Author: Karen Zhang

China’s “One Country, Two Systems” (OCTS) policy has been regarded as an experiment. It aims to integrate Hong Kong’s colonial system and way of life under British rule to the Chinese national picture after Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997. This integration experiment is expected to be used as a model to demonstrate the possibility of reunification with Taiwan. China has promised that Hong Kong’s previous system and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years. We haven’t reached 2047 but we’ve seen so many changes in the last decade in Hong Kong. Is the integration experiment over?

The latest top-down intervention is the reform of Hong Kong’s electoral system. It’s not surprising to see the overwhelming majority in China’s rubberstamp parliament favors one side in voting. Between yays and nays over any given bill the result can be as symbolic as one nay, one abstention and the rest of votes are yays. Will the scene be the same in a future Hong Kong Legislative Council (also known as Legco) in which all the lawmakers will be patriotic?

Because of my Chinese appearance and fluency in Cantonese, when I visit Hong Kong, Hong Kongers regard me as a hometowner. Likewise, I feel strongly with Hong Kongers about our shared mother tongue. Speaking Cantonese in Hong Kong enables me to understand deeper Hong Kongers’ pursuit of prosperity and democracy. Taxi drivers would become talkative when I spoke Cantonese to them. As did the owners of Dai Pai Dong, open-air food stalls and Cha Chaan Teng, Hong Kong-style cafes. They made me feel more at home even though I was only a visitor. When they learned I was heading for Guangzhou, they would still think my home base was Hong Kong, and I was only to “go up” to visit relatives. Guangzhou is located northwestern of Hong Kong. Thus, to Hong Kongers, “going up” in colloquial Cantonese means traveling northbound, as opposed to “coming down,” returning southbound to Hong Kong.

This is Hong Kongers’ true color—resilient and hard-working, polite and dignified. It’s heart-wrenching for a true patriot to see how China’s strongman politics have torn apart friendships, families and partnerships inside China, and now spreading to Hong Kong. Has the experiment of unification burst?    

China’s experiments are not limited to Hong Kong’s politics, economy but also linguistic preference. In the past four decades, China has launched a number of experiments in the mainland as well. When China opened its door to the world for foreign investment and cultural exchange in the 1980s, learning English was considered a necessity for Chinese people to communicate with the world. Private schools that experimented with bilingual curriculums mushroomed in big cities. Now, China has grown up economically. In the annual “Two Sessions” political gathering this March, Chinese lawmakers proposed to remove English as core subject in the nine-year mandatory education. Will someday in sight the experimentation of free trade in China’s Special Economic Zones also to be removed?

Surely, there is one experiment that is not over yet in Hong Kong. That is learning Mandarin in the city’s primary and secondary schools. Hong Kong job seekers seek competency in Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, China’s official language, in order to compete with the Mandarin-speaking mainlanders in Hong Kong and in mainland China. Many schools in Hong Kong teach in English or Mandarin, rather than Cantonese, which is the mother tongue of nearly the entire population of Hong Kong. I did hear more people speaking Mandarin in Hong Kong when I last visited the city. I wish it’s a good sign of diversity instead of a sign of linguistic marginalization. Guangzhou, which is the origin of Cantonese, sheds light on the dismal fate of Cantonese impacted by China’s nationwide “Speak Mandarin Campaign” and domestic migration spurred by economic growth.  

I’d like to compare the relationship between Cantonese and Mandarin in Guangzhou to the relationship between a host and a guest. Cantonese is supposedly the host writ large in Guangzhou. Nevertheless, the influx of non-Cantonese speaking immigrants to Guangzhou in the past 40 years has significantly shifted the relationship. Language preservation and pertinent law enforcement has been weak. As a result, Mandarin is the dominant, arrogant host in its adopted home Guangzhou. Cantonese is now the guest nearly to be forgotten. Will Hong Kong in the near future become another Guangzhou in terms of language preservation? While Mandarin is rising, English is fading quicker than Cantonese in Hong Kong. It is a linguist’s nightmare when diverse languages in a place become politicized.  

Globally, every cooperation between countries is an experiment. The transfer of power in democratic governments brings a new hope and opportunity for these experiments. But the world is losing patience with China over the experiment of an open economy. China has not become more democratic, or at least more transparent, as the Western world had hoped after China joined the WTO and became more engaged on the world stage. On the contrary, China is a testament to a non-democratic model that seems to lead in strong economic growth and strongman governance. But China is already in the game of a free market with the world. The Belt and Road Initiative is one of China’s ambitious experiments of expanding its global influence.  

To some extent, the large public companies in America are running a similar model whose supply chain planning is synonymous to China’s central planning. It is not hard to understand why the Big Four U.S. tech companies are unhappy about the antitrust laws applied to them just as Chinese Communist Party is so assertive with its absolute leadership of the country. Obsession of power is universal by those who already have it. At least the America Inc. strives for accountability and transparency whereas its Chinese counterparts are required to be more patriotic. Patriotism over profit is a norm in China, isn’t it?   

A multi-stakeholder experiment requires a back-and-forth exchange of ideas and consultation. Sadly, the world is lacking the atmosphere for experiments. One of the ingredients of doing experiment is academic freedom and business freedom. China cannot cultivate its Elon Musk unless it has such ingredients. The U.S. has a lot of catching up to do as well. According to an annual report of global economic freedom in 2020 by Cato Institute, the U.S. fell in 2018 in most areas of economic freedom including the soundness of money, rule of law, trade openness and regulation.

Another ingredient in doing a large-scale experiment is reasonably cheap labor. Project financing is a headache for any startup regardless of industry and nationality. Perhaps that is why Southeast Asia has an investment boom not only from domestic investors but also from foreign ones like China and the U.S. Chinese business people are doing what the American counterparts did in the 1980s-90s—outsourcing low-end-labor-intensive tasks abroad or the introduction of automation on the laborious work. The U.S.-China trade war benefits countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Taiwan. On the one hand, China wants to decouple from U.S. tech; on the other hand, China leads the world in manufacturing of steel, car parts, chemicals, electronics and robotics. China is part of the global supply chain and manufacturing accounts for a large portion of the country’s GDP. How to complete an experiment if some ingredients of it have to be obtained through international trade, which today sensitively touches the scope of national security among countries?

Has the experiment of interest-based negotiation surrounding China come to an end? Can China independently do its high-tech experiment with Chinese characteristics? Can the U.S. catch up with its allies with multiple experiments that built on trust? Can Hong Kong’s pre-national security law city image return its luster under the influence of China’s economic experiment with the Greater Bay Area? If you’re like me having an experiment with the future, stop yourself from jumping to conclusions might let the chemistry last longer.

If I tell you diversity is key to becoming a winner for an individual and a society, you may raise your eyebrows in doubt. Have you heard of these big companies such as BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity and State Street? They’re asset managers that manage several trillion dollars of assets with clients that you may be more familiar such as JP Morgan, United Airlines, Verizon and Google. These asset managers are rarely discussed outside the specialized financial press. But the success of their investments results in the fact that “they are diversified and many of their investments are held somewhat passively,” according to Radical Markets (2018), a book by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl about how to radically expand the scope of markets to reduce inequality while promoting economic growth.

Unlike a public company which buys and sells stocks, the institutional investors mostly hold onto their stocks. This is what “passively” means in Radical Markets. Diversification reduces an investor’s overall level of volatility and potential risk. You may have heard of the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Your personal investment advisor may also have introduced you to a diversified 401k retirement portfolio. The idea is about the same as what the asset managers do for American Inc. If your stocks perform awful on Wall Street, your foreign investments may offset losses. Because of diversification and passivity, the institutional investors are super successful and wealthy. When combined, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street constitute the single largest shareholder of at least 40% of all public companies in the United States and nearly 90% of public companies in the S&P 500 (Posner and Weyl, 2018). Can I infer that the super rich already understand the value of diversity at least in the sense of investment and make a successful life out of it?

