Went to Skytower tonight celebrated mum’s birthday. In the morning, went to Bella’s daycare celebrated her birthday. Mum and Bella’s birthday only one day apart. Also Chinese New Year normally falls around this time of the year too, so it has been a busy month of celebrations.
At Bella’s daycare, we prepared 3 fruit platters and some of my dad’s homemade spring onion pancakes. The kids enjoyed the savoury pancakes a lot, it was all gone in 20 mins. Its really interesting to watch how these 3 and 4 year olds interact with each other, you can see lots of reflections in the adult world but with a more direct sense of feelings and purpose.
I also joined Club House 2 days ago, I have to admit its really easy to get suck in the chatrooms and a few hours would go by easily. One thing I noticed with the Chinese chatrooms on issues banned in China, the conversation always become quite urgent and filled with tension. I felt its not just a place to discuss things, its more like a group therapy session with 40 people all want to share their thoughts and feelings at the same time. I get this sense of urgency, because normally these topics were out of your reach suddenly you get to share your views on them, its naturally become a bit chaotic. In comparison to some English chatroom discuss similar topics, it was more clam and the thoughts were expressed with more depth and backed with some research. I especially enjoy Kaiser Guo’s chatrooms, they always have some interesting speakers. Talk about Kaiser, we met at a dinner in Beijing about 6 years ago. He had a rather heated discussion with a British writer on the opium war, during that time I wasn’t aware of his podcast. Now I am a regular listener and it is impressive how he composes himself so well and let the speakers share their views without much judgement.
I think Chinese need to debate more on sensitive topics, these discussions may become really awkward and some comments seem to be ridiculous. However, it is through this process I learnt to clarify my own views and values. I felt good to know many Chinese people living overseas share some similar experiences with me, being minority in a different country help me to open my eyes and have empathy towards other minorities.
Tomorrow we have a big Chinese new year party to go to , then next day is Bella’s real birthday party with friends and family. 2020 definitely has made me feel a bit different being in a crowd, I wonder is it safe, what if? But I know NZ is relatively low risk and we can not stop living life. So keep on celebrating, keep on talking, never stop listening and never be afraid to communicate.
LIYANG'S THOUGHTS 