2024–nowUpstate New York
- Left big tech and stopped being a cog: I want to build products that truly matter, and be a user of my own products
- AI product consultant; on the side I advise startups on product
- I hope to design products for plants and ecology. Design for nature.
- Moved to a small town in New York, August 2024
- Volunteer with Wild Ones Capital Region, promoting native plants
- Cornell Master Gardener Trainee
- Through the long autumns and winters, volunteering is my link to the world outside
- Finally saw the coast redwoods, and the giant sequoias in Yosemite
- A plot in a community garden, where I share Chinese vegetables
- Always trying a new hobby: crochet, calligraphy, painting, piano, clay, stickers, seal carving
2022–2024Shanghai
- Shopee Shanghai: e-commerce search product
- Trip.com: AI product manager, AI Trip Planner
- Four classes in 2024: calligraphy, watercolor, Chinese painting, flower arranging
- A two-hour round trip every week to flower class, and a junior florist certificate at the end
- Honeymoon in Australia: my favourite was the plants of the Cairns rainforest, and in Tasmania we were lucky enough to see the aurora australis
2020–2022Shenzhen
- Shopee · Senior PM: food delivery in Southeast Asia from scratch; I owned the dispatch product
- From zero to four countries and 1M orders a day
- Back in Shenzhen I finally had a life: a big south-facing balcony, and energy from the plants friends gave me
- Learned yoga and sketching
- Drove from Shenzhen around Hainan island; a typhoon on the way back meant leaving the car in Hainan
2017–2020Beijing
- Intern at Esri’s Beijing R&D center, on ArcGIS Earth
- After graduating, map products at DiDi: building our own map service from scratch until it led the industry
- With my intern pay, showed my grandparents, my mother and two aunts around Beijing
- Finally close to the China Film Archive, and Q&As with directors I love
- Five films in a row at the Beijing film festival
- A road trip in Xinjiang, stunned by the scenery of Kanas
- Most of the time, work filled almost everything
2011–2018Guangzhou
- B.S. and M.S. in GIS, Sun Yat-sen University
- National first prize, Esri China GIS software competition: internet products can solve the needs of people around you, and that is cool
- Planned to stay in research; a week of solo fieldwork in Suzhou
- After an internship at an urban-planning institute I still chose tech. Every big-tech internship turned me down; I applied to 30+ companies, found the courage for an English interview with Esri, and in the end got the product job I wanted most, at DiDi: my second turning point
- University was hard at first: I had given everything to get there, and others seemed to arrive with ease
- A small-town exam kid seeing the wider world for the first time
- First trip abroad: Songkran in Thailand
Until I was 18Henan
- At 18, passed the gaokao into Sun Yat-sen University: my first turning point
- Henan has one of China’s largest and toughest gaokao pools; Sun Yat-sen is a top national university (Project 985), the leading one in South China
- Grew up in a small county town in Henan
- In one class in eighth grade it came to me: if I wanted a bigger world, only I could get myself there
About
Where I have lived and worked, and the communities I am part of.
Timeline
In the community
- Master Gardener Volunteer, Cornell Cooperative Extension Albany County (since Sep 2025): horticulture training done, with a first-year commitment of 60 volunteer hours in community education.
- Volunteer, Wild Ones Capital Region (since Dec 2024): event posters and printed plant ID cards for native plant sales, with a companion site you reach by scanning a card.