This is the link to the video Ayen何璟昕「向光性」live performance on Bilibili 哔哩哔哩。I believe the actual date is 04-08-2023 at Rizhao, Shandong province, China 2023.04.8 山東日照櫻谷彈唱會。
I created this link because Wikipedia rejects the bilibili link: in “https://b23.tv/1234567” format. I don’t know why.
Short videos 短视频 (short form content on Wikipedia) are getting popular nowadays.
I have some reservations on the shorts, YT shorts or anything equivalent. Below is not a complete list but let me try list some of the popular shorts platforms. My main reservations are the short durations of videos, their impact on kids’ focuses, and the relatively short time span of short videos in the internet and social media history.
YT Shorts: I know my younger daughter only watches the YT shorts when she gets my phone 🙂
Douyin 抖音 (since Sept 2026): I don’t have account for now. But I did watch two short videos today. Also, this series (or playlist) looks/sounds good to me at least 🙂
For douyin we have to have a China based mobile phone and Chinese ID. In other words the app is not open to foreigners or to outside world. ByteDance’s TikTok serves that market.
This also makes me to think – maybe TikTok and Douyin 抖音 got popular for a legit reason? 抖音和TT在短视频领域称霸是否意味着字节跳动有她的独到之处呢?就像最近的DeepSeek 对ChatGPT 的冲击和影响?一般一开始先是deny, 接下去说她们肯定是抄了我们的作业,最后发现不对啊,我们可能需要抄她们的作业?😂 Because their presentation or their content or their engagement are better than competitors (say, YT Shorts, and FB Reels)?
Also the 2025 graduation festival: this has been a thing since 2000, and I recall Bilibili was the early leader.
TikTok: I didn’t use it much. But I am aware that it’s widely popular among young people, and it may have taken a dip recently in the USA due to the recent law barring the app. But again whatever ByteDance (Douyin and TikTik) was doing seems working very well with the young people across the world. And for that I think as a minimum we should acknowledge their success: I understand sometimes it’s harder for people outside of China to acknowledge that Chinese people or engineers did something really impressive. If we can do that, we can follow up with some more helpful or meaningful questions such as why are they successful? What can we learn from them, and so on.
WeChat (short videos) 微信视频特指短视频: I don’t watch much of it honestly, especially recently – besides I watch a few music videos there 🙂 One reason I watched music is to stay away from politics. As some of you may know, I am not a fan of the current resident of the WH in the USA. From WeChat I saw content creators can also create playlist. Personally I haven’t found a way to share the link for the 合集 yet, note I don’t have a 微信公众号或者视频号.
Bilibili: they have both short videos and long videos. I am not fully converted to 弹幕 yet though 🙂 (Update) I finally moved up to level 2 there, after answering 60 questions (mostly are simple questions). I tried to verify myself as HUST alumni, but I failed 🙁
Here is one example of Bilibili video. Now I also recall the difference between Bilibili and Douyin: the former is a bit smaller in terms of scale, and also, they cater to the young and educated folks, while Douyin is for everyone. They have a playlist or 合集/视频选集 feature too, here is an example.
Also: I just uploaded my 1st video.
(06/04/25) I found a tip to not see the 弹幕 , just pop up the video in the bilibili app.
(06-11-25) Just learned sometimes the platform has exclusivity agreement with creator.
RedNote: or XiaoHongShu. It got a pop recent amid the TikTok ban. The bump or pop probably faded away. But the platform itself is quite popular among Chinese users and has quite good engagement from my observations. RedNote can create a playlist #合集 too. Here is one example Ayen何璟昕国粤双语合集. Note: it’s best to open this in the app. I noticed on my Mac it will automatically download the Android apk file for RedNote app. Or you may go to the xiaohongshu website and I am not sure if the same functionality exists on the website.
From consumer point of view, I think consume in moderation is the key. But from creator point of view, short video and playlist or 合集 in Chinese is a great way to generate interest.
Business model or income
I speculate one reason artists or creators do short video instead of longer or full length videos is due to copyright laws. I am not attorney but I guess a 20 or 30 seconds clip is less likely to cause issues for the copyright owners than the full length version.
This is more from the content creators or advertisers’ point of view.
(Original March 18, 2025) 她的音乐是治愈的 her music is curing – Yours Truly. This is one example: her original Cantonese song Moonlight – 何璟昕 Ayen《月光 Moonlight 》官方高畫質 Official HD MV, note the link is YouTube 油管. Here is Bilibili link: standaloneor official, good sound quality; live performance video. I encourage you buy her music from either Apple Music (iTunes store) or her Taobao store. Musicians need to eat and have other daily needs: we don’t want to be free loaders. Or if I can quote one of my favorite people in the world: if you are lucky, please make sure someone else in the world is lucky too. This person is Warren Buffett. Back to topic.
