Yanwen’s blog

8/12/2026

On American social media, I recently came across the story of two Chinese boys, Zhu Jinxiang (朱金祥) and Zhong Huaqiang (钟华强), who grew up in the same village in Jiangxi Province, China.

Zhong was born with cerebral palsy and could not walk normally. Beginning in elementary school, Zhu and his classmates took turns helping him get to school and classrooms.

From elementary school through high school, Zhu and Zhong were repeatedly classmates and eventually became desk mates, sharing the same desk in the classroom.

As they grew older, Zhu became the person who regularly carried Zhong to school and around the campus. He continued doing so through middle school and high school—roughly ten years in all.

But their friendship was never one-sided.

Although Zhong was physically disabled, he was excellent academically and often helped Zhu with subjects such as mathematics and English. Zhu said that whenever he felt disappointed or discouraged, Zhong would encourage him. In other words, Zhu provided physical support, while Zhong provided academic and emotional support.

In 2023, they took the Gaokao together and hoped to attend the same university. Zhong went on to university, while Zhu decided to repeat his senior year because his score was not high enough.

Their story made me think again about today's young Chinese.

It is easy to look at the phenomenon of 啃老族—young adults who remain dependent on their parents—and conclude that an overprotected generation has become less resilient or less willing to shoulder responsibility. 

China is a vast country, with enormous differences in family background, geography, economic circumstances, and upbringing. We should be careful not to turn one social phenomenon into a description of an entire generation.

There are many young people who did not grow up in highly protected environments. In some rural and less affluent families, children may have had to become independent and take on responsibilities at a relatively young age. Many of them develop strong willpower, resilience, and a willingness to shoulder responsibility.

Zhu and Zhong remind us that people born in the same decade can grow up under dramatically different circumstances.

Within the same generation, we can find young people who grew up highly protected, as well as young people capable of extraordinary responsibility, sacrifice, loyalty, and mutual support.

This makes me wonder: What circumstances help cultivate these qualities? What kinds of childhood experiences encourage independence, resilience, and responsibility? And what conditions, by contrast, may foster dependence or difficulty coping with adversity?

Most importantly, Zhu and Zhong remind us that China is too large and diverse to be reduced to a single generational stereotype.

Resilience does not belong to one generation. Neither does compassion.

In the end, what makes their story so touching is not simply that Zhu carried Zhong for ten years, but that both boys showed qualities of loyalty, kindness, resilience, and mutual support that are deeply admirable and inspiring.

A young friend’s encouraging words to me today , “您能坚持每天写作已经非常难能可贵了！好文章需要时间发酵和传播！写作本身也是一件滋养自己、记录思考的美好事情。您的视角和深度很有价值，相信用心输出慢慢会被更多人看到！”

8/11/2026

Lately, news has been spreading about Joe Biden's worsening cancer. What caught my attention was another article reporting Jill Biden's concern that Joe had experienced symptoms while he was still in the White House, but that his medical team followed the prevailing guidelines and did not perform PSA screening after his last known test in 2014.

Jill Biden said Joe was getting up as many as seven times a night to urinate while he was still in the White House, and that she raised the issue with medical staff. After he left office, the symptom persisted and eventually led to further evaluation. In May 2025, he was diagnosed with Gleason 9 (Grade Group 5) prostate cancer that had already spread to his bones.

The first thing that jumps out: his last known PSA was in 2014

11 years ago when he was 71. Why not performing one for his recent nocturia problem?

Because the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends against routine PSA screening for men 70 and older because, at the population level, the potential harms of screening—including false positives, biopsies, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment—can outweigh the benefits.

So I would not say that his doctors were negligent. Nor do ordinary people have enough medical expertise to conclude from one case that the recommendation itself is wrong.

Still, this case raises some legitimate questions.

--Was the general screening guideline appropriate for every individual, particularly an otherwise healthy older man with access to unusually comprehensive medical care?

--More importantly, how were his urinary symptoms interpreted? Were they considered ordinary age-related symptoms, or did their severity and persistence warrant further evaluation?

--If routine screening is stopped in older men, shouldn't new and significant symptoms receive even greater attention?

--And could an unusually aggressive cancer, an age-based decision to discontinue routine PSA screening, and persistent urinary symptoms have combined to create a blind spot?

Screening an asymptomatic man is one thing. Persistent symptoms are another.

Getting up seven times a night to urinate is substantial nocturia. It can have many causes, including cancer.

The point is that persistent and significant changes in the body deserve attention, regardless of what the general screening guidelines say.

My health, I take responsibility for

There is a Chinese saying:

我的健康我做主
Wǒ de jiànkāng wǒ zuòzhǔ. "My health, I take responsibility for."

This does not mean we should ignore medical experts or decide for ourselves what tests and treatments we need. It means we should not passively outsource responsibility for our health to doctors, medical systems, or guidelines.

Keep in mind that guidelines are population-level recommendations, not personal guarantees.