In the spectrum of a diverse workplace, a company or an industry thrives on innovation and efficiency contributed by employees from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Silicon Valley and the Hollywood are two renowned locations in the world for attracting foreign talents. A glimpse of the major immigration waves in the U.S. during the colonial era and two world wars in the 20^th century tells me a lot. How many first generation immigrants and their foreign-born descendants have made great achievements and received accolades such as Nobel Prizes, Olympics medals and alike representing the United States of America? As a global sustainability writer, I feel strongly that diversity sparks new ideas and constantly surprises me with our shared values and different identities. Diversity complicates solutions to sustainability challenges but also enriches the variety of mechanisms to respond to the non-linear sustainability challenges such as climate crisis and water pollution and scarcity. Do you know the California wildfires not only destroy homes, trees and power lines but also contaminate public water supplies? In communities devastated by fires, extremely high levels of toxic chemicals like benzene are found in tap water.         

As many countries are scaling up solar power projects, one of the biggest challenges is to store renewable energy especially when the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. How to keep the power grid stable and resilient when we are only in the beginning phase of energy transformation from fossil fuels to clean energy? I am up for a diverse energy mix to integrate wind, solar, biogas and other renewable sources into the energy grid. The next generation of nuclear reactors could also produce carbon-neutral energy more safely and efficiently. China is already on track to outpace the U.S. in applying the new generation nuclear power technology to its power grid as early as 2030. Another energy source can be from the landfills. This is an example of circular economy as a typical landfill lasts 30-50 years. So this represents a legacy resource which produces biogas for quite some time. Landfill gas-to-energy projects involve capturing methane, a byproduct of the municipal solid waste including food waste. Methane is the largest component of natural gas, and natural gas leaks are predominantly methane. Carbon dioxide and methane are both critical greenhouse gases. In fact, scientists have found that as one of the highly potent short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), methane heats up the climate over 80 times more, averaged over 20 years, than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. Racing with time to meet the Paris climate agreement goals, we’ll need to have a diverse energy mix to ensure energy security. It is imperative to capture methane which stays aloft for years alongside curbing carbon dioxide which stays in the atmosphere for decades or centuries.   

Scaling up renewable energy and climate resilience require funding and investment. Traditional finance focuses on financial return but sustainable finance considers financial, social and environmental returns in combination. When we see the rapid development of solar and wind power in China, it is not hard to think of the nascent industry with strong government backing. China’s green bond market expanded rapidly from 2016-2019, growing to the second largest green bond market globally. China is also exploring cross-border payments for digital currencies, a move to promote the use of yuan in global payments and weaken the U.S. dollar’s position as the world’s dominant reserve currency. On a global scale, fundraising is no longer limited to traditional financial institution. Blockchain technology enables cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and Ethereum to finance projects of all sizes and across boundaries. Last month Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin to diversify its investments, prompting a crypto price mania. In the development finance space, accelerating photovoltaic solar projects in developing countries may be considered blended finance. As the name suggests, blended finance combines several different sources of capital. It’s the use of public and philanthropic capital to catalyze private investment in developing countries around key development priorities. It’s still in its early stage of standardization and implementation but its financial inclusion attracts more diverse pools of capital from commercial investors. Diversity is wealth for finance.    

The diversity of life makes up the Earth’s biosphere, thus we call the variety of life on Earth at all its levels “biological diversity,” namely biodiversity. Biodiversity supports everything in nature that we need to survive—food, clean water, medicine, and shelter. But due to a rapidly expanding human population, exploitation, habitat destruction and climate change, biodiversity decline continues worldwide. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s postponed United Nations Biodiversity Conference will be held in Kunming, China on May 17 this year. It’s worthwhile to participate in the efforts to rescue biodiversity which is the most vulnerable pillar among the three pillars of sustainability—economy, society and the environment. The health of biodiversity is the wealth of the environment.

As Rachel Carson once said, “Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.” Her wisdom remains timely today in the 21^st century. Only man can create and safeguard a sustainable world with diversity and inclusion for oneself, one’s community and one’s environment. Diversity increases the wealth for one’s mind and livelihood.

“Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back.”

—Adam Smith

I was once a bereaved family member. Twice actually. Once in China, once in the United States. Two different experiences but the same emotional turmoil. There is no shortcut for coping with grief. Only to make sure you give yourself time, healthy diet and plenty of rest during this trying time. One of the takeaways from my grieving is to help those who are in need. This year America is facing more deaths in the covid pandemic, claiming 500,000 lives on February 22. Experts warn that about 90,000 more deaths are likely in the next few months. So, I feel obliged to share my thoughts on grief and mental health in general with you in the lens of sustainable development.

First, it may sound trite. You are not alone. You might be feeling sadness, disbelief, anger, guilt, or numbness right now. I’ve undergone all these feelings for the loss of my parents. At times they still hit me even though the longest physical separation with my loved one is more than a decade. My parents are still in my thoughts so I can’t say we are separated spiritually. You’ll live with a sense of loss for a very long time. But the good things are as time goes by, you’ll find your purpose in life and most likely you’ll take action to pursue it. In my experience, I turned to higher education. Returning to campus to learn and meet like-minded people is the rejuvenation of my life. I’m not surprised that you’ll be able to turn your grief into a driving force to push you for a change. You’re endowed with the tremendous strength from your departed loved ones to make a better life. This strength is their spiritual support for you only. Make use of it and live like you never before.  

Why do I tell you about this? Because my grief helps me better understand the fragility and resilience of humanity like never before. My loss is now translated into my gain from helping those who are in need. Your success is my success as the business world says. And our world needs you to make a fulfilling life for your wellbeing. This is the significance of sustainability—the balance of our internal and external worlds, the balance of the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society and environment), and intergenerational equity which is tightly connected with time—the time beyond your lifespan.    

“That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.” —Rabindranath Tagore

Second, during your grieving period, your brain is undergoing transformative “rewiring” as I call it. Give yourself enough time to do nothing and feel free to release whatever emotions you have. When I was grieving, I couldn’t easily talk about my grief. Until I learned creative writing and I found writing was my way to mourn and find comfort. I also came across interesting people to whom I had never thought I’d be interested in talking. Most importantly, Mother Nature talked to me every time when I was most vulnerable.

Have you watched the movies Nomadland (2021) or Land (2021)? Both latest movies, directed by and starring women, have shown how the power of natural environment impacts humanity, in particular those who suffer from mental trauma in dealing with grief and loss. The naked relationship between humans and nature stands the test of time and is revealed in artwork, music, literature, photographs, and many other formats and mediums. During the covid months, we can’t travel to our favorite outdoor locations but on the screen, regardless of sizes, we see the magnificent sunrise on the prairie and we hear the wildlife in the woods whispering their own languages. How can we not care for our natural environment for the sake of our own mental health?    

“The artist is the lover of nature; therefore he is her slave and her master.” —Rabindranath Tagore

According to the Washington-based newspaper The Hill, on a global scale, mental health and substance use needs are the single largest driver of disability costs worldwide. The post-COVID forecasts warn that the cost of treating widespread anxiety and depression will create a $1.6 trillion drag on the U.S. economy. And growing evidence has shown depression and suicide are linked to air pollution. Not to mention doomscrolling is slowly eroding our mental health. The act of a large quantity of negative online news at once is what mental health experts call “doomscrolling.” Yes, social media is helping people to stay connected during covid lockdowns and social distancing. But I have my reservation about resorting to our electronic devices for comfort and solace in the grieving process.    

