New media · experiment lab
I have worked in fast-moving content environments,
where attention moves quickly and meaning is often reduced to metrics.
Over time, I began to question what it means to “reach people.”
Is it exposure,
or is it something that stays?
I am interested in work that holds both—
circulation and depth,
visibility and thought.
This section is an ongoing experiment:
to explore what digital storytelling can be
beyond the logic of the feed.
When “being seen” itself becomes a primary interest, what are we really chasing?
This link may not be accessible outside China.
Most people are a 500ml cup, but we insist on pouring in 2 liters of emotion.
This link may not be accessible outside China.
She is wild, cruel, chaotic, and free — that is her true self.
This link may not be accessible outside China.
We are the first generation to truly place our lives within global mobility.
This link may not be accessible outside China.
This link may not be accessible outside China.
I first felt a flicker of discomfort during an otherwise ordinary conversation. Someone asked her what her hobbies were. She paused, then said: taking photos, editing them. I was caught off guard. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with that answer, but because it made me realize how accustomed we’ve become to treating “being seen” as something worthy of serious pursuit. I like beautiful photos too. When I go out, I carefully compose shots, adjust colors, post them online. I enjoy the whole process—shooting, editing, sharing, being liked, being complimented. But in that moment, a question surfaced: When “being seen” itself becomes a primary interest, what are we really chasing? If most of a person’s energy is devoted to making herself more “watchable,” how much space remains for her to exist as a subject, rather than an object? It almost feels like a grand, invisible design. Women who tie attention, validation, and even love to whether they look good are not vain, nor are they foolish. More often, they have simply been trained into this way of being. From a young age, what they are praised for is beauty. What draws attention is appearance. What earns approval is being “liked.” Through repeated cycles of positive reinforcement, beauty is quietly placed at the top of the value hierarchy. Meanwhile, qualities that do not fade with age—judgment, capability, curiosity, voice—are rarely cultivated with the same intention. And so, beauty is mistaken for capital. But what defines capital? It must appreciate, be convertible, withstand time. Beauty does none of these. It cannot retain value over the long term, nor can it reliably translate into lasting agency. It is closer to a consumable—packaged as a shortcut, but ultimately depleting. Throughout life, women are offered countless opportunities to “step down”: Marriage will solve things. Find someone to marry and life will be easier. Don’t push too hard. Don’t exhaust yourself. These phrases may sound gentle, but they all nudge in the same direction: toward relinquishing control of one’s life prematurely. Girls who are considered beautiful are often led down this path even earlier. The feedback they receive is faster, more frequent—so much so that the world seems to confirm, over and over: as long as you are beautiful, you are doing everything right. But when the only skill consistently reinforced is “being liked,” what remains to contend with time? When “being suitable for viewing” becomes the central goal, women are quietly pushed back into the position of object. If most of a person’s energy is spent maintaining the appearance of “looking good,” how much room is left to build something that truly belongs to her?
I am a highly sensitive person. In relationships that matter—especially intimate ones—I often find myself caught in cycles of internal exhaustion. As a child, it showed up in comparisons—perceived favoritism from my parents. Later, it surfaced in friendships, in subtle, almost invisible tensions: who is closer to whom. And then, in romantic relationships, it became a pattern of constant emotional overprocessing. Sometimes, something as small as an hour without a reply, or a slight shift in tone, is enough for me to mentally run through an entire branching of possible futures—constructing a thousand reasons to walk away. And yet, the moment we are together again, or a message finally comes through, everything returns to normal. In reality, nothing about the other person’s love has changed—it remains steady, continuous. But internally, I have already staged an entire drama. For a long time, I believed that high sensitivity was a curse. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to give up what also felt like a gift. Our threshold for experiencing the world is simply higher. Where others might feel a 10, our capacity stretches to 100. A passage of writing, a poem, a landscape, a glance— each can trigger echoes within us ten or even a hundred times stronger. But because of this, we are also more prone to pouring all of our emotional energy into intimate relationships, exhausting ourselves in the process. It was only after meeting my current partner—someone who repeatedly reassures me of his love, who offers a stable and consistent emotional presence, and who is willing to explore with me the roots of this anxious attachment—that I began to understand something. Recently, I realized that the issue is not that “I am too sensitive.” The problem is that I have been placing all the energy