Storyboard (1)

The moment when my mom taught me the first character at 4, I, once innocently wandering in the universe of unknowns, tripped down onto the net of meaning weaved by the sounds and shapes of words. All the words I picked up, formless as water yet sharper than the best Katana swords, gradually amalgamated with my experience of everything and pierced my perspective, language, and vision.

My first acquaintance with words is in classical poetry. As a kid, my mom would force me to recite a poem every morning before going to Kindergarten. Though I always tried to resist, the strange imageries flowing on the pages of the likes of Li Bai enticed my fantasy of the Tang dynasty, the chivalrous swordsmen, the hermits, and the palaces; I was introduced to a new world parallel in time to my pre-literate experience living in a modern city.

My best reading experience ever happened on a cool winter night, being alone in my room… I laid on the bed and opened Momo by Michael Ende, a fantasy about a warm-hearted girl fighting with the “bank of time” with help from the “elder of time”.

Soon, I immersed myself completely in the “End of Time” with Momo and lost track of time. Until the red-wood grandfather clock ringed twelve times, I was pulled back to reality. From then on, immersive experience in reading fiction became one of the most enjoyable and precious memories from adolescence.

Meanwhile, I developed a habit of slow reading – I can’t help thinking about the relationships between ideas already covered. For instance, when I’m halfway done with reading Professor Jonathan Spence’s God’s Chinese Son, I had to close the book, take a walk to DCT, and think about how Hong Xiuquan’s policy is/isn’t a primitive form of communism. This habit eventually affected my SAT reading performance, so I had to temporarily give up thinking and do the problems, which was a painful experience.

[One final sketch showing the conflict between what SAT expects of me and how I habitually read]

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