If you develop significant symptoms, instead of thinking about the general guidelines, you should notice the changes in you and ask what it means for you.

This is personal responsibility. You are the person who experiences your body 24 hours a day.

You are the best observer of your own body, which makes you qualify as an essential member of your own healthcare team.

Don't blindly follow experts and don't blindly distrust them

The lesson I learn from this is: we should work with our doctors rather than simply follow them passively.

Ask questions. Understand the reasoning behind recommendations. Know your risk factors. Pay attention to changes in your body. Tell your doctor in details about unusual symptoms. Ask whether a general recommendation applies to your particular circumstances. And when something doesn't make sense, seek a second opinion.

Everything about you is unique: your health history, your risk factors and your body. So listen to the experts. Respect the guidelines. Meanwhile, never surrender your own judgment and responsibility.

No one knows your body better than you do. You may not be the expert on medicine, but you are the ultimate caretaker of your own health.

From a reader, “ 非常赞同！指南是人群层面的大方向，但每个人都是独一无二的.”

8/10/2026

I was deeply disturbed when I read a Guardian article on August 8, 2026, reporting a sharp increase in the number of UK children reporting sexually explicit deepfake images made to appear as though they depict them.

The Report Remove service received 420 such reports in the first six months of 2026—already more than the 397 reports it received during all of 2025. The majority of manipulated-image reports in 2025 and 2026 reportedly met the threshold for child sexual abuse material.

A few points are worth highlighting.

First,  an ordinary photograph of a child can potentially be manipulated by AI into sexually explicit material. The original photograph does not have to be sexual.

Second, some victims have subsequently been subjected to sextortion, with perpetrators threatening to distribute the fabricated images unless the victim pays money or provides additional images.

Third, the problem is not limited to children who deliberately post revealing photographs. The article reports cases in which criminals scraped ordinary school or social-media photographs and used AI to transform them into explicit images.

Fourth, the UK has already criminalized AI-generated child sexual abuse material, as well as the distribution of models adapted to produce it. Yet the rapid development of generative AI is creating new challenges for law enforcement and online platforms.

Fifth, this technology dramatically lowers the barrier to certain forms of crime and exploitation. A criminal no longer needs access to a victim, a compromising photograph, or even a photograph that was originally intended to be private. An innocent image posted online may be enough raw material.

The Internet Watch Foundation and the UK National Crime Agency are now advising parents and schools to reduce the public availability of identifiable photos of children.

The most disturbing implication is that the traditional advice—don't post inappropriate pictures of your child online—is no longer sufficient. The photo itself does not have to be inappropriate. The danger may lie in what someone else can do with it.

This creates a new responsibility for today's parents. Every time we share a child's photograph, we should consider not only who can see it today, but also what technology may allow someone to do with it tomorrow.

For generations, parents have tried to protect their children from dangers they could see: strangers, unsafe places, harmful substances, or inappropriate people. Parents should be keenly aware that the digital world has introduced a different kind of danger—one that can begin with something completely innocent and happen entirely out of sight.

And to parents everywhere: don't assume that because these cases were reported in the UK, this is a British problem. It is a global problem. The technology behind these abuses does not stop at national borders, and neither do the images once they are uploaded to the internet. What is happening to children in the UK today could happen to a child anywhere in the world tomorrow—or may already be happening without being reported.

That is why this is not simply a story about British children or British law. It is a warning to parents everywhere about the new risks created by AI.

It may be an innocent act when we take and share a beautiful picture of a child. In the age of AI, we also have to think about what it could become after we share it.

8/9/2026

Yesterday I wrote about an article that I read on comparing two generations in China. When comparing parents and their children, we have to remember that these two generations were shaped by radically different historical circumstances in China. Their psychological differences cannot be understood without first looking at the worlds in which they grew up.

The first generation—roughly those born in the 1950s and 1960s— came of age during one of the most turbulent periods in modern Chinese history. Many were children or teenagers during the Cultural Revolution and young adults when Reform and Opening began in 1978.

They experienced scarcity and disrupted education during childhood, political uncertainty during the Cultural Revolution, and then the restoration of the college entrance examination. They witnessed the beginning of Reform and Opening and subsequently experienced the rapid expansion of private enterprise, foreign investment, international trade, and urbanization.

Most importantly, they lived through an extraordinary period of upward mobility. China was changing rapidly, and their own lives changed with it.

They were therefore not simply survivors of hardship. They were also beneficiaries—and, more importantly, participants—in China's economic transformation. Many entered the workforce during the early years of Reform and Opening and became the people who actually built much of the new economy. They worked in factories, started businesses, entered newly emerging professions, moved from the countryside to cities, and built families and careers in an economy that was transforming before their eyes.

They were, in many ways, the backbone of China's rebuilding and economic transformation.

Their children, roughly those born in the 1980s and 1990s, grew up in a very different China. This was the generation heavily influenced by the one-child policy and raised in a country that was already becoming dramatically more prosperous. 

