Why I Started Blogging

When I finished my first year at university, I realized I had read more than twenty books but written almost nothing. I had become a passive consumer rather than an active creator—always taking in, rarely putting out. In Li Yi’s RTHK’s “One Minute Reading” program (episode 36)¹, he said language ability grows from two habits only: reading and writing.

Beyond improving my writing skills, I have a more ambitious reason: I want to preserve my lived experiences for history. After reading historian Paul A. Cohen’s “History in Three Keys”², the chapter that resonated most deeply wasn’t the mythology section, but “The Boxers as Experience.” Cohen highlights a crucial insight: people living through events don’t know how things will unfold—they act without the clarity of hindsight. Our present is messy, nuanced, and inherently personal, and every individual’s understanding is necessarily partial and incomplete.

This is precisely why individual records matter profoundly. This blog serves as my chronicle of the present moment—my attempt to document my “experience” as it unfolds. If fortune smiles upon me, perhaps someday these entries can serve as “primary sources” for researchers studying this era. But even if they never reach that audience, the act of writing itself is valuable: it compels me to think critically, clarify my beliefs, and create something meaningful that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

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