Last but not least, coping with grief and loss is a universal human experience. Embrace it if you are now mourning someone (including your pets) or if you’re keeping company with a bereaved member. Things will get better even beyond your imagination after you give yourself time to regroup your thoughts, re-evaluate your values and responsibilities. Perhaps you may turn to reading poetry. I find the healing power of poetry is remarkable. Poems are pithy and precise as if they are musical notes soothing the pain in our weary mind. You may also turn to your hobbies and pursue an interest that you’d want to do but never have a chance to fulfil. When I realize my creative work reflect all traces of Mother Nature and her lively friends in the sky, in the woods and under the sea, I know as voiceless as they are, they’re welcoming me to start a new lease of life.  

As we overwhelmingly emphasize on building the STEM skills, we should pay equal, if not more attention, to the humanities—philosophy, social affairs and the arts. It is only through the humanities that we will increasingly recognize and build on what we humans uniquely are. In the Year of Healing, this is especially so. The humanities are helping everyone to get through tough times. Under covid lockdowns, if you were reading, having binge-watching, listening to music, drawing, playing a video game and even growing flowers and vegetables, you were fully entertained by hobbies and arts. One of the aspects of social development in sustainability is to improve access to education for all at all ages. Perhaps solutions journalism will show us more human-interest stories about improving emotional intelligence and dealing with grief.    

Whether it is addiction (including romantic love), grief or loss, the power to overcome it is in your hand. In my experience, I find knowing more about neuroscience helps me to better understand the brain and its impact on behavior and cognitive functions. With the help of family and friends, I’ve walked out of my dark abyss of grief. So will you. After you find hope and the meaning of life, you will move on to make a difference for yourself and for the future generations. I do believe in the months ahead, there will be many change agents joining the community of sustainability. In closing, I’m sharing with you some verses from Rabindranath Tagore and my heartfelt blessings for you.   

Where The Mind Is Without Fear
By Rabindranath Tagore
  
Where the mind is without fear and 
the head is held high
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms 
towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, 
my Father, let my country awake. 

Lately I’m struggling with the solutions to better reduce, reuse and recycle the plastic take-out boxes and plastic bags in my house. As responsible consumers, we agree to cut back on plastic waste by action. Despite voluntarily reusing shopping bags and plastic containers, we really cannot yet influence retailers and manufacturers to reduce the use of single-use plastics for packaging and transportation. While I was looking for best practices online, the powerful Google search engine introduced me to “Solutions Journalism.” I was like finding my own oasis to incorporate problem-solving facts with my global sustainability advocacy. Solutions journalism is the way to go in this transition period from a fossil fuel-dominated energy world to one that offers equal opportunities and renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind and biogas. Solutions journalism is what today’s mainstream media and grassroots journalists need to build a circular economy.  

As opposed to circular economy, we’re living in the broken system of linear economy which traditionally follows a “take-make-dispose” industrial model and business practices. Do you remember there was a time we only used glass milk bottles for fresh milk? The milkman would recycle those used bottles and refill them with fresh milk. In London, the retro style milk truck returns (video click here). Customers bring their own bottles and containers for milk and food. The vendor delivers the products door to door basically in their naked (unpackaged) form.  

How nice to have a plastic-free zone in a supermarket to experiment with the idea of zero waste. Zero waste is possible. A remote village named Kamikatsu (上勝町) in Japan has spent 20 years practicing just that. With a population of 1,300, villagers must separate their household waste into no fewer than 45 categories before taking it to a collection center. Those that are reused such as clothes, crockery and ornaments end up at a recycling store for the next user free of charge. These are best practices of a circular economy for us to emulate and expand for the far-reaching benefits of zero waste.

According to Solutions Journalism Network, solutions journalism is not only for aspiring and veteran journalists but also for concerned citizens who love great journalism. The journalism industry certainly needs a shakeup from bottom-up to top-down to regain public trust. Especially in the U.S. whose societal institutions—government, business, NGOs and media—are all suffering trust crisis over a growing sense of inequity. So what is good solutions journalism? It must meet these four ingredients:

1. Can be character-driven, but focuses in-depth on a response to a problem and how the response works in meaningful detail;

2. Focuses on effectiveness, not good intentions, presenting available evidence of results;

3. Discusses the limitations of the approach;

4. Seeks to provide insight that others can use. That is, the reporting should draw on sources with ground-level understanding.

Simply put, it is a way of journalism to cover more than just problems. How the problems happen and how to solve them are equivalently important. In the information-overloaded Conceptual Age, we often find ourselves lost in the sensational headlines and hypes from various media outlets and from our family and friends’ social media accounts. We don’t even realize we’re living in echo chambers. We have no shortage of knowing what’s going on near us or ten thousand miles from us. We also have no shortage of solutions. But we’re short of credible solution sorters to comb through reliable data and empower us with knowledge in order to better our well-being.

Besides, what more can we ask the government to do for us if we aren’t well-informed what the options are? Oftentimes the poor and the disadvantaged don’t even know they are being taken advantage of by the powerful and the privileged. For example, if you know the negative effects of an incinerator, will you be supportive of a facility to be built in your neighborhood? But what if you don’t even know what a facility is for in your neighborhood until you’re diagnosed with a lung cancer resulting from taking in excessive polluted air from that facility? Do you know more than 99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels, both natural gas and crude oil? Do you know that not until we hold the oil and gas producers accountable can we entirely resolve the plastic waste problem? Believe or not, ExxonMobil is taking action to address plastic waste by increasing plastic recyclability in plastic waste recovery. How effective will its plastic waste management be? Solutions journalism could play a role to connect the dots here. Currently, there is no U.S. federal law to curb plastic waste and push for a nationwide Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) on end-of-life recycling. Without nationwide legislative oversight of plastic packaging waste and manufacturing, our unrelenting cleanup efforts in the downstream of a linear economy won’t solve the plastic pollution crisis. Now I know I’m hitting a cul-de-sac with respect to the plastic waste problem in my house.

Information does not necessarily become knowledge unless it is relatable and accepted by an individual as being trustworthy. The polarization in the U.S. today is partly because of information confusion and education deficiency. Solutions journalist, a new job title for our Conceptual Age, should be able to inform and educate the general public not only “why” but “how” to better their life in the lens of climate mitigation and adaption. We may disagree a lot but no one in different social class is not concerned about the weather. Asking about what the weather is like is one of the ice-breaker questions in the English-speaking world. That is to say the change of weather affects our everyday life.

In terms of urgency, climate crisis is the greatest threat to mankind next to the covid pandemic. It brings chain reactions and shocks to multiple systems from water, energy, food to national security, finance and biodiversity. It once again tells us circular economy is the direction we should work hard toward by gradually decoupling growth from the consumption of finite resources. Yes, we’re already seeing many new types of jobs with new descriptions, including my recent epiphany to reframe a new hat for myself—Global Sustainability Writer. Precisely, I don’t just write about the environment but about the three pillars of sustainability—economy, society and the environment and the fourth—intergenerational equity.

Evidently, the covid pandemic has caused an uptick of plastic use including disposable masks, gloves and single-use plastics in hospital supplies. This trend has no sign of abating. E-commerce shoppers are grown to enjoy the convenience of a house-bound economy. In the meantime, with the rapid development of e-banking and e-finance, the linear economic business practices are also facing challenges. The Internet has allowed consumers to interact with financial institutions directly through their computer and smartphone, forcing the spatial convenience to transition toward a digital one. Recently I’ve read two books—Radical Markets (2018) by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl and Class (1992) by Paul Fussell. Both of them are not an easy read and yet are thought-provoking for me to recognize the core problems in the U.S. and find solutions to address economic and social inequality.

