Yanwen’s blog

During a meeting with one of my Korean students, I saw that she needed to boost up self confidence in job hunting. 

I told her: highlight the unique contributions that you can make to the company. You can showcase your unique perspective as a woman, a minority, and someone from Asian culture. That's not something they see everyday.

The more I talked to her, the more excited I myself became as I think of so many possibilities in life for everyone.

I emphasize the same focus with the high school students on their college application essays, that they need to articulate their unique voices, so that readers will be impressed as never before.

I remember years ago when my son talked about finding his niche either offering a unique service or the best one in the industry.

In fact, we have to believe that each of us is unique in our own way, either our way of thinking or looking or imagining. We only need to think hard and discover the unique contribution that we can make.

The Chinese saying: 物以稀为贵 (wù yǐ xī wéi guì) meaning: Rarity makes things precious. That is, the rare the things are, the more valuable they are. So, highlight your unique value like presenting yourself as one of a kind, like giant panda. 

By the way, Saturday my youngest sister will go to Yunnan. She has been attending my mother's needs for many years. My mother keeps offering her advices. That's nothing unique.

Wednesday morning I went to meet a high school classmate also in Beijing now. We haven't seen each other for over 40 years. We all have become an old version of ourselves.

As she showed me around her apartment, I noticed some unpacked furniture. She told me they were pictures packed during the apartment remodeling.

The sign of this packing brings back the memories of an old family acquaintance. They moved from New York to Florida in 2021. We went to see them right before the move. They packed plenty of collections and treasures collected over 30 years of their New York life.

I thought at some point in our lives we'd better start downsizing and focus on enriching our life's experience. These collections are 身外之物 (shēn wài zhī wù): materials not inherently ours, that we will have to relinquish eventually. We are like travelers, getting lighter as we have covered a large part of our journey.

Of course, the collection over one's lifetime means also emotional value, apart from monetary one. I once kept the clothes that my children wore when they were babies. Understandably, it's a challenge to part with them.

Every time I am facing the dilemma between keeping and letting go, I always find some comfort and confirmation in considering what Mao Zedong left behind for his family. Nothing in terms of materials.

Yesterday evening, while walking outside with my kid sister, we talked about my meetings with high school or college classmates in China. She told me she seldom went to such gatherings. It's boring because there's not much to talk about with them. People are about the same, more or less.

While I don't go to every one of them, I do enjoy and need some. I told her, meeting people is part of a healthy retirement lifestyle that we should embrace.

Baby brains thrive in many ways with abundance of outside stimulations. Imagine the damage to a baby mentally and emotionally if he were well-fed and clad but were by himself all day long, in a room without human interactions. A deprivation I would consider a crime against humanity!

On the other hand, following the use or loss rule, senior folks' brains shrink faster due to lack of social interactions.

Habits follow the-more-the-more rule, such as, the more you avoid human interactions, the more you feel dreadful about meeting people, the more you prefer being locked in by yourself. This is not good for our brains.

My sister mentioned a gathering during the Spring Festival where the host, after slurping down too much alcohol, started 吹牛逼 (chuī niú bī) bragging. People either 吹牛B or 装13 (zhuāng shi san) pretending at the gathering. It's a waste of time sitting there.

Change your way of looking: this is a super entertaining stage in which people perform without masks. You can't get this free entertainment at home. You can observe, participate, make comments, have fun, or directly tell them to stop bragging or pretending. Get real. Be positive.

去伪存真 (qù wěi cún zhēn), remove the falsehood and keep the truth. The first time I heard of this was long ago from my father. I don't think I understood it at that time. Not until much later after I heard it again from my mother did I gain a better understanding of its meaning.

The year 1967 saw the birth of a small secret group of Red Guards in Beijing, which was said to distribute leaflets against Premier Zhou Enlai. This group was later labeled 5.16 Anti-revolutionary Conspiracy Clique. 

In 1970 the central government issued an official order to capture and eradicate all the 5.16 anti-revolutionaries. It was an era when people were overzealous in answering the call from the above against the anti-revolutionary. There was an over surplus of self-righteous revolutionary fervor burning around, witnessing the young and the stupid of the highest level.

As the result, throughout the country, thousands of thousands of people were thus labeled, arrested, loss of freedom, undergoing persecution, interrogations in isolation, supervised labor and public humiliation. Plenty of them didn't survive the process.

My father worked in Tianjin Mayoral government at that time. Thousands of people were rounded up for interrogation in Tianjin. From the beginning, my father insisted on seeking truth when going through each person. In the end, all were quickly sent home because of my father.

Today I think of my father's words every time I see someone appears to be 装逼 (zhuāng bī), meaning: pretending. The two words are not coherently connected. It doesn't matter as long as I make the connection in my head.

My sisters and I often talked about how we were raised. Our parents knew almost nothing about parenting. They raised us according to their own belief and century-old traditions, simple and straightforward, honest hard work. And mostly following this belief, 万般皆下品，唯有读书高 (wàn bān jiē xià pǐn, wéi yǒu dú shū gāo), nothing is as lofty as study.

My youngest sister is a natural dancer. She doesn't need a teacher. She moves every part of her body gracefully, effortlessly and beautifully with the music, even today. When she was a little girl, she danced everywhere and our neighbors all admired her performance. Someone told my father, send her to a performance art school. There was a privileged institution called Eastern Dance and Singing Group under Tianjin mayoral administration. My father could send her there but he said no.

In old China, people in entertainment industry held low social esteem. I think back in my father's mind, he believed that entertainment was not a reliable profession, or not for decent people.

People of our parents' generation believe that with decades of life experience they know better than their children. With that, naturally they should make decisions for the children.

Since we all turned out great, they must have done something right, even though my sister spent her whole life working at a state-owned bank, an iron-bowl that she never enjoyed. On the other hand, it's not even a relevant concern whether or not you enjoy your job.