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Articles
Most of the articles before October 2026 were first published on the WeChat official account, while the subsequent articles were first published on this website.
117 English translations · 1 English original. Translations are AI-assisted; each links to its exact Chinese original.
0 pending · 0 awaiting an update. Unavailable translations link to the Chinese original.
All articles
118 original articlesView and comment counts send IP and browser information to the selected Waline backend and its hosting provider. Hosting: Vercel; database: Neon.
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On the Great Walk Theory
In this age of grand theories, all kinds of theories keep emerging. The Big Water Theory and Lean Muscle Theory enjoy considerable acceptance, while o…
2 min readRead article →
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A Reference Table of Ming Emperors and Major Events
During middle and high school, I read all nine volumes of Those Things About the Ming Dynasty in vivo Reading. I read them in my spare time, so I took…
36 min readRead article →
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Study is Important
Studying helps us understand the world more deeply. The world is complex, constantly changing, and interconnected. A phenomenon may have several cause…
1 min readRead article →
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An Analysis of Kuala Lumpur's Weather
In summer, I often thought Kuala Lumpur's weather was very good. Many places in China were suffering summer drought and heat, with quite a few cities …
4 min readRead article →
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Happy Secondary School Students in Malaysia
I had long heard that primary and secondary school students in Malaysia finish school early, but never thought much of it. Subconsciously, I assumed i…
2 min readRead article →
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A System for Organizing Research Papers in the AI Era
—I built a Coze workflow that automatically turns research papers into "digital knowledge cards."
5 min readRead article →
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Spelling Patterns in Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese Names, with Lists of Notable Figures
One limitation of phonetic writing systems is that the same character can acquire different pronunciations after communities have been separated for o…
19 min readRead article →
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An Investigation of Time Zones
In the geography section of China's university entrance examination, some people consider questions about Earth's motion the hardest, because they are…
6 min readRead article →
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An Analysis of Kuala Lumpur’s Rail Transit
Kuala Lumpur’s rail system is complicated and hard to make sense of at first glance. It also differs from systems in China in many ways. This article …
8 min readRead article →
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GEO: An Introduction to Generative Engine Optimization and Its Implications
In the internet age, a great deal of information is online, and we have become accustomed to obtaining it there. AI marks another watershed: before it…
4 min readRead article →
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Markdown and Word: A Revolution in Writing for the Digital Age
I previously always used Word documents, .docx files, to take notes and write. Especially since starting my public account, I have written most notes …
3 min readRead article →
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Synthetic Happiness and Its Implications
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert gave a classic TED talk, “The surprising science of happiness,” centered on the theory of synthetic happiness. Its…
6 min readRead article →
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Thousands in English and Ten Thousands in Chinese
Converting numbers between languages can be troublesome. If a foreigner suddenly asks about the population or area of a country or province, for examp…
7 min readRead article →
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China's Birth Decades and Generations Abroad
In China, we commonly distinguish age groups with expressions such as "post-70s," "post-80s," "post-90s," and "post-00s." It is easy to regard this as…
5 min readRead article →
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An Exploration of Malay Names
The first time I saw a Malay teacher's name on the timetable, my immediate reaction was to skip over it. The string of characters was simply too compl…
3 min readRead article →
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Reading English Originals with WeChat Read
I never used to read English books regularly, for three reasons: printed English books were too expensive, there was no suitable platform for English …
4 min readRead article →
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Learning English with YouTube—and Improving the Method with a Coze Workflow
The renowned applied linguist Stephen Krashen proposed the “comprehensible input” theory of language acquisition in the 1970s and 1980s. Its central c…
3 min readRead article →
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A Summary of Key Concepts in Brain Science
Human consciousness and psychology are, in essence, functions of the human brain. Whenever we investigate a question, we are likely to encounter the f…
9 min readRead article →
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The Most Productive Temperature Range for Work: 21–24 Degrees
I just read a paper titled “Room Temperature and Productivity in Office Work,” examining the relationship between indoor temperature and office-work e…
2 min readRead article →
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What I Have Learned from Renting Out Rooms
A friend and I rented an entire home in Malaysia with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a living room, directly from the landlord, on a one-year leas…
3 min readRead article →
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My Big Five Personality Test Results and Analysis
The Big Five model is widely recognized in psychology as the most comprehensive, reliable, and effective description of individuals' basic traits curr…
6 min readRead article →
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From Malaysian Chinese to Singapore's “Mother-Tongue Trap”: Is Downgrading English as a Core Subject Really Unacceptable?