In Radical Markets, the authors introduce the power of auctions based on Nobel Prize laureate in Economics William Vickrey’s ideas. They argue that “the rise in inequality and the fall in labor’s share are both fueled by and fuel a rich-get-richer dynamic.” The linear economy needs a long overdue “mechanism design” to solve major social problems that we are experiencing not only in the U.S. but around the world. Here, without reservation, I advocate for more “Solutions Journalists” to be added in various beats in journalism. To name a few, political reporting, food reporting, education reporting, health reporting, economic reporting, civic and law reporting and even photojournalism. A picture is worth a thousand words. A good storytelling image can evoke people’s to-do spirit and inform them with facts through visual techniques.  

In solutions journalism, perhaps we should think about how we can create a narrative of solutions not only for the disadvantaged but also for citizens who feel the disruption will “downgrade” their status. Take the example of my plastic waste problem. Workers who make a living from producing plastic bags may feel a sense of accomplishment and dignity because they’re able to make a living from the fossil-fuel-dependent economy. But they will lose their jobs if, say, a solar farm replaces their factory. What if they read from credible news stories about how other peers successfully transform themselves by taking green jobs? What if solutions journalism provides resources for them to acquire employer-sponsored career training for these green jobs? What if they also find out from the media outlets that they can sign up for a technical training program near their rental homes? Our data-driven society is hungry for relatable stories like these.      

If we understand the problem, we can create solutions to protect ourselves. I believe knowledge can be acquired. Skills can be developed. Abilities can be sharpened. Underprivileged people don’t have the equal opportunities to basic human rights including health, education, housing, water, sanitation and other services essential to their survival. Thus, in addition to government aid and NGO charities, solutions journalism will be their silver lining to make life-changing decisions. I hope information transparency allows every responsible citizen to not only release credible information for those who are in need, but also hold those distributors of fake news accountable. Perhaps solutions journalism will show us how to do fact checking with critical thinking. In my future posts I’ll share my discovery of sustainability solutions from a global perspective. I do request your support by spreading this free information for those who are in need. If you like my work (click here), partnership is what we can do better for what we care for. 

By the way, the term “caste” in the U.S. wasn’t new. Sociologist Paul Fussell adopted it in his book Class nearly thirty years ago, long before the recent New York bestseller Caste (2020) by Isabel Wilkerson. As Fussell wrote in the opening chapter, class was a “touchy subject.” He added: “Especially in America, where the idea of class is notably embarrassing. In his book Inequality in an Age of Decline (1980), the sociologist Paul Blumberg goes so far as to call it ‘America’s forbidden thought.’” Now, forty years later we’re revisiting the same American wound against the backdrop of the covid pandemic, climate crisis and economic slowdown. Will solutions journalism show us the way to rebuild public trust for the societal institutions?

Philosophers from different historical periods and cultures remarkably shared the same thought. Whether Socrates or Lao-Tze, it’s not hard to find their admonition against narrow-minded thinking. The more common saying we hear today is “the sky’s the limit,” metaphorically meaning the sky has no limit. Especially when NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars, and when China’s Tianwen-1 robotic probe also entered Martian orbit with plan for May landing, I think linguists may need to create a word of grandeur to capture the Martian-style-relativity-bounded sky. The sky is truly endless, and yet if you set a limit on its size and distance, it becomes tangible and attainable like future human expeditions to Mars.     

If we are running our life like a satellite orbiting the 12-month calendar, we have just departed from Black History Month and entered Women’s History Month, which is celebrated during March in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. (It’s noteworthy to mention the days in the calendar of February 2021 are the same as those in March of 2021 except that the latter has three extra days in the calendar.) Let us hope this month is not a “Groundhog Month,” but instead, is one with progress and prosperity as we welcome the spring equinox.

Speaking of Women’s History Month, the International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8 is no stranger to Chinese people. Indirectly, IWD becomes a holiday for female teachers and mothers in China. They receive flowers or presents from their loved ones and employers on that day. As the wave of feminism grows, IWD brings opportunities for merchants to frame the holiday as an appreciation day to thank the significant women of a man’s life. That prompts some male chauvinists to call for a holiday for men on an allegedly equal footing. In a mercenary society, what else cannot be monetarized? I doubt few consumers understand why we celebrate IWD.

Narrow-minded people believe it is purely a holiday for women and about women. But if you believe the sky’s the limit, you might buy the logic. Without men, women cannot be identified independently as women physiologically. Imagine that there is only one gender on the planet. No comparison, no distinction. In the same vein, without human gestation in a woman’s womb for 40 weeks, men cannot be born and recognized as boys for their primary sexual characteristics. Women’s History Month is a month-long learning and re-learning opportunity about women and about what makes humanity as a whole by honoring not only men in a narrow-minded binary sense, but also non-men genders in the lens of diversity and inclusion.       

I remember when I was a pupil in Guangzhou, I had a half-day off on IWD. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t qualified to observe the holiday as I was only a girl in my playful years. But because many elementary (and secondary) school teachers were women, and my school just gave everyone a half-day off, including the students. Kids love holidays. That was how IWD was understood by me in my childhood. Until I grew older, I came across Mao Zedong’s dictum “Women hold up half the sky.” IWD suddenly became a bit revolutionary to me because of Mao’s authoritative acknowledgment of Chinese women. As described in my memoir, I felt privileged to work with a room of women in publication. After I became a full-grown woman and listened to too many harrowing real life stories about women’s survival did I understand the women issues are full of complexity and relatively speaking, boundaryless. Geographically, women suffer similar discrimination and violence from men. Socially, women share similar duties to rear children and bear stigma surrounding woman’s moral responsibilities. Imagine if the Bible was written by a selected group of women, what the world would have become today?        

I don’t completely agree with Mao’s dictum, partly because in various industries, the gender ratio varies; partly because I believe women could hold up the same sky as men do if both genders are given equal opportunities. To achieve that will require active listening from all genders. If you are willing to listen, you might be able to hear the voices that have been silenced from silent spring to silent sky, you might be able to open your mind a bit because you might find silence is the presence of everything. In other words, if you only hear your own voice under an endless sky, you know your world is incomplete.

This is why social media tools can do good and bad to our interpersonal relationships. This is how authoritarian states run their propaganda machines on social media. This is what drives American people polarized and Britons in limbo in the post-Brexit era. Listen, you will hear Indian dancer Mallika Sarabhai’s advocacy for the struggling performing artists under covid lockdowns. Listen, you will see in the movie Land (2021) how a woman survived in the wilderness like a man with true grit to overcome grief and eventually reunite with the lost self. Listen, you will understand the urge to treat everyone fairly and equally is synonymous with breaking censorship in an authoritarian country. To date, China has banned BBC World News to continue airing inside China for alleged failure in providing truthful news reporting about China. A group of public service broadcasters expressed concern following the ban of BBC content on Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK. BBC has been a leading media source for reporting about China’s “re-education” camps for Uyghur, Hong Kong democratic movement, and even the recent investigation by the WHO team in China about the origins of COVID-19. None of these news headlines is pleasurable to Chinese censors’ ears and eyes. So, it’s back to the golden rule that it’s not a politician’s words but her action that exemplifies transparency and accountability. It takes two to tango. Women can be as feisty as men when they are perceived themselves marginalized, silenced and mistreated. For centuries, women have been censored by authoritative men. Between men, that inequality of status usually leads to fistfights or a war as a collective action. So in the end, we are back to the core problem—we haven’t done enough to listen to the minorities, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized. Only when we respect one another and are given equal opportunities will we find ourselves not being judged by our conscience, and to attain comfort in the balance of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The competition of getting one’s voice to be heard has never been stronger in the digital age. Subsequently, the tolerance for other’s voices is significantly reduced. Women issues are not only about gender disparity. They also highlight the importance of listening to others and respect the women you admire and love, create opportunity for the women you cherish, and tolerate the women you may not share the same wavelength in order to free yourself from disputes and noises under an endless sky.

