Below are some improbable facts about me. Keep scrolling if curious!

I study bureaucratic and legislative politics, elite structure, and political institutions in contemporary and imperial China. I use Social Network Analysis, Text Analysis, and statistical methods to study large-scale datasets and find long-term patterns that shape our present.

My first field work was a near-death experience.

Summer of 2022, I began my first fieldwork in Fu’an Village, Yunnan Province of China. Unknowingly, my teammates and I waltzed into a village fraught with corruption, violent crimes, and dominated by a local gang. Upon gaining local residents’ trust, we were let in on the village’s dark secrets. For example, just two months ago, a targeted murder-by-arson took place right in the square where we had breakfast every day (which never made the news!). Another intense story is one told by a male villager, who heroically organized a group of villagers to blockade local officials’ illegal mining in the back mountains, using only their farm tools and tractors. Fearing for our lives, we cowardly cut the fieldwork short and got out unscathed.

I had minority ethnic costumes as school uniform.

Growing up in the most ethnically diverse province in China, I was exposed to a wide range of cultural beliefs and practices through my family, friends, and formal education. One of the channels of influence was the school uniforms I wore every day to elementary school. For each grade, the uniform was the cultural costume of a distinct ethnicity. In addition to the apparel, we also did ethnic dances (民族韵律操舞) in the playground and indoor dances (室内民族操, such as 扇子舞 and 烟盒舞) in homerooms every day. They were quite fun, despite potential criticisms of cultural appropriation.

Check out this video for one of our routine dances of the Dai People (傣族)!

I can identify over 20 species of wild mushrooms.

I absolutely LOVE mushrooms! As is for many Yunnanese, picking wild mushrooms in the outskirt mountains was my family’s go-to activity on rainy summer weekends. That’s when the freshest mushrooms mushroom (apologies for the bad pun)! Many years of (sometimes painful) experience have trained my eyes to discern deliciously edible mushrooms from the ones that are literally lethal. The only risk I am willing to take is for Jianshouqing (见手青), which is so deadly poisonous that it turns black once it meets oxygen, but is at the same time so yummy that it’s worth the risk. (Just to clarify, it is only poisonous when undercooked.) Moreover, the species is fascinating in and of itself, too. Constantly in awe of its tenacity, I admire its philosophy and resilience in transforming decay into fuel, and its superpower to thrive in any adverse environment that comes its way.