I honestly forgot what it looked like. My mom told me that when I was in kindergarten, I used to stand in front of the window — not playing with the other kids, not talking much — just staring out. The teacher probably said something to my mom about it.

My mom said I kept calling for Da Da Liu (刘大大 — the nickname I used for someone I trusted), and I just didn’t want to move.

So after that, my parents started taking me out — to the zoo, to the rides. We went on that little roller coaster called Crazy Mouse, and we played 碰碰车 (bumper cars), crashing into each other and laughing. They took me to places where we ate good food, bought all kinds of small things, and for a moment I was just… happy.

And then, in the next few days, something softened. Back in kindergarten, I finally started touching the world a bit — talking to other children, opening up, letting myself be part of it.

1. The kindergarten-made legendary disaster dumpling.

That dumpling… my god.

It wasn’t food. It was a cosmic event. A warning. A test of human endurance disguised as lunch.

The filling was this unholy mix of too many crispy dried shrimps that felt like chewing gravel, and the sauce inside the dumpling tasted like someone washed socks in warm beer and whispered, “Yes. This is the flavor profile.”

The old‑generation Chinese believed that eating dried shrimp shells could enhance the absorption of calcium. Actually, no — you probably can’t. Modern scientific studies show that if you want to eat dried shrimp shells to compensate for the loss of calcium, it must be a basket‑volume amount. It didn’t help, but it could help people feel safe psychologically. Besides, at that time dried shrimp was so expensive. It’s like you cook beef for your children and they don’t accept your hard work and your wishes.

Whatever the taste, I took one bite and immediately felt my mouth detach from my body, like it was trying to file for early retirement.

So what did I do? I looked left. I looked right. I scanned the entire perimeter like a tiny undercover agent. And then I launched that demon‑dumpling into the void with the precision of a trained assassin.

It flew in a perfect arc — a tragic, heroic little meteor — and vanished behind the green bushes. I swear the earth hissed when it landed.

And the teachers? They never saw that dumpling. Maybe they were sleeping. Maybe they pretended not to. Maybe they, too, feared the dumpling.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Because the next day… they served it again.

Oh my god. Same shape. Same smell. Same existential threat. Same cutting throat. Wow, what would I do? I forgot.

And honestly? That was the first moment in my life when I felt true courage. Not climbing the five‑meter gate. Not racing other kids. No — it was the moment I threw away that dumpling and chose life.

2. The saga of the evil tiny-eyed teacher.

In my second year of S.K., I brought my cassette to share music with everyone. My cassette, my private treasure, my kingdom. I had the right to decide how it played, okay? After it had been playing for maybe an hour, I went to Miss Lee — tall, big eyes, genuinely kind, modern dress and had a 1980s style hair — and told her I wanted to stop it because I didn’t want to damage my beloved tape. She said, “Okay.” So I stopped it.

Then chaos descended:

A young woman with tiny eyes, who technically had the title “teacher” but spiritually absolutely did NOT, suddenly slapped the back of my head and scolded me like she was rehearsing for an opera called The Endless Lecture. She was scolding with passion, like it was her hobby.



I cried, of course. Miss Lee rushed in, stopped her, and comforted me like the angel she was. That’s the whole story. I told my mom about this, the next day, my mom took me to the kindergarten, asked me who she was. There were lots of female teachers over there, and I forgot the face. Now I realised that I may have some facial recognition problems, which let me only recognise the most beautiful face in the scene and automatically forgot others. Even today, whenever I think of that woman, I still couldn't remember how she looked like. I hope she has permanently lost all remote controls in her life. That is my peaceful, poetic revenge.

3. The unforgettable sandpit dive.

This happened during a gym class entirely about jumping. Just… jumping. I don’t know what kind of superpower I thought I had, but I jumped with so much enthusiasm that I ended up doing a full doggy‑style dive straight into the sandpit.

My mouth was instantly filled with sand.

Perhaps I was over performanced, and the ground was so slippery.I still remember the taste — like nature’s way of saying, “Congratulations, you played yourself.”

Unforgettable moment. The sandpit won with a perfect score.

