My Uncle’s typewriter
A world connected, divided, and reimagined
This morning I was sitting in front of a newly adopted Olivetti Lettera 35 typewriter, admiring its svelte Italian design, savoring its robust keystrokes, and wondering the many stories its previous owners might have produced over its lifetime. It transported me back more than 20 years to Shanghai when I was attending a university. To further my study abroad, I needed a typewriter to fill out the application forms.
Thankfully, my uncle kindly lent me his! And I typed and typed, until I earned the opportunity to start my journey through Australia, Finland, and finally the United States. Over these years, both my uncle and I have witnessed a world becoming increasingly connected but also more divided, intertwined by our personal triumphs and failures. Today, I tell this story thanks to the keys of a similar typewriter that reignited my passion for writing in a time of great strife.
The door opened
It was a time when most people believed the exchange of people, ideas, goods, and cultures was beneficial for everyone. There was a curiosity on the part of both Chinese people and the world at large. China was very poor, isolated for so long. The Chinese felt the urgency to learn and to catch up, and the world was equally eager in helping China develop and progress.
My uncle happened to be one of the lucky forerunners when China opened to the world. He was the Chief Engineer for ocean liners that crisscross the international waters, ferrying goods. His earlier trips were limited to Japan and Southeast Asia, but eventually expanded to the United States and Europe.
Traveling the world on an ocean liner
Like many sailors, my uncle liked to tell his stories over family dinner. And the more beer and wine flows, the juicier the tales. There were the Kobe cows who were fed beer, listened to classical music, and enjoyed regular massages. There were 5 lanes of traffic each way in the greater Los Angeles area: endless red taillights in one direction and equally endless white headlights in the other, a magnificent scene for the new visitor.
He was not only generous with his words, but also with his gifts. The novelty goods he brought gave us a tangible connection to the new worlds. I still remember the first can of Coca-Cola that we later reused as a piggy bank, the first black & white TV rescued from a Japanese thrift store, and the giant bag of pistachios from Costco in California.
I was one of the first to use a personal computer, an Apple II, starting to write lines of code in BASIC. As part of the “Learning computer needs to start with babies” campaign, I inadvertently embarked on the road to engineering, and eventually entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. During a social dinner in Los Altos, California, one of our neighbors happened to be the pioneering woman who mobilized housewives to solder and build those very first Apple II computers for Jobs and Wozniak. You could say fate played a kind hand in my life.
There were plenty of cultural exchanges as well: we had the latest Hollywood movies every Saturday in primetime on national TV, and Formula 1 racing during the weekends. We could watch all the Disney cartoons as long as we finished our homework from English class, which started as a second language already in 5th grade at elementary school.
My uncle’s stories inspired me to start my own adventure. His typewriter also contributed in its own small ways that empowered me to cross the oceans that my uncle had sailed, to explore new continents, new languages, new knowledge, new people, and new cultures. I felt a world connected. But that was truly the honeymoon between China and the rest of the world,
Troubles loom
With the increasing economic power, China arrived at a crossroads. It was no longer the poor cousin that was taken in by relatives with open arms, fed well, and sent away with pocket money. China now stands as a peer, a competitor, and even a threat.
When I was working for Nokia in the early 2000s, I went back to China every winter holiday to visit my family and friends. I learned very early on that Huawei was not just a cheap knock-off for rural telephone systems, but an up-and-coming engineering giant that could one day unseat Nokia and Ericsson. I dutifully wrote an internal memo to Nokia managers, but naturally, they laughed it off.
Fast forward to 2019, Huawei overtook Nokia and Ericsson by such a large margin that Huawei’s CEO lamented that it now can no longer find any peers or competitors anymore. It reflects a rising sentiment in China that people are proud of what they have achieved, and now look forward to becoming a leader instead of a follower. This is definitely an unfamiliar role for China, after lagging far behind the advanced nations for over three centuries. Huawei, toying with its leadership role, now ends in the epicenter of geopolitical turmoil.
My uncle, ever ambitious, also met his own challenges during the height of his career. He was in Hong Kong at the time, managing a sizable company in international shipping and trade. As the epicenter of Asia’s financial center, Hong Kong dazzles with super rich tycoons and their meteoric success. Without much training in finance, my uncle jumped into the riskiest currency futures and leverages. The result was brutal, and his finance career ended as quickly as it had started.
The great divide
Throughout the recent decade, increasing globalization and the tech revolution have led to traditional middle-class jobs disappearing. There were trade wars and geopolitical conflicts, promoted by demagogues on all sides who have been feeding upon the growing resentment toward the widening gap of wealth and wellbeing.
The great divide is also apparent in cyberspace. WeChat, Baidu, TikTok, and Alipay on one side — WhatsApp, Google, Instagram, and PayPal on the other. They are parallel universes, each confined inside their own fortress. The truth cannot be communicated, lies fester like disease in dark corners.
My uncle has been battling cancer for the last few years. As tough as any sailor, he did reasonably well in overcoming several bouts of cancer, relying on both modern Western medicine and ancient Chinese meditation. But he was getting weaker, both physically and mentally.
In 2020, COVID-19 crept into Wuhan, before sweeping across the globe leaving carnage behind. Isolated within the limits of their homes and their countries, people are getting anxious, depressed, angry, and desperate. And the politicians wasted no time in capitalizing on these feelings to further divide people.
If we allow the politicians and media rhetoric to deepen the divide, it is not difficult to foresee a world that further degenerates into misunderstanding, suspicion, fear, hatred, conflict, and even war between people. We do not need to look beyond the Second World War to find a stark warning of how quickly things can deteriorate.
A future on our fingertip
When my uncle passed away in early 2021, I planned to write an obituary or tribute. But my grief was so profound that I could not attempt it. Now one year has passed, and my mind has cleared.
We don’t have to repeat those vicious cycles. You and I all have the possibility to change the future, scratch that, you and I have the obligation to break free. To start, we can all communicate better and more often, break more boundaries and firewalls, and let’s be honest, allow candid and open dialog to flourish.
There is a Chinese saying “严以律己，宽以待人” (Be strict with yourself and be lenient with others). People with different values, cultures, and ways of life can live peacefully together. It is possible. We can all use a bit more learning rather than evangelism. We can recognize the differences or even appreciate the diversity, without trying to convert each other to our own way of living. Let’s put aside absolutes for a moment, and appreciate the ambiguity and many shades of gray. Let’s all try to look at events from others’ perspectives.
Humans have the capacity and willingness to collaborate selflessly across the globe, for the common good of the human species. Case in point: much of the improvement in technical productivity in the last two decades can be attributed to the open-source movement initiated by GNU and Linux. With the advent of blockchain, crypto networks, and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, we can imagine new economic models, better modes of massive collaboration among people, and even new forms of policies and nations.
And there are bigger threats that confront humankind on Earth. While it is incredible to explore the Moon and Mars, let’s make our own planet more habitable. Let’s use our collective imagination to improve people’s lives without overconsuming energy and resources.
Clunk, clunk, clunk — the Olivetti typewriter feels surprisingly similar to the one that my uncle lent me so many years ago. Typing this essay on Olivetti, not only helps me remember my uncle, but also inspires me to devote myself to open communication and better understanding among people and cultures. Each letter that the mechanism imprints on the paper will have a minuscule yet tangible impact on the future that we can all look forward to.
In loving memory of my uncle,
California, January 17th, 2022
