During the May Day holiday, I hadn’t planned on traveling far, but my mother-in-law urgently needed to return to her hometown, so we had to make a rushed trip. To avoid heavy traffic, my wife suggested leaving early in the morning. Unexpectedly, my mom called at 3 a.m., asking if we could leave then—she wanted to tag along for a visit too.
The past month has felt both idle and yet strangely hectic. By the end of each day, I’m never quite sure what I’ve been busy with—nothing concrete comes to mind. So, I thought I’d jot down a simple diary to keep track.
Qingming is hailed as one of China’s four major traditional festivals, but in my memory, it has never held much significance, and I’ve rarely participated in its activities. Scrolling through my Onedrive photo timeline, I realized I’ve only actively taken part twice—in 2012 and 2019. Now, in 2025, it’s my third time.
Recently, I came across a disciplinary commission notice online and realized that an old friend of over a decade had been placed under investigation for corruption.
Around 2021, I started reading a lot of web novels. Some were classic works topping historical rankings on Qidian, others were filler novels I stumbled upon through a random Douyin video, and a few were books I abandoned after only a few chapters.
On Wednesday evening, while driving to pick up my child from school, my wife called to tell me that my cousin’s baby had been born. Hearing this news, I suddenly felt a weight lift off my shoulders.
It has been a long time since I last wrote about the Russia-Ukraine war. Over the past few years, this topic has become excessively heated online, with everyone holding their own opinions—many of which are irreconcilable and sharply opposed. After writing a short piece early in the war titled As an Ordinary Chinese, How to View the Russia-Ukraine War, I never updated my thoughts on the matter. Now, it’s time for an update.
Today, I saw someone sharing the Global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking in a WeChat group. China ranked 76th globally, on par with Moldova and the Solomon Islands, only 5 points higher than India, and 40 to 50 points lower than European countries. My intuition told me that this index might be flawed. China has been seriously tackling deep-rooted corruption in recent years, so it doesn’t make sense for its ranking to drop so significantly. Upon further investigation, I found that this index is truly jaw-dropping.