ABOUT

How did I get here?

For as long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with the East Asian cultural sphere. As a young boy, I recall receiving a book about the technology and customs of ancient China, and I was most intrigued to see that such an advanced civilisation could have existed at such a magnitude so long ago. It wasn’t long afterward that I discovered Japanese culture for the first time in my life. I was captivated by the vibrant red of the torii gates against the gentle sway of cherry blossom and towering pagodas I saw in a video game which my parents had bought me. Always alert to my interests, my mother soon bought me a Dorling Kindersley travel guide to Japan, complete with in-depth cultural explainers and breakdowns of every one of Japan’s many patrimonial sites which I would peruse from back-to-back for many years to come. 

It was not long after this that I started teaching myself Japanese phrases, memorising them from the phrasebook at the end of my book and repeating them at every given opportunity. Recognising my newfound interest, one of my teachers at my primary school asked me to give a presentation on Japanese culture to some of the children in the class two grades above me (pictured above), and I did so with vigour. We became regulars at the Japanese restaurant across the road from us, where I would always sit engrossed by the decor around me. What’s more, around this time, I also followed in my father’s footsteps and took up the martial art of taekwondo - partly inspired by the striking awe of ninjas, samurai and legends of Hong Kong cinema - and practised with a close Korean friend, unknowingly putting into practice ideas borrowed from Confucianism and Daoism which I would only learn about in more detail later in life. I am now a first-dan black belt in the art, and have studied more martial arts to varying degrees of competency.

All this goes to show that the East Asian cultural sphere has played a central role in my formative years and has shaped me into who I am today. It was thanks to me discovering my interest in the Japanese language and learning it single-handedly from the age of seven onwards that I opened myself up to learning many more languages over the years and becoming a confident polyglot. Training in taekwondo helped me cultivate self-discipline, humility and respect for others. But even then, my more recent interest in Chinese philosophy, from the classical texts of Laozi and Zhuangzi to the later Tang-dynasty Chan (Zen) texts has had a profound effect on my view of the world, and has launched me into attempting to translate various classical texts, including most recently the Yi Jing, which an acquaintance of mine is developing an app for.