Lyrics for the song Moonlight 月光 can be seen here at jspinyin.net (this one has Pin’yin annotation) or 酷歌词 kugeci.com (this one has links to a singer’s other popular songs).
Another comment on YT: “When the world is moving to fast just listen to Ayen, and everything will be alright.” –Daniel Vache (very well said – yours truly)
She actually sing in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Her Chinese name is 何璟昕 or He Jing’xin in Pin’yin. In Cantonese, 阿昕 sounds a bit like 阿音 or Ayen in English. Both her parents are teachers when she grew up. In fact I saw her mom on this YT video (lovely mom/daughter pair, to say the least).
Here is her wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English). Full Disclosure: I made some contributions to her Wiki pages recently. It’s a somewhat fun experience for someone who likes to edit, write and knows basics of html.
Some social media and music platforms for Ayen 何璟昕
This is probably one of the most popular video platforms in China. I think Douyin is similar: the main difference is Douyin only has short videos. Note you will need to log into the website in order to have full experience with website or app. She did quite a few live show in 2020 on Bilibili, here is one – Ayen何璟昕 x bilibili直播 (纯享剪辑版) [2020.04.08] You may need to register at the website in order to watch, I did, mostly via my gmail and WeChat. Their system is pretty rigorous, I would say, at this time I still cannot upload video there. I think they need to verify my ID or something.
Douyin 抖音
(Update 05-24-2025) Now I realized Douyin 抖音 is much bigger compared to Bilibli 哔哩哔哩, as I said in my other blog post. Here is her Douyin: I think ByteDance (Douyin and TikTok parent co) longer video platform inside China is 西瓜视频。
In order to have full experience with Douyin, one will need to install the mobile app. Note the app is only available inside China. So for instance, if I want the app, I need to to try a different geolocation (China instead of the USA).
One can still watch videos without creating an account. To do it, one needs to pass a captcha – basically slide a shape.
She has quite a few songs on her Weibo, but this one (not music, about how to stay away from online fraud) caught my attention today – 我这么谨慎的人,居然也差点被骗20万… (personally I felt bad for her, but it seems like just something happens quite often nowadays, and I will talk about it sometime in the near future).
She is on WeChat (Wei Xing) and Red Note (Xiao Hong Shu) too – you should be able to search her name 何璟昕 and find her there.
I noticed her subscriber steadily increased from 47.9 k (03-11-25?) to 49.5 k today 05-01-25. It appears her YT channel is gaining about 1k subscribers per month. At this rate I am fairly confident that her channel will have 50k subscribers by the end of this month (I think 50.5 k subscriber count is within reach at 05/31/25). I hope my small contributions on the Wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English) helped 🙂
Some of her original work(compose, lyrics or both)
何璟昕 Ayen【向光性 Phototropism】原創音樂 官方高畫質 Official HD MV: she actually wrote this song when she was about 17 (year 2011) – 独立音乐人何璟昕:向光飞舞的风筝. She made an album with the same tile in year 2016: the album actually has more than 3 songs as shown in this YT playlist. I will update if/when I find the complete playlist.
If you like her music, you can purchase in a few ways. Apple Music store (iTunes Store, search “Ayen何璟昕“) and Taobao 淘宝网。Below is how you would find her music on iTunes store.
Apple iTunes Store (Note: this is available on iPhone as well)
On Taobao, you would search Ayen的店:she sells both her music and her Donna brand guitar there. Last but not least, she sells 吉他谱 Guitar Music online.
Some of her recent workand other songs I like
放手以后 via YT (网易云音乐, 2024) – lyrics available at boomplay; Author/Composer: Carlos’ Instagram. Also a short chip (similar to YT Shorts) on Douyin. Note for Douyin: I don’t have account with them for now – it still allows me to watch the video, if I click “dismiss” when it prompts me to put in my mobile phone or password, and turn on the volume.
I started listened to her a lot in last week or so, partially because we had 3 days power outage, and I didn’t have much else to do. I know you can argue I can listen to someone else’s music too 🙂 If my memory is correct, this time around I came across this new song 【哪吒2】片尾曲《在故事的最終》粵語版|港風填詞翻唱|唱哭每個成長的孩子 Acoustic cover|Ayen何璟昕. Since then it’s been a black hole 🙂
New song《時間不等你》Time doesn’t wait for you: I listened to her new song 时间不等你 (2024) #粤语歌 many times. I really liked the music, the lyrics and Ayen’s singing.
