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, including what I saw, heard, and thought. I hoped 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.
