This year, I turn thirty-six. It is also my seventh year in Sydney. Looking back on the winding path that brought me here, I feel no regret for time squandered — only a deep reverence for the workings of fate, and above all, an ever-deepening clarity about who I am and what I am meant to do.

I was born in Anhui Province, China — the youngest daughter in my family. When I was small, my father would cover cardboard with ink and let them dry, then hand us brushes dipped in water so we could practise our characters on the darkened surface. Each time, he would hold the board up, study it, and nod his approval. At nineteen, after the national college entrance examinations, I chose to study law at China University of Political Science and Law. Yet that same year, a stroke of serendipity made me realise something with sudden certainty: at nineteen, I had found the one thing I truly loved — calligraphy, that thread running through the vast span of Chinese history, binding together cultural heritage and artistic beauty at their very core.

For more than a decade after that, I wrestled with an immense inner conflict: I did not want to practise law; I wanted to do what I genuinely loved — Calligraphy, and to make a life. But this was diametrically opposed to the profession I had trained for, and most people around me thought the idea hopelessly naive.

In 2019, my family and I moved to Sydney. Because legal practice is jurisdiction-bound, I found myself standing once more at a crossroads: re-qualify as a solicitor under Australian law, or commit fully to the thing I loved.

There was hardly any question. I chose the latter almost at once, and began teaching calligraphy to students in Sydney. It was a gradual journey, one rich with quietly beautiful memories, and through it I discovered a second certainty in my life: I wanted to be a teacher — to pass on wisdom, impart skill, and resolve doubt.

As a girl, I spent long hours copying Ou Yangxun's calligraphy on the Jiucheng Gong. In it, Wei Zheng praises Emperor Taizong for "winning distant peoples through the virtue of literature and culture." I was filled with admiration. In the span of a single life there is always one's moment; the thread of literary heritage passes from generation to generation and is never severed. Though mountains and oceans may divide us, the flame of civilisation can still burn bright as a lamp, casting its light to the four corners of the world. The great Northern Song Confucian scholar Zhang Zai once declared: "To establish the heart of Heaven and Earth; to secure the livelihood of the people; to continue the lost teachings of past sages; to inaugurate peace for all generations to come." This has remained the supreme spiritual aspiration of China's Confucian intellectuals. And so I thought: here in Australia, using calligraphy as a bridge to carry forward thousands of years of Chinese cultural heritage and to foster exchange between Eastern and Western civilisations — what a profoundly meaningful endeavour that would be.

The regional nature of culture can present an invisible chasm to those who have not engaged with it closely. How might more people come to understand traditional Chinese culture through the bridge and bond of Chinese calligraphy? This is a question I have reflected on deeply.

Across this world, different regions have given rise to different civilisations and modes of expression, yet at the most fundamental level, all human beings share the same authentic aspiration toward beauty, light, and an orderly continuation of life.The written word is the vessel of culture. The Chinese people have invested the essence of their cultural spirit in the act of writing their own characters, elevating it far beyond mere record-keeping into a higher realm of aesthetic pursuit. At the same time, informed by an understanding of life's balance and natural order, they have passed calligraphy down through the generations as a practice for cultivating the self and nurturing the spirit. To revere the ancient — to follow in the footsteps of a timeless culture through the art of calligraphy — is the most direct and sincere path.

And so I resolved to hold a calligraphy exhibition in Sydney. I spent nearly two years preparing for it. At the very beginning, I did not even know how to find a suitable venue in this city. During those two years, doubt crept in: Could I find the right space? Would anyone care about something so niche here? Would people actually come? How would I cover the costs? Eventually, I told myself: be utterly certain — do I want to do this, and should I do this? When I asked my heart that question, the inner turmoil fell away. I began reaching out for help. Sometimes what came back was simply an inspiring piece of advice. Then, gradually, one friend offered a suitable venue; another helped solve the funding; another contributed translation and publicity; yet another connected me with their own contacts, hoping to rally still more support. These women are the benefactors of my life. Together, we share a single hope: to bring a traditional Chinese calligraphy exhibition to Sydney — a place that holds the culture in which Chinese people take pride, a window through which one may glimpse the beautiful and peaceful, gentle and modest, ceaselessly striving and magnanimously virtuous soul and true character of this civilisation.