Writing

This paper explores how Chinese international students in the United States navigate trust, identity, and political boundaries when using large language models (LLMs). Drawing on interviews with fourteen students, I examine how they evaluate AI systems such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek across different linguistic and informational environments. While discussions of AI often emphasize nationalism and geopolitical competition, participants rarely based their trust on a model's national origin. Instead, they prioritized performance, accuracy, and task-specific usefulness. The study argues that trust in AI is shaped less by national affiliation than by everyday practices of comparison, verification, and pragmatic evaluation.

This paper examines how Japanese illustrated narratives from the premodern to early modern periods portray noblewomen as both constrained by gendered norms and yet capable of exercising spiritual agency. Focusing on Kirishitan Monogatari, Taima Mandala Engi Emaki, and Dōjōji Engi Emaki, the study analyzes how women's devotional labor, suffering, and transformation are visually and narratively framed. Methods include close reading of texts and images, with attention to themes of weaving, almsgiving, pilgrimage, and metamorphosis. The analysis demonstrates that women's roles—often depicted as passive acts of devotion—also contain spaces of active authorship and religious creativity, from Chūjōhime's weaving of the Taima Mandala to the serpent-woman's transformation at Dōjōji. The paper argues that these narratives recast women's hardship as a karmic resource, granting them both redemptive potential and symbolic authority. Ultimately, noblewomen emerge not only as exemplars of piety but also as figures who complicate the boundary between submission and agency, showing how spiritual authorship can arise from within gendered constraints.

This paper examines the Si Da Men 四大门, or Four Animal Spirits, through the spiritual practice of Xiaoli, a woman who turns to spirit cultivation in response to family crisis and uncertainty. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, I argue that her practice reveals the flexible and pragmatic nature of Chinese popular religion. Xiaoli's altar, offerings, and relationship with her xianjia show how personal cultivation, immediate efficacy, and relational devotion overlap rather than remain separate. Her case also shows how religious knowledge circulates through kinship and practitioner networks, making spirit worship a dynamic process of negotiation, labor, and mutual benefit between humans and spirits.

This paper examines the role of bodily movements in shaping parent-child relationships in Italian Neorealism, focusing on Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951). While both films explore the struggles of post-war Italy through familial bonds, they depict contrasting dynamics: Bicycle Thieves illustrates the growing physical and emotional synchronization between a father and son, whereas Bellissima highlights a mother's controlling grip over her daughter, emphasizing their emotional dissonance. Through visual cues such as eye contact, strides, and physical gestures, these films reveal the impact of societal pressures on familial intimacy and individual agency. By analyzing these movements, this study underscores how Neorealist filmmakers used physicality to deepen narrative meaning and social critique.

This paper examines how Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out uses animal reincarnation and transformation to critique China's political and historical cycles of oppression. Through the successive rebirths of Ximen Nao—as donkey, ox, pig, dog, and monkey—Mo Yan constructs a layered allegory of collective suffering and resistance during the twentieth century's major political movements. The study highlights how animal narrators provide a detached yet incisive critique of ideological absurdity, exposing the dehumanization and violence inherent in revolutionary politics. Additionally, the psychological and metaphorical transformations of characters such as Chen and Lan Jiefang demonstrate how individuals internalize or resist political trauma through animal-like behavior and instinctual regression. By weaving together satire, allegory, and magical realism, Mo Yan presents history as a cycle of suffering and endurance, suggesting that human and animal experiences alike are bound by recurring patterns of desire, control, and survival.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, China witnessed a surge in national pride, particularly among its international students, who initially took pride in their country’s effective crisis management. However, as the pandemic evolved, especially during the Omicron surge in 2022, these students noted stark disparities between Chinese official narratives and Western media depictions of the pandemic. This prompted a critical reevaluation of China’s zero-COVID policy and the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading to shifts in their nationalist views. This paper delves into these shifts among Chinese international students, examining how their experiences abroad shape and are shaped by China’s national identity and political authority. Through an analysis of nationalist historical narratives, political education, and current events, it explores the influence of China’s domestic policies and international experiences on these students’ perceptions. Contrary to the promotion of state-centric nationalism, their exposure to global perspectives fosters what I call a “flexible nationalism,” influenced by their cultural identity, political indoctrination, and personal experiences. Understanding this concept is essential for comprehending the sentiments of one of the world’s largest diasporas and their potential impact on global Chinese communities and international relations.

This paper examines the evolving identity crisis in Hong Kong from 1997 to 2019 under the "One Country, Two Systems" policy. By analyzing the intersection of nationalism,cultural boundaries, and political sovereignty, it explores how Hong Kongers' identity has shifted in response to China's increasing influence. Drawing on theories of nationalism from Benedict Anderson, Kevin Carrico, and Frederik Barth, the study investigates the construction of Hong Kong identity through processes of Orientalizing, segmentation, and encompassment. It argues that Hong Kong's struggle is not just a political conflict but an anthropologgical case of contested nationhood, where historical, economic, and social factors have fueled a distinct sense of localism. The paper also reflects on how censorship and ideological control shape narratives of identity, particularly through the translation and adaptation of scholarly works on nationalism. Ultimately, it highlights how Hong Kong's unique identity dilemma challenges conventional notions of borders, belonging, and nationhood in contemporary geopolitical discourse.