🌍 Born in Pan'an, studied in China and the United States, worked in China, the US, and now in Europe.
🙌 Driven to connect and engage the community by years of moving and adapting.
✍️ Trained to be a journalist. I write, photograph, and videograph. Always a journalist in mind.
👩🎓 Trained to be a social science researcher. I studied mass communication with a focus on public relations.
🌤 Sky collector. 📒 Story collector. ✨Sparkle collector.
Photo took at Taiwan Rainbow Village (彩虹眷村), a once faded village saved by a 90-year-old veteran, and now a famous destination because of the art.
The sentence「山水有相逢」on the wall means, across mountains and oceans you will meet your destiny (your lover? your dream job?).
I care about …
Civic Tech
I have been wondering about the role of civic tech and related infrastructure in community-building. For my undergrad thesis, I examined how Tuanyuan, a mobile app helps to recover missing children through crowdsourcing. For my master’s thesis, I examined the message strategies to raise donation engagement.
Everyday Life Experience
I admire the human-centered design of everyday things. For example, the studying experience in my undergraduate library was not that good. The study room was not utilized efficiently. In 2017, together with 5 peers, we redesigned the service by introducing the “spare the seat” card. This project was prototyped in the library and got interviewed by ZJU-TV.
Education Equity
I was born in a small town and luckily step into a bigger world. Thus I have always wanted to pay it forward. When interned at China Development Research Foundation, I contributed to the vocational education program. When interned at 21st Century Education Research Institute, I contributed to the rural education program.
Relationship Building
The community thrives not only with infrastructure but also with real human connections. As an example, WithYou (in Chinese) is a co-mentoring group where every one of us supports each other in conducting the weekly plans and/or bigger scope projects. I joined the team in 2016 and serves as a designer from 2016 to 2019. To date, WithYou has witnessed 4500+ plans.
I enjoy …
Stories
I was a journalist who worked and/or interned at Zhejiang University, Tencent, and Southern Metropolis Weekly, from 2015 to 2019. I wrote, I photographed, and I videographed. I developed 30+ news reports, some of which received millions of views.
Traveling
I am a backpacking-aholic! With pure curiosity and limited resources, I have traveled to 26 provinces in China and 14 states in the United States (should be more without COVID!). I wrote 50+ travel notes. My friends turn to me as a travel designer.
Cross-cultural Communication
I was a Chinese tutor when studying abroad in 2017 at the University of Rhode Island, where I tutored 50+ peers and received great feedback. I was also an English tutor back in China. No matter speaking which language, I am always a cultural ambassador.
Writing
I have been writing/journaling for 10+ years. Primarily I write nonfiction, sometimes I write fiction. In the past, I primarily write for fun, while now I primarily write to speak out and loud. Writing philosophy shown in the bottle cap.