that should not be carried by love alone into a single person. Most people are, in essence, a 500ml cup. And yet we insist on pouring in 2 liters of emotion, desire, expectation, and life force. The result is inevitable: they feel overwhelmed, and we feel deeply wronged. This is not anyone’s fault. It is simply a mismatch of capacity. So for those of us who are highly sensitive, the solution is not to keep shrinking ourselves. It is not to dilute intensity into restraint, or to soften deep feeling into something casual. It is not to repeatedly measure our worth through the question, “Does he love me?” What we truly need is a kind of coronation. We must reclaim the energy we once poured entirely into one person, and redirect it toward a wider domain— work, writing, learning, creation, power, money, travel, experience. Romantic love, in all its variations, is ultimately limited. Most people are simply not equipped to hold that level of intensity. When we fixate on one person’s love, we risk damaging what might otherwise be a stable, life-building partnership. The person who is right for building a life together may not be able to contain the vast emotional current within us. But the world can. What truly suits the highly sensitive is not becoming “easy to love,” but allowing our emotions and vitality to take root where they can resonate fully— in our work, in creation, in the long and expansive project of building a self. We are meant to explore, to expand the breadth and depth of our lives, to make experience vast rather than entangled. Possessiveness, control, insecurity, anxiety— all of these begin to dissolve when we move into a higher dimension of living. The writers, painters, musicians, and visionaries who left their mark on history— they did not confine their emotional intensity to love alone.
What struck me most was a small but telling detail in the director’s portrayal: a young Catherine, visibly thrilled at the sight of a hanging. That moment feels like the truest glimpse of who she is— wild, cruel, chaotic, free, and unpolished. Raised on the storm-beaten moors of Wuthering Heights, she is shaped by wind, isolation, and an untamed natural force. Her emotions exist in their rawest forms—love, hatred, possession—untethered from social order, almost in defiance of it. This, perhaps, is why she resonates so deeply with Heathcliff. At her core, Catherine is not different from him. In fact, the film seems to suggest something even more radical: that she shaped him. Growing up together, he is almost like something she molded—“her pet.” And yet, at Thrushcross Grange, when Edgar Linton expresses how terrifying a hanging is, she can only echo him— like a fish trapped out of water. … As for the film itself, it certainly has its flaws. But the atmosphere crafted by the (female) director is undeniable—so immersive that it lingers, leaving you unsettled for days after watching.
During this winter break, when I returned home, I didn’t feel what I used to feel— that sense of “finally being back to my real life.” Instead, I found myself asking the same question over and over: Which side is actually real? Very few people ever explain this to us in a systematic way: international students are, in many ways, the first generation shaped by globalization. Many of the struggles we assume are “personal issues” are, in fact, the shockwaves of broader structural change, landing on individual lives. At the beginning, studying abroad really does feel like a kind of limited-time experience— a phase, a set duration, a parallel version of life that is assumed to end eventually. So we instinctively believe: home is the main storyline; abroad is just the experience. But that logic depends on one key assumption: that you can leave at any time. And then, one day, I realized something had shifted. The change wasn’t marked by any grand decision. It came through small, concrete, undeniable details of daily life— things that quietly, steadily moved me into a different position. The first time I paid rent with money I had earned myself. The first time I assembled furniture, tightened screws, designed my own space. Learning to navigate bills, to weigh trade-offs, to take responsibility for every choice I make. Cooking after work. Doing laundry. Cleaning. Turning a foreign city, little by little, into proof that “I live here.” Sending out résumés. Job hunting. Facing rejection, then continuing anyway. With no safety net, slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am responsible for building a life. At that point, studying abroad no longer felt like a temporary pass. Because once your life begins to run on its own— when your friendships, your work, your daily rhythms, your sense of future are all being accumulated in one place— you realize something unsettling: there is no longer a position from which you can simply step away. And that is why this winter break felt so different. I still love my home country. I love my family. I remain deeply connected to the culture. But I suddenly understood that the way I return now feels more like visiting than coming back for good. Being taken care of, protected, held—that safety is real. But my life is no longer unfolding there. This does not mean we lack conviction. It does not mean we are ungrateful. It simply means we are the first generation to truly place our lives within the currents of global mobility. Perhaps this sense of suspension— this question of “what is real?”— was never meant to have a ready-made answer.