Yapping about the start of the new year
Random thoughts from the first semester of my second year until now
Hi beautiful friends,
Happy January and the start of the new year! I’m typing this post from the Westin Lobby Cafe on Guam, where the beautiful beach view is behind me, and my high school friend, a recent Stanford University alum, sits in front of me. Together, we joke that we went to different colleges but share the same problem: poverty.
I’m bad at staying in touch over this Substack, partly because Beijing pollution is shortening my life, so I’m battling future lung cancer, and partly because my very powerful nanny (VPN) is unreliable in the nation’s capital. I also didn’t have much to update last semester because I slept 12 hours a day and woke up to learn tennis, ping pong, and badminton. Last semester, I took one and only one class: ping pong. The professor, Liu Wei, won five world championships and a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. China has too many gold medalists, so my professor is teaching plebeians like me.
On an athletic note, I started gym sessions with a personal trainer. I lack the confidence to hit any machine beyond a treadmill, so I asked the gym’s front desk and was told there’s a comprehensive 30-day plan where I pay USD 20 a session to work with a trainer. He started our first session rambling about biological terms in Chinese, and I had to remind him that I last took biology in high school freshman year. I couldn’t even understand it in English; spare me in Mandarin :) My trainer is great. He likes to tell me how he runs 10-15 kilometers a day, and I tell him that it took every ounce of my energy to walk from my dorm to the gym ten minutes away. The only thing I’ll run toward is a badminton court. Our university has a ton of badminton courts that get snatched up at noon. We play with strangers in the facilities for the ping pong finals at the 2008 Olympics, and because it feels grand to play in a sexy stadium, I hit a lot of shuttles. My badminton coach, who’s on the official Peking badminton team, has improved my skills a ton. The main problem is that I run slowly, and smacking birdies alone will do little to change my stamina. So I guess it goes back to my personal trainer’s reminder: Start running, now!
I left early on Christmas Eve to fly home, having learned from last year’s mistake of assuming China would treat Christmas as a major holiday. This year, I also made the mistake of assuming my ping pong class wouldn’t schedule a final exam on Christmas Eve. You can imagine how ludicrous it felt to tell my ping pong professor, a stern and intense master, that I skipped my final exam because I purchased the wrong airline tickets. It took too many WeChat messages to tell her that either she let me go home and take the final exam beforehand, or I’d have to fail my first college course: ping pong.
So I celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Day on Guam. My Chinese uncles and aunts have known me since I was born, and I have to remind them that they should quit calling me by my baby nicknames. They can never tell what type of degree or program I’m in, and recently, my uncle—who had known me since infancy—asked me, “So, are you graduating from undergrad?” Uncle, I did that two years ago. I’m getting a Master’s in Economics. He gave me a big thumbs up before fishing for beef in the hot pot.
I’m also spending Chinese New Year’s on Guam! While I’d love to celebrate a Chinese holiday in China, my dad decided to visit China while I was home to “take care” of my mom. I secretly think he wants to avoid two women bossing him around, but it’s all good, last year’s Lunar New Year festivities in China were fun but overwhelming. The quiet and serene beaches on Guam make a popping festivity dim, though I’ll spend it in endless rounds of hot pot. My parents have a terrible habit of announcing hot pot dinners a day before it happens, and every time I walk into another uncle or aunt’s house, there are already 10 to 13 people there. Meanwhile, our 7 p.m. dinners always start after 8 p.m. because on Guam, if you’re on time for a gathering, it’s rude.
My routine on Guam is the same: Every day I camp out at Westin’s Cafe and either do interviews for my thesis on electric vehicles or high school interviews for Princeton. The college interviews crack me up because high school students come to me announcing they want to cure cancer, extend life, or save children in war-torn countries. When I ask them to expand on their dreams, they mention the war in Lebanon or the ongoing climate crisis. They have so many dreams that will get crushed by investment banking and consulting offers, but I’m overwhelmed to know that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. My favorite interviewee line occurred when a Guam student told me, in person, that he was highly obsessed with Spongebob. He couldn’t defend why he liked the pineapple houses, but he spoke with such fervor that I laughed out loud. “I REALLY like Spongebob,” he said. That was his simple response to my final question: “Is there anything else you want me to tell Princeton?”
For my thesis on EVs, I’ve learned that people are crazy. I’ve had too many EV experts tell me that “Europe is dumb and stupid,” and I have to quote the words “dumb” and “stupid” while trying to come up with a better question. Meanwhile, China and the U.S. hate each other, so I have experts from both countries barking about terrible policies and the trade war. Most of the time, I take these calls between midnight to 2:30 a.m. Guam time due to time zones, and I have to remind my half-dead brain that it’s okay, people are entitled to their opinions.
Summary of a conversation with one Italian expert on EVs. He’s met two Chinese presidents and has 20,000 followers on LinkedIn:
Me: “What do you think of the bankruptcy of Northvolt, a Swedish battery startup?”
Him, an Italian expert based in China: “Europeans are dumb. They’re just stupid. I built the batteries they were trying to build a decade ago. They poured a billion dollars into investment, and they can’t even do a dumb, basic battery. Those people should be tried for corruption.”
The same Italian expert: “I’ve met two Chinese presidents. They have engineering degrees and say smart things when I talk about batteries. Then I meet European political leaders who have no idea what they’re talking about.”
Me to my high school classmate: “Should I chuck out this man’s quotes altogether because he kept telling me Europeans were dumb and stupid? He generalized the people of 44 countries in one sentence.”
My thesis advisor has threatened to send me to the guillotine if I don’t get my thesis together. My advisor even sent me a picture of the sword in his office that insinuated, “He will kill me if I come back to Beijing without more thesis updates.” I forgot to block him on my WeChat Moments, so he saw too many concert recaps and three-by-three travel collages. Every month last year, I’d show up and ask about his office’s mini botanical garden, then make up an excuse for doing little thesis work. In his words, instead of researching, I decided to become China’s travel ambassador. My parents are thrilled that he’s pressuring me. In their words, it’s about time I do what a grad school student should do: Study!
On this beautiful academic note, I hope you have a fabulous day :) I’m looking for business development jobs back in San Francisco or New York, but if I end up unemployed, like I have been the past two years, I’ll go home and lie on Guam’s beaches. My hilarious but savage parents told me that after graduate school, I could come home without a job but sleep with the dogs outside. I told them that I could sue for child abuse. They told me I’m older than 18 years old, and those rules don’t apply. Can someone with a legal background verify these facts for me?
Until then, Happy Chinese New Year!
Warmly,
A human debating whether to leech off their parents and stay unemployed
