Hello, I am Jackson Li. My Chinese name is 李芝明. I, myself, am from Portland, Oregon, however, my parents were from Guangzhou, China, so I can speak both Cantonese and English. I have also been learning Mandarin, however, I don’t consider it to be a strength of mine. My intended major is Psychology, and I hope to be able to also minor in Chemistry or another a foreign language.

Something interesting about me is that I like to collect vinyl records. I like supporting artists that I like and so that is one of the ways that I do it. A few records that I bought recently are Igor by Tyler, the Creator and Self-Titled by Kids See Ghosts. Another thing I recently started to do is go to concerts. The first one I went to is Daniel Caesar, but it definitely is not going to be my last.

One of the most interesting things to me about East Asian societies is the music. There are a lot of artists that I really enjoy listening to such as DEAN and Shirley Chen (陈雪凝). I think that music from East Asian cultures is very meaningful and the melodies are relaxing. Some of my favorite songs are Instagram by DEAN, 后来 by Rene Liu and 绿色 by Shirley Chen. Aside from music, I love East Asian cuisine. I grew up eating mostly Chinese food, but I got around to eventually trying lots of other foods. One of my favorite foods is tteokbokki because I really like spicy food.

Looking at what we have discussed in the class, I have found everything to be really interesting. I’m very interested in the origins of these East Asian languages. As a Chinese person, it’s very intriguing to see what Chinese writing was once like and how the language has evolved. The lectures are very interactive with the iClicker questions, which I find very helpful. My general approach with learning is the same as the lecture. I go through the reading and then I go do the quizzes. It helps me see what I have learned and what I am missing. Then I go back to the reading and write down important information. The course has provided a lot of information that has changed my perspective on the three languages. The difference between how each language uses Chinese characters was very important for me because I thought they had mostly the same meaning and uses.

I look forward to seeing where the class goes and what we will end up learning about!