They are 独生子女 (dú shēng zǐ nǚ), only child in the family. Their childhood experience was almost the opposite of that of their parents:

• One child surrounded by two parents and often four grandparents.

• Much greater material security.

• Enormous parental investment in education.

• Intense academic competition.

• Access to technology, entertainment, and consumer goods that their parents could scarcely have imagined.

• Little or no direct experience of the scarcity their parents had known.

• Many parents who had sacrificed enormously and therefore placed tremendous expectations on their only child.

Many of these children are now in their thirties and confronting adulthood in an economic environment very different from the one their parents encountered at the same age.

There is an interesting reversal here.

The parents grew up in a world where life was difficult, but the future seemed to be opening up. Their experience taught them a simple and powerful lesson: if I work hard, my life can become better than my parents' life.

Their children grew up in a world where life was much more comfortable with abundant materials, but the future became increasingly competitive and uncertain. They inherited the prosperity their parents had worked so hard to create, but they also inherited a society in which expectations had risen enormously.

And here lies an important irony.

The very parents who developed extraordinary resilience by enduring hardship often devoted themselves to protecting their children from the hardships that had once helped make them resilient.

They had known hunger, failure, uncertainty, and deprivation. Naturally, they wanted their children to experience none of those things. They worked hard to give their only child the best of everything, and a more comfortable life than they themselves had known.

That was an understandable—and often loving—response to their own childhoods.

But it also raises an important question:

What happens when parents who learned to endure failure spend their lives making sure their only child does not have to experience failure?

A child who is protected from every difficulty may be protected from some suffering, but may also have fewer opportunities to discover what he or she is capable of.

To be sure, I don't mean to say that every only child is fragile, selfish, or incapable of responsibility. Nor does it mean that every parent overprotected their child. Human beings are far too diverse for such sweeping conclusions.

Of course, these differences in upbringing do not, by themselves, explain why some young people today struggle with depression, why some have difficulty handling setbacks, or why others become remarkably capable and resilient. Nor do they prove that one generation is stronger than the other.

Now I'm interested in knowing if one generation's strengths may unintentionally contribute to some of the next generation's vulnerabilities and how we can prevent it.

More on it later.

8/8/2026

I read an article comparing the resilience of older generation with the depression of the younger generation.

The article correctly points out that many older Chinese lived through extraordinary hardships, and that some indeed learned to suppress their emotions. The problem is the author extends this observation about some individuals to characterize an entire generation.

First of all, the article criticizes people for stereotyping the young as "fragile," yet it stereotypes the old as "emotionally numb," "lacking empathy," and suffering from "learned helplessness."

The irony is, the author went to the opposite extreme--condemning prejudice against one generation ends up expressing prejudice toward another.

Second, there are many causes for the rise of depression cases among young people.

The article tries to explain rising depression almost entirely through chronic stress and modern society.

But the author knows clearly that psychology rarely accepts single-cause explanations. Depression arises from interactions among many factors. Among them, genetic predisposition, personality, childhood experiences, parenting, family relationships, economic stress, sleep, social media, physical health, substance abuse, traumatic events. 

In China, we have another important variable: the one-child growing up experience, in which many only children grew up surrounded by parents and grandparents who devoted enormous attention to them, excessive protection, lack of independence, low frustration tolerance, delayed assumption of adult responsibility and dependence on parents. That's why we have the term 啃老族 in China.

When a phenomenon has many interacting causes, attributing it primarily to one explanation may produce an appealing narrative, but not necessarily an accurate one.

Third, don't forget this age-old wisdom: responsibility builds resilience.

The article almost implies the experience of hardship leaves trauma in older generations. Hardship can leave trauma, but it can also cultivate resilience, competence, and perseverance. Human beings respond differently to adversity.

Resilience isn't pretending pain doesn't exist. A child who never falls never learns how to stand up again. A person who never fails never knows the sweetness of success.

As first-generation immigrants, many of us endured tremendous hardships as we learned a new culture, adapted to a different environment, and built new lives largely on our own. Those experiences made us stronger and more resilient—not emotionally numb.

Fourth, there is no need to romanticize sensitivity.

What particularly bothers me is the author almost treats sensitivity as evolutionarily superior. I'm not sure this is psychologically and scientifically defensible.

Sensitivity has strengths. It also has costs. Likewise, emotional restraint has strengths, and it has costs.

A mature adult ideally possesses both empathy and self-control. Not one without the other.

One generation rebuilt a nation while carrying burdens that today's youth can scarcely imagine. The other is growing up in an era of unprecedented technological change, relentless competition, and constant digital connectivity. Their challenges are different. Both deserve understanding.

To the child born today, I wish you both: a heart that feels deeply, and a spirit strong enough to withstand life's inevitable storms. May you inherit the compassion to understand others, the courage to face hardship, and the wisdom to recognize that with sensitivity and resilience, together they are the foundation of a mature and fulfilling life.