English Essays
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Zhongyong Is Not About Smoothing Things Over — It Is About Seeing Human Complexity
This essay reconsiders zhongyong not as indecision or compromise, but as the ability to see complexity before making a judgment. Moving from Freud and Adler to immigration, success, and self-understanding, it argues that real balance means resisting simple explanations while… Continue reading
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“Just Keep Writing”: I Never Expected Those Words to Come from My Mother
A long phone call with my mother gave me something I had never expected to hear from her: “Just keep writing.” It made me think differently about persistence—not as a promise of success, but as the choice to keep living,… Continue reading
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Did Chinese Education Hold Her Back, or Did Education Abroad Make Her? The Question Itself Is Too Simple
Wang Hong’s story is often reduced online to a simple narrative: Chinese education suppressed her, while education abroad finally allowed her talent to flourish. This essay argues that her development was far more complex — shaped by strong early training,… Continue reading
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Did Chen Lihua Build a Fortune Worth Tens of Billions Through Hard Work Alone? 90% of People Overlook These Two Things
This essay argues that extraordinary success is rarely the result of hard work alone. Ability matters, but so do historical timing, personality, judgment, decisiveness, and luck; effort cannot guarantee success, yet it still matters because it prepares us to recognize… Continue reading
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We Keep Saying “Bitterness First, Sweetness Later” — But Some Sweetness Has an Expiry Date
This essay reflects on what children may lose when joy, play, and curiosity are repeatedly postponed in the name of a better future. Through Alicia’s childhood, the author’s own memories, and the image of her grandmother saving good oranges until… Continue reading
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Why Are Chinese Parents So Intensely Competitive Today? Chen Lihua’s Generation Had Already Given Us the Answer
Many Chinese parents push their children so hard because they grew up in an era when sacrifice, education, and relentless effort really could transform a family’s future. But as the world changes, parents may need to offer children something more… Continue reading
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When Knowledge Is No Longer Scarce, What Do Credentials Still Prove?
As AI and digital tools make it easier to acquire skills outside traditional education, formal qualifications no longer tell the whole story of what someone can actually do. Certificates will remain important, but they may increasingly become one signal among… Continue reading
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A Fake Smart Wristband Finally Helped Me Understand What It Means to “Poison” AI
A fabricated smart wristband helped me finally understand what “AI poisoning” can look like in practice: not hacking the system itself, but contaminating the information it relies on. The real danger begins when AI confidently turns repeated, professionally packaged false… Continue reading
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Twenty Years Later, I Finally Understood Why I Loved Milan Kundera So Much
Why is yuanfen, a Chinese concept about meaningful encounters and connections, so difficult to translate? Looking back at Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I finally understood why I was drawn to his writing: he captured the delicate space… Continue reading
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Isn’t Parting a Kind of Outcome Too?
We often assume that a relationship only has a meaningful “outcome” if two people stay together. This essay asks whether meeting, sharing part of a life, changing each other, and eventually parting can also be a real kind of completion—even… Continue reading
Jane Sonnenschein | A Chinese Way of Seeing 