Lu-Hai Liang

This is a roundup of interesting articles I’ve read recently, a collection of ecletic pieces that come with my recommendation.

First up, this article in WIRED — Why Are Rich People So Mean?

Christopher Ryan weaves together a tale involving his personal recollection of traveling through India combined with scientific and anecdotal evidence that being rich might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

He profiles Silicon Valley millionaires, successful and wealthy men, who feel unfulfilled and stressed out from a life that should be charmed and gilded with happiness. It is a rich, powerful, and redemptive read.

I was in India the first time it occurred to me that I, too, was a rich asshole. I’d been traveling for a couple of months, ignoring the beggars as best I could. Having lived in New York, I was accustomed to averting my attention from desperate adults and psychotics, but I was having trouble getting used to the groups of children who would gather right next to my table at street-level restaurants, staring hungrily at the food on my plate.

Next, a much shorter article in The Guardian which I found relatable — ‘I swapped a job in Cumbria for blogging from the beach in Bali’

For those of you who don’t know, Cumbria is a county in the northwest of England, famous for the Lake District. A regular series that looks at how people spend and save their money, it was an insight into the decisions that led to such a move. I have never been to Bali and it was interesting to get a glimpse of the life there, and to see, in detail, the income and expenditure of someone who decided to swap the cloudiness of Cumbria for the surf and sea of Bali.

Name: Stephanie Conway
Age: 29
Income: About £1,700 a month
Occupation: Digital marketing

I booked a £300, one-way plane ticket from the UK to Bali in May. I didn’t tell my family I was leaving at first as I was worried it might seem irrational.

A soulful and perspective-changing read from One Zero Medium — On Using Tech While Poor

The writer John Bogna details how he gets by using tech he can afford, such as a laptop from 2009 which he still uses. It was a peek into how much technology can mean to people, how something we might take for granted might mean a world of difference.

Reading the article reminded me of the days when I used a super crappy smartphone, back when I was heavily intent on saving money as a newcomer to Beijing, and without job and income.

It was a model with a low-res screen, crappy rear camera (front-facing selfie cameras were not common back then), and I remember it even had an aerial! Yes, a radio aerial that you could pull out from a hole, and which I played with distractedly.

Still, this smartphone was the first Android device I ever used and it was a gateway to a social life, the Internet, and the low-res pics I took on that phone are ones I treasure.

Finally, a long read by Jiayang Fan in The New Yorker — a profile of an actress —  Constance Wu’s Hollywood Destiny.

Here, the fact the author of the article is herself Chinese-American gives the piece a more perceptive and dynamic charge. It is not, and has never been, correct that a profile or an interview should be 100% objective (it’s not even possible, in fact). We relate to other people as people and thus a successful profile piece should see the writer really engage with her/his subject.

People are not just objective facts. To really see the person behind the celebrity, the wealth, the achievements, a writer has to subjectively gauge the truth. Truth and facts are not the same thing. And in this wonderfully perceptive profile, Fan allows us to glimpse the true Constance Wu, a version that we may never otherwise see, with the details she decided to include in her piece.

To end, here are some of my own pieces I have had published, which may be of interest.

10 October, WIRED (UK) — Blizzard and esports can’t win the battle against Chinese censors

Sport has always had moments when politics has suddenly invaded the athletic spectacle, and now the same thing is happening in esports, in what could be a watershed moment for the burgeoning industry.

8 October, Inkstone — The surprising place some Korean women are going for a career boost 

1 October, Underpinned — I chose to become a migrant, and learned to be a freelancer

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