English Essays
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If You Had to Choose Between Love and Staying Alive, What Would You Choose?
When illness, vulnerability, and survival enter a relationship, is love still enough? Being cared for so completely that one never has to handle real life may look like happiness, but it can also leave a person unprepared for crisis. This… Continue reading
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Can There Really Be Only One Mother Tongue?
A debate in the comments made me reconsider whether a person can truly have only one mother tongue. Multilingual children may not be translating from one language into another at all, but accessing different language systems directly and naturally. The… Continue reading
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After More Than Twenty Years in Germany, My Husband Said I Was “Not Integrated Enough” — and I Felt Relieved
After more than twenty years in Germany, my husband still thinks I have not integrated enough. But I have slowly come to see that the distance I kept may also have helped me preserve my Chinese language, cultural memory, and… Continue reading
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For a Long Time, I Held Deep Resentment Toward My German Mother-in-Law. Later, I Slowly Came to Understand
For years, I carried resentment toward my German mother-in-law, until I slowly realized that I had been judging her through the expectations of a Chinese family system. What once looked like coldness was, in her world, often a matter of… Continue reading
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Five Thousand Years of Civilization Does Not Mean Every Ordinary Person Had the Same Dining Tabl
A piece of butter becomes more than a question of food knowledge. It opens up a deeper misunderstanding about China: the difference between historical records, regional traditions, today’s supermarkets, and the actual dining tables of ordinary families. Five thousand years… Continue reading
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Having Cows Does Not Mean Having Butter
This essay continues the reflection on butter and common sense, asking why the existence of cows does not necessarily mean that butter became part of ordinary people’s everyday lives. China had cows, and dairy products did exist in certain regions… Continue reading
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What You Think Is Common Sense Is Only the Default Setting of Your Own World
Starting from a small family conversation about whether butter is made from milk, this essay reflects on the cultural boundaries of common sense. What one person considers basic knowledge may simply be the result of their own language, childhood, food… Continue reading
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Germany Turns Environmental Protection into a Habit; China Turns It into an Engineering Project
Starting from the everyday experience of waste sorting in Germany, this essay compares two different environmental paths. Germany has turned environmental protection into a daily habit, supported by long-term education, civic discipline, and stable rules. China, by contrast, increasingly turns… Continue reading
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They Were Not Born to Prefer Sons; They Were Soaked in Bitterness
Starting from a television scene of conflict among three generations of Chinese women, this essay looks beneath son preference to the historical wounds behind it. It asks how poverty, patriarchal order, old-age insecurity, family lineage, and survival fear shaped women… Continue reading
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Theory Does Not Enter Life First; It Is Lit Up Again by Life
This essay was written after I finally built A Chinese Way of Seeing. Starting from the small but meaningful act of registering an independent website, it reflects on procrastination, writing, theory, and lived experience. For me, writing is not only… Continue reading
Jane Sonnenschein | A Chinese Way of Seeing 