Many talented young Chinese people excel in both humanities and sciences but simply cannot learn English well. Take me: in secondary school, I spent a…
5 min readRead article →
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Some Thoughts on Journalism: Truthfulness Is Not an Inherent Feature of News, but a Standard and Aspiration in Academia and the Industry
Note: I wrote this during the summer before my final year at university, when I was planning to apply for a master’s degree in journalism and communic…
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People with Lactose Intolerance Have Even More Reason to Drink Milk
More than 95% of Chinese people are lactose intolerant and experience diarrhea, bloating, and other symptoms after consuming too much dairy. Recently,…
5 min readRead article →
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How Much Can Climate Affect a Person’s Body?
Climate has a considerable effect on the body. Let me illustrate this with my own experience.
4 min readRead article →
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Rich People's Troubles: How Mr. Lu's Annual Meeting Speech Cured My Inner Turmoil
There is an online creator called “Mr. Lu Says.” He is a finance professional with twenty years in the industry and the first Chinese-national FOF man…
5 min readRead article →
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Notes from a Southbound Journey: Beijing to Dongguan
On this trip from Beijing to Dongguan, I spent more than twenty hours on the train, met several friends along the way, and had some interesting experi…
8 min readRead article →
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Last Night, My WeChat Official Account Came to Life
Last night, my WeChat official account came to life.
1 min readRead article →
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"Tenfold Arithmetic" in Romance of the Three Kingdoms
A few days ago, someone used the proportion of prostitutes in Germany to estimate their number in China. Without thinking, I said, "Chinese people's m…
10 min readRead article →
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1978–2024: Trends in China's Births
I have just entered the population totals and birth rates since 1978 from National Bureau of Statistics data and calculated the number of births each …
2 min readRead article →
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How Do the September 1 Social Insurance Rules Affect Ordinary People?
The day before yesterday, August 30, I ate at a Sichuan restaurant serving noodles, wontons, and similar dishes. The food tasted quite authentic.
4 min readRead article →
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Zhili Province in Old Maps: Sharing 24 Hand-Colored Maps from the Ninth Year of Xianfeng
This atlas of Zhili Province's administrative divisions dates to the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859). It was hand-drawn by Xu Zhidao, an official in Bao…
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A Sichuan Native's First Donkey-Meat Huoshao in Baoding Left Me Amazed
As someone from Sichuan, before coming to Beijing for university I had barely eaten lamb a few times, let alone heard of donkey meat. A chance encount…
3 min readRead article →
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Who Is Ye City's Successor—Anyang in Henan or Linzhang in Hebei? Which Is the Real Ye City?
The very existence of this question begins with the administrative boundary changes of 1949–1952.
5 min readRead article →
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Thailand and Cambodia Have Exchanged Fire Along Their Border: What Is Behind It, and What Is the Current Situation?
The conflicts among political forces within each country are far greater than the conflict between the two countries' rulers, and greater still than a…
6 min readRead article →
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Beijing's Yanfang Line Branch Project Is on Hold: Is There Still Hope for Its Future?
Construction of Beijing Subway's Yanfang Line began in late 2013, and it opened on December 30, 2017. Running from Yanshan to Yancun East, it serves n…
3 min readRead article →
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The Fangshan Line: Its Present and Future
Fangshan has two subway lines, the Fangshan Line and the Yanfang Line. Although they are connected now and will eventually operate through services, t…
3 min readRead article →
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Beijing's Present and Future Were Already Set Out in This Plan Eight Years Ago
In 2017, Beijing released a new city master plan for 2016–2035, laying out a blueprint for the capital's development over the next twenty years.
