Here lies the source that nourishes this territory -- the things that shaped me.

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Books

  • Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

    This book changed the way I look at people. Generally, it's convenient to treat people as innate and unchanging. In reality, many behaviors we attribute to inherent personality traits are actually defense mechanisms formed by individuals in long-term traumatic environments -- the so-called 4F responses. I came to realize that much of who a person is can be inferred from the environment that shaped them. Through this lens, I've privately analyzed many people around me, and come to understand a great deal about them. Looking at it this way, I find I can understand people who once seemed like unreasonable idiots or villains. But that doesn't mean I have to tolerate their transgressions without limit.

    That said, I'm still slowly digesting this idea. When I'm angry, I still catch myself secretly writing someone off as a villain for life.

Games

Audio-Visual

Experiences

Places

I come from a family split between north and south, but I lived in the north (Shandong) for longer and became more woven into the local culture there. My childhood in Fujian wasn't a happy one, so I still carry a small bias against that place.

After eleven years in China, I moved with my parents to settle in New York. The pressure and fear of a new life, the daily arguments with my parents, the difficulty of ever really fitting in with the people around me -- all of it wore me down, and became the backdrop of my teenage years. By the time I reached high school, I had already become someone anxious about socializing yet outwardly arrogant, which set off a string of bad things down the road.

Even though I left home during high school and no longer had to grind against my parents every day, I fell into another quagmire: the love-hate relationship with my roommate. A lot happened between us, and we changed each other a great deal. Without a doubt, we are each other's closest person, and still are today.

In the decade-plus I've spent in the US, I've never once gone back to China, which has left my sense of the country badly out of date. But precisely because of that, you'll find more content on this blog site tied to the United States.