It’s quite understandable in English, but in Chinese, they are made of new jargons, with ancient characters being selected to fit into this new-age, technology-optimistic atmosphere.

I stopped reading anything current in my native language for a whole year, doing it for the sole purpose of cleansing my soul. I felt deeply burdened before, by the news headlines, by the culture I had immersed in for so long. My mind is fragily painful, as I seem to have developed a disease — one that senses oppression and horror in the simplest turns of phrase.

But this is my second time back home. So I assume the situation will become less intense — for one, I have experienced a deeper level of loneliness in European society, one with clear individualistic boundaries; for two, the image of my home country seems to have taken a glorious turn on TikTok, with its state-of-the-art status in artificial intelligence, electric cars, dolls, apps, and other technology. I, secretly, enjoyed the new trend despite my year-long spite. I do deeply appreciate the beautiful creativity rising from my most diligent and intelligent home-folks. Maybe one day — maybe right now — it can be “cool” again to be Chinese.

On my first landing, I did feel the growing distance between Amsterdam and any Chinese city in terms of infrastructure. My hometown, a remote small town in Southern China, has a modernized and grandiose local library, similar to the one near Central Station in Amsterdam.

And the scale of everything — the roads, the ever-growing urban buildings, the robots, the digitization, the efficiency, the focus level on everyone’s face. Everything is moving so fast, despite my personal and stubborn willingness to stay slow.

But the age-old depression hit once again, smashing my new fantasy of rejuvenating my dear home nation. The sheer burden of workload that is trapping everyone. I met my relatives in my hometown — everyone is complaining about how much less rent they receive given the current economic crisis. (My relatives are relatively rich and own several properties in my province, which is the manufacturing and trade coastal center of the country.)

Then comes the way I look, my age, my failures, my miserable state of living — as if there’s no need to live abroad, for China is unbelievably strong now, and growing stronger. I overheard my dad listening to some livestreamer, passionately yelling about how to start an Asia-Pacific war with Trump, and how Taiwan is irrelevant in this equation if we can win the war in Asia.

The sheer madness of it all astounds me.

I have always been prepared to be a stranger at home one day, given the ideological differences I’ve witnessed growing between myself and the mainstream narrative. Not that I intended to fight — I’m well aware of my lack of resources and status. This ever-larger country is moving, every day and every night, in a direction that has nothing to do with my will or opinions.

But still, surrounded by this social fabric, I can’t stop thinking: am I the crazy one? Or is everyone in this town chasing a delusional game — one they will win and laugh about in the end, or just another tragedy like a bubble dream?

As I sat in the dark all night in my childhood room, trying to process everything my relatives said, the description by Lu Xun — the most influential writer in modern Chinese history — came back to me: “human eating human.” Thousands of years of Chinese history is human eating human. Such cases have improved, for sure, as we pulled ourselves out of poverty, famine, and wars. But why do his words from almost 100 years ago still resonate so much?

I observed calmly how my fellow classmates who majored in China Studies delivered brilliant analyses on the socio-economic situation of mainland China — the property market, the possession of rare minerals, the status of artificial intelligence, and the ever-changing state of young people.

But there is something unreachable among these data and empirical studies: the national psyche, lying awake there in our ancient words and customs, soaked in thousands of years of being ruled by emperors and Confucianism. The psyche that places the collective — maybe a large family, maybe a nation-state — firmly ahead of the individual. Where rules overrule humans. Where goals always win over processes. Where suffering is always tolerated.

A glorious nation is rebirthing, but if humans are still eating humans, what is the point of having the most powerful collective? One that you sacrifice for, numbing yourself into believing it is the righteous way. Or — is there another way — to be kind to real humans, instead of building the strongest?

As some of the most well-educated intellectuals from China abandon themselves to the bamboo forests and temples in Kyoto, they are trying to taste a little of an ancient civilization that once still tolerated the idea of kindness and peace. The imagined Tang Dynasty — a dynasty that seemed to perfectly merge the ideals of a strong state, robust art, and cultural diversity.

With the unstoppable ache of lost, I still find myself hoping, once again.

.

i cut you in two
note:
It tells the story of a mad woman tortured by her lover's dark ego. She ultimately chose murder to a way to salvage her love.
This song is completed swiftly within two weeks . It’s interesting sometimes to capture the rough state of mind during creation. I had Covid at that time so my voice sounded even more fragile.
As I released it, I felt relieved. It carried away my anger, violence, and madness.
I guess that’s why everyone needs a nice murder balled sometimes.

lana del rey
note:
I wrote this song after experiencing a mental breakdown while listening to Lana. Amid the storm, I felt connected to the higher power of music. Eventually, this song evolved into my spiritual talisman. Whenever I feel uneasy, I go back to this little demo on my phone, and a sense of spiritual stability returns to me.
I also enjoyed how this song talks about imaginary love, a theme I’ve been diving into. I have been using fantasy to cope with the difficulties in life, even in romantic love. Lana's music becomes a bridge, a tower, an amusement park, a sci-fi fiction, a parallel world, an antidote to reality.
After months of listening to the demo, I confronted the sheer sadness behind the seemingly warm fandom. Retreat might seem pessimistic, but its link with the power of MUSIC seems rather optimistic!

love psychopath
note:
This song is intended to explore the idea of "avoidant attachment", as the hotel door sign on the cover shows. For various reasons, we all need to avoid and distance ourselves from some of the people we love.
This song symbolizes such inevitable grief. Sometimes the grief can be disguised as self-loathing———we pretend to be a love psychopath just to scare away the lover.
I sampled the monologue from the female middleman in Wong Kar-wai's "Fallen Angels". Her self-obsessed, fetish love, mirrors the whole song.

brain of romance
note:
In the Chinese context, "Brain of Romance" is often considered a derogatory term, usually describing women who become easily infatuated with romance and lose their mind. It is deemed as non-feminist, a regression from the female independence.

While this term reflects the progress of women’s right, the implied stigmatization still put me on my nerves.

I ended up writing this song that is very core to my personal experience, while reflecting the concept. Throughout the writing, I become more aware of how common it is for people, especially women, to use love as coping method to deal with challenges in life.

“When life becomes unbearable, let’s find us a new crush!”

The logic is lying in plain sight as we, especially women, are being taught and immersed in a society prized itself in romantic love. However, the blaming and derogatory tone being used to taunt these women, only deepens women's self-hatred and does not truly help them.

Love itself should be celebrated. But to be truly free is to be inclusive and kind in the first place.

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