Outside research, I am a theater nerd — I am obsessed with musicals, especially those written by Stephen Sondheim. My favorites are Merrily We Roll Along and Into the Woods. Beyond this, I enjoy wandering through museums, creating oil paintings, making scented candles, and reading novels. As a child, I was a big fan of Roald Dahl's tales. In recent years, I have become an avid reader of Fredrik Backman’s works, particularly the book My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, which moved me to tears countless times.

I used to spend one year leading a volunteer team and working with caregivers to organize weekly play-based educational activities for children with cognitive impairments and physical disabilities in Foshan. Each Saturday, our volunteer team did exercises, painted, crafted projects, made desserts with the children, taught them essential life skills like crossing the road safely, and helped them learn to write Chinese characters through play. It was a challenging and exciting experience to design learning activities that were joyful and accessible for these children, as I look back.

I spent two incredibly quiet years living in an apartment near the North Sea in Aberdeen, Scotland before moving to Seattle. Those days physically away from family and old friends gave me a lot of space to think and reflect on my relationships with them and the interactions involved, which led me to think deeply about how our relationships impact our well-being and how one should strategically organize their relationships to build a strong social support system.

Currently, I live in Seattle, where I spent a lot of time getting adjusted to the weather here. I'm pretty satisfied with how I’ve built my social support system here, and I am beyond grateful for all the kindness and generous help I’ve received, both in interpersonal relationships and research. Building your own social support system while doing relationship-related research is like raising your inner kids again, only in a more scientific way -- which I guess is why I’m so obsessed with topics about close relationship, communication and emotion.