Chef No. 1
Profile pic? More like pot-folio.
No. 1: Actually, I’ve liked writing since I was a kid...I know that’s such a cliché way to start (laughs), but I’ve always been super talkative and had this strong urge to express myself. I feel like student writing isn’t just schoolwork. It can really shape your interests, you know? It makes you think, “Ah, maybe writing is...this legitimate, almost official, outlet to express yourself outside of just studying and test prep.” So I started writing from a young age. I think...the first thing I ever published online was an original piece. I was probably 12 or 13 when I posted that.
No. 1: My middle and high school followed a sort of “Hengshui model”, which basically means there was no time for...well, I guess I should explain what the Hengshui model is, right?
Cleo: I'd love to hear your take on the "Hengshui model," because I have a feeling our understandings of it might not be exactly the same.
No. 1: Sure, sure. Because last semester, when I was taking creative writing, I had to explain it over three essays (laughs). People here (in the US education system) really don’t get it.
No. 1: First of all, my school had both middle and high school, so that the middle school was attached to the high school. And most students stayed for six years straight. Why six years? Well, you're not allowed to take the high school entrance exam (zhongkao) in a different district. Especially in the suburbs. If they didn’t control that, all the top students would just flock to urban schools, and then the suburban ones would completely collapse on enrollment rates. Even if you wanted to get into an urban school through the entrance exam, it was almost impossible. Most of the top students had already been selected by schools within their urban districts long before, and for everyone else, the chances were so slim that no one dared to gamble on it.
No. 1: In middle school, we had one day off a week. Well, technically a day and a half. Saturday, and then half of Sunday. But we had to be back at school by Sunday afternoon for evening sessions. We’d get up around 5 a.m. every day because of morning exercises. If I remember right, morning exercises started at like 5:40, and then we’d begin early reading at 7. So it was morning exercises, then breakfast, then early reading. Classes ran from early morning till noon—five classes in the morning, four in the afternoon, and three more sessions for evening study. That was the schedule from 7th grade all the way through 12th.
No. 1: We weren’t allowed to bring phones into school AT ALL. They were super strict about it. And I think the more you suppress something like that, the more people just see phones as toys, as entertainment. We didn’t really realize that you could actually look things up, find information online.
No. 1: People always criticize the Hengshui model for the early mornings and late nights, but honestly, that’s not even the main issue for me. What really gets me to ANTI-Hengshui is that it forces everyone to be the same. There’s only one path laid out for you, and even if you take a different route and eventually get what you want, they’ll still say you did it wrong. But I really believe every student is different. You can’t just cram everyone into the same box. And if someone has another way of doing things that works better for them, why not let them? I think this system...it’s taken away what could’ve been a really good future for a lot of people.
Cleo: Thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate you saying it.
No. 1: I’ve always loved writing, but I never really had the space or time for it. I read this book, How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ, and it made me realize how much writing depends on having both time and space. So many women just don’t get to write because they’re busy raising kids or caring for their families. And for someone like me, growing up under the Hengshui system, it was the school rules and the pressure to study that took up all the space and time. On top of that, teachers and parents didn’t really get it either.
No. 1: For us, getting into that high school was basically the only shot at college. All the other schools just weren’t good enough.
No. 1: So…It wasn’t until maybe junior or senior year of high school that I had this deskmate—she was, well, using an old term here—she was a fujoshi. (laughs)
Cleo: (laughs) That really takes me back.
No. 1: I think I knew from a really young age that I had an interest in creative writing. And...I wasn’t good at math. Like, really not good. Which honestly feels like kind of a shared memory—Beijing math exams? I was the kid who failed. (laughs)
Cleo: (laughs) I’m laughing because I was terrible at math too.
No. 1: Like, it was that bad: the night before the gaokao (college entrance exam), my math teacher pulled me aside and said, “I know you have issues with me, but don’t let that affect your exam tomorrow. The score is yours, make it count.”
No. 1: And I was like, “Teacher, I don’t have a problem with you. I literally just don’t know how to do any of it!” (both laugh)
No. 1: So yeah, writing became my way of expressing myself. In an environment that was super tightly controlled, where you could barely breathe, writing gave me a space to say what I really thought. Not the stuff the system wanted me to say or conform to. I just wanted to write. Because you’re waking up so early, going to bed so late, barely even have time to talk to your classmates. So many feelings just get stuck inside. And writing was the only outlet I had. The only way I could be seen, maybe.
No. 1: Another thing is, I really believe that the more you’re told not to do something, the more you want to do it. And my parents were really not supportive. The school wasn’t supportive, so obviously my parents took the same stance. They wanted me to focus all on studying.
No. 1: But writing, to me, has two parts—input and output. Input means reading lots of books outside the curriculum. Output means having the time to actually write. And neither of those things fit with the exam-focused Hengshui model. So yeah, my parents were totally against it.
Cleo: Did they know you were posting online? Or like, what kind of stuff you were writing?
