Xian Feng Yi is a student studying Contemporary Japanese culture in Tohoku University.
She is a 22-year-old girl and have already moved to Sendai, a northern city in Japan for one year. She is one of my social media follower and one day she saw me post this project and she was pretty interested about it so she directly message me whether she could participate in my project.This is the very first time I started to interview a total stranger for my project which is fun but a little bit anxious. But the good thing is we get into the right vibe quickly since I have talked to her in advance to get to know her a bit.
Later on, I started to check the stuff in her private room. Her dormitory is in a typical simple Japanses style .At first,she showed me some wood she picked up in a farm which looked pretty decent, as a beautiful decoration. And then she demonstrated some books on her desk to me. There is a fun fact that she is in the same school with a famous chinese revolutionist in the past, called Lu Xun so I saw some books written by Lu Xun on her table. Besides, there is a ticket to Kinkakuji that looks like a tranditional buddist amulet on her wall.It means bringing luck and happiness.
One year ago, Xian came to Sendai as a exchange student in the last year of her campus life and then she decided to further her study in Japan.However, she got stucked in Japan due to the pandemic and she could not get back because the flight ticket back home was extremely expensive. What is worse, most of her friends in Japan went back home and this was pretty depressing. She showed me the stuff her friends left for her, such as pillow,guitar,and a suitcase. When I saw her stir the pillow from her friends, I can see a slight awkwardness of her accurrent situation since there is no company here anymore at this point.And that is why I took a photo of her sit alone in the public kitchen. Well, the loneliness never ends in the life of studying abroad.
2020.09.14