Believe it or not, if we are good listeners, we’d have enjoyed the quietest period with Planet Earth in decades during 2020 as the pandemic significantly reduced seismic noises. According to a group of scientists from 33 countries, up to 50% so-called ambient noise generated by human activities and factories humming was dropped after lockdowns came into force around the world. As a result, small earthquakes that otherwise would not be observed were detected in some places in order to improve human understanding of the seismic hazard. The complexity of women issues is like the seismic noises undetected in the fabric of our society. After discovery and giving credits to the role of women in a society, we will have a better understanding of how endless the sky is for any individual rather than living in a paranoid conceived by narrow-minded thinking.

Regardless of gender, race and nationality, it is never too late to ponder women issues in the spirit of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s spearheading for the basis of sex, in which she quipped, “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Regardless of gender, race and nationality, we’ll see the endless sky if we dare to end narrow-minded thinking and embrace diversity. Happy Women’s Day!

[I would like to be remembered as] someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.

–Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Every February as I celebrate my birthday and my late mother’s, I also think of the significance of February in American history—it is marked as Black History Month to celebrate the achievements by African Americans and their central role in U.S. history. Since my understanding of American slavery deepens, February adds weight to my celebration. It has become a month of memorial and gratitude, and a month dedicated to the color black—“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” If spring brings us light, the tail of winter in February is the darkest before the dawn.

In physics, black is not a color. A black object absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes. In fashion, black is a timeless and à la mode color. In art, “There is no black in nature” was the popular refrain of the impressionist painters in the 19^th century. They stopped using black pigments and used mixtures of red, yellow and blue to capture the fleeting effects of light in their paintings. In many cultures, whether the East or the West, black evokes images of death, misfortune, and evil spirits. I remember some years ago an African American acquaintance told me half-jokingly that he liked his woman like his coffee—black, bitter and bright. I followed his advice to examine the quality of brightness in his metaphor. Under the lamp, I saw the reflection of the lightbulb in the black liquid, so bright against blackness like a well-juxtaposed black-and-white photograph.

In Black History Month, every American should remember it is the Thirteen Amendment that abolished slavery in the U.S. What a monumental event it was. Last year, a monumental event also took place in the continent of Africa. According to the World Health Organization, Africa is free from wild polio, leaving just two countries where the virus remains endemic, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition, China achieved its longstanding goal of eliminating extreme poverty by the end of last year. It was a milestone for global efforts to fight poverty by lifting 93 million Chinese people out of poverty since 2013. Chinese politicians like quoting Deng Xiaoping’s famous saying, “No matter if it is a black cat or a white cat, as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.” Well, in response to President Xi Jinping’s vow to eradicate the last vestiges of extreme poverty within the country’s territory, officials tried all possible means to reach the goal. I have to say, without the draconian One Child Policy that prevented 400 million births, China would have to call for an extension of time to eliminate extreme poverty. So, the black cat is certainly a good cat in this celebratory Chinese narrative.         

Black is more than a skin color. Black is common in natural resources. Coal is black. Black coal is a sedimentary rock that composed mostly of carbon and hydrocarbons. Speaking of coal and carbon, I think of fossil fuels. To date, Asia is home to nearly 80% of coal consumption. China, India and the U.S. ranked as the top three countries with the world’s most coal consumers and producers in 2018. Last year, China pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. And its long-awaited national emission trade scheme is expected to be launched in the middle of 2021. Japan vowed to reduce 26% of its electricity from coal in 2030; and Germany set the goal of phasing out the use of coal-powered energy by 2038. It seems that responsible countries are gradually bidding goodbye to the Era of Black—the era of coal.

This November, Sir David Attenborough polar research ship from the Great Britain will set sail for its first Antarctic mission. Four years in the making, the giant vessel is a beautiful beast in red. But the Arctic sea ice is melting very fast and the great ice sheets are also melting, it will be a race with time and stamina for mankind to complete this expedition. Last July, it was unbelievably hot at 38 Celsius degrees in Siberia. Due to the Arctic heatwave in 2020, the Arctic sea ice coverage was the second lowest on record, and 2020 may be the hottest year since records began. Can you imagine to live in a condition of extreme heat without air-condition and freshwater supply? Under that condition, it is not hard for anyone to feel dizzy and might be blacked out. In Siberia, not only glaciers melt in the record-breaking heat, but wildfires, loss of permafrost, and an invasion of pests are consequences of global warming. Heatwave is a silent killer. It is hard to quantify the casualties and death tolls of a heatwave.                        

To sing praise of black, no one can do better than rapper Dave. His performance of “Black” at the Brit Awards last year stays on my mind until today. I second that. “Black is beautiful. Black is excellent. Black is pain. Black is joy. Black is evident.” When we were kids, we were afraid of being alone with darkness. When we are grown up, we are still afraid of being alone with darkness—but now, it is usually about making sense of who we are and where we are going. With hope, we will get out of the tunnel of our innermost darkness. Black is be brave and be bright.

You are not mistaken. I’m inspired by Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” a classic rock song that has been played at many big public events. How can we not dream? The poor dream of the days when they own a warm shelter and have food on the table every day. The rich dream of an easier way to realize self-worth and safeguard established success. As a concerned global citizen, after watching on TV President Biden rejoin the Paris Agreement with the stroke of a pen and reliving the teary moment of VP Kamala Harris’s swearing-in at the inauguration ceremony, I feel energized to dream of a diverse and sustainable planet.   

If we learn to dream, we will find our way to solve problems. If we learn to dream, we will conjure hope to make our social-distancing days count.

We are living on a planet full of discards. On land, we’re disposing of billions of tons of junk into landfills with capacity shrinking annually. At sea, plastic proliferation is seen in every nook and cranny, even the deep sea creatures in the world’s deepest Mariana Trench are found eating plastic. With rapid technology advances, space exploration is no longer an exclusive activity of one country. The “out of sight out of mind” mindset is harmful to our awareness of landfill problems. We don’t see the problem but it does not mean the problem is not there. If we don’t reduce and recycle municipal solid waste at the source, overconsumption in the market economy only will soon decrease the capacity of landfills and increase greenhouse gas emissions. Frankly, mankind is living with the consequences like frogs gradually boiling to their death.

Likewise, strong countries are competing in space exploration. Whenever they launch satellites and rockets, they litter in space. All the debris is traveling at a speed that is ten times faster than a bullet, creating destructive heat and power. As a result, space junk will become an increasing hazard to active satellites and spacecraft. It’s likely for us to see a real-life star war taking place with satellite collisions.

As Benjamin Franklin quipped, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It’s thrilling to see two new developments of space trash cleanup underway. The European Space Agency has signed a US$ 102 million deal with a Swiss start-up to launch a special satellite by 2025 in order to snatch pieces of space debris in the Earth’s orbit. In East Asia, a Japanese company and Kyoto University have joined forces to develop the world’s first satellite made of wood by 2023. Wooden satellites would burn up without releasing harmful substances into the atmosphere or raining debris on the ground when they plunge back to Earth. Well, if you are a sci-fi lover, dream on!   

These are good examples of public-private partnership, also known as 3P. It’s natural for business owners to cut costs and maximize efficiency and for governments to take the least risks and maximize the impact of policies and programs. Private sector has its own advantage of maximizing results with a low cost while public sector is unique in ensuring equitable distribution of goods and services. 3P is a desirable marriage for people and planet to make amends in the face of environmental degradation.

