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1. Hiking is one of my favorite activities to embrace nature. The most challenging trip was spending 10 hours to climb Mt. Fuji. I felt all my struggles are worthwhile when seeing the stunning idyllic Japanese scenery from the peak. 

2. I am a passionate magician since elementary school. By performing magic, I want to bring everyone the feeling of happiness, joy, and surprise. 
3. I have a notebook to accumulate funny jokes from daily life. I like using these punch lines whenever I need to cheer myself up or my friends. Every magician is a hidden witty talker. 
4. I wake up early every morning. Because my dog always comes to me at 7 am and demands that I feed him – he is my alarm clock! 
5. Not only puppies love me, but children also love being around me. During college, I volunteered to teach children from remote villages in China. 
6. During college, inspired by my best friend who is in an interracial dating relationship, I advocated for interracial dating by presenting a seminar to my fraternity community and encouraged people to join my efforts. 
7. Starting from elementary, I played on school badminton teams and competed professionally. My biggest takeaway is to have a deeper understanding of win and lose. Not only about the result, but the process when competing with the opponent helps me to grow.
8. My record is being rejected over 200 times in a day when I was doing the cold calling market research. 
9. My favorite color is red because it is associated with the characteristics of strength and passion. I also wear a pair of red boxing gloves for training to keep motivating myself. 
10. While everyone else hates commercial advertisements on media, I do love watching it! Because every time I unconsciously disassemble its creativity, effectiveness, and marketing strategy behind it. 
11. When I was a kid, I would regularly dissemble my mechanical toys to discover how they work. The curiosity remains inside me and it pushes me to see how everything works in the world. 
12. What I appreciate my parents the most is the diligence that starts from the bottom and grows to who they are today, and allows me to be abroad and receive international education. 
13. I love photography and video directing. This also helped my fraternity Instagram account tripled its followers. 
14. Another personal record was during the time studying in London. I was a backpacker and set foot to 10 different countries in 13 days. 
15. I have a nickname of “Challenge Taker”. During the first year I came to the States, I overcome my fear of speaking English publicly by volunteering to perform magic for different school events.
16. I love my Chinese name “Yi Shu”, which means spread wings and fly higher. And I do not need an English name because everyone can pronounce it right easily!  
17. In my backpack, there is always a detective book from Agatha Christie. The complex and plot-driven variety of detective stories intrigue me immensely. It also taught me the detail matters! 
18. Although I am not married and do not have children, I have a baby girl to take care of. She’s my younger sister and is 21 years younger than me!
19. I am a stickler for making a to-do list, no matter how small the thing is. I feel so satisfied when crossing off each line. 
20. From not understanding American football at all but grown to completely enjoy it, I see this as a sign of me getting Americanized. 

I have always tried to bring creativity to my work and my father has been a huge inspiration in this regard. He runs a logistics company in Southern China. When China first opened its door to foreign markets, businesses were not standardized which led to all sorts of inefficiencies. For instance, while delivering TVs to a tower bloc with my father’s company, it became clear that the building’s corridors were too small for the large cargo to pass. He immediately rented three construction ladder trucks to transport the cargos through the windows. Examples like this earned him the nickname, “the magic man in logistics”. His company grew with his reputation, from a team of 30 to a company of 500 staff. My father’s commitment to his work and ability to solve problems creatively have profoundly inspired me.

Alongside my professional work, I have been a practicing magician since the age of eight. The first major experience in this field was a magic show, which lasted 90 minutes and generated over $22,000 sales revenue. All tickets sales were donated to a local philanthropic organization. After confirming my first 500 ticket sales, I sent out a survey to get input from my audience about how to design the show better. I analyzed data from the survey feedback and discovered that the most attractive feature of events like these, besides the magic itself, is the feeling of camaraderie created between those attending. I decided that the show would be more family and group-oriented to attract a larger audience. In order to boost ticket sales, I mailed attendees a personalized wristband to use as their ticket. Indeed, I put a small magic prop in the box, which requires two people to play interactively. The moment attendees received the wrist band, they started sharing their excitement and the magic trick on social media and in their social circles. My personalized giftbox helped to generate affinity between attendees and the idea doubled the ticket sales: 2000 people attended in the end. From the post-event survey data, it became clear that half of the final audience were the friends or family of the initial early-bird ticket buyers.

During the show, I invited an audience member to the stage and asked her to select a word at random from a list. I then asked all people in the crowd to raise their wristbands. Under the laser light – and to great excitement – everyone could see the word “relate” (the word the girl had chosen) on their wristbands. This promotion experience showed me how insights generated by data analytics can be used to improve event sales.

Alongside with magic, combining analytical skill with a fresh, international perspective, I hope to help businesses thrive. The business analyst career path – which I aim to follow – requires diverse and adaptable skill sets. I seek to develop these skills and to make positive contributions in this field. Combining analytical skills with a fresh, international perspective, I hope to help businesses thrive as I have managed with my magic tricks.

That drove me to become a business student at Duke University, where I discovered how effective analytics can reveal effective and innovative ways of increasing business capacity and building a client base. In the data-driven era, many of the best marketing strategies involve employing creative – and previously unimaginable – strategies for targeting customers.

Magic is a mysterious and attractive term. The magician’s move on the stage is always elusive: some things can disappear, more things can be conjured out of thin air, and they can even read the audience’s thoughts. From the props to the magician himself, the assistant, to every character who appears on the stage, magic can always create surprises. This mysterious art deeply attracts every audience, and also intrigued me to spend plenty of time to research and become a magical performer in the eyes of all audience.

