What attracted you to researching the Wenchuan Earthquake for eighteen years?

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, ordinary routines of school life.

I read things that broke me open again and again. Stories of a basketball star hopelessly in love with an ordinary girl, crafting a gift to apologize after their breakup, only to die three days later in the earthquake. Pages filled with lyrics, fantasies, and longing written by teenagers who never made it past seventeen. Letters written to the dead as if they were still alive, merely away on a long journey. Love letters between student couples separated not by distance, but by life and death.

Years later, I would learn to call these materials primary sources. At the time, they were simply devastating revelations. They taught me things no classroom ever could: love, sacrifice, memory, and the strange, fierce resilience born from trauma. These students—five or six years older than me—became my earliest teachers. Their lives etched themselves into what I think of as my private scripture: a book about how life continues after ash and smoke.

But reading was never enough.

My hunger for truth demanded connection—voices, conversations, relationships. About a year and a half after the earthquake, I found the “Coke Boy” on social media, and we became internet friends. From there, my relationship with the survivor community grew organically and never stopped. I travelled to their towns to visit them. After immigrating to Canada, I returned to China during winter breaks just to see them again.

What kept me engaged for so long wasn’t curiosity alone—it was learning how trust is built. Slowly. Carefully. With patience and respect. They taught me how young, kind, intelligent people rewire themselves after trauma. They let me in, inch by inch.

My friendship with the earthquake survivor community, which began in the winter of 2009, has now lasted seventeen years. It is a living archive—woven from trauma, memory, humour, grief, loyalty, and psychological survival. It is not just the richest body of material I’ve ever encountered.

It is the most valuable treasure of my life.