Regardless of nationalities and the size of businesses, corporate social responsibility (CSR) to companies is like a civic duty much like paying taxes is to individuals. Companies with CSR outlast those that don’t. Think about Andrew Carnegie and his steel empire at the turn of the 19^th century. His notable The Gospel of Wealth (1889) illustrated the responsibility of philanthropy by the richest 1%. Sadly, our world is becoming more unequal in distribution of wealth, healthcare, education and natural resources. According to Oxfam, an international nonprofit organization, 82% of the wealth generated globally in 2017 went to the richest 1%, while half the population struggled on less than $5.50 per day. And COVID-19 is exacerbating the gap between rich and poor. So are Internet of Things and technology. Well, if you are a policymaker with ambition, dream on!

One of the exciting aspects of dreaming is prepare yourself for new experience. I remember in my youngster years attending the bi-annual Canton Fair and book fairs everywhere made me feel like a kid in a candy store. A reading pen which is an old technology now caught exhibitors’ eyeballs in those days. A laser wood cutter could realize your dream of building a treehouse with precision. Even in pre-covid years, my every visit to the Home Depot was never disappointed. Entrepreneurial ingenuity is a crystal ball for the future. Recently, the Singapore Food Agency has given regulatory approval for lab-grown chicken meat, making the country the first in the world to give its go-ahead to chicken meat that does not come from slaughtered animals. Founded in 2011, East Just Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up, will apply animal cell culture technology to the development of food products. Whether it is cell-cultured chicken or plant-based meat options such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, if you are game for new experience, new lifestyle, or even better, for an exchange of a heathier environment and yourself, plant-based diets can be as tasty and diverse. Well, if you are a gourmet with imagination, dream on!     

E-commerce and social media tools bring us convenience and efficiency but it is the offline experience that will make our living whole. It’d be a nightmare if the real-life social networking dies in social media software when people spend more time online than offline. Yes, we can find almost everything online but not everything online defines who we are. I like to analogize that experience of the difference between home-made coffee and a cup of coffee prepared specially for you at a café. If you are a practitioner of experimentalism and mindfulness, dream on!

I don’t know since when the food labeling began listing the calories intake of every ingredient. If we can quantify calories and inform consumers, why not we do the same to inform customers about their carbon footprint on their purchased goods and services? A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, or product, expressed as carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent. To parody a known saying, in the face of climate crisis, we need to do as the French people do. We need action to fulfil the Paris Agreement. Time does not wait. One Celsius degree of global warming matters a lot, especially to coastal communities and low-lying countries. For some species, it literally means life or death.

We need dreamers to promote 3P and partnerships of all capacities and formats. At the heart of the Paris Agreement, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are the achievement of long-term climate action goals set by member states. By the end of 2020, 71 countries submitted new NDCs. The most ambitious submissions included the EU, which agreed to slash the EU’s GHG emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, a significant improvement over the EU’s previous pledge of at least a 40% reduction by 2030. Colombia committed to a 2030 emissions cap nearly 37% below its previous unconditional target. Many smaller countries, including Kenya, Jamaica, Fiji, and Grenada have also stepped up. And it’s noteworthy that the U.S. has rejoined the Paris Agreement under the Biden Administration. Dubbed “climate czar,” Secretary John Kerry was named as climate envoy for national security. Combating climate change is to be elevated as a national security priority. As Kerry told the press, “[curbing climate change] can be the greatest economic transformation in global history.”

Dreaming is the easiest, free exercise everyone can do. Live the life of your dreams, or at least do your best to get near your dreams. That is the purpose of life. Dream on.  

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”

—Arundhati Roy, Indian author

To recap where we are in the U.S., here are a few important numbers that encapsulate the speed and destructive power of COVID-19. This infectious virus has pestered mankind relentlessly for more than fourteen months, reproducing itself from host to host infecting more than 100 million lives globally.

On May 27, 2020, five months after the first reported U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant was found in Colorado, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 surged past 100,000 people.

On September 22, 2020, four months later, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 200,000 people.

On December 14, 2020, three months later, the U.S. COVID-19 deaths topped 300,000 when vaccinations began to roll out.

On January 19, 2021, one month later, the U.S. COVID-19 deaths were reported to top 400,000 people. The 400,000-death toll is greater than the population of New Orleans, Cleveland or Tampa, Florida. President Biden even warned the worst of the pandemic is yet to come, comparing the COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. to the country’s troop fatalities in World War II.

This heavy toll boils down to human ignorance and arrogance of a zoonotic disease, a disease shared between animals and people. Precisely, COVID-19 is a novel zoonotic coronavirus related to SARS-CoV and a number of other bat-borne SARS-like coronaviruses. Natural selection is a powerful force. Each viral infection increases the risk of a mutation that could make the virus more infectious, deadlier, or cause vaccines or treatments less effective. To date, two new variants of the novel coronavirus have been discovered in Britain and South Africa. They have spread with ferocious speed locally and abroad. You may have come across their medical labels—variant B.1.1.7 for the British strain and variant 501Y.V2 for the South African strain. On January 22, the more highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variant, B.1.1.7, was detected in twelve U.S. states. A week later, the South African variant was first found in two cases in South Carolina. Some tests suggest the South African and Brazilian variants may be less susceptible to antibody-rich blood from COVID-19 survivors. GISAID, a global science nonprofit group, warns that new variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been reported in Brazil, France, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK.

The transmittable virus vs. the distribution of vaccines

If we divide the world into two categories: “the Haves” are for countries which are able to stockpile COVID-19 vaccine, and “the Have-nots” are for countries which are left behind due to a lack of financial means and leadership. A glimpse of the country names that are reported to have new variants of COVID-19, it is not difficult to group them into “the Haves” category. Will South Africa prove the world wrong about the impression of vaccine distribution inequality, given the country is the most unequal country in the world? What about those countries in “the Haves” category? Will they distribute COVID-19 vaccines promptly to those vulnerable and most needed?

I happened to speak to a couple of healthcare workers and seniors over aged 80 recently. Everyone has their own grievances. Either the official website or hotline of vaccine registration failed to respond to an overwhelming number of inquiries and requests, or the COVID-19 vaccine was out of stock and the restocking date was indefinite.

A medical assistant in her twenties told me that she had her first shot of vaccine and she was required to register again for the second shot. She called the state public health office 30 times and finally got through the hotline. However, the voice on the other end of the line told her that demand was higher than supply and they had no clue when the new shipment would arrive. The poor young soul was told to call back sometime in the near future. An elderly from upstate New York told me his vaccination scheduling was deferred to spring due to shortage of vaccine. To date, almost every American is impatiently waiting for their elected officials to offer some sort of aid and assistance, such as answering the phone calls from voters, responding to the website queries and resolving problems ranging from financial relief to COVID-19 vaccination.

Will new algorithms be ever needed the most to improve communication in public service?

Will robots take the job soon to record human complaints and facilitate problem solving?

Will an employee reward mechanism to be built for public servants to address taxpayers’ grievances based on employee’s time management? 

The distribution of vaccines definitely is not fast enough to satisfy global demand. This January, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised a red flag about “catastrophic moral failure” because of unequal COVID-19 vaccine policies. Canada is reportedly to have ordered enough vaccine doses to protect each Canadian five times whereas nearly 70 lower-income countries would only be able to vaccinate one in 10 people. Which are the low-income countries? To name a few, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Ukraine have reported nearly 1.5 million cases among them. The rich nations only account for 14% of the global population but they have bought up 53% of the vaccine candidates announced so far. If this is not money talking, what is?