Maybe she was bored. Maybe she was too confident. Maybe she just wanted to start her new life with some heroic contribution. But I, being a strategic young gentleman, immediately recognized an opportunity from heaven.

I thought: Well, this is a wonderful time to outsource my homework.

So I gave her my assignment with great pleasure — like a king handing out his royal decree. She accepted it with the seriousness of a junior scholar. She finished it beautifully, neatly, professionally. I took that perfectly completed assignment to the teacher. The teacher looked at it and gave me four stars.

Four. Not three. Not two. Not “see me after class.” Four shining stars like a constellation of academic glory.

At that moment, I felt the first warm spark of admiration.

She had special eyes — bright, clever, observant. She had a beautiful smile that made the classroom feel less like a battlefield and more like a friendly town. And she had the magical ability to turn my lazy fate into shining homework.

Her name was Fan Yu.

She became my first co‑studying friend — the first person in my academic life who partnered with me, supported me, and unintentionally helped me become a four‑star student.

For the rest of elementary school, she never influenced me too much — but just enough to leave a small, gentle mark in the timeline of Lu’s personal history.

To break her dictatorship and release people from her evil domination, Lu started building up his masterpiece: the National Revolutionary Union (NRU).

This was Lu’s first political movement. This was history. This was chaos.

NRU once gathered almost 16 members — about 40% of the whole class. This was not a small club; it was basically a government inside a government. Lu, as the founder and president, showed a leadership that could almost scare a chalkboard. NRU’s rise directly threatened Fan’s domination. She panicked. She stepped on her own shadow. She probably lost sleep. NRU was rising fast and strong.

At this emergency time, Fan and her evil little bandits released their killing blow: framing Lu.

First, she inserted a spy inside NRU — a little traitor who could look you in the eyes and still betray you before recess. Then she made some “evidence,” probably written on leftover homework paper, to “prove” Lu was doing conspiracy.

And unbelievably, that new stupid head teacher X.L. trusted everything Fan said. She didn’t research, didn’t check, didn’t even use her glasses. She just believed it like it was printed on a textbook.

The revolution failed.

NRU was deconstructed.

X.L. treated Lu like a war criminal, even encouraged everyone to criticize him. She summarized that Lu was a “problem student” with “heavy psychology issues.” (In Lu’s heart, he thought: “If fighting against dictatorship is a problem, then I am happy to be a problem.”)

All the NRU core members were punished.

Fan celebrated like she won the Olympic Games of classroom politics.

But life is funny. After 4 months, Fan failed the mathematics exam. She ranked the last but four. That was the consequence of framing Lu and his royal partners. Fan’s win lasted only 4 months, then her political empire went to death quietly like an unplugged fan.

After this failure in LUCHEN Watson’s first school politics show, Lu made a big announcement:

He would disappear from politics forever.

He would never touch it again.

(At least until next time destiny tried to annoy him.)

P.S. Miss Fan Yu eventually dropped math completely (no surprise at all). Now she is a screenwriter and instructor with a Ph.D. in drama, teaching screenwriting at Beijing Film Academy. Very dramatic path — actually suits her political childhood very well.

My dad was trading stocks at that time, when he heard the word "stock" mixed inside the radio, he suddenly rushed into my room and shouted "stock?"

This shocked me a lot, I looked at my cascade player said: "it was just music, no money."

then he left in disappointment.

Everyone who listened Santorini acted like injected cocaine that nobody couldn't control themself. So did I.

I broke open my lovely piggy bank and collected a bunch of coins to buy a pirated copy from a street stall. That stall probably sold more Yanni cascades than snacks.

After that, when I proudly tried to show-off my “rare treasure” to my BBF XP Tan, he showed-off me something even better — the legal high‑definition version. Not only him, even a soft, intellectual, college girl eight years older than me had bought the same pirated album from that very same stall. That album basically became the seller’s secret weapon to raise his whole family.

Can you imagine how hot it was? It only needed one more step: the president recommending it on national television.

The booklet of the album boldly wrote:

"this album, like huge tornado, easily sucked 7.5 million copies after release. (not included my pirated vision from street stall). I thought:

"This guy only did one album and reached such high record, if he makes two album like this, then he probably doesn’t need to work again. What if I make one album like this, then I do not need to go to school anymore.

