Brief Biography:

Literature is my passion. I started with Chinese literature. Then I discovered the world of Shakespeare through English studies. Soon I realized my life was greatly expanded by the cross examination of texts in two languages. I could gain lots of insights by trying to understand two cultures and mentalities. Then, I moved to France with my parents where I began to learn French from scratch. Little by little, I became an avid trilingual reader, walking with blissfulness along the crossroad of three different cultures: three closely knit societies. This unique experience offered me lots of tools and courage to probe into a diversity of books. Chinese old proverbs, Luxun's critique works, Aesop's tales, Shakespeare's drama, Tennessee Williams' plays, Robert Frost's poems, Aristotle's Poetica and Voltaire's world of French aristocracy, to name but a few.

Of course, I'm not boasting that I could grasp the meanings of all these texts. Nobody could. These works span many centuries and come from a great variety of countries. Reading them requires not only lots of close inspection and careful analysis, but also knowledge of history and social conventions across the different cultures. Over the course of my experiences with these books, I've come to discover one fundamental rule: Understanding literature needs to be in accordance with one's understanding of his own life experiences. Without factual reference to the things he's either seen or dealt with in his own life, others' contemplations and insights into life would be incomprehensible to him. One relies on drawing upon one's own memories of the past to make the link between what he reads and the real life. At least, these insights are all in some sense encrypted and the reader needs to decode them through the recalling of the similar events in his personal life. Thus, I'm far from being a qualified trilingual reader. The most I can do is to scratch the very surface of the three distinct literatures. But I enjoy this process of learning bit by bit. One of the byproduct benefits in being a trilingual is that I have developed a spirit of internationalism and better understanding of human nature.

I have to admit that it's difficult to be competent in three languages. There have been times of desperation or wanting to give up. But whenever I weigh the pros and cons of being a trilingual, I see far more advantages than disadvantages. One not so serious consequence of trilingualism is the ability to insult someone in a language he's not familiar with. Or I can be employed as a spy for any of the above countries to gather information in a foreign environment. I can equally be counted upon to translate English works into my own language and vice versa. So, theoretically I can never find myself out of job.