The Heart of Shanghai

Before we begin...

Returning to your birthplace after a 30-year sojourn reveals the weight of inherited stories.

Unlike many Chinese American friends who returned to China every summer, I came back every 5-10 years—a pattern that progressively distanced me from my birth country, its language, culture, and certainly its rapid transformation. The resulting alienation whenever I touched Chinese soil is one of my deepest insecurities.

Compounding this distance was my parents' resistance, born from massive collective traumas of the Cultural Revolution and Great Famine that taught them China was dangerous, unpredictable, a place to escape. My family left China between 1988 and 1995, right before the country went on its rocket ship trajectory, so their perspective remained frozen in time. They experienced the worst of the last 80 years of Chinese history and very little of its ascension. My father still refuses to return. My mother does so only when absolutely necessary.

In the Tao Te Ching, there's this concept of "wordless instruction"—how someone's “being” teaches us far more than their words. Even knowing better intellectually, my psyche inherited their generational trauma: fear, resistance, wariness. These were survival traits for their era, passed down through their energy in addition to dinner table lectures.

Living in America and the UK added another layer: Western narratives that frame China as hyper-competitive, authoritarian, a monolithic threat rather than 1.4 billion individuals seeking simple human things of safety, connection, meaningful work, and the freedom to express basic warmth.

Human things that often gets lost in the intellectual, political and philosophical debates. You have to be on the ground and be open to feeling these things. Reality is more complex than our mental models. Reality requires both the intellect and an open heart to grasp.

I want to share my traveler’s journal entries to reveal how patient observation, direct engagement, and reflective questioning can cut through inherited fear to touch what's actually emerging.

Whether rewriting place of origin narratives, understanding a complex global issue, or uncovering the multifaceted nature of your own life, the same principle applies: direct experience over secondhand interpretation, curiosity over inherited certainty.

The deepest learning happens when we're brave enough to see past the stories and formulas we've been given.

One of the many beautiful boutique Shanghainese cafes that I let my thoughts expand onto paper.

Traveler’s Notebook (June 3, 2025)

I’m getting the sense that Shanghai isn’t like an Austin. It is a city that doesn’t wear its heart on its sleeves. Rather it keeps close to its chest. Yet it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a heart.

Contrary, it has a massive and deep one that’s yearning to be expressed. Otherwise all this culture, refinement and creativity wouldn’t exist. I see its traces. But where’s its source?

I can feel the commercialism yes, but there is much more appreciation for the human experience than say Shenzhen. The cost of refinement, however, is rawness.

Make no mistake, raw does not necessarily mean crude, but rather the natural origin of things. What Laotzu calls “a block of wood”, from which this natural state can be split to make a thousand tools (Verse No. 28).

I wonder where I may touch the raw heart of Shanghai, its limitless origin?

5:30AM. The retired folk wake up to socialize over badminton. They’re also dancing and singing together at night. I notice that old people are happier here because of the abundance of public social opportunities.

Traveler’s Notebook (June 7, 2025 - 4 days later)

I’m touched by the change that’s held in Shanghai. The fact that one can just leave a laptop bag in its equivalent of central park unattended for hours. The fact that the food stand lady gave me a free soy milk in the rain. The fact that storekeeps no longer push you to buy. China is becoming closer to Taiwan.

It took 80 years and many sacrifices to get here, but it’s finally here.

That is the heart of Shanghai. I touched it for the first time this morning. Twice. First was old man Ma who gave me advice on not getting sick in the rain. He genuinely cared.

Shanghai feels like El Salvador in that people want to be good. Once you remove the bad, the hunger, the scarcity, the corrupt. The good will naturally emerge.

It took so much work, but it’s finally here.

I only know because I have contrast from 30 years ago when I left as a little boy in 1995. And my view, in many ways, is a time capsule because I barely returned in the interim because of my parents’ resistance.

The attitude of an entire people has transformed in the span of three decades. It’s a miracle. Shanghai’s heart lies in the emerging warmth of its people. It’s intangible yet it’s felt everywhere. That is the source of the current cultural renewal. The human spirit naturally wants to ascend after securing Maslow’s lower levels.

Of course this isn’t representative of all of China, but the fact it exists here in Shanghai is remarkable. Time will tell if this is the spearhead for the rest of the country.

The class of Paris, the hustle of New York, and the safety of Taipei is the only way to describe Shanghai. It is becoming an alloy of Silver and Steel.

Life works in mysterious ways. I ran into travel vloggers Angel and Edison (on the right) back in Austin last year, and they happened to see me journaling. This dinner with my new friend and musician Matthew Lou turned out to be one of my highlights of this trip so far.

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