Birding is my greatest passion, and the story goes back to my early childhood. I have been fascinated by nature for as long as I can remember: I spent summer holidays traveling across China to experience it, and back then I loved insects, fossils, dinosaurs — and of course the plants and animals of the natural world. Loving photography from a young age also gave me a pair of eyes that are good at finding beauty in nature. During the 2019 pandemic lockdown, I discovered through my window just how many bird species lived right outside. I began paying much closer attention to them, picked up my camera and binoculars, and went out into nature looking for them — and that is how one of my greatest passions began. From 2019 to today, I have traveled all over Beijing and across China, observing nearly 1,000 wild bird species in the country. While observing them, I also decided to record every encounter and every experience in writing — what I saw, heard, and thought — hoping this would help more people notice the birds and the nature around them.
While observing birds, I also began studying them. I built my own sound-recognition setup in my residential compound, monitoring the bird species passing through on migration around the clock. I brought this passion into my school as well: in my second year, I founded the school's first birding club, inspiring the people around me to pay attention to birds. Together with my club members, we spent a full year conducting a comprehensive survey of the birds on our campus, producing a school bird checklist and a school bird field guide. We also joined the national bird-collision survey in China, investigating bird-collision incidents on campus every migration season and contributing our part to bird-collision research in China and beyond.
Alongside photography and nature, I have been drawn to sports since I was very young. Exercise became a habit in kindergarten, when I began training in football and basketball; in high school, playing basketball and football is also my way to relax and stay fit. I am also deeply interested in calligraphy and music — I began learning the violin in kindergarten, and started practicing Chinese brush calligraphy around the same time.