6 min readRead article →
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AI Refuses to Shut Down: The Truth Is Far More Boring Than You Think
Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on the 25th that OpenAI's latest AI model, “o3,” refused a “self-shutdown” instruction during testing and even trie…
6 min readRead article →
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Men Should Not Date Before Thirty: The Most Expensive Lesson I Have Learned
Now that the game has been updated, what choices should ordinary men make? This is what I have learned from life, and I hope it will be useful.
1 min readRead article →
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Is Mianyang Piloting a Flexible 4.5-Day Workweek? The Background and My View
Recently, news that "Mianyang is piloting a flexible 4.5-day workweek" became a trending topic. People cheered, "I'm jealous!", while also asking, "Is…
3 min readRead article →
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Lavish Burials End in Tomb Robbery and Museums: A Visit to the Dabaotai Han Tombs
For a single guy like me, May 20—“520,” a day associated with romance—means having no one to spend it with. This year, however, it happened to coincid…
9 min readRead article →
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Han Dynasty Enfeoffment: A Witness to Growing Centralization
The Han dynasty administered its territories through a parallel system of commanderies and kingdoms. Alongside the commandery-and-county system, it re…
3 min readRead article →
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Life Is a Game: Choosing Your Main Quests, Side Quests, and Storyline
Most Chinese people receive a linear education about life: study, work, marry, have children, raise them, care for aging parents, grow old, and die. O…
8 min readRead article →
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Travels South of Beijing, Part Two: Zhuozhou
Zhuozhou is a county-level city administered by Baoding, yet it is only a little over 30 kilometers from Liangxiang in Fangshan, over 60 kilometers fr…
7 min readRead article →
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Travels South of Beijing, Part One: Liulihe Museum Is Closed, but History Is Still Open
If you had asked me on the evening of May 10 what I planned to do the next day, I would have said I just wanted to lie around quietly at home.
8 min readRead article →
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Zhao Kuangyin and Zhuozhou
While visiting Zhuozhou Museum, I discovered that Zhuozhou was Zhao Kuangyin's ancestral home. Yet the Zhao family's Song dynasty occupied it only twi…
1 min readRead article →
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If Qianlong Asked You to Empathize with His Empress's Death, Could You?
There is a question on Zhihu: “Can AI therapists truly ‘empathize’? What is the fundamental difference between algorithmic comfort and human comfort?”
7 min readRead article →
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The “Age of Middle Women”: Mysticism or Reality?
A concept called the “age of middle women” is very popular right now. Where did this come from?
4 min readRead article →
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My Hemorrhoid Surgery: Candid Details You Won't Find Online (Avoid Reading While Eating)
Someone said that on my WeChat public account I always like writing about refined subjects, and would never publish anything detrimental to my image. …
7 min readRead article →
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In the Information Age, Everyone Should Be Prepared to Be Doxxed
There is nothing that cannot be found online.
2 min readRead article →
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Chicken, You're So Beautiful: Ten Little-Known Facts About Chickens, the Humanities Edition
The saying that chickens possess "five virtues" comes from the Outer Commentary on the Han Tradition of the Songs:
13 min readRead article →
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A Rooster's Cry of Rage, a State Brought Down: Cockfighting Stories from Chinese History
In 517 BCE, Ji Pingzi and Hou Zhaobo, two grandees of the state of Lu, held a cockfight.
6 min readRead article →
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Who Orders More Takeaway: The Poor or the Rich?
This question may not be so easy to answer.
7 min readRead article →
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My Embarrassingly Poor Sichuanese
Every time I return to Sichuan, I have one worry: I do not speak Sichuanese well.
