Yan's Nonfiction Blog

It was the summer of 2014, my last year of living in China. In fact, in just two months, I would go through a 13-hour-long journey and come to the so-called land of the free, but that’s a story for another time. During this summer, my dad introduced me to something I would consider is now one of my biggest passions, something I can connect with him no matter how many miles away: football, or the name I found out after I got here: soccer.       I don’t remember how or why I started watching soccer; my best guess would be one night, my dad was watching the 2014 World Cup, and I began watching with him. What I do remember, though, is quite a few of the matches that I watched and, more importantly, the time I spent with my dad. Due to time zone differences, the matches of the World Cup, which was being hosted in Brazil that year, usually kicked off around midnight in China, and because I was still a little eight-year-old boy who needed sleep, I couldn’t just stay awake ...

    It has been nine years since I moved to Champaign from China and six years since I last visited. Over this period, I’ve discovered so much about my family and my hometown of Chengdu that I couldn’t appreciate when I was younger. So now, amid college applications and senior year stress, I would love nothing more in the world than to return to when I was seven and still going to elementary school in China. I feel like I’ve always taken my hometown for granted. Because I didn’t live directly downtown of the city, I’ve always thought of Chengdu, Sichuan, as a mildly large city that isn’t anything special. Only recently, probably less than a year ago, did I find out that, first, Chengdu is massive; it is the fifth most populated city in China, with a population of about 15 million people. Chengdu also has incredible historical significance, as it was once the capital of the Shu Kingdom (one of the famous “Three Kingdoms”). Thus, the city has incredible historical sites and ...

     When I was asked to name an object that told the story of my life, I really wasn’t sure of what to choose. There are many objects that I enjoy, but even at just seventeen, I felt like I had lived for too long to let a singular object identify me. That is, until I went home that day and made dinner: some steak, broccoli…and rice. I realized that through all the changes in my life, the only two things that have stayed constant are my family…and rice.       If you didn’t know, I was born in China and lived there until eight years old. Then, in the summer of 2014, I came to Champaign, Illinois. Having my life divided almost perfectly in half was a weird feeling growing up. I didn’t really experience the childhood of an American, so often when my friends speak nostalgically about the shows they used to watch, like Phineas and Ferb or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , I just can’t relate because I grew up watching 喜羊羊与灰太狼 and 熊出没 (which apparently transla...