Journal

An exhibition of classic Chinese animation brought back memories of my childhood and reminded me how much beauty there is still to discover in our own cultural heritage. Today, I took my son to an exhibition featuring classic animations created by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. As I walked through the exhibition and saw those familiar animated characters again, memories of my childhood began to return. Where Is Mama?, Havoc in Heaven, Calabash Brothers, and, of course, Black Cat Detective, the brave black cat who would raise his pistol whenever the words “To Be Continued” appeared at the end of an episode. ...

Today I saw a Reuters report saying that the RMB had strengthened to a more than three-and-a-half-year high against the U.S. dollar, just days after the Fed raised rates . My first reaction was a small sense of disappointment. For people who work in international trade and often receive payments in U.S. dollars, a slightly stronger dollar against the RMB is usually welcome news. When the Fed announced another rate increase, I had expected the exchange rate to move up at least a little. Instead, the market went almost the other way. ...

Recently, I redefined LaceMoods and updated the website. I wouldn’t really call it a redesign. It feels more like I finally started bringing together all the scattered ideas I’ve had over the past few years and giving them a place to belong. LaceMoods started in a very simple way. It began with women’s lingerie. I’ve always liked lace, soft fabrics, and the feeling that comes with wearing something beautiful, even when nobody else sees it. Lingerie is still one of those things people can feel slightly awkward talking about, and it often gets linked to sexiness almost immediately. But if you strip away all those assumptions, underwear is simply one of the most intimate pieces of clothing in a woman’s life. From the time a girl starts growing up, it becomes something she wears almost every day and something that stays physically close to her body. ...

Every year on September 18, when I hear the air-raid sirens outside — three times, three minutes each — I feel a heaviness settle in me. It may look like just another date on the calendar, and life still goes on as usual: we get up, take our children to school, go to work, and deal with all the ordinary things that fill a normal day. But in 2026, it has been 95 years since that night in 1931, and I still believe this is a day we should stop and remember. ...

I used to think I would be the kind of mother who rarely lost her temper. I imagined myself as calm, patient, and good at communicating with my child. I would listen carefully, explain things gently when he was upset, and manage my own emotions before they ever reached the point of anger. I had read so much about parenting that I genuinely believed that, if nothing else, I would at least be good at talking things through. ...

It has been almost a month since I last updated Flowanriver. I did not stop because I wanted to give it up; I simply did not find anything during this period that I genuinely wanted to write about. There were topics I could have followed, trends I could have commented on, and certainly things I could have written because they were easier to rank or more likely to be indexed by Google. But every time I tried to approach writing from that direction, I felt something was off. I did not want to publish something just to keep the site active, or choose a topic simply because an algorithm might prefer it. ...

The digital economy is being redefined by AI Recently, while following discussions around the Digital Economy conference in Beijing, I had a very strong impression that although the theme is still labeled as “digital economy,” the real focus has quietly shifted toward artificial intelligence. From what I have seen across different public information, whether it is industrial direction, enterprise digital transformation, or talent development systems, AI is being mentioned more and more frequently. The term “digital economy” still exists, but it no longer feels like a simple extension of the internet era. Instead, it feels more like a broader framework that is now carrying AI, data systems, and industrial restructuring together. ...

A few days ago, while going through crypto news, I came across a story about a Japanese corporate pension fund considering allocating around 1% of its assets to cryptocurrencies. At first, I thought it would be another article about Bitcoin adoption. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that wasn’t what interested me. The question that stayed with me was much simpler: What will retirement look like for our generation? ...

I first heard about Bitcoin in 2015, when a friend told me he was mining it. Out of curiosity, I spent some time reading about it, but that was as far as it went. I didn’t buy any, I didn’t follow the market, and I certainly didn’t imagine it would ever become relevant to my life. The first time Bitcoin really caught my attention was in 2021, when it climbed to around $70,000 for the first time. Suddenly, crypto seemed to be everywhere. News outlets were covering it, social media was talking about it, and everyone appeared to have an opinion. ...

Today is June 1st. Children’s Day. It feels like the right day to talk about things that are young. Not young like a startup. Young like a child — full of potential, not yet sure what they’ll become, occasionally embarrassing, occasionally breathtaking. The children in Miami Just a few weeks ago, 20,000+ people gathered in Miami for Consensus 2026 — founders, executives, policymakers, all there to watch crypto, AI, and traditional finance collide in real time. The theme wasn’t just blockchain anymore. AI agents are becoming participants in global markets — executing trades, managing portfolios, creating entirely new economic models. The conference had a name for it: Agentic Commerce. ...