No. 1: I tried not to let them know, but they’d always find ways to figure out.
Cleo: I see.
No. 1: I feel like that’s just classic East Asian parenting. (laughs) You know, like going through your school bag and stuff. I didn’t have a laptop or a phone at school, obviously, so I’d handwrite everything in my notebook. Then on weekends, when most kids were finally getting their “screen time” to play games or whatever (laughs), I’d use that time to type everything up on the computer and post it online. They didn’t have my account password, but they knew I was doing something, so they’d go snooping.
No. 1: I remember one time really clearly. There was a parent-teacher meeting, and the school said to come at like 3:30 p.m., but my parents showed up at noon. They went straight to my classroom, and just tore through everything—my desk, my bag, everything.
Cleo: Oh my god.
Cleo: But even with all that, you still didn’t stop writing.
No. 1: It made me want to write even more! (laughs) I just got sneakier about it. I mean, writing was the only way I could express myself. And what they were doing—what the whole system was doing—was trying to suppress that expression. So the more they pushed down on it, the more I wanted to push back.
No. 1: Looking back, I’d say yeah, that was my way of resisting. But at the time, when I was 15 or 16, if you’d asked me why I was writing? I probably would’ve just said, “I dunno. I just love it.” (laughs)
No. 1: There’s something else I want to say.
People tend to think the problem with fanfiction is the sexual content, but honestly, when I look back at the stories that got censored, sure, maybe they eventually moved toward something sexual (laughs).
Cleo: Oh well. (laughs)
No. 1: But the thing is, I never directly described anything explicit. At most, I might’ve gotten as far as mentioning someone’s shirt...and they weren’t even undressed! (laughs) Yet once you ban sexual content, what happens?
People can only write about kissing. And once kissing becomes sensitive too, people start second-guessing whether they can even describe a hug.
Cleo: Mm.
No. 1: Because I wanted to avoid trouble. I tried to find a rational excuse for why I kept avoiding it? Well, I couldn't find one. (laughs) Maybe it’s just human nature. And on another level, I do think part of it is political. For example, after I came to the U.S. for school, I started reading fanfiction from outside China.
And I noticed that people there would discuss things. Things like, what they thought about society, about political systems. Just the other day, a friend recommended a Taiwanese fanfic to me. It talked about the legal profession, of whether or not the death penalty should be abolished, what happens when the law fails to bring justice and victims take justice into their own hands, and whether those victims should be punished. I mean, really classic legal dilemmas. And when I read it, I thought: Hadn’t I thought about these issues before? Why wasn’t I bringing them into my own writing anymore?
Cleo: Mm.
No. 1: In fact…It’s not even that I consciously rejected those topics. It’s that now, my mind doesn’t even go there anymore. Or if it does, it immediately tells itself: Don’t write that. But why is my first instinct "No"? Who planted that "No" in me? Or rather—why did I start treating it as a "No"?
No. 1: I can’t give you a clear answer. I’m still thinking about it. But whatever the reason, after reading that fic, even though I admired it a lot, I asked myself: Would I ever write about something like this in fanfiction? And my answer was: NO. Absolutely not.
Cleo: Mm.
No. 1: Because I don’t know what kind of trouble it might bring me. Not just trouble at a “national” level. Even among readers…readers who’ve internalized self-censorship so deeply—I don’t know if they would accept that kind of conflict. (long silence)
No. 1: So my answer is NO. Even though I know these issues are meaningful.
Even though I have my own opinions about society. I still won’t bring them into my writing. And that brings me back to why I started writing in the first place. I wanted to express myself. But now, I realize, this “self” inside me is the first to tell me: "There are so many things you shouldn't say." That, really, is the most terrifying part of self-censorship. (laughs)
Cleo: Indeed.
No. 1: At some point, the lines blur. It’s no longer clear whether these limits came from the outside, or from myself, after analyzing the risks. On one hand, the more you self-censor, the less you speak, the less you even think. On the other hand, I don't think people are truly unaware. It’s that—even when we know, we choose not to say it out loud.
Cleo: True.
No. 1: Our voices become more and more collective, more homogenous.
There are so many opinions that are worth arguing out loud,
but we don't have the platform,
we don't have the space,
we don't have the context to say them.
Because everyone is caught in self-censorship, trying to avoid trouble.
No. 1: And maybe that’s why people say that fanfiction platforms feel more and more boring these days, why so much content feels empty, drained. Some say it’s because "there are too many kids now," but I don't think that's the real reason. It’s that writers aren’t willing to write. Readers aren’t willing to read.
No. 1: The list of things you're unwilling to see grows longer and longer. And the list of things you're able to accept grows shorter and shorter. Self-censorship doesn’t just mean you censor yourself individually. It also means your entire community shrinks its boundaries. The platform’s rules shrink your freedom. The whole society moves toward "less and less."
No. 1: It’s a spiral.
Cleo: Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this.