3 min readRead article →
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What Alcohol Does: Inhibiting Our Inhibitions
I originally did not drink. Then, one afternoon in my second year at university, I was walking off campus with a few classmates near Liangxiang Nangua…
5 min readRead article →
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Meeting Needs and Respecting Worth: The Heart of Interpersonal Relationships
Where there are people, there is a social world, and where there is a social world, there are social conventions and relationships to navigate. What l…
5 min readRead article →
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Drive with Newton's First Law for a Smoother, More Fuel-Efficient Ride
This year, several relatives and I once again drove home together. We left Haiyan County in Jiaxing at 11:30 am on January 21 and arrived in An County…
5 min readRead article →
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Sharing Some Pictures
I have been busy lately and have not published much. Here are a few pictures, with thanks for everyone’s support.
1 min readRead article →
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In Ancient China, 86.39% of Men Were Destined to Have No Male-Line Descendants After 267 Years
In 2012, Dr. Chen Xi of Fudan University’s Institute of Historical Geography published a paper in South China Population titled “The Ideal of Continui…
7 min readRead article →
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The Troubles of the Rich: Reading Thirty Years in a Coal Boss's Own Words
Having no money certainly does not make you happy, but does having money guarantee happiness? I have never thought so. As far as I know, rich people s…
13 min readRead article →
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My Writing Plan for 2025
I began writing for my WeChat public account on September 13, 2024. So far I have published 68 original posts, totaling well over 100,000 Chinese char…
2 min readRead article →
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We Should Not Expect Too Much: Reading Feminism from Scratch
Over the past two days, I finished Feminism from Scratch, coauthored by Chizuko Ueno and Eiko Tabusa. Here is a brief reading report.
34 min readRead article →
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Let the Second Son Suffer, for the Family's Sake! Japan's Household Headship Inheritance System and Its Effects
In China, if a family has two sons, they will not be treated very differently. In Japan, however, their treatment can be completely different. When a …
8 min readRead article →
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Sex Workers, Mistresses, and Actresses: The Personal Troubles of Coal Bosses
Half a month ago, I finished reading A Coal Boss's Thirty-Year Memoir. I have wanted to introduce the book ever since, but it is so dense with informa…
8 min readRead article →
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Fortune-tellers Are Actually Thoroughgoing Materialists
The world is so complicated that sometimes we really cannot predict what will happen. When doubts trouble us, we want a definite answer, so we think o…
13 min readRead article →
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My 2024 WeChat Writing Report: No Wisdom, Just Lessons Learned
It has been 105 days since I published my first article on this WeChat public account on September 13 this year, "Fan Zhongyan Never Saw Yueyang Tower…
7 min readRead article →
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Reading Literature Has Many Benefits, but…
Reading literature has many benefits:
2 min readRead article →
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How I Find Books
I would say I like reading. Before I went to university, my family’s spending on books had already reached tens of thousands of yuan. The books we bou…
3 min readRead article →
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In Life, Be Careful with Your Words and Actions
Yesterday I used a traffic voucher Zhihu gave me to add two thousand impressions to my answer to “What Should We Make of the United States Having a Li…
3 min readRead article →
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How Often Has the World Grieved for the Past? The Mountain Still Rests Beside the Cold River—Reading “Meditating on the Past at Mount Xisai”
My WeChat signature reads, “How often has the world grieved for the past? The mountain still rests beside the cold river.” These lines come from Liu Y…
7 min readRead article →
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We Shape Our Own Fate and Seek Our Own Blessings: Reading Liaofan’s Four Lessons
In the Chinese phrase “We shape our own fate and seek our own blessings,” the words meaning “by” and “from” are similar, as are “I” and “self.” The se…
9 min readRead article →
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Su Shi Studied Buddhism Yet Ate Meat: How Did He Avoid Being Torn by Inner Conflict?
Su Shi was a gourmet. Everyone in China knows this, because “Dongpo pork” is so famous, as is his widely quoted line: “Eating three hundred lychees a …
13 min readRead article →
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That Night, I Felt the Preference for Sons Over Daughters More Deeply
I used to think that the idea of gender equality had taken deep root in China and that feminists online were being somewhat alarmist. In China, both m…
4 min readRead article →
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How Do You Turn Down an Acquaintance Who Asks to Borrow Money?