I started learning professional magic from very young. I think perfect and stunning performance is the combination of day-to-day hard practice and the moment of brilliance. 

During these years, I am very grateful to the people around me for giving me a lot of performance opportunities. I also thank my family for their support for me to perusing this art. While studying abroad, I have also met so many outstanding young magicians who are performing on international platforms. This motivates me a lot. In the future, I want to keep my hardworking and advance the progress of magical art with all my friends. 

• When did you become interested in magic?

In fact, I have been interested since a very young age. I remember the small boxes, rings and all kinds of that stuff sold by the small stores around my elementary school. At that time, I was so intrigued by these toys. In the past, there were also some daily magic tricks taught on TV programs. I watched them every day. In the beginning, I just used the small toys, or some little items made by myself to show the trick to my friends and family. And I think this is my starting point of interest in magic. It encouraged me to never give up in the midway of practicing and performing magic. I always want to be the one who can bring some magical.

• When you started to learn magic professionally? 

Haha, when someone asked me this question, I always say: since I was born! Actually, from my high school, some fellow students formed a magic club on campus. I ran to the recruiting events as a non-brainer. Fortunately, there was a professional magician from outside the school who could be the instructor for us and taught our professional magic performance. Since that time, I have officially got into the professional magic world. I am also very grateful to my high school alma mater for giving me a lot of performance opportunities in a lot of big stages. I also thank my family for their support for me to perusing this art. I feel very lucky to study abroad. In foreign countries, I have met many outstanding young magicians. In the future, I hope to achieve that high standard and advance the progress of magic art with all my magician friends.

• What’s the meaning of magic performance to you? 

I want to be a dream maker. Back to a child, everyone had imagined that he or she could fly like a bird. Then you jumped up and failed, knowing that people cannot fly. You knew it and grew up gradually. You understand that everything around and does not feel any fantasy. Suddenly one day, all the mystery feelings came back. Then your immediate response should be, laugh. You seem to be back to childhood. So, for me the meaning of performing magic has never been showing the sleight of hand or so-called “superpower”, I want to bring everyone the feeling of happiness, joy, and surprise.

• Any plans for magic in the future?

I feel very lucky to study abroad and be able to see the world boarder and clearer. Not only for my studies but also for my magic. In foreign countries, I have met many outstanding young magicians. They have more superb skills, advanced knowledge of the magical art. I also realized that there is still a lot of room for improvement for Chinese magic enthusiasts. In the future, I hope to achieve that high standard and advance the progress of magic art with all my magician friends. With a couple of magic partners, we have registered the non-profit organization “International Association of Chinese Magicians” in Los Angeles. We are planning to integrate advanced magic resources together and promote more outstanding young magicians to the international stages.

When you say “Magic”, what is your first thought? He is still a guy in a black vest, wearing a top hat, manipulating fingers for strange movements, joking jokes, imprisoning brave volunteers or beautiful assistants in a wooden box, or pulling the rabbit out of the hat ? Until recently, this was the deep-rooted idea of ​​most magicians. But the world is changing, and so is the modern magician. The solution is not only a change in appearance, but first and foremost a novel witchcraft professional method that truly attracts the audience.

A boy came to speak with me after my performance in a show in Hong Kong; he told me he dreamed to see snow but it never snowed in Hong Kong. “Could a magician make it snow?” He asked. Though I was sad to not be able to fulfill his dream at that time, I saved his parent’s contact details and promised him a magician could make it snow. A year later, in 2014, I invited the boy and his family to my solo magic show in Guangzhou. At the show’s finale, I invited the boy up on stage and showed the audience a piece of snow-pattern paper. After tearing it up, the pieces of paper in my hand expanded to a huge mass of snow and quickly poured out all over the stage. This was my proudest achievement, both because of the technical success and achievement of the trick and also because I could make the boy’s dream comes true. My multicultural background enables me to develop better transposition thinking and creativity. When creating a magic show, I always think from the audience’s perspective. 

My magical mystery journey started in middle school, when I was still a small and shy boy. At the age of 14, that was the first time I participated in a public performance. The disgust of the audience was really amazing to me. I made a major breakthrough in my life, and I realized what I wanted to achieve. The first performance in the form of a school party helped me gain the necessary self-confidence and further motivation. Competing with experienced and older wizards is a challenging but beneficial school for me. When I was a kid, I knew very well that I was trying to learn magic skills, and at the same time, I found that the audience needed to attract not only skills but also humor. I learned how to attract the audience and attract their attention, and discovered the real factors that really attract the attention of the audience, which is the key to success.

After completing this long series, I received a unique offer to perform on the stage of the largest multipurpose venue in South China –  Guangzhou International Sports Arena for an incredible 20,000 spectators. Attractive for every performer in the world, yet a great responsibility. It went beyond my own expectations and I repeated this success three times. Life is a big challenge for me every day. I realized that the most important thing is to establish and maintain contact with the audience, after all, without it, the performance would disintegrate like a badly built house of cards.

In my performance I bring the audience something different than the magician normally expected, I try to make non-violent contact and attract not only top tricks but also the thrilling and cordial atmosphere of the performance. You will surely be surprised, but that is the point and purpose of spending time together, filled with a varied mix of traditional and modern magic, elegant magic and mutual harmony. You will not like to leave, full of enthusiasm and certainly will not see you for the last time, I can bet my reputation on it.