Considering Yanni was from Greek, I started imagining:

What if one day, a future Chinse musician --Me---, could do the same thing in America?

Emmmm, that's a great job, that's an easy job, that must be my job.

This is my first dream.

Besides watching it, he also read a lot of related reports, behind‑the‑scenes stories, and books about the making of Titanic. He even read things he didn’t fully understand at that age, but they all went into his brain like fuel. Those materials inspired Lu to create a very ambitious dream:

He wanted to make a blockbuster movie when he grew up. Not a small movie. Not a boring documentary about plants. But a big, dramatic, world‑shaking blockbuster — something that could sink a ship (not literally).

Under the Chinese education system, there is honestly nothing very special to mention about Lu’s middle school period. Everything was the same old routine: exams, homework, teachers reminding students to sit properly, and the school canteen serving food that always tasted one level lower than “acceptable.” The only thing worth recording is Lu’s height.

His height went from 160.5 cm to 176 cm, like a bamboo suddenly remembering its destiny. Then in high school, it continued growing, from 176 cm to 177.5 cm.

Very interestingly — and scientifically confusing — it grew another 1.5 cm, from 177.5 cm to 179 cm, when he was in America.

Maybe it was the American milk. Maybe it was the clean air. Maybe it was just destiny giving him a small final push. But anyway, Lu grew.

"That's was amazing. Truly. When beautiful girls were surround you, that was like heaven. I felt like I was a underground celebrity in school. Even people didn't know who is LUCHEN, but they knew that face. especialy for the girls, you know, people in that age were all like that. I was very welcome in schools, even the securities of different shcools would not stop me to go in. And the girls would ask me: are you XXX in class XX, I would not deny and saying: oh sure, how do you know me. Then I was like finishing her, asked her name and giving her my iconic eye contact and saying: byebye...XXX, then smiling to her and watching her leaving."

Thoes were all pure Loves, without sleeping. I can't remember their names but I could remember their faces, even most of them are blured toady. Someone was lucky to recived my small gifts, like cards, my poems, $2 necklace, $1.5 gemstore, cheap but famous books and anyother things. Film ticket was luxury for us at that time in China, especially when you trying to find time. I just watched two moives when I was in high school, one was Pearl Habor, another one was Perfect Storm. That years we didn't have mobile phones that could easily contact to each other. So it should have more romantic moments for "LU and his girls", that could assembled to a short film, like an italian movie. How could I say about this? Well, that's beatiful memories, isn't it?

Interestingly, every morning when I went to my high school, I always saw 4–6 students going to their high school. We were very easy to identify by our clothing — a unique cultural thing in Chinese teenage school life. In short: students were forced to buy school-designed clothing. Each school had its own style.

The educational theory behind this was simple: prevent students from keeping up with the Joneses. (As if a uniform could stop teenagers from comparing anything.)

These uniforms all had something in common: poor design, poor material, and a level of fashion that went straight into negative numbers.

Honestly, nobody wanted to wear them. That’s why, of course, schools had to force students to wear them. In the end, students were dressed like Foxconn workers — how could they show any unique personality with that?

Back to the beginning — where was I? Every morning I met those 4–6 students wearing another school’s uniform. Why another uniform? Because I did wear my school uniform. So it was very easy to identify who was a high school student among the people waiting for the bus.

One day, I talked to them first.

After noticing we could talk about many topics — from science to gossip, from handsome boys to gorgeous girls — we quickly became friends. We talked about everything, anything, nonstop. Very soon, we became close.

To memorize our friendship, we called ourselves the “44 Bus Squad,” because we always met on bus 44. That was the light — a fissure cutting through the darkness, planting the seed of a small blue universe in my high school life.

Time flies. Over 20 years now. They are all living good lives.

Wenkai graduated from Hong Kong University and works in Citibank as a financial lead. Xuetao built his own business and now works at a Fortune 500 company. Wenjia found her other half, built a beautiful family, and has two lovely babies.

Our BanZhuRen — the instructor who supervised students’ life and graduation — was a very self‑righteous guy, especially when it came to 3D knowledge. He once argued with me, yelling that rendering must use a Video Card. He shouted like this was the law of physics, completely ignoring any explanation.

