Yanwen’s blog

My sister and I talked about her moving to the United States in order to live closer to her son. Humans have a long history of migration, except she needs the courage to leave behind the old and adapt to the new. I mentioned to her that her son first moved to his current city in 2011 in his early 20s and stayed there till now.

I once told the young man, "The United States is so big and diverse. Why not try some different places and enrich your life experiences while you are young."

He said he liked this place very much. Perhaps you will like other places once you go there. You won't know until you try. You can always move back if you want to. I moved from Texas to Ohio to Indiana to Virginia to Kansas to New Jersey to New York.

The saying 故土难离 (gù tǔ nán lí) describes one's attachment to and reluctance to leave a place where one has lived for a long time. It captures the emotional and psychological challenges in leaving one's homeland and exploring new opportunities elsewhere, and the difficult choice between stepping out of the comfort of the familiar and embracing the new and the unknown. I'm sure the sentiment resonates with many people who grapple with similar choice.

Looking back at the migration history of my family, I feel grateful for my parents who had the courage and resilience to leave their hometowns, the remote mountainous villages of Shanxi and Hebei province. Both of them were teenagers when they left home. Their adventurous spirit is very admirable. My two uncles on both sides of my parents stayed behind and didn’t do as great as my parents.

You can find the same themes that we value so much in life: attachment, courage, resilience, adventure, and personal growth inherent in the great experience of human migration and exploration.

Yesterday we went to the riverside north of Er-Huan with my mother. One of my relatives sat on a little folding stool by the river, posing for pictures, then wondering what his friends would say if he shared the picture on social media. Undoubtedly he is examining himself from the eyes of his friends and is looking forward to positive feedback.

In a way, we are all like him, trying to impress others and seeking approval or recognition from others. This is made easy and commonplace in the age of social media. That's why we have thumb-up 👍 or heart shape ❤️ or something else at the bottom of a post on social media.

We are different in the way we interact with the outside world, and the degree we allow ourselves to be influenced by others. 

While some people try to impress others with their appearance, brand-name clothes, others with their luxurious lifestyle, still others with their skills. Some people give up easily, while others keep going with or without any feedbacks.

People take advantage of whatever strengths and attributes that they may have to seek outside approval and appreciation.

I shared my thought with my sister. She was right when she said, “You try to impress others with your writing because you think that’s what you are good at.” I made no self-defense.

The incident serves as a poignant reminder of the dynamic of human interactions in which we all judge and are judged at the same time, and also the role of external approval plays in shaping our behavior and interactions.

One step further, it encourages us to reflect on the motivations behind our actions and, most importantly, the impact of outside appreciation have on our sense of self-worth and the strength to carry on.

My sister recently bought a dishwasher just for two of them, she and my mother. Together with other modern appliances like a robotic vacuum cleaner and voice-controlled clothes hanging poles, understandably this purchase reflects her desire for convenience and efficiency in managing household responsibilities. She looks forward to more of it, like using a robot maid, so she can be fully liberated from household duties.

While she enjoyed her new purchase, I said, "they are great inventions for those who are physically restricted for the tasks." I gently reminded her of the increasing reliance on modern technology to automate household tasks, as well as the potential consequences and implications of this trend, specially on our ability to take care of ourselves and maintain essential life skills. 

Modern technology can be a double-edged sword. While making our lives easier, they also have the potential to erode our self-reliance and weaken our capacity to perform basic tasks independently.

Don't forget the law of use or loss, Chinese saying: 用进废退. I remember years ago my mother cooked for herself. She enjoyed doing it and was proud of it. After my sister took over the task, she's doing less and less. Perhaps we should have done something different.

By writing about this, I hope people keep in mind the importance of maintaining a balance between leveraging modern technology and retaining our essential life skills and capabilities, and realize that very often good things don't come without a price. Perhaps losing our ability to take care of ourselves is the ultimate price we pay for these modern conveniences.

Yesterday I read two pieces where the authors talked big about promoting Chinese culture combined with ancient Chinese civilization, recently so boosted by the Chinese leaders.

One of the authors started with this, "When I was a graduate student, my advisor told me that, don't write if you don't have something original to say ... Otherwise, you contribute nothing valuable with your writing." Sadly to say, he produced a super long one full of empty words, yielding nothing substantial.

Talking of civilization only brought to my mind a very uncivilized murder case in Handan, China, where a teenager boy was brutally murdered by three of his classmates. Perhaps civilization needs to be restored because of its severe shortage in China now.

I remember many years ago reading about moral education in Japan. It is an integral of Japan’s educational system, with the goal of “cultivating student’s morality, including moral mentality, judgment, engagement, and attitude” through all the educational activities in school, including orderliness, mindfulness, hard work, fairness, and harmony.

It would be more down to earth and sensible if people talked about teaching morality at a young age, instead of throwing empty pompous terms like ancient wisdom and civilization.

For the health of a society, it is way more important for little kids to learn morality than to learn knowledge. A kid got the whole life to learn skills but once he turns bad morally, it will take his whole life to unlearn the bad morality.

A famous Chinese poem: 随风潜入夜，润物细无声 (Suí fēng qiánrù yè, rùn wù xì wú shēng), "quietly the rain drops with the wind at night, moistening everything without a sound." Like spring rain that moistens everything quietly, the gentle teaching nourishes and enriches children's hearts.

Sunday evening meeting my Korean student always brings something new for me to write about.

March 18, I wrote one on her husband's job loss. She told me that she used to spend money without any planning. Now she started budgeting and putting aside some savings for any uncertain events. Last week she told me the story of her five-year-old daughter. 

I told her that there were lots of things that we could learn from the children. I shared with her my writings on my children’s birthdays. She said, “OMG, it's so wonderful that you remembered all these little things of their childhood. I don’t even remember things happened yesterday."

Next I shared with her a Chinese saying, 一个烂笔头强过最好的记忆力 (yī gè làn bǐ tóu qiáng guò zuì hǎo de jì yì lì), the shortest pencil is better than the best memory. The saying emphasizes recording information, ideas, and experiences through writing can be more valuable than having a good memory alone.

Additionally, writing can help clarify thoughts and provide better reflection when you look back. It definitely can compensate for bad memory or for the limitations in our memory.

I told her writing itself comes easy with modern technology. I don’t write on paper anymore and I seldom type. I use the small mic 🎤 at the bottom of the keyboard on the cell phone and just talk to it, then do some editing. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes.

My student said she would do the same thing to record the childhood stories of her two daughters, too precious to forget.