Camellia Yang
Met 2024-11-25 12:00 at Shenzhen Marriott Nanshan, Shenzhen, China.Age 36. Grew up in Shandong, China. Moved to New Zealand for final year of university then did graduate degree there to be able to stay and get citizenship. (We met many years ago in Wellington New Zealand, and have kept in touch since.) Now nomadic.
Parents are great and supportive and don't pressure her to do anything she doesn't want for herself. But she does want to have a child, though doesn't feel she needs to marry whoever the dad will be. We talked about my experience raising a kid solo, and travelling throughout.
For three months now she's been staying at Balaji's Network School just outside of Singapore. Started with 150 people now about 70, and just 2-3 of them are doing (co-founder) Bryan Johnson's strict diet, getting super-thin and fit. She's writing two books: a collection of articles about nomadic living, and another collection of dreamy science fiction stories.
Why did Chinese have a reputation for being loud, rude, and pushy? Maybe because they often travel outside the country in tour groups, and an entire tour group of Americans or Australians (or whatever) would also, in groups on holiday in a foreign country, be relatively loud and rude.
She's noticed that Chinese residents are now more polite, but she thinks it might be because of the facial recognition cameras. Knowing you're being watched made people behave better. When I commented on how the cars in traffic were not honking horns, she said they might be fined for doing so. Made me wonder if these things that outsiders would say are bad in principle ("Big Brother is watching!") are actually wonderfully effective and helped set better norms for the next generation. She's noticed the most improvement in the rural areas, like where her grandmother lives, where the roads used to be rubble and are now really nice.