As shown in the chart, on January 23 Israel and United Arab Emirates led the world in delivering more doses per person. Before the one-dose vaccine is viable, the two-dose vaccines are tested more effective and will take a longer time for users to complete the entire inoculation within up to six weeks. Several countries are now talking of giving only one dose of any two-dose vaccine to individuals, and distribute the second dose to benefit a larger population. According to WHO, to safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of the world’s population would need to be vaccinated. And the threshold for herd immunity varies with each disease. For polio, the threshold is about 80%; and for measles, it requires about 95% of a population to be vaccinated. The threshold for COVID-19 is not known but it is estimate to be 60% of the population.

That said, even though the rich nations secure more vaccine for their own populations, as long as the poor nations are not vaccinated at an equally fast speed and by the similar capacity, or even larger due to their larger populations, the world cannot return to its pre-COVID-19 normalcy.

The sooner people are vaccinated, the less chance for viral mutation to happen. If not, the outcome will fall into a reinforcing feedback loop—the more people are infected, the more conducive to viral mutation through natural selection. As a result, the easier-to-spread new variants may lower the vaccine efficacy to ineffective. In that regard, the transmittable virus outpaces the distribution of vaccines.  

In the U.S., vaccination is one of many polarized topics. The anti-vaccine movement gains momentum from misinformation and religious propaganda. If you have received spams recently about how harmful COVID-19 vaccine is, you are not the only one. I am also a spam receiver. A report by The Lancet noted that 31 million people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, with 17 million people subscribing to similar accounts on YouTube. What’s the gambit behind this movement? The report shows the anti-vaccine movement could generate US$1 billion in annual revenues for social media firms. Social media firms should have been denounced for having what WHO called “catastrophic moral failure.”

The distribution of vaccines vs. the spreading of Valentinus

As the pandemic-laden world is welcoming Valentine’s Day which has been celebrated since the middle ages, I find the occasion cannot be more apt for remembrance and resilience. Many families lost their loved ones to COVID-19 last year. Why not make this year’s Valentine’s Day a memorial for the departed and dearly missed? Like virus, love is infectious. Unlike virus, love helps mankind conquer fear and get through hard times. I reacquainted myself about the origin of Valentine’s Day. The name “Valentine” originated from “Valentinus” in ancient Rome. “Valentinus” was a common name in the late Roman Empire, meaning “strength.” We need strength now like no other. We need the widest and fastest spreading of Valentinus to get through the months ahead as the COVID-19 vaccination is rolling out in every community.

Historical records point to several Christian martyrs named Valentinus. According to some accounts in ancient Rome, Emperor Claudius II executed two men both named Valentinus on February 14 of different years in the 3^rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.

When I think of anti-vaccine protesters, I can’t help thinking of the motto “In God We Trust” that is placed on U.S. coins and bills. Simply because many protesters claim themselves to be children of God, they must trust God just as the motto on the U.S. monies reminds us. Devout followers love God and God loves his children. Can the motto be interpreted as “In Love We Trust”? If it is so, the distribution of vaccines and the spreading of Valentinus should go hand in hand.

If only the world would be as lovely as the song “Lovely Day” sings, and if only the distribution of vaccine would win the race at the fastest speed, our days ahead might be more hopeful in the company of Valentinus, strength.

Imagine that when you refresh your smart phone the first thing in the morning, all you see in notification and story headlines are about laughing. What would be your first reaction? Has the world gone upside down turning to triviality? Or, has your world made the turn to accept all hard news with an ear-to-ear grin? I do look forward to that day when laughing becomes a law, a code of conduct, a foreign policy, and a necessity synonymous to breathing, food, water among others in the lowest level of Maslow’s pyramid of human needs.

When 2021 started a month ago, an array of new laws and regulations went into effect on January 1. In the U.S., covid-related laws included those offering help to essential workers, boosting unemployment benefits and requiring time off for sick employees. 2021 is the beginning of a new four-year presidency under President Joe Biden, signifying more legislative changes and compromises yet to come to fruition. In China, the country’s first Civil Code which was passed by the rubber-stamp parliament last May also took effect on January 1, 2021. Dubbed “an encyclopedia of social life” by many, the Code is composed of a total of 1,260 articles, covering a sweeping collection of existing laws and regulations as well as judicial interpretation related to civil activities and relations, such as property rights, contracts, personality rights, marriage and family, succession, and liability for tort. More recently, Chinese central government has released its first five-year plan (from 2020 to 2025) on building the rule of law in China. So from now on, there is central planning in a five-year interval for economic growth as well as in the judiciary arena in China. Will these official indicators make China Hands and pundits too busy to remember how to laugh at leisure?    

Will the China’s version remind you of the Napoleonic Code (1804) which was established by French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte? If the Napoleonic Code is one man’s ideological architecture that watched over hundreds of thousands of presumably obedient commoners, China’s Civil Code solidifies the ruling party’s absolute power over the people and their private life. With the help of big data, the Code gives Chinese authorities amble reasons to collect, screen, manage and manipulate personal information. If there is measurable data, there will be manageable solutions to various social problems. If there is law, there will be compliance and resistance. China’s Civil Code will resolve some conflicts and trigger new controversies at the same time. It will substantially influence every citizen. If only lawmakers were to design the systematic compilation of laws for the best interest of the masses. However, securing power is the utmost purpose for a code, or the system of laws. James Madison once said, “Justice is the end of Government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”    

A majority of people pay little attention to the changes of existing laws or arrival of new rules unless their needs and interests, both financially and psychologically, are impacted by them. I would not care about the Farm Bill unless the Farm Bill becomes a law and it will cause a spike of food prices, specifically, making my favorite zucchini more costly now than yesterday. China’s marriage rate hit eleven-year low in 2018, with the trend continuing at the start of 2019. The Civil Code requires a cooling-off period of 30 days before Chinese couples who want to dissolve their marriage can do so in an effort to lower the country’s soaring divorce rate. Heated discussion about the new law spread like a virus on the Chinese internet. Just glimpse at this statute about marriage and family, and you can see that I think the beneficiary is the society, or precisely, the party leadership, not the individual.       

It is a pattern that the more economically developed a society becomes, the more stable the fertility rate is. The stable fertility rate in some developed countries and regions even declines. Europe, the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Australia have long been on the list of low fertility rates. Taiwan just joined the club of low fertility rate. The self-ruled island has its lowest fertility rate in 2018 of 1.06 children per woman, one of the lowest in the world. For the population in a given area to remain stable, an overall total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed.

China thrives on strong productivity and domestic consumption supported by a gigantic population base. But this system cannot be sustained without outer forces—as the country is steering toward a moderately prosperous society, or “xiǎo kāng shè huì” in pinyin, where the middle class dominates the majority of the population, China cannot escape the same pattern seen in other economically developed countries. One of the outer forces is the implementation of the Civil Code to influence citizens’ everyday activities from cradle to grave. The cooling-off period in the Civil Code may chill fiery domestic conflicts temporarily but engenders fear among young loving souls who might someday tie the knot.  

If laughter is the best medicine, when I reflect on today’s Chinese society, I can only laugh at the Civil Code’s top-down approach to a man’s inalienable right to pursue happiness. I am a living proof of China’s notoriously famous One Child Policy which ended in 2015. In my memoir, I sympathized with Chinese women in my mother’s generation whose body and sense of self-efficacy were deprived of by the cruelty of this national policy. Every time I think of the draconian family planning policy, I think of education. When I traveled to Singapore years ago, I was told single women in that city state had “three highs”—high education, high pay, and high standard for Mr. Right. A sense of appreciation rose from the young me for those Singaporean women—with education, women know how to protect themselves; with education, contraceptive choices are made voluntary, not coercive; with education, women’s growth brings social progress, rather than threatening men’s constant socioeconomic insecurity in a patriarchal society. History would be rewritten had Chinese women received education about birth control instead of contempt and suppression from the society.     

