize, even if they seldom articulate or admit it.

For me, the book answers questions I have long carried about the lives of non-local migrants in Beijing. In the essays that follow, I hope to share what I have learned—not only about Wang Wan’s story, but about the broader human condition it reflects.

2/9/2026

On January 20, 2026, I wrote about The Genius of Athletes, by Noel Brick and Scott Douglas. In that piece, I explored three strategies athletes use to avoid the willpower trap.

Top athletes don’t rely on sheer grit. Instead, they redesign tasks so willpower is barely needed. First, they lower the cost of starting by using open-ended goals that trigger curiosity rather than fear. Second, they remove decision-making through simple “if–then” plans that turn action into a reflex. Third, they focus on identity rather than outcomes—asking whether they maintained the system, not whether they hit a specific target. Once action begins, momentum takes over, making persistence easier than resistance.

Today, I want to focus on another powerful strategy discussed in the book: reconstructing the self.

Sometimes, the human “self” is not a reliable partner. Under pressure, it can be fragile and overly sensitive, prone to quiet self-doubt: Can I do this? Am I good enough for this? I’m going to mess this up.

Top athletes respond differently. Instead of being ruled by that inner voice, they split the self in two: one part performs, the other acts as a coach—observing in real time, engaging in dialogue, and adjusting actions calmly.

One of the simplest techniques for doing this is effective: switching to second- or third-person self-talk.

For example, when Joyce is running, she said to herself, “Joyce certainly can run faster than this,” or “You did well today.” This small linguistic shift creates psychological distance—and that distance matters.

Psychologist Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan has conducted a series of experiments on this phenomenon. In one study, participants were asked to motivate themselves before delivering an impromptu speech. One group used first-person self-talk (“I can do this”), while another used third-person self-talk (“You can do this”).

The results: those who used third-person self-talk showed better emotional regulation and stronger performance. Afterward, they also reported less dissatisfaction and insecurity.

Brain scans revealed why. First-person self-talk activated the medial prefrontal cortex, a region associated with negative self-judgment and rumination—Why am I so bad? Why do I always mess this up? Third-person self-talk, by contrast, reduced activity in that region and activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which governs rational thinking and problem-solving.

In other words, speaking to yourself in the third person doesn’t just create emotional distance—it neurologically shifts the brain from emotional mode to problem-solving mode.

This kind of self-talk allows someone to step out of thoughts like “I’m exhausted, I can’t go on,” and into a coaching stance: “Okay, fatigue is setting in. Adjust the technique and keep moving.”

The book also describes an example involving American swimming legend Michael Phelps. His coach deliberately created disruptions during training—breaking his goggles before races or forcing him to swim in darkness—so that Phelps would learn to activate “coach mode” under any circumstance.

During the 2008 Olympic 200-meter butterfly final, Phelps’s goggles filled with water. He couldn’t see the pool lines or the wall. Instead of panicking, he switched into coach mode and told himself, “Count the strokes.” He knew it took 21 strokes to reach the wall. He counted—and touched first, winning gold and breaking the world record.

Effective self-talk, the book emphasizes, is not innate. It can be trained in three stages.

The first is the awareness stage. Athletes keep self-talk logs, noting when negative thoughts arise, in what situations, and how they respond. Without awareness, there can be no adjustment.

The second is the learning stage. Athletes use restructuring worksheets to reframe disruptive thoughts. For example, “My legs are sore after 20 kilometers” becomes “This means my muscles are working; this is normal.” The goal is not to silence negative thoughts, but to build a stronger, more useful internal voice.

The third is the implementation stage—applying these skills under real pressure. This is the hardest phase, because competition stress is very different from training. But with repetition, the self-talk system becomes more refined—much like a pianist practicing a difficult passage until it becomes second nature.

Many people discover that their inner voice is harsh and unforgiving, constantly whispering, “You’re not good enough.” What athletes develop instead is a voice that offers precise, believable encouragement—firm but supportive, critical without being cruel.

