Moments

A Thursday evening, and the city had quietly gone home. I was the only person on the entire Ferris wheel. LUCA's wheel turning just for me. Cool wind, the last light slipping behind Mount Pilatus, the moon rising slowly from behind me, and music playing that I hadn't chosen. I was moved to tears.

At night, it looks exactly like a castle from an animated film.

Grass pollen season. Switzerland: entirely red on the forecast map. I checked it twice, as if the colour might change. It didn't. I went outside anyway.

September 2023. I visited the luthier's workshop in Shanghai and met the maker of my pipa for the first time. Then I carried it home. By hand, all the way to Lucerne.

April 2025. Zurich has a Chinese garden. A gift from Kunming to its sister city. Kunming is my hometown. The moment I stepped through the gate, I was back in Yunnan.

June 2024. I was on the upper floor of Lucerne's main library when I looked down and saw her. One woman, one table, one newspaper, completely still. The whole room arranged itself around her without her knowing. The red sculpture, the wall of magazines, the blue chair by the window.

August 2022. Shaoxing with my mother — one of my favourite cities. We stayed at the Xianheng Hotel. This was the courtyard at dusk, the lanterns just coming on.

May 2024. The World Rowing Cup at Rotsee. Also an Olympic qualifier. I bumped into some of China's young team members on the bus and we talked for a while. I wished them luck. On race day I rushed over after finishing some errands and arrived just as I heard their coach on the phone. They didn't make it to Paris. I hope they know it was still something, being there.

2017. First time trying watercolor. Copied from somewhere — I no longer remember where.

April 2022. During the lockdown, I signed up to volunteer delivering supplies to neighbours in our compound. Full gear. It was April, the trees were green, and the streets were completely empty.

October 2017. I was passing through on a business trip and stopped by my uncle's home. He was in the late stages of cancer. That morning he got up early and made me beef rice noodles — my favourite — insisting on it. I sensed it might be the last time. I took this photo. A week later, he was gone. I can make a very good bowl of beef rice noodles now. I will take care of myself.

The morning of November 18, 2022. The day I left for Switzerland. I wrote it on the whiteboard in my room before I wheeled everything out.

Spring is here. A mother goose was sunbathing by the shore of Lake Lucerne with her whole family, bathed in the golden evening light. It felt exactly like a scene from a cartoon.

December 2025. A glass observation deck in my hometown. Nothing between you and the drop but the floor beneath your feet. I was afraid of heights for exactly five minutes. Then I walked to the edge like it was nothing.

An extraordinary evening. The sky turned a captivating shade of crimson and violet, and Chapel Bridge. All of Lucerne was bathed in that intoxicating light.

My father had a brain aneurysm rupture the night before. My residence permit happened to be at the post office that week. Annual renewal. Monday morning: collect the card first, then the train to Zurich, ticket bought on the way. I took this photo somewhere over Central Asia. He was already out of surgery by the time I landed. I still don't have the right words for what I felt on that flight.

October 2023. The Palais des Nations, Geneva. One hundred and ninety-three flagpoles, one for every UN member state. I walked the whole length without saying anything. The building at the end says UNITED NATIONS. You feel the weight of that, standing there.

May 2023. I bought a bottle of sparkling water at the Metropolitan Museum and couldn't get the cap off. I carried it all the way back to the hotel and asked several large men in the lobby to try. None of them could open it either. It travelled with me for the rest of the trip. I left it at JFK.

Leilei's first month at home. Blue eyes, white fur, tiny — with no idea yet how beautiful he was.

2016, Chengdu airport. The vest says: except for love, everyone must queue.

Dunhuang, autumn 2020. No camera. I pressed my phone into the sand and held it still for thirty seconds. But the photo isn't why I remember this night. It's the moment the desert motorbike crested the dune and the Milky Way appeared, all at once, directly above me. I couldn't move.

My grandmother passed away fifteen years ago. The kindest, most gentle soul I have ever known, and a devout Buddhist. Walking through the temple in my hometown, I found her name among the donors from 2002. She had been there all along, quiet and still.

August 15, 2024. A group of strangers from every corner of the world, sitting together on the mountain, watching the sun set over Saxer Lücke. The next morning brought a thunderstorm. I woke at first light and ran down before it hit. But that evening sky has never left me.

September 8, 2025. A total lunar eclipse. I brought my DSLR, ready to capture it properly. My zoom lens was nowhere near long enough. The blood moon stayed small and distant in the frame. But the red is there, if you look.

The hottest day of that July, and fifty thousand people packed into an open stadium anyway. I don't remember deciding to raise my wrist. I just did. The whole place was singing. It was absolutely on fire.

May 1, 2017. A friend's Qiang ethnic wedding in Beichuan New Town, Sichuan.

The original Beichuan was destroyed in the 2008 earthquake. A new town was built eight miles away.

The first week in my apartment in Switzerland.

September 2019. Lake Bled, Slovenia. The water was so still the sky lived in it twice. I went back again in 2025. It was still impossibly beautiful.

I had loved the Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Singers for years before I finally heard them live. July 2021, Shanghai Symphony Hall. Those melodies still find their way back to me.

September 2017. Tried temporary tattoos for a party. Both arms. Studio Ghibli all the way.