But that was 2006 A.D.

The first GPU computing tool (CUDA) came in 2008, while the first real GPU renderer arrived around 2010. And he didn’t even say “GPU computing.” He said “VIDEO CARD,” like he was talking about some magical thing inside Windows 98. That moment fully proved he knew absolutely nothing about rendering technology.

Another self‑righteous instructor was a business management teacher — a woman who refused to compromise on anything. When I pointed out her explanation was incorrect, she responded to me rudely, saying what she said was “absolutely right” and my argument was “wasting her time.” These two instructors were the top stars of my college life — in the worst way possible. So you can imagine what you could learn under this kind of teaching.

In 2007, I decided to change my life track from the previous undirected, depressed, anxious days. I put all my classes on Monday. That meant from 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., I had an extreme marathon of classes with almost no time to breathe.

Why did I do this? Simple: If you put the whole week’s classes into one day, then Tuesday to Friday becomes completely free.

Which means: Every week = a six‑day long vacation. What a wonderful idea.

So I made a big step: I started making music.

I bought many books and e‑magazines about mixing, recording, and MIDI technology. I began with Cakewalk Sonar — felt inconvenient. Tried Cubase — looked ugly. Tried Reason — anti‑humanity interface. Finally switched to FL Studio, and hmm, that felt good.

At that time, I didn’t have a MIDI keyboard, but FL Studio allowed me to use the PC keyboard to play music, which felt like magic. I also rented an old‑fashioned apartment with two guys, and called my tiny room “Studio.”

My studio was made from: $1500 PC, $40 speaker, $50 Audio‑Technica monitor headphone, some illegally downloaded software (everyone did that at that time).

The beginning was very painful. Using a PC keyboard to draw notes of a whole song was like watching an old man type on a typewriter — slow, loud, and extremely inefficient. But I forced myself to continue.

My life during that time was very regular: 7:00 am — woke up, Breakfast, Worked until 11:50 am, Lunch, Afternoon entertainment, Dinner, Night working time.

The college restaurant delivered far more delicious food than what I can get now. The dishes were lightly salted, low oil, over 40 varieties, and cheap — three times cheaper than modern takeout.

Now in China, takeout is more expensive, more oily, more salty, spicier, and more unhealthy. Without that dream restaurant, I wouldn’t even have motivation to maintain a regular life.

Life in Shanghai today? A disaster. (Cry)

After almost 3 months, my first song was born. It was created with various tools: FL Studio, Bösendorfer Piano, SampleTank 2, and mixed in Audition (surprise!).

My feeling was indescribable — like the universe suddenly belonged to me. The genius finally launched like a rocket, like a giant dick blasting into the sky.

My happiness was like the moment Donald Trump became president by accident — unbelievable but real.

The song was called “Your Eyes.” It was inspired by a beautiful girl who looked like Cate Blanchett.

The interesting thing was that I didn’t have any real reference. At that time in China, almost nobody knew Cinema 4D, which happened to be the only tool I used. So I grabbed a book called “LightWave 8 Handbook.” This was the only thing I could find that looked like a reference.

In the CG field of China, LightWave was already a very little‑known software… and my choice, Cinema 4D, was little‑known’s little‑known. Basically a rare Pokémon nobody had ever seen.

So I had to face a miserable situation: no reference, no advice from professors, no tutorials, no team, no partners, no existing experience, no YouTube, no Vimeo. Everything was just me.

It felt like standing in front of a big, cold wall and being asked to write the formula for E = mc² from zero.

But after 8 months of isolated life, something happened. The lights split the dark sky. The wall was broken. The equation was solved. I survived. My robot stood up.

Since God’s light shined on me, I felt this moment must be memorized. So I decided to build a brand-new LiveSpace to show off my works. Thus, LuChen’s 1st 3D Online Gallery was officially opened on my LiveSpace. Countless people came to witness this groundbreaking ceremony (at least that’s how I felt).

Here, I put some of those early works — let’s memorize that tremendous time when LU’s 3D journey first launched!