作詞:陳鈺海 作曲:石羽函 編曲:梁雨森 (the link goes to Douyin, note you can still visit Douyin even without an account, you just need to complete the Captcha and also dismiss the dialog about phone number). Below is quoted from his Douyin profile. 棉花佬就是梁雨森🎸在此!职业吉他手,作曲/编曲 “棉花乐队”成立二年啦~ 以棉花乐队的形式致敬BEYOND乐队~ 不教学,不卖谱~
YT: 【粵語】想見你想見你想見你|火土填詞 x AYAN何璟昕|想見你劇集主題曲 (Update 04-02-2025) I liked this song very much. There are a few variations (Mandarin, Cantonese as well as different lyrics). I came across it at QQ Music first and noticed Ayen sang a few variations there. Then I did search on google and WeChat and noticed other versions, as well as the TV series that featured this song.
I don’t know about you, but to me this song reminds me 粤语更接近文言文.
Live Performance
何璟昕碩士作曲專場音樂會 (2021). Note she created all the below songs (compose and lyrics) over the years. She graduated in Dec 2021.
Also note, she pretty much managed all her creative activities by herself, this is from composing, lyrics, graphic design, photography, videography, editing, sound, and managing her social media and music platforms. She explained it here – 一個人就是一個團隊?/揭秘:我平時是如何一個人製作視頻的!
Slightly older videos (I believe that’s when Ayen created and uploaded videos to the Internet). Between 2014 and 2017, she debuted or sang quite a few Cantonese, Mandarin and English songs, mainly using her own acoustic guitar or ukulele as accompanying instruments and posted some of the videos on Sohu.com, and more specialized website such as yueqixuexi.com too. Some of the songs are also available on QQ Music (QQ 音乐)too.
(She took the video in Summer 2014, uploaded it to YT on Jan 30, 2020) 梁靜茹 – 暖暖 cover(吉他 + ukulele )| Ayen 何璟昕 || On YT, if you want to look at her old videos, you can go to her channel, click on videos, and then click “Oldest”. This approach works across the YT too.
(Update 04-3-2025) I just created a YT playlist Ayen何璟昕-early: I believe those are songs/MVs she made between 2014 and 2019.
From the Sohu.com videos, the playlist above, to her more recent videos/songs such as 时间不等你, we can see her growth in many aspects. But I think she kept her 温柔女生 style, for the most part, through the years. That’s probably one reason I liked her singing.
She talked about her video creation and how she pursued her music career from a hobby in middle school. She actually made two videos because she wanted to keep her video under certain length. Below are two videos.
Some fun videos: having a sense of humor (despite all kinds of obstacles in life) is important. I created a playlist in which she has some fun elements in the music videos.
翻唱 (cover, or acoustic cover) and Playlists
Since this is getting a bit long, I moved the content here to another post here – Playlist.
One thing I may add is: in many ways 翻唱, or cover, or acoustic cover, is creative and sometimes hard work. For example, in this video, 謝安琪【喜帖街】Kay Tse 鋼琴+吉他彈唱 這是一首關於懷舊的粵語歌 | cover by Ayen 何璟昕, she rented the 1980s style house (惠州棠梨和光民宿), as well as some other interesting and fun settings. Here is another one 【Mr. 森林】Acoustic guitar cover | Ayen 何璟昕: if you watch towards the end, you will notice the work put behind it.
Last but not least, music industry is intensely competitive (I talked a bit here). I didn’t expand or elaborate, but in short, the top dogs such as Taylor Swift of the USA and the G.E.M Gloria Deng Zhiqi of HK/China makes most of the dough in the industry, via steaming, live performance, merchandise and products endorsement (ads). That’s all good, but we should not forget about musicians who are less famous. That’s why personally I support all my kids music teachers (as much as practical) and in this case, we should support Ayen 何璟昕 too.
If you are interested learning guitar (take guitar lesson from her), or collaborate on music creation (music composition, lyrics etc.), you may reach out to her “如果你想讓我為你製作音樂(編曲/作詞/作曲都可以),或者想找我學習吉他音樂課程”
Because I have two new years. I can make another new year resolution 🙂
I was thinking about what part time gig I wanted to do, as I am thinking about stopping Uber Driving. I felt the pay is too low, and there may be some unknown risk, and definitely some extra work say if I drive for Uber Health or Uber Care. While I do charity work or give money to charity org sometimes, I don’t want to mix it with my Uber driving. My own happiness and wellbeing are still top priority in all cases.
Imagine when a kid falls and how western parents and traditional Chinese grandmas react
Is probably the confidence. From the day they start to walk. I still remember the time my older daughter started to walk. I think most parents would encourage their toddler kids to walk when the kiddos were still learning. I guess the same goes for the potty training. Now I recall we gave our older daughter chocolate when she successfully used the potty without peeing or pooing in the diaper. when we started potty training on her. And I clearly recall she asked for chocolate at her toddler daycare place when she successfully did it there.