1 Keep a low profile in daily life. Do not flaunt wealth or live too extravagantly, and avoid making others envious. Fewer people will then try to har…
1 min readRead article →
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On Science and Belief: Inner Strength Comes from Consistency
People with inner strength all have a consistent system encompassing a complete worldview and set of values.
5 min readRead article →
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The Mode of Production Is the Central Question of Social Science
If we had to choose the person who best understood Marx's thought, apart from Marx himself, we would surely choose his comrade and successor Engels.
17 min readRead article →
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What Is Socialism?
(I wrote this article in the summer of 2022. I have revised some wording in paragraphs 8, 12, and 13 and am now publishing it. I firmly support the le…
6 min readRead article →
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Why Did I Give Up Studying Literature?
My major was English Language and Literature, and our university had some of the best teachers in British and American literature. In my first year, m…
7 min readRead article →
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An Investigation: Is the US Literacy Rate Really Only 79%?
A claim circulates on the Chinese internet that "the US literacy rate is only 79%." Supposedly, the figure comes from the United Nations and official …
16 min readRead article →
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Never Underestimate the Power of a Squirrel
There is a well-known social media personality overseas named Mark Longo. He kept a small squirrel named P'Nut. The pet was adored by internet users a…
3 min readRead article →
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What Is the Current Employment Situation Really Like? A View from Baidu Index
Baidu Index is a data analysis platform based on the vast amount of behavioral data generated by Baidu users. It offers a great deal of information. I…
6 min readRead article →
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What Is the Employment Situation Really Like? A Look at National Bureau of Statistics Data
The National Bureau of Statistics defines “employed persons” and the “employment rate” very broadly. Put simply, if you do one hour of casual work in …
4 min readRead article →
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How Is China’s Official Unemployment Rate Calculated, and How Useful Is It?
At present, the National Bureau of Statistics has two unemployment measures: the “registered unemployment rate” and the “surveyed unemployment rate.” …
5 min readRead article →
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How Was Sima Qian Able to Write the Records of the Grand Historian?
In the first year of Taichu (104 BCE), Sima Qian began writing his book. It was finally completed in the second year of Zhenghe (91 BCE). Fourteen yea…
14 min readRead article →
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What Can Ordinary People Learn from the Jiang Ping Incident?
1 Truthfulness in news is an aspiration and a slogan, rather than an intrinsic property of news. News is not necessarily true; even the most authorita…
3 min readRead article →
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Liu Xiaoqing's Reading History
Born in 1950, Liu Xiaoqing is 74 this year. Her life has been highly successful, with remarkable achievements in many fields. Most people know her onl…
6 min readRead article →
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Learning Emotional Intelligence from Pang Tong
Known as the “Fledgling Phoenix,” Pang Tong was as famous as Zhuge Liang, the “Sleeping Dragon.” He helped Liu Bei seize Yizhou and died during the as…
14 min readRead article →
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Regulated Verse Is Dead
Today is Frost's Descent, and a sudden feeling moved me to write a poem. To make it conform as closely as possible to the rules of meter, I spent a lo…
4 min readRead article →
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Ten Thoughts on the Internet
1 The internet is not virtual. Every voice on the internet has a basis in reality and reflects a real need.
3 min readRead article →
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Differences in How Men and Women Think, Seen Through Yang Li’s Stand-up
Yesterday I discussed the JD customer-service incident, prompting lively discussion. I have three points to make about Yang Li and the stand-up routin…
6 min readRead article →
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What Should We Make of JD Customer Service Staff Insulting Customers?
Over the past few days, many internet users have reported being insulted by JD customer service staff, and screenshots have been circulating online.
3 min readRead article →
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What Is Shanxi?
(During the summer vacation of 2021, I went to Shanxi with my senior fellow student uu. It was my first visit, and I was full of curiosity about this …
16 min readRead article →
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Maps of Qingdao and 10 Little-Known Facts About the City
(Textual information comes from the Encyclopedia of Qingdao, published by the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House in 1999. The maps come from Shand…
2 min readRead article →
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How Should We Understand the Second Form of Value: B. The Total or Expanded Form of Value?
