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One of my favourite YA authors once said,  “Writing makes you a writer.”  I couldn’t agree more. Whenever you doubt yourself, pick up your pen. When you question whether your story matters, pick up your pen. When you regret not starting earlier, not reading enough, not practicing sooner—pick up your pen. It is never too late to become a writer. And it is never too late to become a better one. Passion lives in daily life; craft is built through repetition. Every sentence you w

When I was twelve, I came across a blog written by a seventeen-year-old earthquake survivor. In it, he described a dream he shared with two of his closest friends: one day, when they were old, they would build a three-story house near their high school. It would have a small café, an internet bar, and an arcade—a place filled with laughter, light, and shared memories. One of the boys died in the earthquake. The other two survived and made a pact to carry the dream forward. Th

At the most immediate level, I write to bring the lives of earthquake survivors back into public view—and into contemporary popular culture. These are stories that have often been simplified, muted, or distorted, shaped to serve propaganda or packaged as one-dimensional “inspirational” narratives. I want to dismantle those frames. I want to return the icons to being human again: complicated, contradictory, tender, flawed, alive. But my reasons go beyond storytelling. I write

The  Where the River Meets the Moon  series consists of five books in total. Three are completed, and two are currently in development. Together, they trace the lives of a group of earthquake survivors from childhood through adulthood across changing genres and life stages. Book I –  Where the River Meets the Moon: The Meili Story This middle-grade novel follows Xue Xiao—later known as the “Coke Boy”—through his primary school years, alongside his childhood companion, Ma Yu,

Stardust  began with a conversation during a car ride to a lake in China in September 2008—just four months after the Wenchuan Earthquake. I was in Grade 6, and my cousin was in Grade 4. As the road unspooled outside the window, I told her a story I had recently learned about Xue Xiao, the “Coke Boy.” Halfway through, a realization struck me with startling clarity: this should be a book. By then, I had already spent months researching Xue Xiao and his classmates from Class 6,

The real-life earthquake survivors serve as the foundation for nearly every character in  Where the River Meets the Moon . Each character is rooted in a real person, and many even share the same names and life trajectories as their real-life counterparts. The book exists deliberately at the intersection of fiction and non-fiction. In art and literary history, this approach is often described as  parafiction —a form of storytelling that blurs historical reality with imagined r

I write because it is the truest way for me to exist. In daily life, we are constantly nudged to be socially acceptable, emotionally manageable—lighter and brighter than what our hearts actually carry. Writing frees me from that performance. On the page, I can exist in my barest, purest form. I can be raw or restrained, dramatic or quiet, poetic or brutal. I can be light or heavy, angelic or wicked. Writing lets me elevate what has mattered most to me and crystallize fleetin

It happened at exactly the right moment in my life—when childhood was loosening its grip and larger questions were beginning to surface. I had just started wondering who we are, where we come from, and who we might become. Then a national trauma arrived, sudden and merciless: collapsed buildings, grieving parents, children my age buried under rubble. It was impossible to look away. The Wenchuan Earthquake was the first disaster in modern China to unfold live on television—raw

Humanity—deep, intricate, puzzle-like humanity. Learning about student survivors of the Wenchuan Earthquake felt like uncovering the hidden architecture of the human mind. It turned me into a kind of detective. I began quietly wandering through survivors’ online spaces—their early social media pages, blogs, QQ zones, and long-forgotten platforms. What I found was a hidden world, overflowing with stories people would never tell you face-to-face, especially not in the tidy, ord