Born in the central part of city Beijing, China and lived there until 2005, bringing my daughter with me, I moved to Nova Scotia, Canada.
I am a non-fiction writer, author with over thirty-year natural science background.
I grew up in a big family with parents, grandparents (mom’s side), uncles, aunts and cousins. Three generations living together was common in Beijing at that time. Although everyone played certain roles for my growth, my grandparents influenced me the most.
Here is an old family photo taken in 1960, grandpa, grandma, cousin Lily and me (front). Grandpa had retired when I was born. One of his hobbies was gardening, so flowers, bushes, trees, flying insects and creeping creatures were my natural friends. The background in the photo was a huge mock orange bush, fully blooming in a corner of our garden-like courtyard. Grandpa told me when I was two years old I often carried a tiny water can while following on the heels in the garden.
Grandpa was also a well-organized person. When I grew up grandpa said to me garden tools, after used, must go back to where they came from. After grocery shopping, any change, even a penny, must be recorded in his accounting book. What grandpa said to me benefits both my personal and professional lives.
Grandma was a housewife and cooked each day for the whole family. She could neither read nor write, but taught us by her selflessness and hard working. She and grandpa sent three of her seven children to university. This was uncommon at that time in China. Grandma liked Peking Opera (live performance) and Charlie Chaplin’s movies, “Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator”.
There were always some hens in a coop. Every day, as soon as grandma said: “go to check the eggs”, I would be the one racing to the coop. After I grew up and lived in concrete apartment building, raising chickens became a long-held dream.
A big bag of books, fairy tales, fables and short stories, accompanied my childhood, too. I still have some of them that I have carefully kept for over fifty years. Mom often read to me or with me. I still remember if a story mom read sounded scary to me, I would put my index finger tightly into each ear, but still urged mom to keep reading. When I could read, mom borrowed many books from the library at her workplace.
At the time, nothing seemed special in my childhood, but no doubt, books or reading raised my potential for writing. At grade seven, it was my Chinese teacher that identified my outstanding skills of writing. Often he read my homework assignments as good examples in class.
Grandpa’s garden cultured my love for nature resulted in macro biology (living things seen by the naked eye) becoming my particular interest and entomology, the study of insects as my major for a Bachelor Degree.
Since graduation and before moving to Nova Scotia, I had explored in two scientific fields. One was vector biology, the study on infectious disease related insects (mosquitoes, fleas and more) and some arthropods, like ticks. Along the path, integrated pest management (IPM) and certain disease epidemiology extended my knowledge in this field. Another was instrumental analytic chemistry focusing on the determination of trace pesticide residues in food.
In Canada, a Master thesis study on a beetle, the black vine weevil, at Saint Mary’s University brought me back to entomology, my favorite field. However, even with a Master Degree, a science job staring out in Canada would be no higher than a Research Assistant. Thus, I had assisted for the studies that had nothing to do with insects, such as drug delivery by nasal using rats, Nemann-pick II disorder using mice and blood coagulation using human plasma.
Alongside this multi science journey, my writing grew, too. In 1996, my first essay “Mock Orange Blossom” for a non-fiction contest was published in the “Beijing Evening News”, the city focused newspaper. Many more personal essays have been published in print media, or heard on radio broadcast since then in China and since 2006 in Canada.
Among them, there are a few about Nova Scotia. I write about what I see, hear and experience on the beautiful peninsular, such as my own stories directly related to St. Margaret’s Bay, winter diversity in Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy and a story of how my life in Canada became connected to the Halifax Explosion.
Since 2016, I have become a full-time writer.
After my long-held chicken dream had come true in Nova Scotia, a creative non-fiction book for children, “Running Wild with Bossy Boy” was published in 2018. It focuses on chicken’s personalities through the stories of 15 chickens my friend Bob and I raised in a beautiful semi rural setting. In the book, there are seventy story-matching photos chosen from the hundreds I took during the chicken’s growth.
As social birds, chickens do many things together, searching for worms, taking dirt baths, crowding on an old wooden bench or roosting on trees. However, they are different from each other. Some are brave and some timid; some are fighters and some peace keepers. Being individuals, chickens have personalities, or to them, “chicken-alities.
The success in writing, book design, photographing, self-publishing, marketing, promotion and distribution provides me with a high level of confidence to continue writing more non-fiction books, especially for children.
Please visit the page “Running Wild with Bossy Boy” for more information about the book.
I am a Council Member at Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and involved into the program, “Writers in the Schools” (WITS). If you are interested in what I share with school students, please click here Writers in the Schools (WITS) and scroll down. Once you see a photo of “Sunflower”, you find me.
Being a freelance interpreter and translator (English/Chinese), I am associated with some local service providers, the Canada Justice System (2016-2019) and various businesses. I am a member at ATINS.
Gardening, a heritage from Grandpa, remains my favourite pastime.
Updated on May 10, 2021
Essay Samples
