Empowering Youth Voices with CIERP: A Reflection on My Path from Shanghai to Tufts
By Nancy Zhou
My 7:03 a.m. alarm sounds and a warm McDonald’s breakfast sandwich with soy milk on the side completed the “holy trinity” of my winter morning routine on yet another mundane gray weekday in 2013.
As I rushed around the apartment, bickering and laughing with my grandfather about my boring and stressful term at middle school, I peeked outside my window and witnessed the chaotic atrocity that most Shanghainese residents normalized. “Wow, the same grimy skyline as yesterday," I called out to my grandfather. "Look outside! We are literally living at the peak of a mountain!” I sighed and proceeded to head to school with my father by car.
Shanghai’s air felt comparable to a dizzying combination of dirt, ultra-fine particles, and chemicals prophesizing and fueling the prelude to cataclysm. The daunting overcast backdropped severe pollution and traffic congestion as if people could keep living this way regardless of the cleanliness of the oxygen they breathed. Masking was a diurnal must. Incessant coughing noises from the pedestrians were truly a test of my patience. Fantasizing about pretty skyline sceneries while sitting dully in my first class, I found myself helplessly yearning for something that I had taken for granted. These sceneries of gloominess agitated me. “I wonder how my grandfather managed to get groceries today,” I whispered to myself, “I hope he stayed at home.”
Unfortunately, my anxious thoughts and intuitive worries about my grandfather’s physical condition evinced the tragic reality that he became extremely sick that night and received a diagnosis of lung cancer. Apart from the complex medical terminologies regarding his symptoms, his aging and daily exposure to the city’s aerobic toxicity due to his habitual outings to local food markets and cooking delivery trips to our extended families’ households ultimately led to his deteriorating health.
Anticipatory grief from losing the light of my life encroached on my soul along with the uncertainties that came with such a period of sudden tragedy in addition to my concurrent academic aspiration to study abroad. A few weeks after my grandfather’s hospitalization, with a forceful grimace, I flew to the U.S. in quest of an international education that he had always encouraged me to pursue. Staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror at an east coast elite private boarding school before my thirteenth interview, I could barely recognize my face and held onto a fragment of optimism that perhaps he would stay alive. Unfortunately, upon my return, I learned about his passing. The overwhelming pain felt like ancillary fertilizer for overnight maturity as I grieved with a promise to myself to sustain his legacy of selflessness, compassion, and love, carrying two hearts in one.
Similar to how nature’s impermanence manifests in its shifting cycles and aesthetics of seasons, human existence is transient yet fulfilling, for we give meaning and passion to our experiences. In my case, I confronted the challenge of adapting to restorative familial relations and dynamics with equanimity. Throughout my eight years of scholarship in diverse U.S. institutions, I dealt with homesickness and emotional turmoil which yielded lessons of embracing change with courage and humility. I leaned into what ached. Pondering intrapersonal values, vulnerabilities, and the intersecting identities I share with those around me, I have sought to participate in cross-cultural dialogues and multilateral climate research to support efforts of activism and promulgate awareness, especially among Generation Z youngsters like myself. My perturbation about China’s environmental contamination turned the wheels in my intellectual consciousness. Those goals have since guided my undergraduate and graduate endeavors at Tufts University.
As a Chinese woman, I have been consistently motivated by personal impediments and privileges to embrace opportunities for intellectual and social growth. My research internship with the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of International Affairs in the summer of 2020 provided healing and showed me the potential of policy research. I was determined to improve indoor and outdoor air quality by assessing L.A.’s fulfillment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) in comparison with fellow C40 cities such as Beijing, Wuhan, and Shanghai. Working on the project, I realized the power of research was guiding me through loss and more importantly, engendering tangible changes on municipal, residential, and commercial scales beyond national boundaries to bring about the balance between human activities and ecological well-being.
My attachment to the past manifested itself in reactions that oscillated between two extremes: teeth-shattering anxiety at one end and absolute numbness at the other. I had to retain trust in myself and my path ahead. In the following semester, brought home to Shanghai because of the pandemic, I resumed my Tufts journey online and decided to expand my workplace skills through an eight-month consultant program in venture capital analysis of the SDG initiatives in China. Thanks to the “holy trinity” of my winter morning routine in early 2021, including roaring 3:03 a.m. alarms and a toasted plant-based homemade breakfast biscuit with a hot black coffee on the side, I maintained a rigorous day-time job and stayed up to attend synchronous online seminars at night. Despite the unusually demanding workloads, I was able to do this by managing my time effectively, negotiating schedules with my teachers, and practicing traditional exercise and regenerative mindfulness meditation. Through my involvement in the sustainability and green economics fields, I witnessed first-hand the exigency of climate-conscious investments and development schemes and became more confident that I would thrive at Fletcher as I continue actualizing an environmentally-friendly lifestyle while fulfilling my grandfather's hopes for me in learning and caring for others.
Fletcher’s abundant resources and the “grandparental” mentorship I have received from Tufts’ professors always inspire me to embody my grandfather’s selflessness and empathy to face the realities of an arising crisis. I am grateful to my family, friends, and mentors for their unconditional support and affirmative guidance. With two more years of studies, I look forward to advancing my distinct scholastic and professional objectives in climate change ethics and engaging in research and on-campus teaching tasks to offer my awareness and comprehension to those in need.
Nancy Zhou is a dual MALD/MA candidate at The Fletcher School and Columbia University.