How should we understand the second form of value: B. The total or expanded form of value?
1 min readRead article →
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Questions and Answers on Capital 1.11: How Should We Understand the First Form of Value?
Of the first form of value, Marx says: “The whole secret of the form of value lies hidden in this simple form. (62)” What should we pay attention to a…
3 min readRead article →
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Questions and Answers on Capital 1.7: How Should We Understand the Dual Character of Labor? What Are Useful Labor, Concrete Labor, and Abstract Labor?
How should we understand the dual character of labor?
2 min readRead article →
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Questions and Answers on Capital 1.6: How Should We Understand a Commodity's Exchange-Value and Value, and Their Relationship?
How should we understand a commodity's exchange-value? How should we understand its value? What is the relationship between the two?
2 min readRead article →
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Questions and Answers on Capital 1.5: How Should We Understand a Commodity's Use-Value?
How should we understand a commodity's use-value?
1 min readRead article →
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Mao Zedong and Reading
(I found the script for a first-year university presentation in my Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought course on my computer. I am taking it easy today…
11 min readRead article →
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Questions and Answers on Capital: Prefaces and Afterwords
Yesterday I finished reading the prefaces and afterwords and took many notes, but forgot to save them and lost everything. I had to start again, hence…
8 min readRead article →
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Reading Report: "The Biographies of the Money-Makers" in the Records of the Grand Historian
Huozhi meant doing business or accumulating goods and wealth for profit in ancient times. The Analects, "Advanced in Ritual and Music," says: "Ci does…
10 min readRead article →
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Which Matters More: Getting It Done or Making It Perfect?
Get it done first; make it perfect afterward.
2 min readRead article →
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Book Report: I Am Not a Loser, the Novel Behind the TV Drama Born to Be the One
Born to Be the One is a television drama that has recently been popular. I had seen all kinds of online commentary about it long before. Having some t…
9 min readRead article →
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Walking Through Tongzhou Beneath the Mid-Autumn Moon
Mid-Autumn is probably the most comfortable time of year in northern China. The north has four distinct seasons: winter is too cold, summer too hot, w…
3 min readRead article →
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Reading Report: Bianshui Wangshi
More than ten days ago, a friend recommended the television series Bianshui Wangshi to me. I took note of it but did not watch it. A few days later, I…
5 min readRead article →
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Some Obsessions and Worries Really Do Become a Fart When You Treat Them as One
A few days ago, a friend told me she had suddenly started missing her first love. She kept feeling she owed him something and wanted to know how he wa…
3 min readRead article →
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What Social Connections Did Zhuge Liang Have in His Early Years? (Part Two): The Alliance Between Jingzhou's Resistance Faction and Liu Bei's Group
Last time I discussed Zhuge Liang's four “big daddies.” Today I will continue exploring his early social connections and draw some conclusions from th…
15 min readRead article →
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What Social Connections Did Zhuge Liang Have in His Early Years? (Part One): Four Powerful Dads
Zhuge Liang had never held office in his early years, yet after Liu Bei visited his thatched cottage three times when he was 26, Liu immediately value…
5 min readRead article →
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Never Count on Reading Tomorrow: Some Experiences and Thoughts About Reading
When I was repeating my final year of high school, the atmosphere in our class was oppressive. Everyone was under great pressure and short of time, bu…
6 min readRead article →
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The More Something Needs Protection, the Less Vitality It Has. Things with Vitality Are Growing Wild.
The great tide of the world surges onward: those who follow it flourish, and those who resist it perish. Social development has its own laws. We shoul…
3 min readRead article →
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Wages Are Just Money for Food
Anyone who has read Marx and Lenin knows that wages are just money for food. They have nothing to do with your performance, the region you live in, or…
8 min readRead article →
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Fan Zhongyan Had Never Seen Yueyang Tower, and Li Bai Had Never Visited Mount Tianmu
Early this year, I traveled from Taizhou to Jiaxing and stopped at the Xinchang service area along the way. I remember how upscale it was: there were …
7 min readRead article →
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