Leaving Malaysia, I saw a boundless sea of clouds, floating in the sky like a scene from Weathering with You. The end of a journey leaves beautiful memories and awakens the desire to travel again. Autumn has arrived, and life returns to its ordinary rhythm. Some connections, some unfinished things, can pick up again.
In Penang, an ethnic Chinese driver told us, “You Chinese earn thirty years’ worth of money in ten.” In Hangzhou, even buildings that do not pierce the clouds glow with lights. Inside, the race against time plays out again and again. One winter holiday, I took my younger brother and sister to wander around in77 by West Lake at midnight. It was quiet and deserted. They asked where all the people of Hangzhou were. After a moment’s thought, I said, “Working overtime.” Having a late-night meal in a little roadside restaurant, I sat across from an influencer who was still discussing the results of a shoot with a photographer at half past midnight, with a livestream about to begin. And ten kilometres away, at Zhejiang University’s Zijingang campus, the second floor of the main library stays open twenty-four hours a day. Those “big papers” are forged night after night by researchers like my labmates. The miracles on this ancient land were built by its great people. The pyramids of ancient Egypt, South Korea’s Miracle on the Han River—history tells the same great story again and again.
Anyone who has struggled towards something will feel a lump in their throat at the hardship behind these stories. And they will understand a little better: it is good to slow down, ease up, and take a rest.
Comparing notes with Ji Jiamin, I realised we had travelled together in 2023, to the Greater Liangshan region; in 2025, to Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao; and in early August 2026, to Malaysia. We are both getting older. Graduate school makes you grow up fast, and our careers need to keep pace with that growth. Back to the lab, and back to work.