In terms of teaching kids to walk or run, I also recall, that many years ago, in my college (China), sometimes we saw Western parents walk with young kids on campus. And occasionally, kids will fall, to my initial surprise, the western parents would usually let the kids get up by themselves, and in a way help them grow. This way of handling kids falling is totally opposite to what my grandmas would do: they would walk over, blame the ground, pretend hitting the ground, and so on.
Fast forward though, I think partially due to kids growing, partially due to our own aging, it seems we can use more patience as kids growing up. I know it’s easier said than done, especially for parents of teens, pre-teens etc.
I think the below tweet showed an excellent way the parent supported his kid. Lot of hard work, obviously. But it both improved her volleyball skills and perhaps equally important if not more, her confidence in playing volleyball.
Last year, my daughter got cut from her 7th grade volleyball team.
She made the first cut, and thought she had a good chance. But on the second and final cut, they called her name, and she put her head down and walked out to the car where her mom and I were waiting.
油管:my Youtube 2022 video for BRK HQ video below (narration mostly in Chinese)
Charlie Munger
We know Charlie Munger (Wiki) passed away recently, and he was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway: he had some influence on Warren Buffet’s investments over the years, including See’s Candy, Coca Cola and so on. Here is the free online book Poor Charlie’s Almanack (you can purchase the paper versions through the links here). Also, the last interview before he passed away with CNBC’s Becky Quick (1 hour 42 mins, YouTube link here). I still think Warren makes most investments decisions independently. though.
四大金刚 (google; baidu baike, Wiki) is a common idiom in Chinese, and I think it may be suitable to describe the current top 4 men who works for Warren Buffett. And I assume they take over most of what Warren does today, should Warren decides to retire.
Top Two (Duo)
Greg Abel (Wiki): current Vice Chairman of BRK, responsible for all non-insurance operations, which also means he is in charge of the BRK Energy (formerly Mid-America Energy), BNSF Railway, many manufacturing and retail operations ranges from BH Home Service (real estate agents), Brooks Running, Clayton Home, Diary Queen, to ISCAR, Nebraska Furniture Market (NFM), Net Jets, See’s Candies, to Oriental Trading, Squish Marrow and so on. Note there are many business people may have not heard of. As of now, Greg will be the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway when Warren Buffett retires, in addition to his curent Vice Chair title.
Ajit Jain: current Vice Chairman of BRK, responsible for all insurance operations, companies such as Geico (car insurance) to reinsurance business.
Warren asked Greg and Ajit to be on the stage in last few years’ annual shareholder meeting, and they answered relevant questions in their portfolio. This is a good move. I think also, once Charlie slipped his tongue during an Q&A, and he said Greg will keep the culture (or something similar). So the world knows Greg is the CEO heir apparent.
Investment managers(also a duo)
Ted and Todd are two former hedge fund managers that Warren Buffet hired about 15 years ago (exact date please refer to their Wikipedia links below, or you can google it). Quite a few people including $BRK.A and $BRK.B shareholders would question Warren Buffett’s age and they are worried what if Warren suddenly became incapacitated or die. Who is the heir apparent. This is a tricky question or problem, because very few hedge fund managers would give up their career, at the same time would basically be prepared when this inevitable happens. It seems in Ted W. and Todd C. Warren found the perfect duo for this job. This is somewhat like the duo of Warren himself and Charlie.
Ted Weschler: Ted got a bit unwanted attention from his personal IRA investment. But his performance speaks louder than his words. Quote Wikipedia: in 2012, Weschler joined Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, a year after Todd Combs joined as Berkshire’s first investment manager. As of 2019, he managed $13 billion of the equity portfolio and $8 billion in pension funds.
Todd Combs: in addition to his investment duty (along with Ted), note Todd is also the CEO of Geico (and technically for that role he reports to Ajit). Here is a picture of Todd during “invest in yourself 5k” during the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. Here is a picture of Ted, Todd and Tracy Britt Cool during that run. Note Tracy used to work for Warren as well, and she started to work on her own investment partnership in recent years. Maybe someday she will come back to BRK: if the right opportunity arises.
Board
Howard Buffett, Warren’s older son, plans to take over the Chairman role when Warren retires. Susan Buffett, Warren’s daughter, and a few others will be on the board. They may need to add one or 2 board seats because Charile used to be a board member.
One thing it’s interesting is Warren likes #pairProgramming, or #pairWorking, because he has two pairs of magnificent managers for CEO and investment managers job.
Reading Time: < 1minuteFinancial education for the kids
of course, learn from the grand master is the best way. Here it is, buffett’s secret millionaire’s club cartoon.
This is a more systematic approach, which includes a lot different concept on personal finance and investing, such as saving, rate of return/capital expenditure (modeled after See’s Candy), etc.