Exactly. Chinese logic + English words = a magical language system. Let’s look at some examples:

Two other legendary Chinglish cases came from the same issue:

1. “The shrimp fucks the cabbage.”

This came from 虾干炒白菜 (dried shrimp stir‑fried cabbage). The 干 (dried) again became 幹 (do/fuck). So the software basically created a seafood romance nobody asked for.

2. “Fuck the empress.”

This came from “干后” which was supposed to mean “after drying” (乾後). But 干后 got interpreted as 幹后 — literally “do the empress.” Because “后” is also the simplified character for “queen/empress.”

When Chinese simplification meets machine translation… you get a whole parallel universe of Chinglish that no English speaker can understand, and every Chinese person finds both embarrassing and hilarious.

TOEFL test, an English exam made by native English speakers, was probably the first English exam that actually helped me make real improvements — especially in speaking and listening. After learning English for 10 years at school and still unable to speak like a normal human, TOEFL finally solved the biggest problem: the robot finally learned how to talk.

When I later went to SCAD, I realized TOEFL really saved me. It fixed my “mute mode.” But speaking fluent English? That was just step one.

Some Hollywood movies also played the role of catalyst for my English speaking. One was the comedy “Accepted.” Another was the legendary “The Devil Wears Prada.” Although my motivation for watching movies was never “pure learning,” they gave me things beyond grammar:

From Accepted, I learned how to make jokes.

From Devil Wears Prada, I learned the principles of film editing.

These two movies were like my personal English tutors — who also taught me humor and cinema.

My English study schedule was simple: 8:00 am – 11:00 am, then 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm. Seven hours a day. The night was for my favorite things — games, music, movies — the only reward for my poor brain.

I prepared for almost a year. Then I returned to Zhejiang University to take my first TOEFL test. My mom thought my score would be around 40–50. When she heard I got 61, she became extremely excited — like I won a Nobel Prize or something.

But my second try backfired. Still 60. My mom guessed that I didn’t put effort into the second attempt. But in contrast, I thought it was just a natural bottleneck. My treatment for this situation: Patience. Change environment. Do unrelated things. Forget about it.

So I moved to Shanghai and found an internship, thanks to my uncle’s connection with the CEO of a company called BizArk. They claimed they helped Chinese manufacturers raise their pricing power to get more profit. It was the first time I heard the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This internship expanded my worldview. With this internship and TOEFL classes at New Oriental School, my third try got a score of 78 — finally enough to get my ticket to graduate school.

If I had more time, my fourth try might have been 100 — maybe. LOL. But honestly, my purpose of taking TOEFL was not about chasing numbers.

At the same time, I applied to five colleges and got accepted by three:

Art Institute of San Francisco replied first with super positive feedback. But because my TOEFL score didn’t meet their minimum requirement, their dean even asked for a phone interview to help me get in through a special admission channel.

Kent University was the second one interested in me. But they added a request: “Could you try again and raise your TOEFL to 86? We’d be happy to have you here.” Seriously… 86? You kill me.

Right when I was preparing for AISF, a huge package fell from the sky — literally. It shocked me with its size. It was from SCAD. Inside was an official letter:

“Congratulations LU, we are honored to inform you that you are accepted by our VFX program.”

At that moment, I thought: “Well, at least one college in this world understands me.” I read that message a million times.

Finally — I was a college boy.

From 2011 to 2012 was LUCHEN Watson’s ESL period — the time when English was still new to him. In 2011, during the full SCAD orientation ceremony, Lu met three beautiful girls and made many international friends on that same day. During his first quarter at SCAD, he lived in a big house with a guy named David King — a man who called himself the owner of “David King International Co.” So, first of first to him at that time, Lu had to figure out how to survive in Savannah. Getting familiar with everything he saw was a huge challenge for a newcomer. There was no pre‑exercise for him, especially for a student who was still learning how to speak English. Everything was difficult to struggle with. Anyone who arrives in a strange place with a unique culture would understand what I’m saying. Everything started from, at least, a silly acting under this condition. Sometimes people were good at dealing with things by following instincts, but not everyone was that kind. Sometimes some of them might laugh at what they had done. I knew that was not on purpose. If that kind of thing happened, that meant I did something wrong.

