About

I grew up between Shanghai and Texas, and landed in New York because it reminded me of Shanghai — my first love.

I grew up between Shanghai (in Jing'An) and Texas — Spring, Texas of all places. I work in tech and am writing a literary science-fiction novel about an alien that falls in love with life on Earth.

Most of what interests me is learning how different people see the world — through art, music, film, literature, philosophy, and the stories they carry. There are few things better than a long run with music you love, a warm day, or anywhere water meets land. I like tennis, boating, laughing, and making things.

I like art that feels like a private world — quiet, a little dreamy, slightly off from real life. OB paints solitary figures in soft, delicate spaces that feel like memories you can't quite place. Renoir gets me for the opposite reason: the way he lets light blur everything into softness. And a lot of it is just whatever stops me mid-scroll from someone whose name I haven't learned yet.

My favorite art museum is the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris — they show one exhibit at a time, and the art almost isn't the point: each floor walks you through a stretch of the artist's life, the people and moments that pushed them one way or another. You come out knowing why someone made the work, not just what it is.

Film pulls me the same way — I love a story that builds a whole world and then lets you live in it for a while. Project Hail Mary got me recently: an astronaut alone in space befriends an alien rock spider and, at the end, makes a choice that shouldn't make sense but completely does. That's the through-line, really. The films that stay with me are the ones where someone picks a life that looks strange from the outside and obvious once you know them.

Music is the one that's always on — a long run with the right album can turn a whole day around. My taste wanders more than anything else I love, so the honest answer to "what do you listen to?" is just to look.