Robin Diangelo made a pithy remark in White Fragility that lingers on my mind. She wrote:

“While women could be prejudiced and discriminate against men in individual interactions, women as a group could not deny men their civil rights. But men as a group could and did deny women their civil rights. Men could do so because they controlled all the institutions. Therefore, the only way women could gain suffrage was for men to grant it to them; women could not grant suffrage to themselves. . . . white men granted suffrage to women, but only granted full access to white women. Women of color were denied full access until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

China’s high divorce rate did not happen overnight. In 2016, 50.6% of postgraduate students in China were female, exceeding the percentage of men for the first time. Women college graduates have outnumbered men in China. The same phenomenon has happened in the United States for roughly four decades but is not represented proportionally in the workforce yet. Compared to the old days with a rooted tradition of patriarchal societies, today’s Chinese single women in urban areas are more or less like the Singaporean women with “three highs.” While men continue to dwell on the fantasy of possessing power and dominance of women’s bodies for their want and desire, highly educated women in China are mocked as a sexless “third gender.” Will the Civil Code tame the third gender in China or unleash their civil wilderness?

Urbanites in Chinese big cities are no different from those in Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong, leading a middle class life with shelter, car and a secure job. A number of news stories have sounded the alarm that young people in Japan—particularly men—are turning their back on sex. “Sexless Japan” is now a reliable media meme bolstered by a plummeting birth rate and an aging population. If Chinese leadership cares about fertility rate and productivity, will they worry about Japan’s today becoming China’s tomorrow? Will the amended Civil Code expand to citizens’ love life in the future? Could the abolishment of Hukou system become reality in an amended legislation? That will definitely bring laughter to many separate families across China. In these broken families, children are left behind in villages with their grandparents while their parents are making money in big cities. Without an urban Hukou, rural children and their parents are technically second-class citizens in big cities.        

If we know how to look for laughter as seen in our imaginary front-page news headlines, life is more than a seven-day cycle surrounding the familiar loops and turns. I’ve discovered two places to receive healthy doses of laughter medicine during this stressful time. The Laughing Ritual, or “Owarai-shinji (お笑い神事),” is held annually on the first Sunday of December in Higashi Osaka City, western Japan (in Japanese). Legend has it that the sun goddess Amaterasu secluded herself in a cave and the Gods laughed together to coax her out. They placed a Shinto rope, or “Shimenawa (注連縄 しめなわ),” on the cave to prevent Amaterasu from ever hiding herself away again. Last year’s ceremony at Hiraoka Shrine was an exception due to the pandemic. The priest and participants could not laugh out loud with their masks on. The other laughing activity originated from Mumbai, India in 1995 and spread around the world with a name called “Laughter Yoga.” Perhaps a little bit of laughter yoga will alleviate your stressful mind and vacate space in your heart to include a tad tranquility of life.       

Laughing is contagious. When we can listen to other’s heartfelt laughter, we will then become part of it. When we learn to let go what troubles us the most, we will make room in our heart to accept the other, the unwanted, the uninvited, the unexpected, forming our own law of inclusion with peace. All in all, live laugh law.

The debate about renewable aviation fuel has been around for some years, but it has become heated in the wake of concern about climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic adds fuel to the fiery discussion about whether we should cut back on air travel. The popularity of video telecommunication services triggered by social distancing shows possibilities for the reduction of, some if not all, business air travel as well as saving money for air tickets and hotels. In a nutshell, the conundrum of flying boils down to its economic and environmental impact.

Environmentally, aviation overall accounts for 2.5% of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions but its overall contribution to climate change is higher. Air travel not only emits CO₂ from burning fuel, planes affect the concentration of other gases and pollutants in the atmosphere, such as emissions of water vapor, soot, sulfur aerosols, causing a decrease in methane and ozone. Scientists coin this non-CO₂  impact as “radiative forcing.” And global aviation accounts for 3.5% of effective radiative forcing that impacts on warming and 1.9% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Not to mention that geospatial measurement of air pollution is controversial. Non-CO₂ radiative forcing from aviation is overlooked in the Paris Agreement on climate change. When we talk about a country’s CO₂ emissions from aviation, we are only looking into CO₂ emissions from domestic flights. International aviation is not counted within any country’s emissions inventories or targets. So, technically speaking, when you take an international flight next time, you shall not feel disappointed for not doing more to reduce carbon footprint, because you will be flying in the air where there is no carbon law for the commons. Perhaps climate activist Greta Thunberg need to reframe her refusal to fly.

As much as we pay more attention to indoor air quality resulting from the pandemic, air pollution from aviation—both inside and outside the aircraft—is affecting human health as well. Nitrogen oxides (NO_x) are a major source of air pollution and have been associated with asthma, respiratory disease, and cardiovascular disorders. At cruising altitude, airplanes emit a steady stream of nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere. According to a MIT research, the generation of these chemicals due to global aviation results in 16,000 premature deaths each year. Will there be creative space to redesign a plane for emission filter and recycling? 

Electrification of everything from transportation to buildings and industry is an exciting transformation in this century. Energy efficiency is what we need to pursue and perfect individually, societally and globally. In my daydream of novel writing, airplanes should be powered by solar, geothermal sources and wind. Mankind would have figured out how to store renewable energy. Economically, electrification of everything will produce many new jobs. Major U.S. airlines have committed to goals in a United Nations agreement that aims for carbon-neutral growth after 2020. Indeed, 2020 was an awful year for global aviation industry. Pundits estimate the industry will not return to pre-covid performance until 2024. International Air Transport Association (IATA) data shows that worldwide air passenger traffic fell 64% until last August. Bankruptcies and massive job cuts for airlines will continue in 2021 unless governments increase aid. However, government’s intervention is comparable to a long-term investment in the industry. Sustainable aviation fuel and socially responsible business practices are key not only for contemporary but also for future generations.

As a growing number of people in developing countries will join the middle class, they will be able to afford electricity and electrical amenities, Internet of Things (IoT) and even air travel. Because of COVID-19, we cannot travel by air as often as we normally do. According to the Global Carbon Project, a locked-down pandemic-struck world cut its carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 by 7%, the biggest drop ever. The reduction of ground and air transportation in 2020 has contributed to part of the big drop of carbon emissions. But it won’t last long as soon as people return to air travel as frequently as before.  

I can’t help thinking: Will the increase of air travel be more detrimental to the environment than the continuous use of carbon-based fossil energy sources? Will the change of travel behavior be more effective to climate mitigation than the swift from fossil fuel to renewable aviation fuel? After all, the rebound effect might take effect in which travelers might feel encouraged to fly more because they can do it with a cleaner conscience. In economics, the Jevons paradox can also explains this dilemma where chasing efficiency alone might have opposite effect on the total consumption. If economic benefit is the driving force to make the transition to renewable energy in aviation more actionable, the estimate that the market for renewable aviation fuel has is quite promising. It is expected to witness a combined annual growth rate of more than 56.05% from 2020 to 2025. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ties its SDG no. 7—Affordable and Clean Energy—to aviation as well. These are some examples of action on its website. The global aviation sector has a role to play in 15 of the 17 SDGs, some in small ways and others with much more significant influence.

Flying is the age-old dream of mankind. Thanks to the Wright Brothers, this once-unbelievable dream has become tangible and ordinary like taking a selfie on a smart phone. Nevertheless, facing the existential emergency of rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns, every air traveler including flight crew and airline employees is responsible to crack the code of the conundrum of flying—how can we reduce carbon footprint while satisfying our desire of flying and traveling? How can we make an inclusive and sustainable future for the pandemic-stricken aviation industry? Would you be willing to get aboard and brainstorm with these characters from The Hobbit?