More about me

Before my journey at Oxford, I spent half a year at the University of California, Berkeley for academic exchange and about 4 years in Hong Kong completing my undergraduate programme in broad discipline of language, culture, and communication at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Growing up in a mountainous region in China, I was surrounded by a variety of Xiang dialects from an early age. When I was a child, mimicking different dialects was of great fun. It seems, however, the rise of Mandarin has been overshadowing many local dialects. Meanwhile, new regional Mandarin accents are emerging too. I am enthusiastic about maintaining language diversity and probing the social meanings of language varieties. I have been working on a Plastic Mandarin project and conducted fieldwork collecting speech data from urban high school students in Changsha, Hunan, China.

I worked as an intern at a tech start-up Mo Intelligence Ltd, during which I developed skills in building Android phone apps and some experience in speech technology including speech-to-text and speaker identification.

I enjoy films and gain energy from travels. Painting and cooking without a recipe are relaxing for me. Hiking, Bachata dance, and yoga are my nourishing activities. I am learning piano by myself and exploring how to take better photographs using my camera. As a child I aspired to be a writer, but unfortunately my blog is still quite empty without any updates for years.