I did ride a second‑hand bike to go to class, and it cost me 70 bucks. Habersham Hall was about 15 minutes away from where I lived when I rode the bike at full speed. It was hard to imagine that I could ride that fast every day just to get to class and still stay on the bike — it was real crazy. One reason might have been the extremely good air quality(Some polluted cars were not included), which supported me to do it. You know, it was almost 3 miles away, over 50 blocks.

However, because of that craziness, I got into a car accident that almost took my life. Luckily, two kind old white people found me and called the police. I actually lost my memory for about 5 minutes. I remember that when I woke up, I was being held and hugged by that old lady. When I realized I was still alive, I said, “Am I alive?” The old lady said, “Yes, you are alive. You are absolutely alive.” She asked if she could go to the hospital with me to take care of. I showed her it wasn’t necessary and thanked her for her help. Then I was taken into an ambulance. They called my uncle and notified my college. I was treated in the hospital by three young, beautiful blonde nurses — it felt like a dream. Well, that was a big day for me, right at the beginning of my American trip.

Before that accident happend, LUCHEN Watson had a unforgettable moment that he met a girl who was perhapys the most beautiful girl in the world. The elegance was reflected through her drastically clean and transparent eyes with tons of micro sparklers. Her tooth with side tiger-shaped one dramatically shapped her smilling like an angle, which made LUCHEN Watson even forget what should he do. That happend in a resturant called Hibachi. So LU wrote a song to memorsie it, named Hibachi Girl.

Later on I knew she was called Deborah, a professor who taught Lu programming. " Well, you know she was really tough, very hard to negotiate, and easy to make people crashed. Considering art based student's poor background of programming, I can't believe she even teach us Python, and using that Fxxx ridiculous Houdini. I was struggling with her assignments. Every night, you know, in every deep night, the rain was falling down like waterfall, everybody was like living in a comfortable room with happy TV episodes, while I was in the lab of Jan Library, had to face that believable coding, and working to midnight until the library was closed. Every midnight when I came home, what people could see was a poor shadow of a body, standing in the cold rain, breathing the frozen air, I didn't know if my face was splashed by rain or by my tears. So I did quit. But I still loved her, with tears.

Deborah could be called as Dr. Deborah, she owned Ph.D of computer science. I am so proud to be her student, even the worst one. Everything she taught me was demonstrated that they were foresight. She also reminds me my past grandma who share the same warmth and eye contact, which empowers me to go further with no fear. Because of she always talks about Houdini--a software of creating complex CG content, I give her a nickname called Houdini Girl."

To let people understand my tear which mixed love, hate, missing, complain, hugging and many more, I leave this song to share what was my feel to her at that moment.

Everyday in the spring of 2014 was shinny, beautiful, and unforgettble. The weater in Savannah at that time was great, no rain, no cloudy, just sunshine. That days I did use to think about maybe I should speak out my love idea to that two blonde girls, perhaps I could get one of them. If did so, there won't be so much sadness over the past years.

From 2018 to 2020 I was focused on......nothing, just made money, that's okay. Who fucking care what I did. With the worst job I got and the longest working distance I had, I even surprisingly got depression, OMG! Thankfully, I got escape from that company on time, otherwise I couldn't imagine I could typing this words here like a normal person. Holly Crab!

I call her Olin in short. She is unperfect, but somehow is almost enough to me. I used to dream spending my final days living with her in Denmark, or taking her to Shanghai. That was so sweet when we talking together. Seems like everything was real (at least we have pysical text messages). I wrote one song for our past.

I was told I had a relationship with an international pop star, but searching found no evidence - no reports or social media posts proving it. Instead, I found information showing it was just an illusion, perhaps from immersing myself online too much. No friends or family ever mentioned it. Nothing in my physical city suggested I had a famous girlfriend.

So I concluded it was an illusion, a tired one. I needed rest to clear my mind. Over two years, I disconnected from the web by deleting unnecessary social accounts and "friends." This wasn't isolation but bringing me from dreams into real life. I stopped dreaming of fame or success. Life became simpler. Now without western pop culture influences, films or international purchases, I confirmed my real life is just me. Who spread those rumors is unclear, but they've ended.