The book highlights three techniques for effective self-talk. The one I find most powerful is this: connect your self-talk to meaning. In moments of difficulty, ask yourself: Why does this matter? What kind of person do I want to be right now?

In the end, thinking like an athlete means learning how to speak to yourself when things get hard—so that pressure no longer turns you against yourself, but helps you become your own coach.

When I first saw the title The Genius of Athletes: What World-Class Competitors Know That Can Change Your Life by Noel Brick and Scott Douglas (2021), I assumed it was just another self-help book dressed up in sports language. But one sentence stopped me short:

“Whatever your biggest goals are in life, learning to think like an athlete is a game changer.”

The book turns out to be far less about sports than about how humans struggle—and succeed. At its core, it challenges one deeply ingrained belief: that success depends on willpower. No. It doesn’t.

Avoid the Willpower Trap

Persistence is the prerequisite for any difficult goal, yet it is precisely where most people fail. We see this everywhere: weight loss, exercise, quitting smoking, writing regularly. Only a tiny minority stick with these goals long enough to meet their goals.

The usual explanation is: successful people are more disciplined, more motivated, and with stronger will. The authors argue the opposite. Top athletes are not better at forcing themselves. They are better at designing systems that don’t require force.

Their first key insight of the book is: restructure the task so it no longer depends on willpower.

Strategy One: Lower the Cost of Starting

Most people set closed goals. These provide clarity—but also imply a clear failure line.

“I must run five miles.”
“I need to write two thousand words today.”

The moment a goal is framed as something you must complete, the brain activates its threat-assessment system: Can I do this? What if I fail? That mental friction alone is exhausting.

Athletes often use open-ended goals to start with.

Instead of “I must run five miles,” they think, “I’ll run for thirty minutes.”

This subtle shift changes which system the brain activates. Threat gives way to curiosity: Let’s see how this goes.Curiosity is inherently motivating. It needs no willpower.

Strategy Two: Remove Decision-Making

Athletes also rely heavily on implementation intentions—simple “If… then…” plans.

Instead of vague ambition like “I need to write every day”, the instruction becomes specific:
“If it’s 2:00 p.m., then I sit at my desk and start writing.”

This matters because decision-making itself drains energy. By preloading the decision, you turn action into a reflex.

Neuroscience shows that these situation–behavior links are stored in the basal ganglia. Once the cue appears, the behavior triggers automatically—without the prefrontal cortex stepping in.

In plain language: no debate, no resistance, no willpower.

Strategy Three: Focus on Identity, Not Outcomes

Many people believe habits form in 21 days. Research from University College London puts the average closer to 66 days—and sometimes much longer. But the real question isn’t how long it takes. It’s what you focus on during that time.

Most people ask: Did I hit my target today?
Athletes ask: Did I maintain the system today?

That’s a shift from outcome to identity.

A runner doesn’t ask, “Did I run five kilometers?” but “Did I do something today that a runner would do?”
A writer doesn’t obsess over word count but asks, “Did I show up as a writer today?”

The brain responds differently to identity-based action. The moment you act in alignment with who you believe you are, dopamine is released—not as a reward for achievement, but as confirmation of identity.

And once you begin, something interesting happens: momentum takes over.

The Physics of Change

Starting is the hardest part. Continuing is easier.

This follows the same principle as inertia: a stationary object resists movement; a moving object resists stopping. When action begins, willpower becomes less relevant. Motion sustains itself.

The lesson of The Genius of Athletes is not that we should all train harder, but that we should stop moralizing struggle.

Athletes don’t win because they endure more pain. They win because they remove unnecessary mental and other frictions. They don’t ask more from willpower.

For the rest of us, this is liberating. Change requires knowing how the brain works, how habits form, and how effort can be redesigned rather than endured.

Think like a top athlete so we can move forward without constantly fighting ourselves.

Continue tomorrow...