I received an offer from the Commerce School of the University of Toronto a month before I was turned 18-year old. The next year, I was quite depressed and eventually recognized that I had no courage for working in finance; no sensitivity to numbers for being an accountant; nor eloquence that is needed in marketing. In the second year of undergraduate study, I decided to switch from the Commerce School to the School of Arts, and studied fine art history for the rest of my undergraduate years. I felt the happiness of study and research: a pottery from ancient Greece had so many stories to tell, and an abstract painting was not as superficial as I thought before. Writing long essays was not boring and thick art history book were not dreadful. So I believed that I should work with arts in the future.

I came back to China after I got my bachelor degree. I tried three different jobs within the first two years of my graduation. I assisted in performances arrangement of international performing groups for theatres, worked on copyrights importation of books as a copyright agency, and participated in concept design and FFE design in an interior design studio. All these experience brought me back to school with a bunch of questions. “Why tickets for a chamber music performance were more expansive than tickets for a full play of Chinese opera?”, “Why no foreign publishers would ask me about copyrights exportation of Chinese books?”, “Why the clients always asked for ‘Simple European Style’, ‘French Style’ or ‘Neo American Style’ when choosing their interior design?”

Canada is a multicultural country; I did not feel the disadvantages of Chinese culture during the years I was there. I had an Indian friend who watched Chinese soap operas every weekend, my Romanian friend read The Romance of Three Kingdoms with a lot of interests, and my Jamaican friend could sing Socialism is Great fluently. It was only when I came back to China, I realized by my heart that the western culture “bullied” the Chinese culture. However, the ones that lived in such environment day by day were insensitive about such circumstances and would not agree with me. They answered me “Because the chamber music is more upper-class!”, “Because Chinese books are boring!”, “Because a room in Chinese style is way too old-fashioned!”  

I wish to change these thoughts, I want to find a way that allows more people to accept and appreciate Chinese culture. I searched different universities around the world for relevant graduate programs, within all of them, the Cultural Industries and Arts Management program from the School of Arts, Peking University became my first choice. And the School of Arts, Peking University embraced me with an offer paper. I now researching on intercultural communication of Chinese opera, passionately participated in international symposiums of culture and arts, and worked with research projects of intercultural communication of culture and arts. I truly wish that I could make a modest contribution to the intercultural communication of Chinese culture and arts. I hope the beauty of Chinese arts can be recognized and appreciated by more people in the world.